things to think about

In which Dawkins discusses how behaviour is evolutionary and has its roots in the genes, and how the seemingly stable and predictable actions of individuals in a interacting group (an “evolutionarily stable strategy”, or ESS) are in fact reached by a number of individuals acting selfishly.
p68: It would seem that, as with genetic evolution, […]

The post I made yesterday, particularly the bit about consciousness-as-illusion, raises a bit of a problem I have with all this ”consciousness” stuff. It often seems like philosophy, unlike every other science, seems to have an inverse Occam’s razor which states that the more convoluted and weird a theory of consciousness is, the more valid it becomes. I mean, there’s people who seriously consider the notion that we may all be components of some vast (literal) computer […]

In which Dawkins discusses how early replicators acquired themselves “survival machines” to “protect” them from other replicators, and, eventually move them around using legs, wings, fins and similar. He also suggests the origins of imagination, and, possibly, consciousness.
p59: Imagination as a threat-prediction mechanism. This is an interesting, and plausible idea. Once early brains could map […]

In which Dawkins discusses further what happens during replication, how best to define a ‘gene’ or ‘chromosome’ and how inheritance and selection works.
p28: The structure of a cistron, with its beginning and end markers, will be familiar to anyone who’s studied prehistoric computing theory: files were often stored on magnetic tape in this way, one […]

It would appear that I spoke a little to soon in October; shortly after making that post, I foolishly took on a freelance job which swiftly outgrew its allotted few weekends and took over my life till the end of the year.
However! I’m back again, and this time I’m not going to do anything stupid […]