Consciousness - Grandest of Delusions

Chapters: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8


Chapter 0: Problematic Consciousness

Should one strive to be rich or strive to be poor? This may seem like a trick question, but it is a valid and actual question. If rich means to have more than enough money and power, and poor means having almost no money and certainly having no power, who would ever strive to be poor?

Nearly everything in your life, such as the quality of health care you can access to the kind of lovers you encounter to the places you can go, etc. is effected by money. The rich man experiences things much differently than the poor man.

Obviously. But not entirely differently. It seems that the poor man can be just as happy or even happier than a rich man. The poor man can be healthier than the rich man. The poor man can fall in love just as deeply as the rich man. For instance, if you're poor you can bet you britches that cute girl is not after your money. You can't possibly afford to pig out on outrageously ludicrous amounts of heart and liver damaging foods. Both a rich man and a poor man can be depressed some days or elated on other days. Only the most depraved thieves, like some republicans, steal from a poor man. Everyone tries to steal from a rich man.

The outside view, from us judges is that the poor man is pitiful wretch and the rich man is an evil hoarder and glutton. The inside view, from the inside of either man's head, is that life goes on. The brain of each man will causes his perception to become normalized to the status quo. A billionaire tends to seek greater billions, whereas the poor man watches out for the next day's meals or a new TV set, a cause of joyous celebration.

This is the effect of the mind. I use "rich vs poor" as an illustration of polarized states of mind that, with time, center around the special cases of the environment. If it is always hot, our bodies adjust and it begins to feel normal. If it is always cold, our bodies adjust the other direction. A mental state is no different than a physical state, and the brain adjusts to things the same way the rest of the body does. There are limits, of course, since the body could never adjust to a constant 100 degrees C, nor to -100, without external devices like special clothing or air temperature regulators, etc. Yet there would be conditions beyond even technological adaption, such as the inconceivable conditions at the core of the Sun. Of course our science fiction imaginations could think up an ultra powerful ultra shielded ultra insulated machine of some kind, but not in the real world of the here and now.

So these adaptations to mental states have limits. If a poor man is so poor that he is starving to death, his mind reaches an absolute point where all remaining energy in the body is dedicated to the attainment of food, sometimes even if it means killing someone to get it. On the other extreme, there is a limit to how much food one can possibly eat, how many sex acts one can possibly do, or how much money that one can ever spend in the remaining years, months, days, or minutes of one's life-- on anything.

From the outside, as know-it-alls, we can assign various levels of tragedy to these effects. Whole moral systems, ideologies and civilizations have been designed around the greatness of one thing, or the evilness of another, or both. Communism was an attempt to make everyone "middle class". Capitalism was often touted as letting the "hardest workers" get the most money. Of course these didn't work out exactly as intended, but I guess it's the thought that counts. In reality communism and capitalism are merely different ways to treat people unfairly, to enslave them in one manner or another. There is no choice. We will always be slaves to something or other. Other "modern" ways are merely ineffectual or yet more atrocious than slavery, where the worst possible features are gathered from all other bad systems, such as those developed by various madmen who wrestle control from military dictators only to become an even worse military dictators. (Per Woody Allen's movie where the Castro-like revolutionist obtains victory and immediately begins commanding such absurd orders as "Everyone must wear their underwear on the outside.")

So whether internally, as individuals, or externally, as mobs, our brain- body systems produce "condition normalizers" which either screw things up, or prevent things from getting screwed up, depending on respective points of view. Any attempt by the rich man to prevent theft of his money is seen by the poor man as further "ruthless greed". Any hand outs to the poor are seen as "encouraging laziness" by the rich man.

I don't care who is right or wrong in the above examples beyond my own sense of fairness. (Nor am I restricted to men and not women, I simply mean humans generally.) But these emotional mental conditions and their physically implemented (temporary) solutions are common to every culture as well as to many "animals". (As if humans are not.) It is much harder to ask animals about their internally experienced mental states, yet it is just as unreliable to expect the truth from highly vocal humans, to whom tall tale telling is an art form.

It is fairly reliable to observe the behavior of humans and other animals. Thus became Behavioral Psychology and its torture chambers, which could measure physical movements and reactions to various stimuli. It was seen as irrelevant whether any pain or suffering was felt by the subjects, in part because "inside the box" experiences were difficult to confirm, and in part because emotional detachment helped to limit experimenter biases in observation. Behavioral methodologies are not as popular as they once were because of the obvious cruelty those practices achieved. In and of themselves, though, these experimental methods would appeal to Nazis and physics professors alike (but for different reasons).

When discussing consciousness, behaviorists might scoff and smugly explain that no such thing can be proven to exist (which, of course, doesn't prove that it does not). This position would be pummeled with all kinds of experientially and cosmically philosophical artillery. But to each point such as "men are aware of their own awareness", a behaviorists might counterpoint with "perhaps rocks are equally aware of their own awareness." Of course, neither side can disprove the other.

Now, if behaviorists study the effects of Prozac on depressed patients, they might notice that it tends to produce more physical movements but less "frown" muscle usage. If the Prozac was used for anxiety patients the effects might be similar except that "fret" muscles are involved instead of "frown" muscles. But they could not determine anything about whether the patients felt relieved or not. That is inside the box, and thus immeasurable. In fact, Prozac has different effects on different people, and it sometimes increases the severity of the symptoms, or causes other undesirable side effects.

All in all, behavioral science could only measure the parts of the mind that mattered the least to most people-- not the mysteries of their own experiences of their own lives, such as spirit or consciousness.

Both religious types and police types can employ the knowledge gained from those "outside the box" behaviorists-- your ever popular "mind control" enthusiasts. (But always for "good" purposes you suppose?) How convenient that such and such magnetic wave frequency causes immobilizing convulsions in the subject. How convenient that certain rhythmic voicing and body motions can induce subjects to become obsessive-compulsive worshipers of virtually anything.

Marketing as another example. The baseline ambition of a marketing "person" is to effect the consciousness, the awareness, the desires, etc. of as many people as possible simultaneously. Many use just plain common sense, such as the old adage "sex sells". But more and more use statistical dynamical modeling, secret or subliminal information, and the prurient or self absorbed interests of adolescents and "hip" people.

They ask, "what will another consciousness perceive above the din of other synchronous perceptions?" or "How can I yell louder than everybody else to get everybody's attention." If the competition uses Cruise Missile Explosions to get a rise, you must use Thermonuclear Explosions. Yet, sooner or later, people will get normalized to nukes and even volcanic eruptions. Perhaps it will take an asteroid collision with Earth to beat those. But those are crude methods, just making louder and louder noises, essentially.

More clever marketers will use the "purdy girls" to get men's attention and "cute kids" to get women's attention. All manner of variations on this theme arise, sometimes causing traffic accidents, moralist attacks and so on. "Free Money" is an ever popular ruse, though rarely true. The use of such appeals to the instincts are nearly irresistible, and the inner consciousness of humans can only counterattack with knowledge that these tactics are not in their interest, so to thereby ignore them.

During the late 60's I lived in Los Angeles and fell victim to such a Marketing scheme, though only for a few minutes. I was waiting for a light to change so I could cross the street to return home with my bag of groceries, when a very attractive young lady began flirting with me. Naturally, my male brain was flooded with goo-goo thoughts and a severe impetus to drool. Then, once eye contact was firmly established, the Product is offered-- a "Christian Recruitment Party". My face stopped smiling. The pretty girl's alluring spell was broken. "Excuse me," I said, "my frozen goods need to get into a freezer."

I have not noticed (literally) any further use of "feminine deodorants" in modern times. Although I do not follow the minute to minute actions of all females, I can still generalize from the sampling in my immediate environment. At some point a product was invented, and shortly afterward a need was developed for it. All it took was to convince the perpetually worried females that they smell bad without it. (I would have been very embarrassed to have to tell a woman that myself. Fortunately the need never arose.) As far as I'm concerned, the only time I ever noticed any truly unpleasant odor was when those "deodorants" were used.

Anyway, the techniques used by one group of people to persuade another group depends on the knowledge, or probability that such a group will respond to specific stimulus in a specific way. If one relied totally on behavioral science it might be sufficient to measure whether the marketing "stimulus" resulted in increased sales or not. Yet other aspects of the effects are not so cut and dry. Does the subject have more or less "respect" for the product, or does it convey more or less "class distinction" or "glamor"? In fact, can the same old boring product be converted like a frog into a prince, simply by changing the way one effects how people perceive it? At least a loser can be reintroduced as a "new and improved" winner by removing some toxin that it once contained and replacing it by some other toxin that nobody is aware of yet.

Things like this are very popular today. We once despised anything made by machines as "unnatural". Then, when spreading disease germs was proven to be a problem, "natural" becomes unpopular. Today it seems "natural" has become popular once again. The term "chemical" has become synonymous with "toxin" even though all natural foods or products contain chemicals and toxins of some sort anyway. I do not feel comfortable with chemicals anyway, but I don't feel comfortable with any food of any kind from any source in today's clueless world.

How much of this is because of truth and how much is due to marketing? If you are a member of some Society Against Everything, then anything that counters your dedicated belief system is akin to the devil. Only evil, godless murderers would feed "meat" to our children, or sell fur coats, or create gas guzzling automobiles or genetically modified foods or whatever other trend in indignity arises. (Note that I share a few of these beliefs myself- it seems obvious that selling rhino horn for an aphrodisiac is both insane and criminal, except to people who live lives of lunacy and crime, supported by thousands of years of tradition...)

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Chapter 1: Magical Consciousness

At any rate, regardless of one's beliefs, superstitions or scientific preferences (certainly not proofs), the tendency for people to become easily influenced into any belief at all, regardless of proof, is a worrisome state of affairs. It results in Nazis, Inquisitions, mad men like Jim Jones or Stalin, Islamic Jihads, communism, capitalism, totalitarianism, ism-ism, and Zero worship (all-is-nothing-ism.)

Science is just as likely as religion to promote foolishness. The old days of phrenology, eugenics, blood-letting and other such lunacy was loudly proclaimed as "truth" in their times. Doctors in the 1800's were aghast at the thought that their own dirty hands could be the cause of so many patients' deaths. "Germs Indeed!" they huffed.

Now, even as I write this text about Consciousness, I am spreading unprovable flotsam and jetsam into the environment of knowledge. It is terribly frustrating to be human, so amazingly advanced yet so amazingly stupid. We are so gullible we believe every word from our favorite politician even as we proclaim all the rest as liars and cheats. It seems far more likely that either "some" are liars and "some" are truthful, or that all of them are liars and cheats. It is very unlikely that only MY favorite politician is truthful.

It puzzles me how so many people can be so totally devoted to ideas that disprove themselves so obviously. Take the number of Gods in the world for example. There is the Catholic God, the Lutheran God, the Islamic God, the Druid Gods, the Alien Gods, ad infinitum. Each God is a jealous God proclaiming all the rest to be false Gods. Yet it is far more likely that all Gods are false, than that only one, (the one I believe in), is the true God. The familiar refrain of "not all can be true, but all can be false" comes to mind.

You may wonder, what does all this have to do with consciousness? Should I stick to the dry, psycho-babbles of theorists and brain dissectors? I myself tend toward the "brain function" theory of consciousness-- that the function of the brain is consciousness. There tends to be a lot of backup in that approach. Various brain injuries, surgeries, or congenital defects produce equally various losses of mental functions. People can have a small lesion in the brain at a specific site and suddenly not be able to experience any color vision or even color memory whatsoever. Does this mean that the "soul" will correspondingly lose that ability after death?

Alzheimer patients are a sad lot. Bit by excruciating bit they lose their abilities to think, remember or even function as a person. Did they correspondingly, bit by bit, lose their "souls"?

Is it possible to know anything to be true or false? Seemingly endless argument arises whenever close inspections of proclamations are made. Does science measure the effects of some preexisting conditions that man must cope with? Does science instead delude itself, and solipsism is creating the world as we go along. Like the husband and wife team in which one could eat no fat and one could eat no lean, this remains a highly polarized concept of which the respective minions are loathe to find common ground.

A scientist might seem as a cold-hearted, godless automaton, working against mankind to form a metallic kind of materialism, devoid of love and magical power. A spiritualist may appear in return as an idiotic unicorn-promoting hunter of golden pots at the ends of rainbows, whose only basis of belief are fairy tales. Neither extreme is the case, usually, since many scientists are also spiritualists, and many spook hunters use scientific methodology and tools in their quests. Biases do find their extremes in some cases, however, just as in the far-left versus the far-right in politics. One seems to promote some kind of unachievable utopia where everyone wears robes and smiles, just as the other promotes a militaristic totalitarianism that seeks to divide and conquer all weaklings and undesirables.

Polarization aside, there remains the question of whether truth is knowable or not. Surely our bodies are limited to certain conditions and actions, with death weeding out those who fail to stay within those limits. No God has to tell you not to jump off a cliff. If you do, especially before mating, your genes are not likely to survive into the future. The people who jump off cliffs failed to produce any culture, and the group's solipsists failed to imagine a reality in which one can jump off cliffs with impunity.

In other words, there are certain aspects of reality that all animals, regardless of intellectual or spiritual powers or lack thereof, must obey, like it or not. Another example might be that such and such diseases can be healed more quickly by having a positive attitude. This has been observed and confirmed by all camps, but it does not allow for someone with an especially enhanced positive attitude to go step out in front of a 55,000 pound truck going 80 miles per hour. Attitude simply has nothing to do with inertial forces or with the breaking of every bone and crushing of every organ in one's body.

So, except for those who are terminally unreasonable, there seems to be a few classes of truth that CAN be known. Science does have a few legs to stand on. Can the same be said of "faith"?

Since the brain is designed to adapt to whatever conditions that stay around long enough, such as to being rich or poor or deaf or blind or pretty much anything, it is not surprising that any kind of absolute truths are difficult to prove. This is especially true when one is convinced by faith that their very existence was caused by some God with supernatural powers. Also, with a "devil" to blame for all things that go wrong, it is easy to smugly ignore all contrary information.

In earlier times, and perhaps even today in less "progressive" social groups, one could be stoned or tortured to death for even expressing a slight doubt about any status quo belief. Faith was an important foundation for the belief, and being a fragile foundation, required constant vigilance and reinforcement. The censorship in various governments, whether clerical or not, is a popular tactic in keeping the faith. Burn books written by "heretics", "infidels", "subversives", or whoever. Burn them at the stake, hang them, behead them. They are stating untruths about some sacred cow. Obviously, they feel that any cynic out there will expose the baseless nature of their authority, and the whole society will collapse. So powerful is faith.

The remaining faith oriented organizations are as zealous or more so than ever, since the advent of science has convinced so many potential converts that such superstitions and old wives' tales are simply not possible. Still, just as "Flat Earth Societies" or "Faked Moon Mission Theorists" hold sway over obvious proof otherwise, any kind of dissenting belief systems can exist despite any foolishness they convey. Marketing groups have to really get hip to all these fads and faiths that pop up like mushrooms about the globe. You can sell a lot of cheap crystals for nice margins lately, if you know all the right buzzwords and symbols that are considered chic, much like the Peace signs and Mood rings of times past.

One can sell idiotic nonsense for a lot of money, no different today than in the good old days of Snake Oil and Dr. Huff's Toad Remedies. It is still an unfortunate time when a sucker is born every minute and to never smarten up a chump is divine. If you can sell snake oil to the eternally gullible you can sell eternity to them as well. In my teenage years of the late 60s there were a lot of pretty young girls winding up in the water beds of smooth talking "gurus". As I look around the current time, I see that little has changed, except that the guru may be more inclined to use condoms and a regular mattress. Also, the girls are still pretty, but all the blue hair, body piercings and tattoos are kind of distracting.

Certainly I must sound highly cynical of "spiritualists", however that is not really true. I am cynical, yes. Just being a scientist of any kind causes and/or requires skepticism, but it is really the con men and charlatans of every era that I condemn. Even I can have common, everyday "spiritual" experiences just observing tropical fish or such things, as well as wondering just how it can be that I can wonder how it can be that I wonder. Science uncovers incredible complexities and mystery in the Universe. The wet blankets are many, but those who say God is the cause of all this could only be more awed by His Glory than ever before. It was one thing to think that the heavens were stars on some kind of curtain a few miles above our heads. It is quite another to realize the inconceivable vastness of the Universe that truly does exist.

I do not feel that "spiritualism" has any right to deceive people. One thing I always felt was cruel was the insistence that our bodies are mere shells and that our souls are eternal and one needs to sacrifice all material goods for the future reward of "Eternal Bliss" or whatever. Whether it is true or not is immaterial. It encourages people to waste their lives. Time goes by. Your life goes by. You suffer and suffer for some unseen God that never answers your prayers and lets the good or innocent people die horrible deaths. All "scientific" information that points out problems with this approach are ignored as "the work of the devil" and the lives of even more people are wasted.

Whereas it MAY be true that life after death exists, exactly as told by the zealous followers, there is no proof, of course, only faith. Yet it is PROVEN true that you are alive right now. You have needs to fulfill right now, not later. You cannot stop feeding your babies and proclaim, "Oh, well. God will take them to Eternal Bliss". Some believers deny their children "evil scientific" medical care. The children die. The justification: "God has taken them. God works in mysterious ways."

So, in my hated opinion, these functions of our brains, these actions of our "souls", are simply frustrating examples of how primitive we still remain. We are not so removed from apes after all. Where the almighty "scientists" torture people in boxes, with probes and tools of analysis, the "faiths" torture people for their entire lives. Each acts in total ignorance, since the answers can only be found in some aloof Omnipotent Being" or in an endless march through pedantic and exhaustive scientific experimentation (which even then only reveal truths to those with excessive mathematical abilities).

Doesn't it seem odd that unknown thousands of years of "spiritualism" has resulted in almost nothing but astounding "church" architecture, whereas only a few hundred years of science resulted in stepping out on the Moon and curing of so many "incurable" diseases. The fact that you or I are alive at all is likely to depend not on God but upon Medical Science. If the effects of science and technology were somehow instantly done away with, what would happen to all these "souls". Most likely, about 5 billion of them would find themselves in "Eternal Bliss".

I wonder what would happen if the effects of "spiritualism" could be instantly removed. Would we collapse back into apes? Or would we have not wasted 50,000 years of history groveling before idols. Imagine the progress into space one can make when sacrificing another ox every so many meters is unnecessary.

Fanciful speculations like that are not relevant. After all, the world of animals and plants existed for untold millions of years before even pre-humanoid apes existed. They had no Shamans, no priests, no science, no doctors, no Saviors, no Devils, no Gods, no nothing. Other than the remote possibility of some reptoid intelligence emerging early on, it seems highly unlikely that any animals or plants made it to space. In an ironic twist, it is possible that microorganisms did make it to space, however, and we all know how utterly mindless those things are. It is also possible (but not proven) that specks of life floated down to Earth from space in the first place.

Chapters: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Chapter 2: Fanciful Theories of Consciousness

Cosmic Internet:

One of my favorite fanciful theories is the one that the brain is like some Radio Consciousness Transponder. No memory or thoughts actually reside is such a brain, only the apparatus to access it from Cosmic Transmission. People flog me all the time for suggesting that this is untrue. It does spoil the fun of the "divine vibration" theories that accompany such ideas. I'm not saying it is proven to be untrue (although it almost is), I'm just saying it is a lot of meat for such a small function. Computers have tiny bits of contaminated silicon that act as radio transponders which take up only a cubic millimeter of space. A cow has a bigger brain than a human, (because it is a big animal), so how come it can't pick up more "cosmic stations"? I can't tune mine very well, anyway.

Cosmic Overseer:

Another fanciful brain is the one that has a soul that knows everything and a mind that knows nothing. I simply fail to see the difference between "mind" and "soul" generally, and I especially see no evidence of anyone "knowing everything." If the mind knows nothing, the soul knows nothing.

The Android Concept:

Another is that there is no consciousness in human brains. It is all a delusion formed by the side effects of memory. Memory gives us all a little "screen" inside our heads where we can view previous events and project future likelihoods. This added "space" seems to give us an added "self awareness". Whereas most animals supposedly lack this added space, they are not as "self aware" as humans. Thus, they seem to have no consciousness as defined by humans. Physiologically I can see some validity to this theory, but it fails to account for such obvious phenomena as creativity, which sometimes requires incredible insights that are not mere "memory" operations. This whole theory is much like supposing that where a small tape recorder is unconscious, a much larger tape recorder can attain consciousness purely through storing larger amounts of data. Hard disks, computers, tape recorders or whatever, when supplied with vaster and vaster memory spaces simply remain hard disks, computers and tape recorders, and so far have never spontaneously become conscious.

Homunculus Theory:

Another more idiotic theory, which still had (or has) followers, was that the eyes were like telescopes to little men in the brain who look through them to a world outside. The ears were little ear horns that were listened to by other little men in the brain. All the things going on in the brain had little men who controlled gateways and memories and evil and good, much like the little angels and little devils which constitute the cartoon characters of one's conscience. These are described as homunculi, or "little men inside". They did probably seem believable in a time of demons and devils. At least it was a step up from considering the brain some kind of sponge.

Massive Parallelism:

A more modern version of this, which does not literally consider the existence of "little men", is the theory of faceted agents. An agent is some aspect of brain processing that acts on its own, without too much influence from other agents. When the time comes for decision making, each agent attempts to become the "facet"-- the part of our consciousness that "appears" in our minds. Naturally, not all agents can become the "facet" simultaneously, but most can achieve some temporary ownership of the "facet" for a short time, depending on what the brain has to respond to. There is a constant battle going on all the time over which agent is appropriate for what solution to some problem. In this model there is no "Me", there are many versions of partial "Mini Me's" that occupy the throne of "myself" for fleeting moments. This also occurs on many levels of the mind at once, since the design of the brain implements only variations on that central theme.

This theory is more believable to me because I have implemented some computer simulations that seem to mimic natural animal and human behaviors in just this manner. I assemble simulated neural networks of various configurations and let them self-organize into competing agents whose separate, nearly insignificant decisions are summed in an ordered way to become a very significant decision. Sometimes one set of "agents" will win, sometimes others. For a simplified example, one cloud of neurons can be associated to the shape of "A" and another cloud to the shape of "Z". If I "show" the shape "R" to the clouds they will both respond "me, me, me, I know it is (A or Z)". The one with the strongest (loudest) response wins. Of course "R" is neither an "A" nor a "Z", but "R" probably has more in common with "A".

Another related response system would be where simply being the loudest does not mean anything, and that some third cloud of neurons is necessary to resolve ambiguities, perhaps to the point of making up new patterns from combinations of old ones. Such an invention may be the "ZA", a combination of A and Z, when some test pattern cannot be assigned to one of many pre-existing patterns unambiguously. This is a sort of creativity response. This can be seen in cats or dogs as well as humans, such as when a cat learns to open doors, or a dog learns to say "Ri Ruv Ru". Nature did not provide the cat or dog such responses as instincts. They had to be synthesized from innate, existing abilities by some adaptive process in their brains. These stupid pet tricks are not limited to dogs or cats, since some kinds of tricks can be learned by practically all animals at some level. Some animals learn more spontaneously, however, because they are highly evolved, at least to a point of natural curiosity and experimentation.

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Chapter 3: The Netherworlds

Although there are many more models of "consciousness", most of the rest do not even give credence to the brain whatsoever. One might be to think of consciousness as the "Mind of God" existing in the minds of all individuals simultaneously (or sequenced by every possible ordinate on every measurable dimension). It is impossible to analyze such positions rationally. Such confusion exists even between "the heart" and "the mind". Mechanically, the two exist entirely differently. The heart is a mechanical pump and the mind is a massive connection between the neurons and their so- called wires. There is no such apparatus in the heart, and people who have had heart transplants or mechanical heart replacements cannot be said to have "stopped being themselves" as a result. It is understandable that such a drastic measure would cause many odd feelings, including guilt, profound gratitude, or just confusion, yet they did not suddenly forget who their spouse was or any such thing, change their hairstyle, or anything else indicative of a "soul" transplant.

There are as many theories as there are cultures. To be politically correct it is probably wise to just let each culture believe what it wants. Practically, though, this is difficult. People will die by their own choice rather than violate some taboo that precludes the reception of someone else's heart or liver. For one thing it is the flesh of the dead. For another it is the spirit of the previous owner. Not everyone will just rationally lay there and accept another person's parts any more than they might resort to cannibalism in an emergency.

Should a doctor therefore say to a patient, "Oh, well, you are a Tuku and therefore go ahead and die"? In our culture that would be thought of as discriminatory or racist in some way. Either everyone or no one is entitled to whatever technology that exists". Still if the patient says nope, or the parents say nope, or whoever says nope, what more should the doctor do? Force a new heart into the patient?

Likewise, those who feel that consciousness is divinely inspired may not allow any meddling into their mental health or other personal affairs. If they are hearing the "voice of God" then what right does some less-than-divine psychiatrist have to prescribe drugs to them that eliminate their heavenly voiced knowledge. At some point it does seem that a line must be drawn, especially when those voices begin to command murders or other atrocities. Most times God does not tell the recipient many practical things via this method. You can be a victim of schizophrenia whether you believe in it or not, and whether God likes it or not.

There are smarter scientists out there, more scholarly persons, and more literary minds than mine. Many of these ideas have been told and retold again and again and now yet another time by me. I do not know everything of current brain science nor the whole of philosophy. I cannot dispel the long held traditions or value systems that have effected modern cultures so profoundly. But I can know the truth when I see it. I do not need to jump off a cliff to prove I will die as a result. I naturally know such things. I do not pretend that cars and trucks sharing the highway with me are merely "tricks of the devil" and thus ignore their presence. I know that mind over matter does not always work, since I have never been able to "levitate beautiful women" to me, no matter how hard I concentrated. You think I was not motivated?

I know for a fact that the mind is as physical as the body. If one wants to conjure a soul in addition to that, I don't object, but it does make for a less elegant solution, an affront to Occam's Razor. When the body dies the mind dies. If the soul goes somewhere else that's OK with me. I have seen patients with Alzheimer's. They are already mindless, even before death, from a physical ailment in the brain. A soul would be nice in that case, but there is no sign of that either. They forget who they are, what they are, where they are and virtually everything that made them themselves, eventually. They do not experience "near death experiences". There is nothing left of their minds to experience it with. They can neither make sense of any ideas about "God" or "Angels" nor make such things up from imagination. In fact, the most advanced cases of Alzheimer's are simply "after death experiences" so far as their brains are concerned.

Not all Alzheimer's patients are completely gone as I describe. Many are still "themselves" to some degree. Some can still remember who some members of their families are, or their favorite pet or something like that. When comparative studies of autopsied brains of various states of Alzheimer's are made, the degree of atrophy of brain cells is directly proportional to the degree of mind and personality loss.

Similarly, if the "soul" is in the heart, why does a brain-dead person never respond to loved ones or to anything else. They simply lay there as if in a permanent coma, usually needing some external means to keep them alive. Has Elvis already left the building? Although I cannot prove anything one way or the other about "souls" and "minds" to any rigid spiritualist, these profoundly sad examples have adequately effected me. Death can be a sudden, complete and permanent loss of consciousness. It can be a slow, long torture of decay and degradation eventually leading to a complete and permanent loss of consciousness. It can be a euphoric rush of endorphins or a horrible, fear based nightmare, eventually leading to complete and permanent loss of consciousness. The end is always the same.

My father died of congestive heart failure. That disease is usually accompanied by emphysema and other breathing problems. For years my father suffered through seemingly endless bouts of coughing and shortness of breath and heart palpitations, with several occasions of being resuscitated from certain death. When he finally did die, my reaction was not one of great sadness, or rationalization that he would go to "a better place" or a fear that he might "go to hell". It was a great relief that his suffering was over, and that the big sleep had taken away all fear and pain and given him the peace that life could not. The prison shackles of consciousness are gone. He is now free to not exist, to not gasp for air that never comes, to not experience another minute of agony.

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Chapter 4: Who cares?

Why do people argue about consciousness. I never really did until I began to study the details. As a child I could not stand to talk about the religious or spiritual aspects of consciousness. I was not a person who could be easily persuaded by authority. I needed to see the magic beans before I would trade them for my cow. After I found out the truth about Santa and the real story of the Tooth Fairy, that was pretty much that for ethereal beings. I was punished, ostracized, ridiculed and all sorts of things, but I simply could never believe in anything invisible ever again. My consciousness does not perceive ghosts or fairies, therefore they don't exist. If they exist for other people, so be it. They just don't exist for me.

Later in life I grew interested in computers. How cute, I thought, as I realized that one could communicate with the strange machines. Eventually this led to robotics, artificial intelligence and all sorts of esoteric computer science. During that time computer capabilities have exponentially expanded. I was able to simulate animal-like vision and hearing. I could make little genetic programs that emulated a kind of artificial life. All this was highly fascinating. Contrary to many peoples assumptions though, I never confused "artificial" with "real".

I know that my mind, as a human, is vastly more complex than any kind of computer program, now or in the distant future. The numbers alone are beyond our current and foreseeable technology, no matter how much Intel might brag otherwise, or what Arthur C. Clark might predict. The qualitative differences in conscious experience are obvious, yet even the mere mechanical constructions are "mind boggling" if I may use a pun. The estimations of just neurons alone approach the 100s of Billions, when accounting for all components of one's brain. The connecting nerves or axons between neural synapses, even if merely one axon was connected to two other neurons, would yield a possible 100Billion^2 possible states. Since the actual number is in the many thousands, the number of simple connections exceeds the trillions, and the number of possible states nears numbers without names. I thusly, conservatively, named my company Octillion in respect for the vastness of a single human brain. I thought that "infinity" was somewhat pretentious, besides the name was already taken anyway.

This is one problem I've always had during discussions of the mind. Once other people who are not well voiced in computers and mathematics are confronted with enormous numbers it simply numbs their thinking and reduces any attention they might spend on such ideas. Marketing types are like that usually. If brain parts can be substituted with profit values they can stay awake, otherwise they begin to "lose consciousness".

In essence, it comes down to the vast numbers of anything that nature is involved with. There are uncountable quadrillions of bacteria, and even larger numbers of viruses. There are trillions of cells in a single human body. Nature fills the oceans and forests and all living things with hugely complex cooperatives of uncountable organisms, each with their own huge numbers of sub-organisms, and even vaster numbers of organic and inorganic molecules from which they are composed.

To model such things is similar to modeling atomic explosions. The complex interactions of so many tiny parts is what results in the higher order behaviors and manifestations. If a calculation is off by just a teensy tiny amount, the upper level reactions are off by enormous amounts. In other words, nature is comfortable working with chaos equations of the deepest complexity. When we humans can make machines that can predict the weather for more than a few hours or days, then we might begin to get serious about modeling human intelligence.

So complex are the atomic to molecular to cellular interactions that no mind can follow such events, no matter how profound one's insights and intelligence may be. It is difficult enough just to follow the fleeting thoughts and memories of our consciousness on a minute to minute basis. No wonder so many conflicting theories and supernatural explanations are extant. It is just depressingly difficult to comprehend or model. Even I am tempted to throw in the towel and seek the blissful state of Zen nothingness touted by its Masters. But that will come soon enough, there is no value in speeding up death, not even symbolically.

I have tried to keep my beliefs based on verifiable facts, so far as any mind can verify facts of any kind. Of course I drift off into one rant or another rave, because it requires so much thinking and there are so many analogies to consider. Perhaps that is analogous to those who practice self-flagellation or forehead-slapping or whatever self abuse their religion demands. Most of all it requires sacrifice of my wrists and fingers to the Gods of Carpal Tunnel. In the modern era of Mouse and Keyboard Worship, this is a common ritual.

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Chapter 5: The Bad Thing about Consciousness

Assume for a moment that Aliens from space are here and selectively communicating with some humans. Those humans experience the events and try to tell others (who were not selected) the "truth". One might take the position that these people are mad, there are obviously no aliens walking around, just as there are no six-foot rabbits named Harvey. (There are, however, six-foot dinosaurs named Barny).

Then, in desperation, those who can "see" the aliens go on an all out campaign to convince the ones who cannot "see" them of their reality. Now the problem becomes even more polarizing because not only do these "seers" see things that aren't there, they are now proselytizing others to join in with the insanity. At first all the doctors and experts simply pass them off as "mildly paranoid" but eventually, after the preaching intensifies, the government has to get involved. These nuts are disturbing the populace with this stuff and have to be stopped. Since no scientist can prove a negative, all this tends to do is whip up a bigger froth, now causing massive distrust of the government.

The fact that the government has become hostile to their cause, and that debunkers and skeptics of all sorts have begun deriding them and ostracizing them, they feel a special attachment to the other "seers" and to the aliens. It has become an "us against them" issue. Certain extremist individuals from all camps begin to use more abusive tactics. Each thinks that whatever "God" is on their side. Each is convinced of their own righteousness. Each is convinced that the other side is evil.

The government, now faced with more divisive mobs, including their own, must take more and more drastic measures. They try various tactics that range from peaceful persuasion to ruthless intervention. If there are "aliens" what do they want? Tell us where they are, why don't they want to talk to us? Surely you can see our point of view? Then the tactic becomes: Those who refuse to testify against the leaders of the "alien believers" will be arrested. Then it must be executions of "traitors and subversives."

Now, you must be able to discern a certain historical case like this. It must have happened in many cultures before and since, but one particular case was that of "Jesus", and the descent of tactics to brutality was the persecution of Christians. All manner of suffering and atrocity has been committed since then, for and against the name of Christ. Yet, to this day, no proof of the "aliens" has been found. All the original witnesses are long, long dead. Only the horrible conflicts still remain. (Of course the arguments begin anew in the current centuries, about a new batch of space aliens. So far the governments have not "openly" began executing believers yet.)

The advent of Christianity was followed by enormous changes in the social order, both good and bad. We still number our calendars from the assumed birthday of Jesus. We still have enormous numbers of believers, and our customs and laws are profoundly effected by the precepts of Christianity. Essentially, it was a sect which pushed a certain super-ego type of life-style, where not only society or customs of the culture defined behavior, but the model of "love and forgiveness" through a perfect, divine being in the form of Christ.

It represented yet another attempt to codify the ascent of man from lowly, ferocious beasts to some kind of heavenly beings. It was another load bearing wall in our collective consciousness.

The other aspects of Christianity still involve attempts to resolve conflicting attitudes with Jewish roots and the horrible scenes of outrageous brutality common to the Gods of Noah, Moses and Abraham. A jealous god and a vengeful god, and a god who simply despised His creations and nearly wiped them all out with floods and other disasters do not fit well with the image of "forgiveness and love" that Jesus symbolized. I think much of the brutality and self-righteous "witch burnings" etc, can be traced to the complete hypocrisy and irresolvable differences between the Old and the New testaments. One could always pick and choose between the "love" part and the "eye for an eye" part. You know which parts appeal to humans the most. I think this was a great mistake, whatever else might be said for the rest of Christianity.

This point has its counterpoints, of course, such that "Jesus has died for our sins, so God doesn't have to kill us all again." I don't know. That still isn't very comforting to me. Can you trust anyone that would allow His own children to die senselessly at the hands of a bunch of brutal Roman centurions, especially in such a puzzling attempt to win over the hearts of all mankind?

In modern times, with all the religious fanatics and terrorists, it seems riskier than ever to criticize the tenets of any belief, however loony it may seem. It has almost always been that way, however. One of my greatest failures during my life has been to say what I really think at the wrong times. Of course I know to lie to the police, even when innocent. I know to never tell the truth to marketing people. But I thought, ha ha, that since the very foundations of religion were firmly rooted in truthfulness and virtue it would naturally be OK to just blurt out my thoughts on any matter. I always feel uncomfortable lying anyway.

Yes, I know it was foolish. I don't know what I was thinking. Did I actually think that religious fanatics were rational? Did I not expect them to use my truthfulness as a weapon against me? These various incidents taught me that the very instincts that religions have always sought to diminish are the ones that become so quickly exaggerated. Self-righteousness, "Kill for God", "Stone sinners". Religious zealotry has produced sexual criminals, megalomaniacs, ignorance, poverty, disease, idol worship, animal sacrifice, black magic, blood societies, vast atrocities of unfathomable cruelty. The destruction of "heretical" documents of history, such as the Library of Alexandria, makes me wince just as much as the demented act of burning Joan of Arc at the stake.

The Catholic missions were installed in the shadows of explorers, such as in the case for Guam, where Magellan's men killed all the males and raped all the females and then installed a missionary to rid the island of its "primitive practices", but who then continued to rape not only the women but the children as well. Guam is only one of hundreds of cases of that kind. Not pretty stories.

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Chapter 6: What Good Will Come Of This?

Why should I bring all this up? Even the "superior rationalists" of science have brought massively inhumane suffering on millions of people, by developing industrial pollution, chemical and high explosive warfare, atomic bombs, nuclear processing accidents, medical tests, psychological tests, sex drugs, mind control drugs, and all manner of technological dead ends and traps. My own work with robotics and artificial intelligence simply adds to the dehumanization of humans. I bring it up because all the things man does is the result of what differences there are between human and animal consciousness.

Although I can't imagine that I have any greater knowledge than the average brainologist, I think working with stuff that works the way a real brain does, and with stuff that evolves the way real life does, gives one some insight that might otherwise never arise. Scholars have argued for millennia about this or that philosophical idea, purely from some arcane or abstract point of view that can never be proven. When an actual physical mechanism can be found to verify philosophy, it can destroy previously held foundations for belief in an instant. Science has its "wet blanket" reputation because of its tenancy to squash all the "wonder and mystery" from everything. The unfortunate evidence of dinosaurs and other profoundly ancient life forms in the form of fossils and rock impressions has caused difficulty for religious literalists who view the Adam and Eve thing as the unalterable truth in the form of the word of God. Evidence to the contrary is the work of the Devil.

Our consciousness gives us the ability to know we will die. The fear of death is common to all animals, whether consciously felt or not, but in humans it is a quite powerful fear. Men try to pretend they are not afraid, women know otherwise, children are not quite ready to understand anything about it. I distinctly remember a certain time, when I was 10 years old, that the fear of death struck me. I suddenly realized that if I fell off the coal filling tower I had climbed I would fall into those jagged machines far below and be hacked to death. DEATH! I climbed down extremely carefully that day.

So how do you dispel this terrible fear? You can go into denial and think of yourself as somehow invulnerable, or somehow special and capable of "astral self-healing", or resign yourself to "fatalistic" life, or-- yes, this is it --there IS NO DEATH. There is life after death! All one has to do is say seven prayers on seven levels of seven pyramids and PRESTO! --life for eternity. Magical thinking is really neat. I imagine myself as happy. I am happy. I imagine myself as young. I am young. I imagine myself as holier than thou. I am holier than thou. Etcetera, ad infinitum.

We have plastic fantastic brains. We need no truth to believe. We can make up anything whatsoever and simply believe it. Who needs proof? That is for the "in the dark, square headed" rationalists. We can simply imagine the world and it conforms to our imagination.

Well, I'll never be able to verify the validity of that philosophy because I'm automatically skeptical and therefore unable to imagine myself into believing just any old thing. (I am "a gross dimensional being" in the parlance of new agers). Someone might have warned the person that died from starvation while practicing "eating light". I mean eating something like sunlight, not simply "a skimpy meal". The person was enough of a believer to think it was possible, but evidently not enough to "create the reality". If human consciousness is capable of believing something like this, then nothing surprises me.

One could criticize me for putting a "bad spin" on things like that. I have picked out some horrible mistake and generalized over many belief systems. I don't think so. I'm just as willing to believe in miracles as anybody. I need to see one first. Just hearing about them from "my armchair" is not enough. I have never seen a UFO, never seen a Bigfoot, never seen a New Jersey Devil, never seen a miracle. But I am open to the possibility. No, I'm not going to force myself to believe in such things in advance so that I can see them. That is the very thing that makes me so concerned about belief systems.

I once observed my wife's cousin who collapsed into a coma from a brain aneurysm at age 25 or so. Her family is very religious and every one was praying. My wife and I visited the hospital room. Being into all kinds of technology, I looked around at the machines, blinking lights, and beeping monitors. I followed the wires to their sensors. I looked back to the machines. Jeeps! The guy was brain-dead. Hadn't anyone told the family? I clasped my hands over my mouth. I couldn't say anything. I couldn't drive all hope from the family's hearts. I had to keep my knowledge to myself. Nobody there wanted to hear the truth. He died a day or so later.

I've watched many documentaries such as one called "Gizmo" where many interesting inventions and technological gadgets of history found an audience. Some of the early aviators effected me very sadly (even as I laughed until I cried). Evidently one great inventor was so convinced of the effectiveness of his contraption, believed so strongly he was to prove to world that he found the secret to manned flight, that he did not hesitate to jump off the bridge and fall to his death, pitifully flapping those useless wooden wings all the way down. How awful indeed, but yet the man was a brave pioneer whose terrible failure helped pave the way toward landing on the Moon. (If by nothing else than pointing to a way that doesn't work.)

There must be lessons like that to learn from all of history. Vast amounts of horrible mistakes were made throughout the past, densely packed into time, complete to the current second. Somehow, no matter how many examples emerge from history, people still get duped into worshiping megalomaniacal murderers like Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Adolf Hitler, and Stalin. Some despots are less harmful than others for a while, but eventually they lead their populations into death or despair, again and again, after promises of grandeur or fulfilling the hopes and dreams of their culture. Perhaps even Bush-II meant well, in the beginning, but the same trappings of power has not turned out very well for us. It may take generations to heal.

Even in our own American "culture" we've made heroes from murderers and other evil villains, from Columbus to Machine Gun Kelly, to the Gang Bang Rappers of today. Our pilgrim ancestors resorted to such senseless practices as witch burnings in the name of Christianity. We have left behind atrocities in every war from the Revolutionary to the "skirmish" in Iraq. One of the most horrible was a war against ourselves in the Civil War. Thankfully there was no nerve gas or atomic weapons in those days.

Our own highly moral forefathers owned slaves. Perhaps some slaves were treated kinder than others, but some of the excuses for the owning of slaves were hard to resolve. Slaves were made to work in terrible conditions, raped, beaten for sport, used as gladiators, and so forth, supposedly because they were "not human". Assuming that was true, it still would not make sense. A "human" woman who gets raped has been criminally abused. An "inhuman" female that gets raped by her owner seems not too much different than a sheep that gets raped by her shepherd. So the slave owners would be guilty of either "criminal rape" or "bestiality" either way you sliced it. All this committed by men who dutifully went to church every Sunday.

I needn't be too hard on our beloved forefathers, however. Nearly all other cultures have similar tales of woe to tell. Also, they were ignorant of what we know today. Why, Heck, we have a sizable bunch of good old boys to this very day that still believe in such things. They still fly the Confederate flag to prove it, not to mention dragging the "damned things" on chains from their pickup trucks, laughing like hyenas. Are those creationists really really sure we didn't "degenerate" from apes?

OK, so every kind of belief system has its problems. Loosen up, dude. Let them be. Be tolerant. To be intolerant of intolerance is just as bigoted as any other intolerance. Sarcasm is the tool of cowardly men. After all, dude, you live on the "Left Coast". Is nothing sacred? Are you now, or have you ever been-- an atheist? America -- love it or leave it. You must believe...you must believe ...you must believe...you are a chicken...cluck...cluck. Gee, Mom, did Cain have sex with his own sister? Shush, child. You ain't supposed to question the Word of God.

One day I looked at my arms and noticed hairs growing there. I look at the arms of chimpanzees and see hairs growing there. I see the people around me mimic one another, just like I see the chimpanzees mimic one another. I can ride a tricycle, so can the chimpanzees. I can ride a bicycle, so can the chimpanzees. Wait just a darn minute here. There must be something I can do that a chimpanzee can't do. After all there are many things chimpanzees can do that I can't do, such as climb trees by grasping them with their feet.

Aha! I thought. I can think. I can wonder why. I can escape the bonds of instinct. I can rise above the fear of fire, and the fear of the night. I can know I will die. I can know how I came to be. I can rise above ignorance. I have consciousness. I can know what the Moon really is. I can reach the Moon. I can change the world to suit me. I can change the Universe. I do not have to eat termites! I can understand Pop-eye cartoons! I YAM what I YAM!

OK. Feet back on the ground. Enough with the Tarzan yell. No more chest beating. Return to the dignified position. Return to the ignorance of superstition and tradition. One word after the other. Type slowly and clearly, Dante-San. Have a breath mint. Say seven prayers and walk around the computer seven times and send the Pope seven dollars. There, all better now.

Yes, I know I am going to "Hell". (The actual definition of "hell" is the dirt or other debris thrown over a grave. Where did the purveyors of Fire and Brimstone get such an idea, anyway? Not from the bible, certainly.) The Dante wrote a nice phantasm about that, but did people actually think that sickening prose had anything to do with reality? I could expand on that so easily -- just throw in some greasy grimy gopher guts and Joila! Another level of hell.

I prefer plain old, simple consciousness. All the bilge water of various religions, political parties, social groups, clubs, golf courses and whatever marketing scheme anybody else thinks up can take a hike. I don't even want to be a "Scientist" (capital S) at all. Such belief systems are too constricting. It would be fine if I could ascertain that such and such club knew "the real truth", but, so far, I haven't been convinced of that. Too many scientists turned out wrong. Too many "gurus" turned out to be snake oilers. Every -ism and -ology gets mired in rituals and men who say Hum after hum every hum word hum. Too many priests are raping little boys. Too many politicians are despots. Too many young soldiers die for nothing. For @#^%! nothing.

I see the sky as blue. I see the sun as golden. I see the grass as green. I see her smile as beauty. I see sex as natural. I see the light already. I see things as what they are whether I like it or not. It's OK if I die and don't have any afterlife. I don't need some "agent of the Lord" telling me that sex is dirty, or that "love is all you need" or that "all men are equal". Not only are all men unequal, even brothers are unequal. Dirty people can pervert sexuality. Love is nice, but certainly not all you need. Either I can trust my own eyes and my own senses or I can't. If I can't trust my senses, why should I trust any person's senses?

Whoops, you say? I am opening myself up to the Devil's trickery? So what? When is anybody NOT opening themselves up to trickery? Maybe the Holy Babble was written by the Devil. How do I know? How does anybody know? God talks to some people but not to me? Why is that? Can I really trust a person that "talks to God?" Why is God so stuck up? Am I not good enough? No, I don't do things like "reject the Lord". I was a child once. I believed all that once. I prayed as a child. Not a peep. Not a clue. God let my puppies die. God let my parents beat me. God did not save me from the evil foster home people.

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Chapter 7: Lost Sheep

What happened to me? Why did I choose the path of science and so many others chose spiritualism? Why did I become bothered by the dilated-eyed church goers around me when others found it comforting? Why did the preacher look like the Devil? Why do those people try to get me to feel guilty about something I'd never done? What is wrong with everything? Don't we all have the same brain design? Isn't reality out there for everyone to see? Doesn't everyone have the same consciousness as me? Or am I just dreaming this nightmare?

Dreams. That's it. Dreams. Why do dreams seem so realistic? Is reality actually a dream, so the similarity is inherent? As it turns out, that is actually the case. Our brains generate fields of images and streams of events from the chaotic sensations that hit us from every side. We dream the world as we live it. We can't see the "actual world". We can only translate our sensations into dreams that seem to be the "actual world".

Consciousness is like a multidimensional movie projected into our "minds" from nowhere. The light we see ranges from the noontime glare of the roiling Sun to the dimmest starlight of the night which is a level of brightness millions of times less. We don't see it as a million times less, just from "glaring" to "sparkling". Maybe a hundred times less. Our eyes, both physically and retina processing-wise, convert these vast ranges to some other internal standard that suits our "dream". We can see lines so thin that the light pattern only intersects a few photo receptors many times the size. How does it look so straight, so continuous, so complete? Because the actual splotchy data is converted into our "dream" by the same retinal and brain processing as everything else.

We see things in our "blind spot". Of course there is nothing there, since there are no photo receptors on that spot in our eyes. But, in order to maintain the "dream" it is filled in with whatever pattern seems appropriate to complete the field. There are ways to "see" these spots, by looking at special patterns that ambiguously flip from one configuration to another, but at a different rate in the blind spot from the surrounding "real" data. You can also "see" it by using a smallish dot of a contrasting color or shade from the surrounding field. Once the blind spot is positioned exactly over the dot, the dot disappears and is replaced by the surrounding pattern.

This has nothing to do with magic. It is not special "spiritual" works of "vision fairies" or whatever. It is an easily replicated function of neuron connections. When a particular group of neurons is "turned off", it enables or "turns on" the connections from surrounding neurons. This same technique lets us experience all the seeming continuities of our vision. Although I label the result of such brain tricks as "dreams", there are rules and degrees of congruence with "actual reality". Like I mentioned before, one can't drive cars in a "dream" where cars and trucks can't be precisely located. The dream must therefore be very "realistic". You could not have an blind spot the size of your computer screen, else it would be filled in with sheer folly and so would be the resulting "dream".

The example using vision is somewhat easier to describe than the same process concerning knowledge. I remember seeing little specks of dust in a beam of light as I was "taking a nap" as a child. I was too young to know many words then. I called the dust "popcorn" because that was the only thing I'd seen before that had such irregular shapes as the specks of dust. I'm not sure why I can remember events like that but can't remember whole months and years surrounding it. On a more general ground, a child's brain will substitute fantasy for whatever reality is missing. Since a child doesn't know very much, a lot of fantasy takes up the space.

At any rate, people who are seeking absolute truths and consensus realities better buy a different brain because the one we're born with is not designed for that. Not only that, but different parts of the same brain can "believe" completely conflicting things. There is always a tiny piece of cortex left over that still believes in the Tooth Fairy, no matter how sure we are that there is no such thing. It was not "cut out", it was "wired around". Here and there throughout the brain little "coral like walls" have been built around all the unproven "facts" or conflicting beliefs that accumulate. They are not literal "walls", merely effective walls made from rerouted data.

These walled off regions of knowledge are then like blind spots of the eye. They cannot easily contribute to the "dream" anymore, so the brain automatically replaces those areas with "imagined" or "new" truths instead. These new areas of stored knowledge can yet again be rerouted around if they turn out incongruent with experience as well.

So how can anything be known to be true in a bad brain like this? It is nothing more than a relative stability stretched over a endless ocean of chaos. Well, we're all in the same boat on that ocean. We all evolved over the eons to handle life in such a sea of unpredictability and meaninglessness. If one wishes to label "evolved" as "created" so be it. It all comes out the same in the wash. We still only live a dream. That is the "spirit", the "soul", the "mind". All the agonies and ecstasies and demons and gods and trips into space and into the abyss are nothing but a dream. But a dream with very real effects, very real consequences. Like the Zen master who punched the reality obsessed young grasshopper in the nose said, "That is truth."

If it hurts you can bet its real. What does it matter if one is only imagining pain? If there is pain, it hurts, nonetheless. Sure, you might be able to "meditate" the pain away, or be distracted by pain of a different sort, or fooled by a "placebo" pain reliever. But, no different than popping Codeine, the brain is replacing the pain with endorphins. Something had to alter the brain state, a chemical had to be countered by some other chemical, a neural pathway had to be shut down, some physical thing had to occur before the pain really went away. It matters not how "scientific" or not, how "spiritual" or not one has to be in order to get a placebo effect. If someone that you respect tells you emphatically that such and such gimmick cures some condition or disease, there is an automatic action by the brain to cause that to happen. However, it seems to only work well when the disease or condition can be handled by the immune system or by some balancing of the endocrine system. Spear wounds and lion bites are usually severe enough that placebos and beliefs by themselves will not work. A bit of antibiotic mushroom or herb may be of help in those cases, if not a great skill in sewing up the body.

As I mentioned before, though, being struck by a high speed truck might not respond to any treatment whatsoever, placebo, herbal or surgical. The brain has its limits, like everything else in life. That is something that evolution takes care of. Truck-ignorers are less likely to pass on their genes. (In the old days, it may have been charging-rhinoceros-ignorers.)

Do I know for sure that there isn't something "mystical" about the placebo effect? No. Can it be a form of solipsism? Sure. But as far as I can tell, it is just the normal function of the brain, like all other aspects of consciousness. Depression, whether caused by "feeling sorry for yourself" or from a death in the family, or even by brain dysfunction, is a physical lack of certain brain chemicals. The depressed person feels fatigue, futility, sadness, anger, social antagonism, all kinds of emotionally and bodily felt sensations. If some level of the brain decides correctly or by some mistake that life is no longer worth living, it tries to make sure that happens by shutting down the things that keep it alive. It doesn't try to kill itself, it merely stops signaling various glands and regulating systems to keep on trucking. It is the "mental" version of not signaling the heart to keep on beating or the lungs to keep on breathing.

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Chapter 8: Perfectly Imperfect

I'm sure that various neurologists and psychologist could correct oversimplifications or misstatements I have made. I'm not trying to write a scientific journal. The brain is so utterly complex that the detailed facts about it will have to be revised and perfected over many decades to come. I just see the overall pattern from the parts that I have studied in detail. I see the way that conscious minds can exist, regardless of what atomic structure this or that enzyme or protein may have. By studying the way bacteria can coexist in colonies, and the way ants cooperate in their social complexes, and the way fish behave in schools, or cattle behave in stampedes, one can see an overall pattern of self-organization. From the way bubbles form hexagonal or other shaped facets (the effect of minimal surface tension), and from the propagation of chemical triggers from one cellular entity to another, one can understood the actions of any particular kind of "mob". The brain is merely a mob of brain cells with all kinds of propagation waves and chemical triggers, no different than a colony of ants, essentially, except for having no legs or antennae.

When I first tried to explain to my postal-worker father what I did in my job, I felt a great frustration. He did not have the minimal understanding of this kind of stuff, and it would take weeks of babbling to describe the foundations of it. He was not stupid, but I think too long of a session would have irritated him to no end. Since he was Nebraska 'Huskers fanatic, I thought of a suitable analogy-- the people in the middle seats of the stadium who spell out a big "N" or whatever shape from flipping their red and white cards over in a synchronous fashion. All the person in X,Y seat has to know is what side of the his card must be up or down at any particular moment. He doesn't even have to know what shape it will become when viewed externally.

He understood this immediately, and said, "Oh, so that's how people can believe totally opposite things at the same time. Some of those little card guys get out of sync." Still he didn't quite understand what anything like that had to do with automated machinery, and was starting to get impatient with the whole subject.

But that is pretty much how brain cells work. Each cell (or group of cells) is associated with some tiny concept, some tiny muscle movement, or some tiny piece of memory. A great deal of a neuron's chemistry is used to simply turn itself ON or remain OFF, according to what signals it is receiving from other neurons, or directly from nerves from the sensors. In other words, in the time domain, a cell is either ON or OFF, just like the binary 1's and 0's of computers. Some cells just turn ON and OFF in some mindless circle, thus forming a kind of clock. When other cells turn ON or OFF within such and such fraction of time that the clock is ON or OFF, then a synchronous signal is "valid". Otherwise it is "invalid". This is not too much different than traffic lights at intersections.

Vast numbers of these minuscule decisions are made simultaneously. The patterns of decisions are so complex that it would be impossible for one's consciousness to follow. If you try to follow your own thoughts it is quickly evident that it interferes with the very thoughts you try to follow. Imagine this on millisecond time scales over millions and millions of micro-thoughts.

From this point on the theory can only be ascertained by empirical results. If such and such stimulus is applied to some group of cells then such and such muscle moves, or such and such memory is felt, or whatever function that group of cells has. Literally following all the different pathways is impossible to do in real time. (One can, however, stain the neurons in a slice of brain tissue to trace what fibers are connected to what other neurons, ad absurdum. Some researchers have done this in painstaking completeness. Still, since that particular brain was no longer alive, it is hard to say what connection did what.)

After years of playing around with computer simulations of this, and reading the experimental results from neuropathology studies, etc, it becomes much more apparent how one experiences consciousness. The actual feeling of "Me" is another matter, but all the stuff that the "Me" experiences is able to be understood. This remaining part, the "Me", gets latched onto by spiritualists or anti-materialists as proof that consciousness is still a divine thing. That is demonstrably untrue, however, since the "Me" part changes continuously and according to the states of consciousness-effecting cellular clusters. Also, the fact that there are "unconscious" brain functions is used for another seat of "mystical powers", but that too is just a point of view. Actually, the effected parts of the brain are just as conscious of the signals at the "unconscious" level of processing as the "awake" parts are at the conscious level.

Still, for anyone who is conscious, no matter what "actual" process is going on, the feeling of being "Me" is no less mystical and spiritual than the billions of people who lived before us felt. The feelings of awe or "enlightenment" that seem so spiritual are just as real as the chemical mess that makes it all work. Science cannot simply "proclaim" that since the "Me" is merely a bunch of biochemical processes, that it ceases to be "Me". It takes more than some detached doctor to tell his patient that "Oh, well, the amputated leg is merely some collection of conceptual neurons in the brain, so it doesn't matter that it's gone."

It does matter that it is gone, since that was a part of the "Me" and the feeling of loss or even phantom pains might continue for many years as the "Me" tries to adjust. Dry statements of fact change nothing. I therefore don't expect that my stating that "the sense that things are real is just an illusion. Don't worry about it" will have any effect either. To whatever Muni Mula tribe, no matter how ludicrous their "alligator god" seems to us, it cannot be easily ripped from the "Me" parts of their brain that believe in it so firmly. That would be nearly as bad as amputating one of their limbs, if not worse.

Likewise, whenever someone has "bought the horse" within some religious or spiritual arena, it is pretty much going to be very traumatic to "deprogram" them. One can spontaneously recover from such belief systems, as if some buried memory suddenly returns to an amnesiac, but to be forcibly "recovered" is extremely difficult. Therefore, anything I might say to persuade a religious fanatic to "get smart" will be effective as a reinforcement of the very belief I might find so vapid. I would be henceforth known as the enemy of their cult or whatever. To lose the faith would be to feel the pain.

I feel equally assaulted by whatever Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses proselytize at my door. Am I ready for the Destruction of Unbelievers? Well, I don't know, but if that is like dying in an automobile accident I guess I'm as ready as anyone else. No thank you. I'm already Awake. Eventually I get frustrated and ask, "So, what exactly do you want from me? My soul? Well, I ain't giving it to the Devil and I ain't giving it to you. You'll have to wait until I'm dead, and then you can fight over it." Afterwards, once the assault is over, I get a bit angry with myself for not just swallowing my spit. I know well enough that it is futile to discuss anything with dilated eyed fanatics.

It's just that they don't let up. Not since I was born, and by all accounts, since thousands of years ago. This is the way brains work. I will never know, of course, but I wonder if, thousands of years from now, a bunch of door-to-door belief salespersons riding bicycles will continue to spread such endless, circular logic. And, boy oh boy, look at the zeal in those Islamic Fundamentalists. I can only hope Allah has more effect being Great than He does preventing traffic accidents in Arab countries.

Most people, from my wife to chance acquaintances, become agitated in one way or another if I make such comments as these. This can either be construed as "I'm guilty of breaking some political correctness law" or "I am dead wrong" (or both). I too have twinges of fear in such expressions. Now, it's not a problem if somebody argues with me. Why should I care, or expect anything else? I'm saying things that a very large number of people disagree with, or at least don't like to hear.

Sure, there are a good number of other computer freaks and neurologists that wouldn't blink an eye. There are some scientific types who would also argue with me. However I would never fear them. I wouldn't expect to wind up on some torture rack for "blaspheming the word of Science". This cannot be said about religious zealots. They see any such things as I say here as horrible insults to their God, or against the Church (which I always thought was just some building). Well, excuse me. Yes I do fear some lunatic might attempt "helping God" and try to kill me.

Where I live, north of San Diego, there was, some years ago, a killer who was sentenced the death penalty for killing some little boy in a public restroom while the mother waited outside. He stated over and over, as calmly as if discussing dandelions, that he was merely carrying out the "Will of God". He had read the Bible and it told him to kill people, or something like that. Have you ever heard of someone claiming that "Science told me to kill them"? Why is blaming God so popular when good boys go bad?

It seems to me that evolution will control the future of belief systems. If blind belief is more suited for mankind's survival, then that will survive. If science is more suited, then that will survive. From what I see in the world now, and from observing history, science will not survive. The very inventors of scientific philosophy are no longer with us-- the ancient Greeks. I don't know who the modern Greeks are, direct descendants, or the result of invasion, but they seemed to have forgotten all that fancy stuff from 1000 B.C.

However, I don't think it was science that destroyed itself. It was not science that burned the ancient libraries. It was the fanaticism of whatever religious zealots came into power and decreed such stuff to be "the work of heathens and devils". The same things happened to the ancient Americans, such as the Aztecs. The "holy, sacred Catholic missionaries" that so zealously wiped out the history of that people must accept that deed as a senseless, cowardly act.

I predict this will happen again. Maybe not in the near future, maybe it will not be Christians, this time. But you can hardly scoff at the likelihood that some Crusader for God with nuclear or biological weapons will go off the deep end someday shouting "Purity of Essence!"

Active Nitwittery

There are thousands of web sites out there, most of them relatively OK, some of them rather nice, and some of them astonishingly banal. I'm not the prissy type, so I pretty much ignore the obscenities, narcissism, jackass antics, 8th grader fart humor -- that stuff is just noise.

But some people really put themselves into boxes, write the instructions on the boxes "smash into bits", "drop over cliff" or some other self-demolishing statement, and then call in the bogey boys. For instance, [an undisclosed person] made a website extolling her 13 year old virginity and good Christian beliefs and then had links to all of the comments -- open to the world, unedited -- with every sort of four-letter, five-letter and even eleven-letter obscenities written in all CAPITAL letters.

Her response? "Umm. Urso RUDE!" "OMG How DeeesGUSTING!" and so forth. I felt like writing a snail mail to her HOME ADDRESS [in an undisclosed Midwestern city] to warn... but thought better -- is that a trawler? I might get my toe caught in a corn picker.

Just fishing for RUBES? Probably. But then I thought, OMG -- some people really are that ignorant. At any rate that one goes into the Nut Box. I hope it really is a trawler -- otherwise it makes me worry.

Trapezoid

In politics these days, the worst thing you can label someone is a "Liberal". I can't exactly remember when this happened, but I think it was some time around the Reagan presidency. Certainly, it became even more acidic when Rush Limbaugh hit the airways, and I'm sure that the right-wing nut cases in the Brainwashed Churches of America have sprinkled "holy water" on the word -- with their crap.

I have never considered myself anything but a scientist, really. Science is actually a rather conservative business. You can't "liberally" claim anything you want, willy-nilly, such as "love is all you need." Any claims must pass many hardened tests of veracity else your reputation as a scientist will be thrown out the window.

Also, scientists are usually not "neo-conservatives", which also involve claims that may or may not be endowed with the constraints of reality, such as "pollution is good for climate change" or "nicotine is not addicting."

Belonging to the "left" or the "right" has no meaning in true science. At best I might be described as belonging to the Trapezoid Party. This is the party where things lean both left and right and also obey all the rules of geometry, unlike the flower power far-Left or the gun powder far-Right. And while leaning, the base of a trapezoid is always firmly assuring good balance.

Religion has a tough time with science, and often makes the mistake of lumping science in with "liberal academia". Religions have always had problems with people who notice the men behind the curtains. Religious people often make the mistake of believing unbelievable things, and then getting angry when others don't believe the same thing they do. I don't mind when they get angry -- only when they start killing "infidels."

The Trapezoid Party is more like the "Trisection of an Angle using a Compass" party. "That cannot be done," it is often said. That is true -- at least in 2-dimensional Flatland. But it can be done in the actual N-dimensional world that we actually occupy. We are not confined to pieces of paper. But the act of Trisecting the Angle is something that requires thinking way outside the box. That is something that belonging to political parties that are some 200 years old has a great problem with.

But, back to the "Liberal" label. I would not be labeled as anything but a "Liberal", merely because I do not believe in bigotry, gluttony, avarice and so forth, even though I am not religious. The Trapezoid Party does not support killing people needlessly in glorious wars, therefore "Liberal". We do not believe in gods or ghosts, therefore "Liberal." We do not believe in destroying the environment so that a few corporate fascists can get rich, therefore "Liberal." We believe in evolution, therefore "Liberal."

I think you get the idea. But if you don't -- worry not, the Trapezoid Party will not kill you because of it.

But you really have to watch out for the extremists of the Trapezoids -- the Triangle Party.

Distopia

Three possibilities await our children in the future.

1. There could be a wonderful, technological Utopia, with the problems of pollution, lethal weaponry and political corruption all solved, with a spirit of brotherhood distributed widely amongst all the nations of Earth.

2. There could be a repressive, authoritarian police-state that commits ever greater atrocities on the citizens of the nations they rule. Problems with pollution, overpopulation, health care, pandemics, locally destructive warfare and possible widely destructive "preemptive defense operations" lay waste to large swatches of Earth's habitable surfaces, and technology is turned into a service for the survival of those who hoard the most.

3. There could be a difficult, barely hanging on of a few human settlements amongst a widely denuded and arid land, ruined by climate chaos, where water either never comes or comes in destructive deluges. Food is scarce, either unable to grow in the parched, eroded lands, or destroyed by pests, desperately hungry animals and roaming bands of humans. Armies, nations, dictatorships -- all gone, all impossible to maintain in a planet-wide breakdown of life-support and where no technological solutions are adequate.

--

Somehow I feel that option 1 is pretty much right out. No Utopian ideas ever come to anything. Brotherhood only has spotty application, even in areas where fundamentalist insanity is not in control, which means that Dixie and Islam are right out, too. Militants and terrorists will be able to wreak havoc on the human condition as easily as a swarm of bees can ruin a picnic. And I doubt that anything truly sensible will ever come of environmental protection, it doesn't fit the quarterly profit-loss portfolios and conservation just isn't conservative enough for the right-wing nuts of the world.

I hope I'm wrong, but, so far, some combination of options 2 and 3 seems the most likely. I guess it really won't effect me unless I live to be 3 hundred years old or something. I'm 250 now, and don't feel like I have 40-50 more years in me. Maybe 10 or 15 if I'm lucky. And that's if there is no holocausts, nuclear exchanges or biochemical attacks during my ebbing years. But I'm not concerned for me, it's my grandchild, and yours, that will have to suffer the longest in that dubious future.

Climate unHealthy Skepticism

Global Warming Skepticism -- See Global Warming Skeptic Sheet

This might just be a lot of opinion but then so is the whole subject of weather. Tornados both kill people and stimulate the housing industry. The trick is to own construction businesses near tornado alley, so when the disaster happens you make money. If your company gets hit, your insurance pays for it.

Some people have a vested interest in the suffering of lots of people.

Climate Change - Human No Change

My work with computers tends to isolate my thinking sometimes so that everything has an abstract quality. It is as if everything was a computer game and I was only an "avatar" wandering around in an artificial terrain, where nothing really gets hurt if I swing my Vorpal Blade around.

I know, however, that the world is very real and unforgiving. In the US we can come up with all kinds of reasons to pussyfoot around the issues of greenhouse gases and our piggish habits of consumption -- as though the levels of the stock market took precedence over the level of atmospheric toxins and global temperatures.

To someone living in Africa, where "climate change meetings" took place during the last couple weeks, it is a much different problem -- one that isn't measured so easily with colored graphs and marketing displays.

Some climate change issues remain unresolved after two weeks of talks. "The question is, whose problems are we addressing?" she asked rhetorically.

"Fine, we can have Western countries coming, but some came here with their own agenda, to protect themselves and their economies; others came here as climate tourists who wanted to see Africa, take snaps of the wildlife, the poor, dying African children and women." -- Sharon Looremetta, a Maasai woman.

I often read the words of climate "skeptics", who deride everyone as "enviro-moonbats" or engage in some other school-yard name-calling against those who consider the climate a real and serious problem. I am too old to care if people call me names... I am not going to change my beliefs under such childish conditions. But I think some of the skeptics need to arise from their armchairs and looked at what this SUV riddled traffic jam called a "life-style" actually costs.

Sometimes the skeptics haul out statistics, such as "86% of all hogwash is malarkey", or point out faulty statements with "all computer models fail X years out" or "no scientific prediction of weather is possible because of random deviations." The stupider ones don't try to argue the science, so much as pooh-pooh science itself and appeal to an intervention by "The Good Lord" who, lovingly looking after his flock, would never allow the Earth to succumb to sewage, coal and petroleum pollution.

I've heard all that crap, the same crap as the tobacco industry used whenever cancer or lung disease was linked to their addicting products. "The science isn't in" or some such drivel. Meanwhile, thousands of people die every year directly or indirectly from tobacco. The numbers of deaths could be even greater for environmental damage, and that doesn't even consider the extinction of other species.

I feel like I am living amongst cave men who can't imagine a future where rocks and clubs will give way to nuclear weapons. They can't imagine a world of corporate dictatorships and fast food and disposable diapers. Cave men could never imagine what effects methane and carbon dioxide might have on their planet. As long as there were females to club over the head and animals to sacrifice to the Gods, who cared?

Even the Africans, the least respected amongst the Earth's inhabitants, know what is going on. So do the pollution industry executives. They can lie to everyone else, but they know how guilty they really are.

All The Little Piggies

This is my first post since the blogger account has gotten google-atized. I'm a little annoyed at having to login twice, and hope it doesn't stay that way.

Otherwise, everything seems to be in place.

For today's message to no one in particular, I offer my opinion of the recent governmental changes.

Democrazies versus Republicanists. Although I am not very socialist, in that I don't believe everyone should get equal pay for being overfed couch potatoes, I also don't believe that the USA should be run by racists and fascists who still fly the Confederate Flag and revel in the riches of corporate dictators, love the poverty of middle class workers, and who believe in the abolition of reason -- preferring irrational Biblical evangelism instead.

I wish there was a true Rational Party, where people who aren't one extreme or another could provide support for government. We don't have to kill everybody in Arabia or just give in to the terrorists. Things are not black and white like that. Also, I don't like having to choose between The Rapture and Atheism. Both of those extreme positions are filled with the same irrational pomposity. No one can prove there is a God or that there isn't one. As far as that goes, however, the burden of proof lies with those who make their claims. The Rational Party would not make such claims, or demand that either extreme must burn all their books.

Children are the future, as everyone already knows, but we are making a world for them which will be very ugly, and difficult to survive in. It will be a great test of adaptivity, of increased competition for resources, and a more terrible jungle than any found in 19th century Africa. The term "only the strong will survive" might well be rephrased to "only the bacteria will survive". Since there is no actual Rational Party, little will be done to fend off a polluted world with nasty weather; one riddled with disease and pestilence from a great disruption in the cycle of life on Earth.

There are still senators like Inhofe who claim that God will save us from our gluttonous, bigoted habits, so just go ahead and drive that 500 hp pickup truck across the prairies, burning as much gasoline and rubber as possible -- thus lining the pockets of all those who profit from pollution. If God didn't want bigots, well certainly they'd just poof out of existence, right? If God didn't want us to eat like pigs he wouldn't have created humans, right?

Getting the Boogers Out

I am quite surprised to awake to a new political climate in the USA. Although I knew that the Bushies were getting pretty shrill and increasingly out of their minds, I had become resigned to a future that would be more and more like Nazi Germany as I grew older.

I was especially surprised that the first act by a clearly humbled Bush would be to fire Sec. Def. Rumsfeld.

That said, I am still not convinced that life will be much different, especially for the next few months, because the problems that have accumulated in the last decade of the right-wing theo-crazy government by propaganda are too difficult to solve by merely voting out the old nuts and voting in the new ones. At least there will be a slow-down in the accumulation of dementia -- I hope.

There is still a reality of war, poverty, Israeli-Palestinian insanity, border problems and the destruction of the environment by every country in the world including and especially US, and the religious nuts trying to erase a thousand years of progress. These things will not be solved by ushering in a new set of politicians.

It is, though, like picking your nose. It gets the boogers out.

Modern Extinct Mammals

Extinct Animals

1. Antillean cave rat
   
2. Arabian gazelle
   
3. Aurochs
   
4. Barbados raccoon
   
5. Barbados rice-rat
   
6. Barbuda rice-rat
   
7. Barbuda rice-rat
   
8. Basalt plains mouse
   
9. Bavarian pine vole
   
10. Big-eared hopping mouse
    
11. Black-footed ferret
    
12. Bluebuck
    
13. Blunt-toothed mouse
    
14. Brazilian three-banded armadillo
    
15. Broad-faced potoroo
    
16. Buhler's rat
    
17. Bulldog rat
    
18. Canary mouse
    
19. Cayman Brac hutia
    
20. Cayman Brac nesophont
    
21. Cayman hutia
    
22. Central hare-wallaby
    
23. Central rock rat
    
24. Columbian hutia
    
25. Corozal rat
    
26. Corsican shrew
    
27. Crescent nailtail
    
28. Cuban spider monkey
    
29. Curaçao giant rice rat
    
30. Curaçao sloth
    
31. Curio's giant rat
    
32. Dark flying fox
    
33. Darling Downs hopping mouse
    
34. Darwin's Galapagos mouse
    
35. Desert bandicoot
    
36. Desert rat-kangaroo
    
37. Dusky flying fox
    
38. Eastern hare-wallaby
    
39. Emperor rat
    
40. Falkland Islands dog
    
41. Fernandina Galapagos mouse
    
42. Field's mouse
    
43. Flat-headed myotis
    
44. Flores cave rat
    
45. Flores long-nosed rat
    
46. Florida naked-tailed rat
    
47. Giant deer mouse
    
48. Goliath white-toothed shrew
    
49. Grand Cayman hutia
    
50. Atlantic gray whale
    
51. Great hopping mouse
    
52. Great key mouse
    
53. Grooved-toothed forest mouse
    
54. Guadalcanal rat
    
55. Guam flying fox
    
56. Gulf of California woodrat
    
57. Gull Island vole
    
58. Hairy-eared dwarf lemur
    
59. Haitian edible rat
    
60. Hensel's field mouse
    
61. Ilin bushy-tailed cloud rat
    
62. Imposter hutia
    
63. Indefatigable Galapagos mouse
    
64. Insular cave rat
    
65. Jamaica rice-rat
    
66. Jamaican monkey
    
67. Jamaican pallid flower bat
    
68. Large Corsican field vole
    
69. Large funnel-eared bat
    
70. Large ghost faced bat
    
71. Large Palau flying fox
    
72. Large sloth lemur
    
73. Large-eared tenrec
    
74. Lava mouse
    
75. Lemke's hutia
    
76. Lesser bilby
    
77. Lesser Cuban nesophont
    
78. Lesser stick-nest rat
    
79. Lesser yellow bat
    
80. Long-tailed hopping mouse
    
81. long-nosed potoroo
    
82. Lord Howe Island bat
    
83. Maclear's rat
    
84. Madagascan pygmy hippopotamus; coon Malagasy hippo
    
85. Malagasy dwarf hippopotamus
    
86. Marcano's solenodon
    
87. Marianas flying fox
    
88. Martinique giant rice-rat
    
89. Miller's myotis
    
90. Montane hutia
    
91. Muy shrew
    
92. Negros naked-backed fruit bat
    
93. Nelson's rice-rat
    
94. Nendo tube-nosed fruit bat
    
95. New Guinea big-eared bat
    
96. New Zealand greater short-tailed bat
    
97. Old fig-eating bat
    
98. Omilteme cottontail
    
99. Oriente cave rat
    
100. Osborn's key mouse
     
101. Pemberton's deer mouse
     
102. Philippine fruit bat
     
103. Pigfooted bandicoot
     
104. Poey's pallid flower bat
     
105. Pristine mustached bat
     
106. Przewalski's horse
     
107. Puerto Rican flower bat
     
108. Puerto Rican hutia
     
109. Puerto Rican plate-toothed mouse
     
110. Puerto Rican sloth
     
111. Queen of Sheba's gazelle
     
112. Rabida Galapagos mouse
     
113. Red fruit bat
     
114. Red gazelle
     
115. Red hairy-tailed bat
     
116. Santiago Galapagos Mouse
     
117. Sardinian pika
     
118. Saudi gazelle
     
119. Schomburgk's deer
     
120. Sea mink
     
121. Short-horned water buffalo
     
122. Short-tailed hopping mouse
     
123. Small key mouse
     
124. Southeastern pocket gopher
     
125. St. Lucia giant rice-rat
     
126. St. Vincent pygmy rice-rat
     
127. Standing's hippo
     
128. Steller's sea cow
     
129. Sturdee's Bonin pipistrelle
     
130. Swan Island hutia
     
131. Tanzania woolly bat
     
132. Tasmanian bettong
     
133. Thylacine; Tasmanian wolf
     
134. Toolache wallaby
     
135. Torre's cave rat
     
136. Tretretretre
     
137. Verhoeven's giant tree rat
     
138. Vespucci's rat
     
139. Victorious nesophont
     
140. Vietnam warty pig
     
141. West Indian monk seal
     
142. West Indian porcupine
     
143. Western Cuban nesophont
     
144. Western palm squirrel
     
145. White-footed rabbit-rat