"level"? In what sense? In terms of fending for themselves, dogs are much more apt than an infant. In terms of logical thinking, probably not. There's no single kind of cognitive ability in the brain, there's a wide range of abilities, and in any given species some abilities are stronger than others. In some species, many abilities are stronger than they are in any other species, but this doesn't mean that they all are.
Souls? If we have them, then they either affect how we behave in this world or they do not. If they do not, there's not much point discussing them. If they do, then they must at some point interface with our bodies. A lot of places have been suggested for this soul central - Descartes thought it was the pineal gland. There is, however, no central control point in the brain to be found, and in general there has been no indication whatsoever of any kind of trans-physical element to our minds.
At any rate to say the urge to worship is unexplainable is pretty pessimistic of you. It isn't hard to come up with perfectly plausible explanations for how an animal might come up with superstitious beliefs and benefit from them. A large part of intelligence is recognizing patterns of cause and effect - stone hits head, head hurts: was it the stone that caused the head hurt? No, it was the person who threw the stone. Applied without sufficient critical thinking, though, this kind of thinking will also lead to untrue conclusions: Avalance buries village, people die. Was it the rocks that killed the people? No, someone must have triggered the avalanche. No known animal is strong enough to do that, so there must be a superior being out there. Why did they kill us? We must have displeased them. We must strive to please them in the future so they see us favourably. Worship, sacrifice.
As for why this kind of thing would persist so long, organized worship holds societies together. It helped make sense of the world when there was no way to understand it otherwise. It puts people in control of their own lives by letting them affect their fortunes by pleasing the gods. Accepting random events as such, random, has not been something people have traditionally excelled at. Furthermore, when individuals are needed to put themselves at risk for the good of their tribe, if they believe their souls will live on after their bodies die, they are that much more likely to act fearlessly, able to suppress their instinct of self-preservation.
Overall, if you look at the wide variety of human societies, you will find religion everywhere. All kinds of religion, from animal worship to belief in a one true god somewhere beyond human reach. This doesn't show that any particular religion has much truth to it - if that were the case, you'd expect there to be a much smaller variety of religions around. It just shows that people everywhere have an innate tendency to fabricate supernatural explanations for events. Religion has been useful, but that has nothing to do with its truth value.
On the other hand, maybe growing a bigger brain will become an evolutionary advantage because it consumes more energy, therefore reducing the risk of lethal fatness. We may see a few hundred generations after obesity start significantly culling individuals before the reproductive age.
Art? Depends on your definition. Whale songs aren't understood, dolphins (and other animals) certainly seem to play and generally "do stuff" just for the hell of it. We have a hard time defining human art these days, I'd reserve judgement on non-humans...
Science? True, I'm not aware of any systematic attempts to understand the world building on the experiences of others. I'm not sure I'd call it a fundamental trait, though. It's certainly important to mankind as we know it, but science in my opinion is enabled by too many more fundamental abilities of the human mind to be considered fundamental itself.
Law? There are certainly hierarchies and rules in animal societies. Nothing written down, and no trials as far as I know. Morals, concepts of right and wrong? Hard to say. That requires empathy, primates might exhibit something like a sense of moral.
Culture? What do you mean by culture? I addressed the art part of culture above, that leaves customs specific to a society of animals. I don't think you can just plain say there are no different cultures in animal societies.
No literature? True, no argument.I Don't think it's fundamental in the sense I meant, though. It's a function enabled by a higher degree of intelligence.
Economics... Well, hard to say again. Economics as the systematic study of transactions and their effects on society? No, you won't find that. Understanding of profit versus risk? Certainly on some level that's there. Here's a New Scientist article on macaque monkeys paying for sex:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/sex/mg19726374.100-macaque-monkeys-pay-for-sex.html
As for self-analytical, any being that learns from experience is in a sense self-analytical.
Creative? Every species has at some point learned new tricks. Monkeys use sticks to fish for insects - I don't think that's a trait hard wired into their brain. Once upon a time, a monkey got creative and learned the trick, then probably a portion of the other members of the species were smart enough to learn the trick, having seen it, or maybe only that one monkey was clever enough, but by learning a good new trick, gained a clear reproductive edge over the others, and some of it's offspring were sufficiently smart to either learn the trick by seeing it performed, or by figuring it out themselves. And so on. In any case, at some point, a monkey got creative.
Abstract communication? Maybe, frankly I'm not fully sure what you even mean by that. My point is, people have historically been very keen on making these blanket statements on just how we fundamentally are different from the rest of the animals (or, often, "the animals"), and the claims tend to not hold up to scrutiny. The human mind is a remarkably complex thing, but it is born of the nervous system, which is a product of evolution. It's tempting to think of some kind of magic point of complexity or whatever you wish to think creates consciousness where a mind turns from animal to human, but I don't think we'll find one. Consciousness is not something you either have or don't, there are degrees. Sometimes we're not conscious of our actions, like when driving a car down a long, straight road. It's not inconceivable that a being could be more conscious than a human being, so I don't think it's inconceivable that a being could be less so, and still be conscious. It's a matter of degree.
Sounds to me like cooking provided an opportunity to grow a bigger brain, but I don't think it explains the need. Something else in the environment made having a bigger brain increase the odds of reproduction, and cooking made it easier to provide the nutrition needed for that brain.
In any case, I don't see how we're "so strange compared to other animals". Seems to me we're remarkably similar, I can't think of any fundamental differences between us and other animals that are more than a matter of degree. Well, I don't know of any animal religions.
Precisely. Sports is not news, it's entertainment. This is like raising a ruckus about augmented titties on movie stars, claiming it's an affront to media integrity.
I for one am rather glad we tend to, apart from some notable exceptions, overlook ideas that amount to mass murder. It makes me feel that little bit safer to know that at least my neighbours are likely to feel a tad uncomfortable with the idea of killing me "to save mankind".
If you truly feel drastic measures should be taken to reduce the human population, I invite you to start with yourself. Pick a building 6 storeys or more high and jump off the top. Or are you saying it's the OTHER humans that need thinning down, not you? Isn't it funny how we overlook some obvious solutions when it's our very selves that are the problem?
That's the humanitarian point of view. There's no guarantee that short-term aid doesn't result in long-term harm to developing societies, though. Let's face it, no-one seems to actually know how you should go about lifting a society out of desperate poverty, but many are willing to use 3rd world countries as testing grounds for their ideas. With private and governmental entities engaging in aid operations for a wide variety of reasons with insufficient coordination, expect chaos.
I don't know, all this business of uploading to computer servers and conflicts with antivirus software sounds odd to me. What kind of servers are we talking about here? If there was a conflict with other software, then does that mean that somewhere the vote data passed through a computer not specifically designed, from the ground up, for the task? That is to say, an insecure one? I mean, the problems with the actual voting machines are bad enough, but I don't actually remember hearing about what is done with the data once it is loaded off the machines.
The "what year was the internet started" one at least sounded like a person who genuinely DID know what the emergency number is for (and indeed said so several times herself), but was too drunk to give a damn.
I thought you were maybe talking of the authoritarian fascists running the country - the ones behind ASBOs,arguably the most pervasive surveillance state in the world, DNA registries for the everyman etc. etc.
I recommend http://www.exrx.net/ as a decent source of exercise information, especially for weight training. Under "exercise instruction" you'll find workout templates.
Personally I have a 3-day split gym workout (meaning the muscle groups are split over three training sessions, allowing adequate rest) and I only do two sets per exercise: one warmup set of 12 repetitions at 50% target weight, which is really just to get a feel for the exercise and one set of 8-12 reps (or until failure) at target weight. ("target weight" being a weight I can lift for 8-12 repetitions, and if I do 12 or more, I increase the weight by 5-10% the next time.)
The main benefit of doing so few sets is it keeps the time you need to spend at the gym low. It seems people who have routines that have them spending more than an hour at a time lifting tend to lose motivation. On the other hand, doing only one "real" set per exercise, you need to really push yourself to do the very maximum you can each time to get the full benefits of your work.
Ultimately, it boils down to finding something you enjoy. I go to the gym with a friend. If I went alone - and I have - I'd be much more likely to just blow it off and not go at all. (the "ah, I have so much stuff I want to do" syndrome.) Probably, it's best to find several things you like. You'll need cardio exercise to really burn calories - muscle training will help with body composition and raising your metabolism, but can't replace cardio. Try riding a bike, in-line skating, running, walking, swimming... Whatever you like. Then vary what you do - any given type of exercise will train your body in ways the others won't, and you won't get bored as easily if you have some variety in your routines.
Whatever you do, if you want to see progress, keep pushing yourself. Your fitness improves as your body adapts itself to the level of physical strain you're putting on yourself. For best results, you need to make sure to keep giving your body the signal to keep improving by not getting stuck at running 2 kilometres in 10 minutes, or doing 12 reps of bench presses with 60 kilos of weight. Run further, or faster (or both!) and lift more than you have before. Your body will improve as you test your limits and break them. Just be aware of what those limits are and don't break yourself in the process. Start slow, be persistent.
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The hiss is fitting
The human can try to brake when someone wanders onto the tracks. And then get traumatized for life when they fail.
I get that whenever I work on something intensely, but I suspect it's just because I forget to eat.
"level"? In what sense? In terms of fending for themselves, dogs are much more apt than an infant. In terms of logical thinking, probably not. There's no single kind of cognitive ability in the brain, there's a wide range of abilities, and in any given species some abilities are stronger than others. In some species, many abilities are stronger than they are in any other species, but this doesn't mean that they all are.
You confuse "identical" and "similar".
Souls? If we have them, then they either affect how we behave in this world or they do not. If they do not, there's not much point discussing them. If they do, then they must at some point interface with our bodies. A lot of places have been suggested for this soul central - Descartes thought it was the pineal gland. There is, however, no central control point in the brain to be found, and in general there has been no indication whatsoever of any kind of trans-physical element to our minds.
At any rate to say the urge to worship is unexplainable is pretty pessimistic of you. It isn't hard to come up with perfectly plausible explanations for how an animal might come up with superstitious beliefs and benefit from them. A large part of intelligence is recognizing patterns of cause and effect - stone hits head, head hurts: was it the stone that caused the head hurt? No, it was the person who threw the stone. Applied without sufficient critical thinking, though, this kind of thinking will also lead to untrue conclusions: Avalance buries village, people die. Was it the rocks that killed the people? No, someone must have triggered the avalanche. No known animal is strong enough to do that, so there must be a superior being out there. Why did they kill us? We must have displeased them. We must strive to please them in the future so they see us favourably. Worship, sacrifice.
As for why this kind of thing would persist so long, organized worship holds societies together. It helped make sense of the world when there was no way to understand it otherwise. It puts people in control of their own lives by letting them affect their fortunes by pleasing the gods. Accepting random events as such, random, has not been something people have traditionally excelled at. Furthermore, when individuals are needed to put themselves at risk for the good of their tribe, if they believe their souls will live on after their bodies die, they are that much more likely to act fearlessly, able to suppress their instinct of self-preservation.
Overall, if you look at the wide variety of human societies, you will find religion everywhere. All kinds of religion, from animal worship to belief in a one true god somewhere beyond human reach. This doesn't show that any particular religion has much truth to it - if that were the case, you'd expect there to be a much smaller variety of religions around. It just shows that people everywhere have an innate tendency to fabricate supernatural explanations for events. Religion has been useful, but that has nothing to do with its truth value.
On the other hand, maybe growing a bigger brain will become an evolutionary advantage because it consumes more energy, therefore reducing the risk of lethal fatness. We may see a few hundred generations after obesity start significantly culling individuals before the reproductive age.
I don't think calorie intake is the limiting factor on brain growth in homo sapiens - at least not in the western world. Witness the obesity epidemic.
On animal language, I think the jury's still out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_language
Art? Depends on your definition. Whale songs aren't understood, dolphins (and other animals) certainly seem to play and generally "do stuff" just for the hell of it. We have a hard time defining human art these days, I'd reserve judgement on non-humans...
Science? True, I'm not aware of any systematic attempts to understand the world building on the experiences of others. I'm not sure I'd call it a fundamental trait, though. It's certainly important to mankind as we know it, but science in my opinion is enabled by too many more fundamental abilities of the human mind to be considered fundamental itself.
Law? There are certainly hierarchies and rules in animal societies. Nothing written down, and no trials as far as I know. Morals, concepts of right and wrong? Hard to say. That requires empathy, primates might exhibit something like a sense of moral.
Culture? What do you mean by culture? I addressed the art part of culture above, that leaves customs specific to a society of animals. I don't think you can just plain say there are no different cultures in animal societies.
No literature? True, no argument.I Don't think it's fundamental in the sense I meant, though. It's a function enabled by a higher degree of intelligence.
Economics... Well, hard to say again. Economics as the systematic study of transactions and their effects on society? No, you won't find that. Understanding of profit versus risk? Certainly on some level that's there. Here's a New Scientist article on macaque monkeys paying for sex: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/sex/mg19726374.100-macaque-monkeys-pay-for-sex.html
As for self-analytical, any being that learns from experience is in a sense self-analytical.
Creative? Every species has at some point learned new tricks. Monkeys use sticks to fish for insects - I don't think that's a trait hard wired into their brain. Once upon a time, a monkey got creative and learned the trick, then probably a portion of the other members of the species were smart enough to learn the trick, having seen it, or maybe only that one monkey was clever enough, but by learning a good new trick, gained a clear reproductive edge over the others, and some of it's offspring were sufficiently smart to either learn the trick by seeing it performed, or by figuring it out themselves. And so on. In any case, at some point, a monkey got creative.
Abstract communication? Maybe, frankly I'm not fully sure what you even mean by that. My point is, people have historically been very keen on making these blanket statements on just how we fundamentally are different from the rest of the animals (or, often, "the animals"), and the claims tend to not hold up to scrutiny. The human mind is a remarkably complex thing, but it is born of the nervous system, which is a product of evolution. It's tempting to think of some kind of magic point of complexity or whatever you wish to think creates consciousness where a mind turns from animal to human, but I don't think we'll find one. Consciousness is not something you either have or don't, there are degrees. Sometimes we're not conscious of our actions, like when driving a car down a long, straight road. It's not inconceivable that a being could be more conscious than a human being, so I don't think it's inconceivable that a being could be less so, and still be conscious. It's a matter of degree.
Sounds to me like cooking provided an opportunity to grow a bigger brain, but I don't think it explains the need. Something else in the environment made having a bigger brain increase the odds of reproduction, and cooking made it easier to provide the nutrition needed for that brain.
In any case, I don't see how we're "so strange compared to other animals". Seems to me we're remarkably similar, I can't think of any fundamental differences between us and other animals that are more than a matter of degree. Well, I don't know of any animal religions.
Too bad the people being thanked won't care much in their graves.
Precisely. Sports is not news, it's entertainment. This is like raising a ruckus about augmented titties on movie stars, claiming it's an affront to media integrity.
That's... fascinating, and yet I fail to see the relevance?
I for one am rather glad we tend to, apart from some notable exceptions, overlook ideas that amount to mass murder. It makes me feel that little bit safer to know that at least my neighbours are likely to feel a tad uncomfortable with the idea of killing me "to save mankind".
If you truly feel drastic measures should be taken to reduce the human population, I invite you to start with yourself. Pick a building 6 storeys or more high and jump off the top. Or are you saying it's the OTHER humans that need thinning down, not you? Isn't it funny how we overlook some obvious solutions when it's our very selves that are the problem?
That's the humanitarian point of view. There's no guarantee that short-term aid doesn't result in long-term harm to developing societies, though. Let's face it, no-one seems to actually know how you should go about lifting a society out of desperate poverty, but many are willing to use 3rd world countries as testing grounds for their ideas. With private and governmental entities engaging in aid operations for a wide variety of reasons with insufficient coordination, expect chaos.
I don't know, all this business of uploading to computer servers and conflicts with antivirus software sounds odd to me. What kind of servers are we talking about here? If there was a conflict with other software, then does that mean that somewhere the vote data passed through a computer not specifically designed, from the ground up, for the task? That is to say, an insecure one? I mean, the problems with the actual voting machines are bad enough, but I don't actually remember hearing about what is done with the data once it is loaded off the machines.
And who, pray tell, would those people be? The government?
But many songs can it store?
In other words, the mechanisms designed to make tampering harder/impossible are not being used by all countries.
It's what they use as propulsion material.
Scratch that list, here's my replacement:
- Thinking you know best how everyone should behave and having the gall to push for legislation to force everyone to conform to your ideas.
Please, closet fascists and power junkies, go ahead and create the totalitarian utopia you want - just leave me the hell out of it.
The "what year was the internet started" one at least sounded like a person who genuinely DID know what the emergency number is for (and indeed said so several times herself), but was too drunk to give a damn.
I thought you were maybe talking of the authoritarian fascists running the country - the ones behind ASBOs,arguably the most pervasive surveillance state in the world, DNA registries for the everyman etc. etc.
It may be #1 in terms of enjoyability, but sex, sadly, isn't that great as exercise...
I recommend http://www.exrx.net/ as a decent source of exercise information, especially for weight training. Under "exercise instruction" you'll find workout templates.
Personally I have a 3-day split gym workout (meaning the muscle groups are split over three training sessions, allowing adequate rest) and I only do two sets per exercise: one warmup set of 12 repetitions at 50% target weight, which is really just to get a feel for the exercise and one set of 8-12 reps (or until failure) at target weight. ("target weight" being a weight I can lift for 8-12 repetitions, and if I do 12 or more, I increase the weight by 5-10% the next time.)
The main benefit of doing so few sets is it keeps the time you need to spend at the gym low. It seems people who have routines that have them spending more than an hour at a time lifting tend to lose motivation. On the other hand, doing only one "real" set per exercise, you need to really push yourself to do the very maximum you can each time to get the full benefits of your work.
Ultimately, it boils down to finding something you enjoy. I go to the gym with a friend. If I went alone - and I have - I'd be much more likely to just blow it off and not go at all. (the "ah, I have so much stuff I want to do" syndrome.) Probably, it's best to find several things you like. You'll need cardio exercise to really burn calories - muscle training will help with body composition and raising your metabolism, but can't replace cardio. Try riding a bike, in-line skating, running, walking, swimming... Whatever you like. Then vary what you do - any given type of exercise will train your body in ways the others won't, and you won't get bored as easily if you have some variety in your routines.
Whatever you do, if you want to see progress, keep pushing yourself. Your fitness improves as your body adapts itself to the level of physical strain you're putting on yourself. For best results, you need to make sure to keep giving your body the signal to keep improving by not getting stuck at running 2 kilometres in 10 minutes, or doing 12 reps of bench presses with 60 kilos of weight. Run further, or faster (or both!) and lift more than you have before. Your body will improve as you test your limits and break them. Just be aware of what those limits are and don't break yourself in the process. Start slow, be persistent.