Proto-animals

560 million years ago: “Proto-animals” were the first multi-cellular organisms. Proto-animals looked like plants. It had soft cell walls and absorbed its nutrients directly through its large surface area without ths and guts. However, their simple and effective fractal cellular division meant that they could not adapt and thus failed.

100 million years later, animals started to move and they had modern body arrangements. They reproduced (550 million) and this enabled adaptation through genetic variation. Soon some animals developed predatory mouths and hunters in the oceans (for the first time) had enormous evolutionary consequences.

Sub-atomic beauty

Matter is made of electrons, protons and neutrons.

Protons and neutrons are made of quarks which are conceptualised as strings vibrating at different harmonic patterns to produce different kinds of protons and neutrons.

These harmonic vibration patterns are expected to be found in particle accelerators which collide protons at speeds nearing the speed of light. They photograph the sub-atomic particles which are released upon collisions of protons.

Intelligience in slime mould?!

In 2000, Japanese scientist Toshiyuki Nakagaki discovered that slime mould could organise itself into the most efficient possible shape in a maze (constructed on a plate of agar) and grow pseudopodia (tube-like structures) in order to get to two sources of food on either side of the maze. Mind-fucking stuff!

On Hominin evolution and technological progression

We begin with technological progression. Bipedalism allowed early hominin to carry an object to maintain a physical distance between them and predators. This had more survival value than fearsome canine teeth or great speed of foot.

2.5ma ago, Hominins then discovered the use of stone tools. This allowed Hominins the ability to engage in large animal scavenging.

2ma ago, the toolmakers begun to hunt prime adult animals. After trotting after animals for a sustained period of time, hominins could then tire it out and eventually earn themselves a meal. This was accompanied with a marked increase in brain size.

1.5ma ago, the hand axe was invented. 200,000-300,000 years ago, modern levels of brain size had been reached.

Fire was also controlled and projectile points could be hardened. This also allowed for hominins (physiologically tropical) to move to cold regions and they also started using animal skins for clothing. Fire also allowed for cooking. Cooked food requires less chewing and this converted middle-Pleistocene faces into its 'modern' form slowly over time.

String-based techniques for game acquisition meant that it was no longer essential to have the levels of muscular and skeletal robustness of previous hominin forms. String-based techniques also gave hominins the ability to catch more game much easier.

A cute animation about Hilbert's hotel

Hilbert's "Infinity hotel"

I am loving this: Amanda Boyle's short film Hotel Infinity concerns a hotel with an infinite number of rooms. Its slogan is "We're always full, but we always have room for you."

Guffaw guffaw!

Now let's get onto the serious stuff:
1) In order to check a new guest into the infinity hotel, you need to get the guest in room 1 to move into room 2 and room 2 into room 3 and so on. Then you will free up one room in front for the new guest. You cannot check in the new guest into the last room because there is no last room and every room is already occupied.

Infinity + 1 = infinity

2) In order to check an infinite amount of new guests into the hotels, you need to move all existing guests to the room which is double the room number they have already (ie the person in room 4 moves to room 8; the person in room n moves to room 2n). The first person in the newly-arrived group gets room 1; the nth person gets room 2n-1. In this way, an infinite number of odd-numbered rooms get freed up.

Infinity + Infinity = Infinity

3) If an infinite amount of guests leave the next morning, how many guests would be left? The answer is interesting. It could be that any real numbers of guests stayed behind while the infinite rest checked out or it could be that all the guests checked out.

Infinity - Infinity = Any real number (1,2,3 etc) OR 0

Unwin's equation for the existence of God

P(before) starts off with 50-50 maximum ignorance -> I argue that this 50-50 divide is inaccurate since because there are so many "Gods". Shouldn’t the 50% for the existence of Gods then be divided up equally among all possible Gods?

Next I go on to analyse the Divine indicator scale and I argue that none of these indicators can provide proof of God.

1 existence of moral good -> “moral” good can be explained via CBA, Game theory and a moral actions as a behavioral evolutionary tool
2 existence of moral evil -> evil actions exist because “cheating” is a behavioral evolutionary tool. There are also a limitations of resources, dysfunctional pyschological states and power differentials.
3 existence of natural evil (disasters) -> What?! All of these are naturally occurring!
4 existence of natural and unnatural miracles -> Natural miracles are very rare and occur because of probability/ laws of physics and unnatural miracles have never been documented/ proven.
6 religious experiences -> These can be easily explained by theory of mind and/or artificialism etc

I was hoping for a more convincing equation.

And yes, since we are here. Let's talk about Pascal's wager. A fundamental flaw is that there are sooo many possible Gods! By following one God, I would be improving my probability for a comfortable afterlife but not by much. And then we are all subject to a very high probrablity of having chosen the wrong God to believe in. And if I just followed a religion just so I would not be punished, wouldn't an all-knowing God find out? And wouldn't he/she punish me accordingly?

Important terms and concepts about abiogenesis

Laboratory tests have shown Atmosphere of early earth + basic elements (charged with energy i.e lightning) -> amino acids ( building blocks of life)

Carbon linked in many interesting ways to other elements.

Life was formed within 1st billion years.

Primitive lipids can naturally form cell-protecting membranes.

RNA was single-stranded (compared to double helix of DNA), stored communicative information and could replicate.

Life progressed by methods of organisation.

Lifeforms used energy from their surroundings to make self-copies that were prone to change due to the instability of the replicating process.

This allowed for adaptation which was necessary for evolution.

Important terms and concepts about evolution

Designed VS Designoid
Natural (hindsight) VS Artificial (foresight) selection
Convergent evolutionary trend: similar problems and pressures call forth similar solutions
Exaptation
Evolutionary branching bush VS 'ladder progression'
Transitional characteristics VS transitional animals (old-dated concept)

The "missing links"

Migration of Homo Sapiens
Archaeopteryx: link between dinosaurs and modern birds
Tiktaalik fish: link between fishes and land-dwelling animals
Ida: link between higher primates and lower primates
Australopithecus
Homo Habilis
Homo Ergaster
Homo Erectus