Sunday, January 09, 2011

Who'da Thunk It?

Happy New Year! I was looking for a file from late 2000 on my computer and stumbled across ... the outline for a book I was apparently thinking about writing, dated November 18, 1999. I had completely forgotten about this. A post-humanist manifesto!  It does look like topics that were covered in the blog. Anyway, here it is:

In Our Childhood – 
The Human Race Emerges from its Infancy

“There is nothing new under the sun”

History of Human Intelligence 
follow outline from Bicameral Theory

Bicameral Theory 

Modern Theory – the Influence of Computing 

Traces of our Infancy 

Primate Social Patterns

  • male social models – hierarchy – mapped into most governments
  • female social models -- networks 
Religion
  • statistics on belief in a god, life-after-death
  • UFOs and modern cults 
Gambling
  • history of gambling???
  • Similar activity in other species?
  • Risk-taking behavior as a variant? 
Substance Abuse
  • background and history
  • other species that use mind-altering substances 
Collecting
  • things people collect – include books, skills, ideas;
  • other species that collect 
Cult of Personality
  • suspension of disbelief for actors
  • role-playing games
  • fanhood 

Signs of Maturation
  • are we putting “pecking order” behind us? No -- look at mating patterns in high schools -- still totally instinctive alpha/beta. Columbine -- video/role-playing games short-circuit normal alpha dominance reinforcement rituals. 

Future of Human Intelligence
  • interfaces to computing
  • engineered memes

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