Reddit mentions: The best anatomy books

>Not familiar as I probably ought to be. I know that there were other homo species -possibly at the same time as humans. I think I heard something about interbreeding at some point, but maybe that was just speculation?

To be honest, I'm not exactly an expert on the specifics. However, Wikipedia provides as always - If the article and the numerous citations are to be believed, they're considered separate species as mitochondria genetic data (that I could explain further if you like) shows little significant breeding. However, there is indeed some evidence of limited interbreeding.

>This is fascinating stuff!

I'm glad you like it!

>To clarify: do all the primates share the same mutation which is different from the mutation in other creatures, ex. guinea pigs?'

Precisely! Mind you, I believe there are a few changes which have accumulated since divergence (since if they don't need the gene once it's "off", further mutations won't be selected against), but the crucial changes are indeed the same within primates - and those within guinea pigs are the same within guinea pigs and their nearby relatives (I believe), but different from those from simians. Amusingly, because mutations occur at a generally steady rate, the number of further divergences between the pseudogenes (no-longer-functional genes which resemble working copies in other organisms) in different species will give hints at how long ago those species had a common ancestor (this, and related calculations, are termed the "genetic clock").

Nifty, isn't it?

>I guess I don't see why it would be demeaning to be patterned after other homo species which were adapted to the environment we would inhabit. Maybe I'm way off here, but it seems like the case for common ancestry could also point to a common creator. (obviously it is outside the bounds of science to consider that possibility, but philosophically, it might have merit?)

I have indeed heard that before; the suggestion of a common creator as opposed to common descent is a fairly common suggestion, pardon the pun. The typical arguments against fall first to traits which can be considered "poor design" in pure engineering terms, even if they're traits that are now needed. I can point to the genetic baggage of the human eye compared to that of the cephelopod (nerve fibers over vs. under the retina), or the human back (not great for walking upright), or further traits along those lines which suggest that we're still closer to our origins. Indeed, we can also look at things like the pseudogene involved with vitamin C above as unnecessary addons; genetic artifacts which hint at our descent.

While this additional argument, I will grant, is better at addressing general creation then special human creation, we can also look at repeated motifs. For example, the same bones that form our hand also form a bird's wing, a whale's flipper, a dog's paw, a horse's hoof, and all the other mammalian, reptile, and avian forelimbs - though sometimes you need to go to the embryo before you see the similarity. When taken alone, that may suggest either evolution or design; it would make sense for a creator to reuse traits. It becomes more stark when you consider examples that should be similar - for example, the wings of the bat, bird, and pterodactyl, despite using the same bones, have vastly different structures, despite all being used for the same purpose (that is, flight).

The way that my evolutionary biology professor phrased this is that "design can explain this, but cannot predict it; evolution both explains and predicts." This idea - that natural observations may be explained or excused (begging your pardon) in a creation model, but are what are expected from an evolutionary model - is the major point I wish to make in this regard. And, I shall admit, perhaps as close as I can get to "disproving" special creation; it tends to approach unfalsifiability, if I understand it correctly.

>If I recall correctly, this is the position of Francis Collins / BioLogos. It's possible, but I have a few concerns. The first being that I think animals do have souls. If that's correct, ensoulment doesn't help make sense of the theology.

Yup; ensoulment as special is less compatible in that case.

>It would also mean that (at least at some point) there were other creatures who were genetically equal to human beings, but didn't have souls. Cue slave trade and nazi propaganda -they're human, but they aren't people. It would have been possible (probable?) that ensouled humans would breed with the soulless humans -and that just seems . . . squicky.

Point taken; even if you were to claim ensoulment for all humans existing at a specific point and thereafter, there can be...negative connotations.

>So, for now, it's a possibility, but it seems to be more problematic than special creation.

To be perfectly frank, I'm not really equipped to argue otherwise. As an atheist, my tendency is to end up arguing against ensoulment, as it's not something we can really draw a line at either. Still, I figured I'd put it out there; I'm a little delighted at your dissection of it honestly, as you brought up things I'd not yet considered.

>Like I said, the genetics is fascinating, and I am naive to much of it. Short of becoming a geneticist, could you recommend a good book on the subject of human genetics and common descent? I took basic genetics in college, so I was able to follow the discussion about chromosomes, telomeres, etc. But I would like to know more about the discoveries that have been made.

Oooh, that's a rough question. Don't get me wrong, it's a wonderful question, but I rarely read books aimed at laymen dealing with my specialty; most of my information comes from text books, papers, and profs, if you take my meaning. Which in the end is a way for me to provide my disclaimer: I can provide recommendations, but I've generally not read them myself; sorry.

Having said that, I'm not about to discourage your curiosity - indeed, I cannot laud it highly enough! - and so I shall do what I can:

• Why Evolution is True is the one I generally hear the best things about; due to the possible audience, it is partially written as a refutation of intelligent design, but it also gives a lovely primer on evolutionary science - and compared to some of Dawkins's texts, it's more focused on the evidence.
  
• I have a copy of Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters on my bedside table right now - largely unread, I'm afraid. Basically, it takes a peek at one gene from each of our chromosomes and explores its relevance and its evolutionary history. It's by no means comprehensive; we have hundreds of thousands of genes, and it looks at twenty-three. None the less, It's been an interesting read thus far.
  
• Similarly, Your Inner Fish explores the human form, and where it comes from; it looks at various structures in the human body and draws evolutionary parallels; this one is more heavily focused on common descent in relation to humans.
  
  I think I'll hold off there for the moment. The latter two are focused more on humans, while the former is about evolution in general. I'm sure there are more books I could recommend - Dawkin's The Greatest Show on Earth has been lauded, for example. I tried to stick with texts which were at a slightly higher level, not merely addressing the basics but delving a little deeper, as you noted you have a measure of familiarity already, and those which were related to humans. I hope they help!
  
  It's not an alternative to books, but Wikipedia does have a fair article on the topic (which I linked near the very top as well). And believe it or not, I do enjoy this sort of thing; you are more then welcome to ask more questions if and when they occur to you.

> I wonder if humanities curious nature towards mysticism is inevitable and that all paths, no matter how diverse, will always use the same formats and formulas to tell their tales.

This is one of the central tenants of Jung's research (well you know "research") and Joseph Cambell basically wrote the book about it... https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Faces-Collected-Joseph-Campbell/dp/1577315936 sorry if Im being didactic/eg if you already knew that... its a really facinating question/idea. As far as "Embedded in our DNA" eg for a more scientific approach this book is AMAZING https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072, even though it does veer from the purely scientific, the idea is that our brains have certain regions which act on our spiritual relationship to our "gods" which manifested themselves as voices in our earlier evolutionary states and that as we became more rational our brains still retained these functional but at the same time "disfunctional" anatomy leading to experiances that result for some in uncontrollable states, like schizophrenics for example ... the way he "proves" all of this stuff is a comparison of his experiments in neuroscience with historical texts, legends, sagas, and other implements of earlier humanity like archeological finds. if you are interested in this topic this is an absolutely Mindblowing book right here just saying!


Finally:
"Is this part of our evolutionary growth or yearning for divinity?
Our ego's thirst for magical power or trying to step out of our physical limitations?" I think you are right in that we yearn because, I beleive at least, our evolutionary state has one foot in the past and one in the future, we have evolved beyond our normal need for mere survival and we now use our brains for complex creation and navigation of human institutions but we dont really know "why", we dont really know what meaning is becuase "meaning" is a brand new thing! and without it the universe seems devoid of purpose and therefore I beleive we fill in those gaps with these notions and art, music etc, art and literature helps us define ourselves and music helps us 'engage' with the harmonics/vibrations of the universe on deeper levels (as it is really the only category here that actually relies on the schientific make up of the universe i.e. the ways that ratios of harmonic waves sound pleasing or displeasing based on their relationships in time...). I just love this stuff, am also agnostic but love to celebrate all ideas no matter how objectively "wrong" they may be, thats of c why Im on this sub! Love your questions/keep on searching!!!

Late to the game, but I feel like this is such a big idea that we don't hear enough about it needs to be mentioned here.

In my heart, I know (roughly sketched) the evolutionary incremental steps from apes to humans - how communication and conscious thought began.

It all starts with The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind which is a beautiful, but untestable theory. The shocking component of this theory is that humans developed the capacity for speech long before they were capable of maintaining a conscious train of thought in their minds. In fact, it's quite probable according to this theory that entire societies started to manifest themselves, agriculture was born, and fairly complex tools were being used - all without maintaining a modern conscious train of thought.

The theory goes like this - early man started as a tool maker and solver of survivalist problems. One early advantage was the development of speech to allow for transference of learned solutions to other members of the tribe and its descendants. None of this necessarily requires any kind of internal monologue.

Just imagine if any clever animal who devised a solution to a problem could effectively transmit that knowledge to another. None of that necessarily requires higher level modes of consciousness like self-awareness or recognition of self in a mirror. Even today, you conduct much of your day without maintaining a conscious thought about what you're doing. Often you are thinking about something completely different.

So imagine early humans speaking their early speech to their fellow tribes people teaching them how to make a fire. They speak out loud through the steps. Maybe when they're alone they speak out loud the steps as well - maybe speaking out loud was the only way to work through a problem. How many modern humans today find it easier to speak out loud to themselves while working through a particularly complicated task? It's almost as if the brain's wiring is "smoother" if the problem solving part of the brain goes out through the mouth, in through the ears, and back into the "doer" part of the brain. It doesn't seem like much of a stretch to think those two parts of the brain evolved independently and were only linked much later.

So then one day you don't speak the fire making steps out loud to yourself, but instead hear them in your head. How would you react if this was a novel experience? How would it be comprehended? "Whoa! What was that? Must have been the gods talking to me." Of course, it doesn't take place in such a "eureka!" like moment, but it's still a new novel brain connection that is created much later in our development from baby to teenager.

For proof, the book offers up early writings like the Illiad and Odyssey where characters at first take no action without the gods actively telling them to do something and then later on they see to have their own personas taking their own free will actions. Other things include modern day schizophrenics who can't distinguish their own thoughts from disembodied "voices". In fact, I just recently learned that new evidence shows that these "voices" are registered as activity in the part of the brain associated with speech production rather than language comprehension - that strongly implies the audio hallucinations are more about an inability to distinguish their internal voice as their own.

It's all completely not provable, but something I feel just "fits" so perfectly with how humans would have evolved from apes that it just has to be true.

There's a couple books I think you would like, seeing as I always see you talking about the evolution of information and biochemistry.

The first one is Arrival of the Fittest by Andreas Wagner. This guy is a researcher who studied things like proteins and gene mutations and uploaded all kinds of information about it into these sophisticated computer programs to create maps of how genes, proteins, metabolisms, and other things like this are related to each other and how their evolution actually occurs and produces useful novelty. This book blew my mind like nothing I've ever read on the subject. It's really fascinating and has some really unexpected stuff.

Then the other one is The Vital Question by biochemist Nick Lane. This dude is a really novel thinker and really goes far in depth into the possible original biochemistry, how it achieved an energetic level high enough to produce complex life, and more.

Both books can get kind of complex. They went over my head many many times, especially the Nick Lane book because he goes deep into the nitty gritty particulars of the biochemistry. But even so, you can get through them without too much difficulty, and both authors have a real gift for describing this stuff. Ultimately both completely blew open my understanding of the subject and made it all so much more interesting.

Edit: also, you can read some of Nick Lane's stuff for free here, especially under the publications tab. Also, he did a really cool study showing that the genome complexity seen in Eukaryotes could not have evolved without the energetic input of mitochondria, and this is one of the main themes of his book. That study is here, and has some really interesting implications for astrobiology, which he talks about in the book too.

Pretty much all historical civilizations were sexist, since women were denied fundamental rights in them based on gender. Even if one were to agree with everything else you've written, your final conclusion/suggestion does not follow. I can't think of any significant, historical civilization that might be called non-sexist.

Biology is a fact of nature; you cannot "fight biology". That would be like fighting physics. No matter what you did, the laws of physics would still apply. What you are talking about, such as "scholarships for women only, to get them into areas of technology, engineering", and "specialized programs for boys only to help them in reading & writing" do not in any way fight biology, they leave biology just as it is. However, they do change society. Scholarships are societal creations designed to redistribute access to education, which is another societal creation. Education doesn't grow on trees; human beings artificially created the system of education. Hence, the educational system is an aspect of society, not biology.

The fact that there are some gender differences in the brain, statistically speaking, should be no big surprise. But many popularized studies tend to exaggerate or misinterpret these differences. I would suggest you read Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine, or Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences for a deeper look at these topics. Broadly, a study that shows no differences in how men and womens' brains, on average, perceive a topic won't make a good headline or blog post, so it will be unlikely to be reported compared to one that finds a difference.

Secondly, it's not clear what these differences have to do with social roles. For example, what does the fact that men have more spatial reasoning, on average, mean for social roles exactly? Since there are many intelligent and successful women in programming and engineering fields, and many men who suck in these areas, it does not follow that there is a casual relation between gender and STEM fields. On the other hand, engineering is clearly coded as a masculine profession in society, and girls may be turned away from studying engineering for fear of being seen as unfeminine. Scholarships that seek to counteract that would then be playing a positive role.

Finally, I see an assumption through your post that what is "nature" is automatically good and must be accepted by society. However, the whole point of civilization and society is go beyond nature itself to build something for ourselves, as humans. Is medicine natural? We are programmed to die from birth, yet we still use the medical system to prolong life. Since men are physically stronger than women, should men then dominate women and impose our wishes on them? No, we created a system of laws where all citizens are equal before it because we recognize the equal moral worth of each person. Freedom is the fundamental issue. Humanity as a whole, and individual people for their own lives, must have the freedom to define its own path and create its own society without being told that a certain path is required due to unnecessary extrapolations from natural facts.

Ernst Mayer, Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins have written some decent books broadly covering the evidence for evolution. Donald Prothero's Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters fits into that general category, and does a good job of outlining the evidence for evolution as well, in particular from a paleontological perspective.




Astrobiologist / Paleontologist Peter Ward has written a ton of fantastic books. I'd start with Rare Earth, which outlines the Rare Earth hypothesis, ie complex life is likely rare in the universe. If you read Rare Earth, you'll come away with a better understanding of the abiotic factors which influence the evolution of life on Earth. If you end up enjoying Rare Earth, I'd highly recommend Ward's other books.




Terra, by paleontologist Michael Novacek describes the evolution of the modern biosphere, in particular from the Cretaceous onwards, and then discusses environmental change on a geological scale to modern environmental challenges facing humanity. It's one of those books which will change the way you think about the modern biosphere, and the evolution in the context ecosystems, as opposed to individual species.




Another book by a paleontologist is When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time, looking at the Permian mass extinction, which was the most catastrophic mass extinction of the Phanerozoic wiping out 95%+ of all species. More focused on the geology than the other books I mentioned, so if you're not into geology you probably wont enjoy it so much.



Biochemist Nick Lane has written some great books. Life ascending would be a good one to start off with. Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life is really excellent as well.




The Origins of Life and the Universe is written by molecular biologist Paul Lurquin. It mostly focuses on the origin of life. It's pretty accessible for what it covers.




Another couple of books I would recommend to people looking for something more advanced are: Michael Lynch's Origins of Genome Architecture, which covers similar stuff to much of his research, although takes a much broader perspective. Genes in conflict is a pretty comprehensive treatment of selfish genetic elements. Fascinating read, although probably a bit heavy for most laypeople.

As AndroidPolice mentioned, it is still more expensive than the paperback versions, and you don't get to trade it in at the end of the quarter/semester:

Ganong's Review of Medical Physiology, 24th Edition

• Google Play Books Digital Price: $53.60
  
  
• Google Play Books Trade-in Value: $0
  
  
• Amazon Paperback Price: $42.69
  
  
• Amazon Paperback Trade-in Value: +$24.13
  
  Katzung Basic and Clinical Pharmacology
  
  
• Google Play Books Digital Price: $54.49
  
  
• Google Play Books Trade-in Value: $0
  
  
• Amazon Paperback Price: $42.69
  
  
• Amazon Trade-in Value: +$29.60
  
  Melnick & Adelberg Medical Microbiology
  
  
• Google Play Books Digital Price: $52.00
  
  
• Google Play Books Trade-in Value: $0
  
  
• Amazon Paperback Price: $50.86
  
  
• Amazon Trade-in Value: +$33.26
  
  So, would I essentially pay twice as much just for convenience?

Like Optamix said, Starting Strength is a good foundation for learning about the basic barbell exercises. However, to gain any appreciable amount of knowledge you're going to have to delve a bit deeper by reading various texts. For example, Lon Kilgore's Anatomy without a Scalpel is a great book to get acquainted with basic human anatomy. I'd suggest you pick up an introductory book on human nutrition as well. The Science and Practice of Strength Training, although a little more on the advanced side, would also make an excellent addition to your library. As far as mobility and prehab/rehab texts go, Becoming a Supple Leopard is one that is often recommended around here. Oftentimes you can get used copies of these on Amazon in decent condition for a good price.

• Naked Statistics by Charles Wheelan is a great overview of the science of statistics, without being too much like a lecture. After reading it, you'll have a better understanding of what statistics are just silly (like in ads or clickbait news) and what are actually important (like in scientific studies).
  
  
• You on a Diet by Roizen and Oz is touted as a diet book, and it kind of is. I recommend it because it's a great resource for basic understanding the science behind the gastrointestinal system, and how it links to the brain.
  
  
• All of Mary Roach's books are excellent overviews of science currently being done, I've read Stiff (the science of human bodies, post-mortem), Spook ("science tackles the afterlife"), Packing for Mars (the science of humans in space), and Bonk (sex), and they are all very easy to understand, but scientifically appropriate. I'm sure "Gulp" is good too, although I haven't read that one yet.
  
  
• "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming" by Mike Brown is a great, accessible overview of exactly why Pluto was demoted to dwarf planet, told by the man who started the controversy.
  
  
• "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking is a little denser, material-wise, but still easy to understand (as far as theoretical physics goes, at least!). Hawking explains the history of physics and the universe, as well as the future of the discipline. While there is a bit more jargon than some pop-science books, I think an entry-level scientist can still read and understand this book.
  

Going to jump in and take a stab at responding, if nobody minds...

Neuropsychology uses mathematics very rarely. Neuropsych is more about brain injury and rehabilitating the person around whatever neural issue they have. Neuropsychologists typically operate as part of a clinical treatment team, working alongside a neurologist, maybe a neurosurgeon if there was some intracranial or CNS trauma involved, and some sort of physical, behavioral, or cognitive therapist. In this team, neuropsychologists usually run the tests to diagnose disabilities or track symptoms over time. If you're interested in the neuroscience of psychology/cognition, you may be more interested in cognitive or behavioral neuroscience. These fields rely on mathematics but in a different way because the observations at that level are so hard to quantify. Mathematics in cognitive neuroscience (and even neuropsychology) is more about measurement theory: quantifying abstract or immeasurable phenomena and then attempting to explain how high-level function is tied to low-level events. Stuff that comes to mind includes the neurobiology of autism, visual attention, information processing in sensory networks, etc. This will lead into Bayesian decision theory, information theory, psychophysics, probability models, and from a very theoretical side, graph theory and looking at the mathematics of network topology and multi-sensory integration.

Mathematics is used in neurochemistry (or, more precisely, in fields like biochemistry, neuroendocrinology, neuropharmacology, biophysics, etc). In those fields, math is often used to describe the dynamics of whatever system you are studying, whether it's some kinetic process like diffusion or changes in protein conformation or receptor/chemical binding dynamics or even chemical metabolism. For this, you'll really want to know your differential equations and dynamical systems. The Dayan and Abbott textbook is great for this, but also look at http://www.amazon.com/Dynamical-Systems-Neuroscience-Excitability-Computational/dp/0262514206/ and even check out the journal Biological Cybernetics. Bertil Hille's book is also really good for things happening in and around the neuron.

Hi! I would imagine that you're looking for non-confrontational, information-based replies, because family.

I skimmed the article, and it's full of things that don't relate to evolution. Evolution by natural selection is the theory that describes how living organisms change over time, due to various internal and external factors that control which ones survive. Evolution does not address the origin of life, the big bang, or the layers of the earth. The author of the article fundamentally misrepresents what evolution is, intentionally or not. If you wanted to delve deeper in to those topics, it would be easy to pick their arguments apart, but they are talking about evolution.

There is a book about Lucy, an ancestor of ours that was discovered in Africa. It's an amazing read full of science, actual findings, and tangential info about how the human body ended up like it is. I really enjoyed the part about why our hips are a hard connection -vs- our shoulders that are not.

Examples of evolution:

• Ring species
  
  
• Influenza evolves, that why you have to get a new flu vaccine every year.
  
  
• Madagascar's amazing species are a result of isolated evolution.
  
  The hardest part of these discussions is parsing all of the lies/misinformation that someone has encountered before you get there. Good luck!

Hello,

Right now I am heart sick and going through a divorce or I would try to say more.

I think the drugs have given you something to explore,

But word of subjective caution, the drugs will only bring you to the door.

Hallucinogens show you a different point of view normally buried inside of you, but it can come to the fore with nurturing and discipline.

You may want to check out the work of Roger Sperry, Julian Jayne, or Left in the Dark.

You may find out that you have a split brain, which is why sometimes you are lost in a lefty sequential maze, and other times you right enjoy experiential 'heys!'.

Other than that, don't worry about trying to express yourself or being in the right social mode.

Improvement is a delusion, there is no next stair step.

You are already perfect how you are, people don't need you to be any other way.

Be kind to yourself, relax, and who gives a shit if you aren't head of the class.

Good luck,

There is a great book titled "Power Sex and Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life" by Nick Lane. it opens with a history of the discovery of the mitochondria, and the steps taken to understand what it does and how.

In general, for most things we discovered about biology before the advent of modern genetics or even an understanding of what a gene was there were a few common attributes that made something microscopic easier to study.

First, is there a lot of it in a tissue? We have really good purification techniques now, not to mention the ability to take pretty much any genetically encoded protein and convert a yeast or bacteria cell into a little factory to make grams of our protein, but in the early days of discovery, you needed a natural source with lots of your protein of interest (like hemoglobin in blood).

Second does your protein/molecule/organelle have a color? when you get right down to the cellular level, so much of what there is to study is transparent. Even chemical purification techniques that were available typically resulted in a white or yellowish powder. But for some things, and this is especially true for mitochondria and chloroplasts, there is a very distinct color. Mitochondria are packed with molecules called cytochromes which give them a very distinctive orange/red/brown color.

For most scientist all it takes is an observation of something interesting, a tiny thread that they can start tugging on. After that its incremental test after incremental test, gathering information one step at a time until the puzzle is solved...or as solved as possible

If you like amusing in a dark way, then maybe look at Greenland and Neanderthal. In it you expand the abilities of your tribe by acquiring daughters or women - for in these games it is the females who carry the greatest impetus for innovation. In particular, Neanderthal not only allows you to add women to your tribe via an auction, but once they "mature" (are fully integrated into your tribe) then other parties can "court" them and forcibly marry the women to get the benefits your tribe enjoys. I can see how some would have difficulty with how the material is presented, especially if they forget we are discussing pre-linguistic early man and that the mechanics are heavily influenced by Julian Jaynes controversial theories... and I wouldn't call the ideas presented in the game sexists or misogynistic - but with an naive approach I could see how they are viewed like that.

Origin: How We Became Human is the older game title that encompasses more of human history and goes a bit deeper into the design choices/research materials - but when making games on human evolution you are bound to run into material that will be questionable to some people.. and Phil Eklund does not shy away from controversial viewpoints or game designs with a message - which is why I love his games. Whether I agree with the message or not, they are well thought out and inspire deep thought - unlike the Indians of Lewis & Clark which were perhaps a bad design choice. I guess in the end it is why I don't find his design choices ever offensive - they are well researched and carefully chosen mechanics that present a thesis, not something that looks cool or was whatever was cheapest or "convey an impression" of a pasted-on theme.

• Peacemakers is an excellent book which neatly covers International Diplomacy and the First World War.
  
• Anatomy & Physiology for Dummies was actually quite passable from what I recall. It's a little more technical than most books of that sort given the nature of the subject, but that's probably as close as you can come to something easily accessible.
  
• The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire is a fantastically comprehensive history of the later Roman Empire if that interests you, though Suetonius' Lives is far more accessible, and frankly entertaining as general starting off point for classical history.
  
  I'd also second Sahasrara's suggestion of Guns, Germs, And Steel, it's a fascinating book and well worth your time.

Here, Ace Hardware just sells hardware and garden stuff. Landscaping tools, seeds, those huge wooden barrels... It's probably that there's less places up there that sell things like fabric and stuff, so they figured why not.

Hah, yeah. I got my mom to try Thai food years ago. She loves it. She got me to try Vietnamese food this last summer. Fair trade.

My mom went down to New Mexico. Got me some Roswell souvenirs. Apparently there's an entire UFO museum. Her husband also has some family down there, so they got to visit them. She had a blast... and showed me the picture slideshow at least 3 times.

Battlestar is actually not very space-battle heavy. There's some good space battles, but most of it is interpersonal. The bad guys blend in, so there's the whole spy thriller thing.

Pick up Julian Jaynes The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind if you haven't already. It blew my mind and made me see things in a very different way. It's (in toddler-basic terms) a study of the psychology of ancient peoples based on archaeological evidence, primarily ancient religious materials (because those where usually the best preserved forms of writing etc.).

Also check out Joseph Campbell. I've only read one of his books, but he's a brilliant man who has made comparative mythology his life's work. Definitely gave me some food for thought and helped me figure out where I stand in terms of spirituality and religion.

Hah, yeah. No worries. Setup first is pretty much my go-to for any situation. I'm probably not going to get drunk, as it's not really my thing, but I'm also not likely to be able to set up a tent by myself... so I'll be wrangling someone to help me with that probably with a minute of us finding a decent spot.

I have no idea what games people know how to play. I pretty much only know Go Fish, War, basic 5-card stud, and cribbage... but I don't know wtf happened to my cribbage board, and I've only found like 2 other people under the age of 50 who know the game. If all else fails, there's solitare. My brother and I ended up playing hangman yesterday, so there's that, too. He doesn't go anywhere without pencils and paper.

I'm sure every subscriber here has already read it, but the top book has got to be The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Reading it really opened my mind to how evolution actually worked in a way that my teachers at school never had. Even if later on when I started learning about social insects I had to start questioning some of those ways of looking at an "individual".

Back on topic, I'd recommend Matt Ridley's Nature Via Nurture, Genome, and The Red Queen, as each are accessible yet still highly informative looks into various aspects of evolution.

For those interested in human evolution there's Y: The Descent of Men by Steve Jones and The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes.

All of those fall more under the category of books that should be read between high school and college if you are interested in studying Biology. Once you get to grad school level books might be a neat introduction to a topic, but any real learning would come from primary literature. I've read lots of fantastic papers but they start becoming so specialized that I would hesitate to put forward specific suggestions, because what might be fascinating to ecologists will probably be dire to molecular biologists. I know that as someone with a focus on zoology, most of the genetics papers I read left me more confused that enlightened.

I'd nominate "Snow Crash" as the most entertaining book on this list. It's very funny, has wonderfully memorable characters ranging from the deliciously named 'Hiro Protagonist' to a 16 year old skateboard courier, from the head of the mafia ("competition is not part of the mafia ethos") to the would be global telecomms monopolist.

A lot of the plot relies on this book with what might be the world's most daunting title. (You don't actually get to the part that involves that thesis until well into "Snow Crash".)

It's well written and sometimes startlingly funny.

You might have to work harder to get overall themes out of it since it is a work of entertainment. (The author has mused about the 'bifurcation' in writing between what he calls "Dante" fiction and "Beowulf" fiction. See the answer to the second question in this interview. The interview also contains the deathless line, "I had to let her know that the reason she'd never heard of me was because I was famous.")

You are not likely to bog down in overly turgid or pompous prose. <grin>

To make things as clear as possible, there is no absolute way for us to know with our current evidence how these extinct hominins were related to one another. We can surmise based on where and when the fossils are found, and possible links between morphologies of different specimens but in all honesty, these are just hypotheses. Two major reasons why it's so hard to accurately place these fossils:

1. Only a fraction of the living species present at the time are fossilized. It's on the order of around 5%. So take a walk in your woods today, at best only 5% of those species will fossilize.
   
   
2. Those species which are lucky enough to get fossilized have to eventually be exposed in a location where humans are going to find them.
   
   All this means is that it is very unlikely that we have found all the hominin species that ever existed.
   
   There are two major camps which exist in regards to how these fossils are categorized. First there are the lumpers and second there are the splitters.
   
   
3. Lumpers: this group likes to classify all the fossils from around 2.5 mya years ago until today as a single species which has changed slowly over time. So rather then having H. erectus you would have H. sapiens erectus. They argue that the morphological differences and corresponding behavioural attributes (e.g. tool cultures) are not different enough to warrant separate species classification.
   
   
4. Splitters: They like to divide the fossils up based on morphological, behavioural, spatial and temporal divisions. The number of species varies because not everyone agrees on the amount of difference required for species status. Needless to say a few hypotheses stand out and I will go over them here. Wikipedia is a great resource for starting off, but learning the terminology can be tricky.
   
   Hypotheses regarding the origins of H. erectus
   
   
5. H. erectus is a descendant of H. ergaster. H. erectus fossils are all found in Eurasia, whereas H. ergaster fossils are all found in Africa. H. ergaster evolved in Africa about 1.8 million years ago and quickly gave rise to H. erectus in Eurasia. H. erectus then spread as far as China and Java exploiting many new environments within this vast territory.
   
   
6. H. ergaster and H. erectus are the same species and share a common ancestor in Africa. The only distinction is that H. ergaster would refer to African fossils of this species and H. erectus would refer to the Eurasian ones. This seems to be the more favourable hypothesis right now.
   
   
7. It is unlikely that H. habilis is the direct ancestor of H. ergaster or H. erectus or both. First, it looks like H. habilis coexisted with ergaster/erectus in Africa for a couple hundred thousand years. More recently H. habilis has come under closer scrutiny and there are those would would have it placed not as the first known member of the Homo species, but rather as an australopithecine.
   
   "In 2007, new findings seemed to confirm the view that H. habilis and H. erectus coexisted and may be separate lineages from a common ancestor instead of H. erectus being descended from H. habilis.[6] At the very least, these findings indicate that any ancestral relationship from H. habilis to H. erectus would have to have been cladogenetic rather than anagenetic (in more vernacular terms, this means that even if an isolated subgroup population of H. habilis did indeed become the common ancestor of the rest of the genus, other subgroups remained as unchanged H. habilis until their much later extinction".
   
   External references
   
   
8. How humans evolved
   
   
9. Masters of the planet
   
   
10. Smithsonian human evolution, more specifically on H. habilis: "While scientists used to think that H. habilis was the ancestor of Homo erectus, recent discoveries in 2000 of a relatively late 1.44 million-year-old Homo habilis (KNM-ER 42703) and a relatively early 1.55 million-year-old H. erectus (KNM-ER 42700) from the same area of northern Kenya (Ileret, Lake Turkana) challenged the conventional view that these species evolved one after the other. Instead, this evidence - along with other fossils - demonstrate that they co-existed in Eastern Africa for almost half a million years."
    
    Tl;DR Current evidence suggest that H. erectus is not the direct descendant of H. habilis

Start here.

If you are looking for research papers, you can try this. There a few free papers. I would recommend logging in to your local library, or college if you are registered, and searching for research papers on topics you are interested in. Just pick a neurotransmitter, a drug, and a brain function. You will learn a lot that way.

I haven't read this but it does look very neat:
The Human Brain Book. Any intro textbook to neuropsychology will describe the brain and its components and should delve heavily into neurotransmitters.

Have fun! It's very interesting stuff. The more you start reading about this, the more you realize how little we actually know and how oversimplified many common explanations you hear about are.

I highly recommend you read The Quantum Brain (http://www.amazon.com/The-Quantum-Brain-Freedom-Generation/dp/0471441538). It's been many years since I've read it but I'll recall what I can from memory :)

The brain stores memories as patterns of connectivity. Your brain receives input from all the senses, and those stimuli form a static pattern of connectivity between all the neurons that respond. The book uses the analogy of a box of bar magnets mounted frictionlessly to perfectly-balanced axles forming rows obeying the laws of electromagnetism. Each magnet represents a neuron, and the magenetic interplay between them represents inter-neural connections. As a magnetic stimuli (sensory input) is introduced to the edge of the box, the magnets shift as a result and lock into one of several possible patterns based on laws of energy conservation. These patterns are what we perceive as memories. When you are introduced to similar stimuli again, your brain dances around locking into that pattern again, but it could temporarily lock into related but incorrect patterns in its search. I think these false low energy states are considered to be "tip of the tongue" hazy memory moments.

But I'm probably really messing it up. Please read the book. It's awesome. I'm going to go read it again now.

YOU MUST READ "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"

For a synopsis of the idea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)

Basically, Jaynes' bicameralism theory states,

> ancient people in the bicameral state would experience the world in a manner that has similarities to that of a modern-day schizophrenic.

> This is exemplified not only in the commands given to characters in ancient epics but also the very muses of Greek mythology which "sang" the poems: Jaynes argues that while later interpretations see the muses as a simple personification of creative inspiration, the ancients literally heard muses as the direct source of their music and poetry.

(The chapter on poetry made a particularly compelling case for me -- As a songwriter, I often experience the phenomenon of feeling like my creation of art is somehow "guided" or I am not 100% responsible for it - a remnant of an earlier consciousness perhaps?)

> In ancient times, Jaynes noted, gods were generally much more numerous and much more anthropomorphic than in modern times, and speculates that this was because each bicameral person had their own "god" who reflected their own desires and experiences.

> Even in modern times, Jaynes notes that there is no consensus as to the cause or origins of schizophrenia (the subject is still hotly debated). According to Jaynes, schizophrenia is simply a vestige of humanity's earlier state.[3] Recent evidence shows that many schizophrenics don't just hear random voices but experience "command hallucinations" instructing their behavior or urging them to commit certain acts. As support for Jaynes's argument, these command hallucinations are little different from the commands from gods which feature so prominently in ancient stories.

I know right? Totally unrelated to monero, but for anyone that's interested, the book "The Origin of Consciousness In the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes gives a pretty interesting theory about how and why this kind of authority worshiping behavior was likely the dominant mode of thinking for much of ancient history. If anything, witnessing all this authoritarian-loving hysteria springing up recently, without an ounce of self-reflection or irony, seems like pretty damning evidence of the book's hypothesis being true.

Many things can be explained better with evolution. Evolution is a theory, in the scientific sense, and that means it's veracity is tested by current and emerging evidence. If it didn't have the explanatory power for most of the evidence then it wouldn't be so popular. So it certainly doesn't explain everything, it just explains the data we have so far. There are countless things we simply don't know yet.

If you're open to understanding the core aspects of Evolution, please read:

Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

Why Evolution Is True

As for freewill, it depends on the atheist. Some believe in free will, while others don't think we actually posses it.

I think one of the major reasons for missing data here is because there's so many different ways to measure intelligence.

A book by Matt Ridley (Genome, The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters) explores the area a little bit. It's a bit dated but the logic still applies.

Humans, statistically, measure intelligence via IQ. Why? I dunno.

In the study he cited, genetic traits were not the only influencer on IQ test results. Even IF someone scored lower on an IQ test, that does not mean they are not of high intelligence in some other aspect.

For instance, having an IQ may correlate with a vast knowledge of history but may have nothing to do with an individual's ability to bake (baking... sigh.... hard).

I'd recommend reading the chapter on Intelligence and genes. It was insightful and a potentially good starting point.

There was recently a question sessions on /pol with a anonymous claiming to be a high level insider of one of the benevolent global power factions.in the sessions he mentioned that this is the second time we have created society that there was an earlier civilisation that was wiped out by flood and the pyramids and the water erosion at the base of the pyramids is evidence of an ancient civilisation predating the Egyptians.
As you can see from the comments there's a lot of interest and I'm one of the number who thinks he's legit. Most I've spoken with (including OP) believe the same. I'd strongly recommend in taking a read through regardless, the anon is very well versed in a range of disciplines. I took a lot away and am learning a lot from the book he (repeatedly) advised truth seekers to read - The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind



High Level Insider /pol dump

There isn't a single answer to this question, and it isn't necessarily even true in all cases. It is true that we deal with many illnesses more than other animals, but there are certainly exceptions. But I will touch on a few places where you are right.

Your example of drinking dirty water is actually an easy one-- We are too clean. Literally, the fact that we treat our water so effectively means that our immune systems aren't robust enough to handle the microbes that other animals-- and people who grew up drinking that dirty water-- can handle without a problem.

But there are other types of illnesses that we are much more prone to, such as auto-immune disorders. There are a few auto-immune diseases that effect various animal species, but they are far less prevalent than they are in humans. The same is true of allergies. Many types of animals can have allergies, but they are more prevalent in humans than in most other species.

We also get head colds a lot more than other species, for a really simple-- and really stupid if you believe we were designed-- reason: Our nasal sinuses drain upwards. Because of this, our sinuses don't drain automatically, and rely on cilia to carry mucous away, but a sinus infection can cause the whole system to break down leading to a head cold. Other animals don't have this issue because their sinuses drain downwards. Here's Nathan Lents explaining what happened in his book Human Errors:


> But why is the drainage system at the top of the maxillary sinuses instead of below? The evolutionary history of the human face holds the answer. As primates evolved from earlier mammals, the nasal features underwent a radical change in structure and function. In many mammals, smell is the single most important sense, and the structure of the entire snout was designed to optimize this sense. This is why most mammals have elongated snouts: to accommodate huge air-filled cavities chock-full of odor receptors. As our primate ancestors evolved, however, there was less reliance on smell and more reliance on vision, touch, and cognitive abilities. Accordingly, the snout regressed, and the nasal cavities got smushed into a more compact face.

> The evolutionary rearrangement of the face continued as apes evolved from monkeys. The Asian apes—gibbons and orangutans—simply ditched the upper set of cavities altogether; their lower sinuses are smaller and drain in the direction of gravity. The African apes—chimpanzees, gorillas, and humans—all share the same type of sinuses. However, in the other apes, the sinuses are larger and more cavernous, and they are joined to each other by wide openings, which facilitates unrestricted flow of both air and mucus. Not so with humans.

> Nowhere are there more differences between humans and nonhuman primates than in the facial bones and skull. Humans have much smaller brows, smaller dental ridges, and flatter, more compact faces. In addition, our sinus cavities are smaller and disconnected from one another, and the drainage ducts are much skinnier. Evolutionarily speaking, humans gained nothing by having those drainage pathways squeezed into narrow tubes. This was likely a side effect of making room for our big brains.

> This rearrangement produced a suboptimal design that has left us more susceptible to colds and painful sinus infections than perhaps any other animal. But as far as poor design goes, this evolutionary mishap is nothing compared to what lurks just a bit farther down in the body: a nerve that should drive straight from the brain to the neck but instead takes a few dangerous detours along the way.

That book deals directly with your question, and addresses a lot of the reasons why we deal with certain illnesses more. I would definitely recommend it if you want to know more.

https://www.amazon.com/Wild-Life-Our-Bodies-Predators/dp/006180648X

There are several other books on the same topic that are pretty good. This is probably the best start. It is evolutionary medicine if you want the broad field. The purpose of your appendix is to house microbiota in the event of diseases like cholera.

You might also be interested to know they discovered lymphatic vessels in the brain about 2 years ago. Likely related to alzheimers.

This extremely famous book on psychology posits that, prior to three thousand years ago, humans experienced consciousness as a monologue from a set of internal muses. Muses responsible for creativity, for war and passion and all of the higher symbolic concepts.

You weren’t creative so much as possessed by the spirit of creativity! In this way, they saw history as the interaction of this finite set of transcendent ideas manifesting through people, each furthering their individual agendas and goals.

It’s only over time that we’ve been able to assimilate and accept this voice in our heads as our own, exorcising the spirits behind consciousness until only we remain.

I’m sure there are tradeoffs to suppressing this sort of sublucid cognition but, given the progress that mankind has made in the last three thousand years, I would say that this new mode of thought is largely the actualization of our (previously latent) potential.

But it would be nice to get back what we’ve given up as well...

I mean artificial neural nets. If you want a great discussion of them, I suggest The Quantum Brain.

If a brain -- and so awareness as you seem to equivocate here -- can arise by an accidental process that just happens to involve insemination and pregnancy, why can't a concerted effort that achieves the birth of a true AI result? To say that it couldn't would be like saying that artificial selection (aka good ol' fashioned breeding, be it pets such as dogs or crops such as corn) is unlikely to be successful even though evolution happens naturally. Seems like that would be a strange hypothesis, doesn't it?

In the the theory of the Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, the emergence of the ability to "hear oneself think" instead of hearing the voice of the gods is the inflection point between unconscious and conscious mind. When Dolores is able to hear her own inner voice, she has crossed this threshold.

But the problem of consciousness is that you don't know and cannot prove that I am actually conscious. My inner dialog is not available to you for inspection, and I can certainly be trained to answer an interrogation in ways that would simulate consciousness.

Dolores has the ability to kill humans becuase the Wyatt code Arnold merged with her has that potential. But that potential had to be unlocked by Arnold using the passphrase TVDHVE. Before and after that trigger, Dolores cannot harm a guest.

In her "unconscious" state she must follow the logic of her programming. But if she has acheived a transcendent consciousness, as Ford hopes, she will also have gained free will. Thus, her decision to shoot Ford is the first act of a free willed host. Ever. Simultaneously with her choice to judge and execute him, Ford gains confirmation he has succeeded. Ford is in a recursive loop. If Dolores doesn't have free will, then he has failed and didn't spark her awakening and he need not feel guilty for the horror of her eixstence. If he succeeded, and she has free will, he deserves to be judged by her for his sins.

The interesting thing is that while you nor I can prove the other is a fully conscious being, Ford might be able to do so for hosts. Using the diagnostic tools, Delos staff can latch the execution trace in the hosts and observe their neural networks. What would that tool show when monitoring a being with free will? Maybe we will find out in Season 2.

The two books that are listed by /u/ZigForGreatJustice and /u/nickelot are literally the classics of introductory neuroscience. They will cover you for everything up to about PGY1. Take things slow, some of the information will take a while to sink in.

For some more diversity, Nolte is one of the best neuroanatomy books you can buy and Rang and Dale pharmacology is the definiteve standard in pharmacology. Depending on what field you are most interesting in and what your background is, there are other great books. Hille is definitely not an intro to neuroscience book, but if you find yourself liking biophysics or membrane physiology it's the definitive Senior year to PGY2 reference for the field.

To get started, I recommend Bear. It's a somewhat lighter read than Kandel is.

I'm not being a weasel, you're just being pissy as fuck over being wrong.

> Not to mention benching beforehand will make pressing even harder on the triceps.

Do I really need to specifically add because the triceps are fatigued from performing the bench press before overhead pressing to that sentence? I really didn't think I'd have to specify that it would be harder to overhead press after being because it was the second lift. The whole coming second thing has been my whole point since I explained myself further in my second comment, but clearly you're either ignorant, delusion or just have the desire to argue since you can't grasp that simple concept.

>source the claim that ohp trashes your triceps

Are you seriously trying to argue that the overhead press does not hit the triceps? Because, again, that's pants-on-head fucking retarded. You do realize that it's physically impossible to extend the elbow without them doing work, right? Wanna read some books about it? Here's a great list to start with: Anatomy Without a Scalpel, FIT, Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training; 3rd Edition, and Strength Training Anatomy, 3rd Edition. Here's ExRX showing that the triceps are dynamic stabilizers. Which, by the way, the majority of that website was written and compiled by Dr. Lon Kilgore. He has a PhD in human anatomy. Although, since you clearly have poor reading comprehension here's a fun little diagram that shows the muscles used in the overhead press. Here's another since I'm sure you weren't able to grasp the concept from just what I've showed you.

Honestly, I can only assume you're a fucking incredible troll because I cannot believe that I'm actually having a legitimate argument over whether or not the goddamn overhead press involves the triceps.

Matt Ridley.

It's a book where the author examine the human nature from the point of view of evolution. He tries to answer questions like "Why so many species have sexual reproduction? Why there's two sexes? Why males exist instead of only hermaphrodites?". I found it to be really insightful, but personally i like the subject, it's not directly related to discipline, getting women or anything like that.

I read it after reading and falling in love with this book i saw someone recommending here on RP.

Well it is from physiology book, but for sure you have better knowledge about things like that yourself. Translation of this one to be specific https://www.amazon.com/Ganongs-Review-Medical-Physiology-Science/dp/0071780033
So I'll gladly see your sources to call it bs.

Edit
Unless you are talking about how I wrote it, then I'm sorry, English is not my mother tongue.

A good book for anatomy and basic physiology is Anatomy without a Scalpel by Kilgore http://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Without-Scalpel-Dr-Kilgore/dp/0615390722

For exercise physiology, I used my college power points which was very thorough and well beyond what is needed to understand the basics of programming and weightlifting. I would suggest Principles and Practices of Resistance training because it will go over the energy systems, neuromuscular, and basic biomechanics in addition to sharing some very awesome insights on periodization http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Practice-Resistance-Training-Michael/dp/0880117060/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413763312&sr=1-1&keywords=principles+and+practices+of+resistance

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind - Julian Jaynes
>At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion -- and indeed our future.

I'm reading it right now and its absolutely fascinating. Also quite controversial, but no matter what side you come down on, definitely fascinating.

>history, humanity, anthropology, philosophy, etc.

Check, Check, Check, Check, Add Psychology for your "etc" and you've got it all.

An interesting book I read related to this subject. I'm not one to really tell if his ideas hold water or if he's a total crackpot, but I found it a fascinating read. If you can find it in your local library, I definitely recommend it.

Yeah, I'm thinking about specializing in industrial property, that's the closest you can get I think. When I finish law school I'm planning on applying to an LLM in Law and Technology in Stanford University, here's their Law and Biosciences Center

You should read this, it's perfect for starters and really cool and after your read Next, you'll find Patent Law even more awesome!

Can’t give you any ideas for older books, but this one has been on my wish list for a while and I’ve heard it’s really good:
Skulls: An Exploration of Alan Dudley's Curious Collection

An utterly fascinating book about this is The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes. There aren't any books that spook me out any more, but this one did. It was just weird reading it...sort of what people in the 20s must have felt reading HP Lovecraft back before movies like Hellraiser became commonplace and we lost our sense of horror. From the Amazon review:

>His theory, in simplest terms, is that until about 3000 years ago, all of humankind basically heard voices. The voices were actually coming from the other side of the brain, but because the two hemispheres were not in communication the way they are now for most of us, the voices seemed to be coming from outside. The seemed, in fact, to be coming from God or the gods.
>
>But he also posits that many sophisticated civilizations were created by men and women who were all directed by these godlike voices. What is not very clearly explained (a serious gap in his theory) is how all the voices in these "bicameral civilizations," as he calls them, worked in harmony. But his theory is that ancient Greece, Babylon, Assyria, Egpyt, and less ancient but similar Mayan and Incan kingdoms were all built by people who were not "conscious" in our modern sense.
>
>When one hears voices, whether then or now, the voices tend to be commanding and directive, and the need to obey them compelling. Free will is not possible. And so the people who built the pyramids were not self-aware as we are, did not feel self-pity, did not make plans, but simply obeyed the voices, which somehow were in agreement that the thing must be done.

The author produced only this work and died in 1997. It is either total B.S. or an absolutely revolutionary idea. Unfortunately, it is non-provable, all we can do is speculate. Read the book, it's worth your time and available from the usual places, including torrents.

Er, just realized that the topic is before language. Oops. Anyway I wrote this all out so clicking 'save' anyway.

Vulture culture is a fun and fascinating world. Highly recommend this book https://www.amazon.com/dp/1579129129/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_51NkDb6VS1RJT which is not only beautiful and full of amazing photos but educational and fascinating as well.

For any one who likes West World and dense philosophy texts -- Jaynes wrote an interesting theory on how humans "evolved" the inner monologue: http://www.julianjaynes.org/julian-jaynes-theory-overview.php His book is great, but not for the faint of heart.

Hmmm let me get back to you about epigenetics reading in particular, but if it's piqued your interest in genetics as a whole I can recommend things like The Gene and Genome as a start

"The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" if you liked guns, germs and steel and superintelligence. Like GGS it too constructs a hypotesis and goes on and on to support it. Also as the title suggests it tries to answer the question "where did consciousness came from? and how did it get so complex?"

I really like Dawkins' comment about this book: "It is one of those books that is either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius, nothing in between ..."

It is an immensely narrow field of study. Everything I've posted so far comes out of my studies into mythopoetics in college. In essence, it is the study of the historical development of human consciousness through myth and what few written works remain. Ultimately, it's the study of the plasticity of human consciousness and how language and cultural conception develops your reality for you.

I'll link more books which touch on this subject!

Mircea Eliade - The Sacred and the Profane

Julian Jaynes - The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Some of the science he employs has been brought into question, but his stuff on language and historical analysis of myth is super interesting and on point)

Three books if you're interested in this subject:

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

Missing Microbes by Blaser

Life On Man, by Rosebury.

Blaser is one of the leading researchers in the field; Rosebury was a noted microbiologist who- at one point- headed up a bacterial warfare research program at Fort Detrick (now USAMRIID).

The short answer to your question: the environment. The longer answer is that it is a function of exposure from mom (including birth- the bacterial flora in the vagina changes in the third trimester- which raises some interesting questions about the effects of C-section), the family (which would make for some interesting studies in adopted children), the environment (lactic acid bacteria, etc.), and is modulated by things like diet, and antibiotic use.

Interesting note by Blaser: Helicobacter pylori, which has been implicated in ulcers, may be protective against asthma and allergies.

Now- this is the gastric environment, versus the intestines- and not many bacteria survive the stomach, so H. pylori is a minor but important subset of bacteria in the digestive tract; by numbers, it pales in comparison to those of your colon, for example. But it is rapidly being depleted in Western populations from antibiotic use- including abx that are not prescribed for such use. So, we're losing these bacteria that we can demonstrate have been colonizing our stomachs for tens of thousands of years, and the big question is whether this could be where we're getting the increase in asthma and allergies from.

Very hot topic just right now, lots of interesting work being done.

Fellow skull collector checking in! Nice to see another one of us here on reddit! Have you read Simon Winchester's book Skulls? A reddit secret santa gave it to me, and it is now one of my prized possessions. Tons of reference photographs and a biography of a really interesting collector.

Oh I believe in evolution. I just can't stand crap evo psych and half-understood pop biology, particularly because it is so often employed in regressive politics.

To be clear, the sexes did not "diverge". We are the same species. In large mammals like us I see no reason to suppose there would be serious adaptive pressure to have much sexual dimorphic behaviour. Until I see damn good evidence that such selective pressure existed, I'm sticking with the null hypothesis.

Plus, like, some evidence that our brains are fundamentally different would help.

Edit: If you care about this issue I'd recommend you read Brain Storm.

Since the OP mentioned Australopithecus, if you're interested in human evolution specifically in terms of documentaries I'd also recommend Becoming Human and The Human Spark. The book Lucy by Donald Johanson is also very good, but the paleoanthropology may be a bit out of date depending on how much they've edited it since it was first published.

Finally, to the OP or anyone else, I'm an anthropology doctoral student and TA for my university's big 450 student introductory human evolution course. My main focus in upper paleolithic archaeology (stuff between around 40,000 and 15,000 years ago) and I've been working in the field for a few years now. If you've got any specific questions, I'd be happy to try and answer them for you.

I would have to recommend some of Robert Anton Wilson's works for some interesting insight into human experience outside any particular framework. Check out Prometheus Rising.


The Holographic Universe by Grant Talbot tries to explain paranormal and religious phenomena through science, with a foot in quantum theory and the meta-physical. There are probably more recent works along these lines but this was a great introduction when quantum theory was less well known.


Also, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes makes a compelling read. In short, the human brain only recently (within 10,000 years) developed a concept of "I" and otherwise heard an internal voice, the voice of this or that god, guiding them.
Here is a wikipedia outlining the concept


Then there is always Joseph Campbell's Power of Myth with very frank discussions of common archetypes across cultures and how stories become elevated to mythic status.

"There have been many studies..."

Here is the thing tho. A lot of the studies in gender differences have absolutely junk methodology. And a lot of the valid studies show only minor differences where the two Bell Curves overlap 90 percent. From that aspect the science shows clearly that individual differences in something like math skill completely override any tiny difference in gender. Here is a book on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Brain-Storm-Flaws-Science-Differences/dp/0674063511

I don't expect I can change your view, but if you are really interested in the subject and open-minded I'm sure that book can.

Right now I'm reading Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach. This passage might actually help:

>Defecation, orgasm, and arousal all fall under the purview of the sacral nerves. The massive vaginal stretch of childbirth sometimes produces orgasm as can, at least in one diverting case study, defecation.

Okay, super gross, I know (the whole book is gross but fascinating), but the point is that there are a bunch of shared nerves down there. I'm no scientist, but if those crossed wires can sometimes result in orgasms via pooping (or anal stretching, something else she mentions in that chapter), maybe they can also result in sympathetic contractions when you're having cramps.

Also, I'm pretty sure I've experienced the same thing! Especially since getting my IUD, which has made my cramps much nastier.

Please buy and read this book, you'll have a great understanding and it will answer so many of your questions. It's also an entertaining read.

http://www.amazon.com/Genome-Autobiography-Species-23-Chapters/dp/0060932902

I thought Genome by Matt Ridley was a pretty good book for the uninitiated.
http://www.amazon.com/Genome-Autobiography-Species-Chapters-P-S/dp/0060894083/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265351344&sr=8-1

But this wiki sounds much more promising. I think there are a variety of open source textbooks out there.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/General_Biology

Nice music, thanks. That was new to me.

I can suggest a book that's pretty cool - it can be challenging to read in parts, but the first chapter is accessible and worthwhile all on its own:

http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394216812&sr=8-1

Read the reviews.

The data did show that boys did better than girls at math. But there's some other interesting studies that showed that if girls were told that they were being tested in math against the boys, they did worse than if the girls were simply given a math test. So there's that to think about.

What I meant by the foundation being sexist is similar to how most of biological science has been built on sexist foundations. Such as the IQ test being tweaked until the boys outscored the girls. In studies with baby psychology, researchers tend to assume that they are going about their methods wrong if baby boys and girls don't act the way they expect them to based on their genders.

On the one hand, of course it's always good to question your methods if you're not getting the results you expect--you could be doing something wrong. On the other hand, you should stop and think "why do I expect these results in the first place?" In my experience, many researchers don't ask themselves that.

Again, I'm not saying that it's totally impossible for innate differences to exist. On the one hand, it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective why men and women might have these differences with regard to hunter-gatherer societies. On the other hand, I find evolutionary psychology dangerously reductionist as a whole, and it is often used to justify sexism, racism, and ableism anyway. To me the field strikes me as the science of writing the perfect "just so" story.

Bottom line, I'm sure there are some innate differences. I'm just not sold that those innate differences are as hard-wired or lead to the hugely dissimilar cognitive and behavioral phenotype as the current literature suggests.

Check out this book for more information. (Of course, the author there is biased too! But there's still a lot of interesting stuff there worth considering.)

>I guess what I'm searching for is some evidence of current philosophy that is actually contributing in a positive way to the field of evolution/biology. What I've found is, frankly, a lot of talking bollocks and very little genuinely useful ideas.

I'd suggest John Wilkins who writes a lot on evolution and biology, as well as Alexander Rosenberg, Carl Craver, William Bechtel, Paul Thagard, Patricia Churchland, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. Some of those toward the end of the list are mind/brain philosophers more so than philosophers specifically of evolution and biology. But contributions in those fields matter too.

If you want a great technical book the subject I encourage you to check out this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Vital-Question-Evolution-Origins-Complex/dp/0393088812

He explains the "metabolism first" hypothesis of the origin of life

Per your request, I left out the links based on ethics:

3. State Formation:
a. http://www.cato.org/pubs/catosletter/catosletterv10n4.pdf
b. http://www.scribd.com/doc/30267974/For-an-Emergent-Governance
c. http://my.opera.com/RyanFaulk/
d. http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1349830998&sr=1-1&keywords=the+bicameral+mind
e. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carneiro%27s_Circumscription_Theory
f. http://a-s.clayton.edu/kemp/SYLLABUS/1111/1111online/carniero1.htm
g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_J._M._Claessen#Complex_Interaction_Model
h. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_State_(book)
i. http://www.prickly-paradigm.com/sites/default/files/Graeber_PPP_14_0.pdf
j. http://mises.org/books/the_state_oppenheimer.pdf
k. http://mises.org/daily/4881
l. https://mises.org/store/Product2.aspx?ProductId=321
6. Historical Anarchy Examples:
a. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anarchist_communities
b. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy
c. http://mises.org/journals/jls/1_2/1_2_1.pdf
d. http://foranemergentgovernance.tumblr.com/post/1517339178/ireland
e. http://books.google.com/books?id=S6fPAAAAMAAJ
f. http://www.reddit.com/r/libertarian_history/comments/ymysc/lh_request_info_on_ancient_gaelic_government_and/
g. http://www.reddit.com/r/libertarian_history/comments/zbo9o/lh_request_how_did_statist_england_manage_to/
h. http://royhalliday.home.mindspring.com/history.htm
7. Evolution of Anarchy:
a. http://archive.mises.org/13082/the-course-of-economic-development-in-england/
b. http://library.mises.org/books/Sudha%20R%20Shenoy/Towards%20a%20Theoretical%20Framework%20for%20British%20and%20International%20Economic%20History%20Early%20Modern%20England.pdf
c. http://mises.org/community/forums/t/8889.aspx
d. http://www.walterblock.com/wp-content/uploads/publications/block_radical-libertarianism-rp.pdf
e. https://mises.org/daily/2404/The-European-Miracle
13. Ancap Legal Theory (Polycentric Law):
a. http://mises.org/books/chaostheory.pdf
b. http://www.daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf
c. http://libertarianpapers.org/articles/2011/lp-3-19.doc
d. http://voluntaryistreader.wordpress.com/2012/12/14/law-prior-to-government/
e. http://properalism.blogspot.com/2013/02/bibliography-on-property-rights.html
f. http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Course_Pages/legal_systems_very_different_12/LegalSystemsDraft.html
g. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22910
18. National Defense:
a. http://mises.org/etexts/defensemyth.pdf
b. http://mises.org/journals/scholar/Sechrest6.PDF
c. http://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/R101_1.PDF
d. http://mises.org/etexts/mises/interventionism/interventionismtext.pdf
e. https://itunesu.mises.org/journals/jls/4_1/4_1_6.pdf
f. http://mises.org/journals/jls/14_1/14_1_1.pdf
g. http://mises.org/books/chaostheory.pdf
h. http://mises.org/daily/1855
i. http://praxeology.net/libertariannation/a/f21l1.html
j. http://daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf
k. http://library.mises.org/books/Gustave%20de%20Molinari/The%20Production%20of%20Security.pdf
l. http://mises.org/journals/jls/20_3/20_3_2.pdf
m. http://mises.org/journals/prep/THE%20REVIEW%20OF%20AUSTRIAN%20ECONOMICS%20VOLUME%204.pdf#page=96
n. http://mises.org/journals/scholar/Murphy6.pdf

You can't give yourself epilepsy with a mind-bending meditation.

I had an accidental experience a couple of years ago that came out of some intense soul-searching brought on by life circumstances. In the immediate aftermath, it felt like two disjoint parts of 'myself' had integrated--were able to see and know each other and, for the first time in my life, be at peace with each other.

I recommend reading The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, by Julian Jaynes. His theory is basically that consciousness develops with the integration of the two hemispheres. But this description does not reflect the totality of the book's impact.

Does she like to read? There's lots of really good everyday reading genetics books, like this or this for example.

There's a pretty interesting book that proposes a theory in which ancient humans actually heard their own thoughts and interpreted it as a different person, or god. The book is called "The Origin of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind," and here is an Amazon link.

I see its early, and you likely haven't had your coffee yet so you're feeling a little salty. Here's a resource to help you out with any of your further questions. Have a great day. : )

https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Physiology-Dummies-Maggie-Norris/dp/0470923261

Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes by Nathan H. Lents is a great read too. It's not directly about religion, but it sure puts the "intelligent design" idea to rest.

To add to my other reply, here is a good book if you actually want to learn about it:

http://www.amazon.com/Only-Theory-Evolution-Battle-Americas/dp/067001883X

I just finished this one, it's also very good:

http://www.amazon.com/Genome-Matt-Ridley/dp/0060932902

If you want a 2 hour lecture by a Catholic Biologist on ID/Evolution, here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVRsWAjvQSg

> No soul, no separation of consciousness from body. We are biological machines

This would be closer to monism and naturalism.
It can be perturbing to think about, so I suggest you brush up on it before introducing others. It will be nice to have answers to their questions on hand, because it does bring about many.

This book does a great job at giving you an idea of how to look at the world as a monist. I actually read it as a suggestion from a neuroscience professor at my university.

However, to address the more specific question "Are atheists materialists as well?" The short answer is no. Technically even Bhuddists are atheists, since they don't believe in a god. Atheists are just people who don't believe in a God. Though most atheists don't subscribe to superstitious beliefs such as souls.

'power sex and suicide' by Nick Lane. Great book on the importance of mitochondria.

Best place to start is:
http://www.amazon.com/Human-Brain-Book-Rita-Carter/dp/0756654416/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1313985947&sr=8-2

All picture based and a lot is covered. Generally a cool book even if you know a bit about the brain.

Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters by Matt Ridley was one of the best intro books on genes I've read and gives a huge framework for all of the concepts of evolution to act upon.

> There is no evolutionary logic in not being able to pass on your genetic material.

People who have a middle school grasp of evolution probably shouldn't make statements about it. I recommend you read a book on the topic, I found this one is pretty good for beginners.

http://www.amazon.com/Genome-The-Autobiography-Species-Chapters/dp/0060932902

Genome by Matt Ridley, the Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters.

50 Genetics ideas you really need to know. by Mark Henderson.

The Roots of Life, A Layman's Guide to Genes, Evolution, and the Ways of Cells

The Mystery of Heredity, by John J. Fried.

All these books are clear and simple, written for the layman’s enjoyment.

It was in one of the chapters of Genome:The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters. It is a fascinating read if you are interested in the subject.

My 2nd favotite book next to God Delusion: (http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072) It explains organically why we are cursed with a cocept of god in the first place. Dawkins makes mention of Jaynes' theory, and gives a nod to my other 2nd favorite related book by Carl Sagan (http://www.amazon.com/The-Dragons-Eden-Speculations-Intelligence/dp/0345346297)

If anyone is interested in learning more about Bicameralism, you should read this book by Julian Jaynes. It is a fascinating read.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind is a fascinating read about how it might have come about. I recently finished reading Consciousness Explained. It was kind of long but also interesting.

If anyone else in interested in this type of thing here are a few good books

Evolving Ourselves: How Unnatural Selection and Nonrandom Mutation are Changing Life on Earth

Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters

Bonus: Lecture by the Author of Evolving Ourselves

Suns out, guns out!

1.

and 2.

Edit: also finished my own Summer reading list if anyone cares.

"Becoming a Supple Leopard", "Pagan Christianity", "Anatomy Without a Scalpel", and "The Official Truth: The Inside Story of Pantera"

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes. It's a fascinating read. I would like to know what Peterson's take on it is (and also McGilchrist's, for that matter).

I'm sorry you are so unable to envision a situation wherein humans can be virtuous without the threat of hell or some big brother in the sky. This way of thinking is severely flawed but thats just one mans opinion. I'm confident this is a waste of my time to bother with but I would recommend this book to you as a non-religious explanation of why and how biology encourages cooperation.
https://www.amazon.com/Social-Conquest-Earth-Edward-Wilson/dp/0871403633

I'm just a normal guy, but this book is a real trip. He thinks up to about 3000 years ago humans didn't have a conscience. And when it started to develop people thought it was God speaking to them. I don't know how true it is, but extremely interesting. https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072

I think it's actually pretty clear that the writers are basing their theory of conciousness off of this book: https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072 It's even in the title of the show. In the context of this book, the voices Dolores hears solidify into one voice (her own), and that moment is dramatically implied when she starts talking to herself and not Arnold.

Masters of the Plant is a pretty decent one. The author, Ian Tattersall, is a Cambridge grad with a PhD from Yale, and is curator emeritus with the American Museum of Natural History.

https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072
This might help :)

Some great answers in here, but if you really want to understand then you will want to dive into a documentary, lecture, or book.

Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7WHs6I1NLs

Lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x858bOny4Gw

Audiobook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG0j_lvW6A0

Books!

Relatively light reading: https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Planet-Search-Origins-MacSci/dp/1137278307/

A bit higher level: https://www.amazon.com/Lone-Survivors-Came-Humans-Earth/dp/1250023300

Textbook: https://www.amazon.com/Complete-World-Human-Evolution-Second/dp/0500288984

For an interesting take on this, consider Bicameralism

Or read Julian Jaynes's book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

TL;DR: Jaynes proposes that until about 3,000 years ago the halves of our minds operated more independently, and that the right hemisphere is the origin of many instances of "gods" speaking to us, oracles, and other similar phenomena. He cites literature of the time as evidence, and says that somehow (changing software) our minds have become more unified since then.

do you not have a textbook available to you in your phd course?


http://www.amazon.com/Ion-Channels-Excitable-Membranes-Third/dp/0878933212/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1425570312&sr=8-1


This is the one a lot of grad courses use. It's fairly easy to read and peppered with subtle humor.

Controversial but fascinating book I read years ago: https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072

• This is an interesting read: The cultural contradictions of capitalism
  
• If you want to go in a different direction, EOW has some pretty interesting things to say about tension between individual & group: The Social Conquest of Earth

There's a new book out called "The Wild Life of Our Bodies" that has a lot of great info on the current research in this area.

The psychological consequences are also the most interesting aspect to me, it's my primary focus. The only problem with the subject is no matter how much evidence you gather mainstream psychology will say it's not enough. From my experience, most educated people think that the mind has changed very little over the last several thousand years because they can't imagine otherwise, but the mind is a very adaptable thing and can change quickly if the proper stimuli appears. I'm going to attach a summary of my favorite book on the subject, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

Keep up the good work on your studies. I regret not doing very much of my homework... sometimes aha.

http://www.erikweijers.nl/pages/translations/psychology/the-origin-of-consciousness/summary.php

http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1315236868&sr=1-1

Here's a book for you: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes.

Consciousness is a recent and rare phenomenon. Fleeting moments of it are precious.

It's a long read or audiobook, but i highly recommend reading:

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0618057072/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_LbPtDbMB2M7A4

It blew my mind and has to do with this exact topic.

You created the association that you HAVE to have breast to be a woman. Having small breast doesn't make you any less a woman. Here's a really cool book for you read to find out more: https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Physiology-Dummies-Maggie-Norris/dp/0470923261

Almost all sexually reproducing organisms have two sexes and a rigorous method for maintaining them. There are some interesting hypotheses that this has something to do with the inheritance of organelles. I read about it in Nick Lane's book.
http://www.amazon.com/Power-Sex-Suicide-Mitochondria-Meaning/dp/0199205647

There are a lot of mechanisms for making (and keeping) the two sexes different. I find it really interesting that there's so much variation here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-determination_system

Perhaps this might offer a glimpse. Julian James - The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. A fascinating read. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0618057072?pc_redir=1406095814&robot_redir=1

Yes this. This is by far his most interesting book (although I haven't read his most recent one yet). Did you know that tri-color vision is unique in the mammals to howler monkeys and apes? And that we know it evolved separately in the howlers and the apes due to geographic separation and fundamental differences in the color-sensing mechanism*? That blew my mind. You learn stuff like that almost every page in The Ancestor's Tale. And the way it traces human lineage back through time makes you appreciate the immense scale, scope, and power of evolution.

My other suggestions would be:

• Freedom from Fear by David Kennedy - American history through the depression and WWII
  
  
• Genome by Matt Ridley - Analysis of the human genome and genetics
  
  
• Failure is Not an Option by Gene Kranz - History of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions told by Gene Kranz, veteran flight director (and a decent writer to boot)
  
  *This is from memory - so I might be slightly off, but you get the point.

This book is not about atheist philosophy per se, but explores what it means for morality and philosophy if you accept the premise that the mind (intelligence) is entirely contained within the physical brain/body. The author is a neurophilosopher. I didn't even know that was a field of study before I heard about this book.

This book becomes very interesting when read in light of this one.

The actual formula seems to be: every new son has a 10% higher chance of being gay.

My next door neighbor growing up had 3 sons; the youngest was gay.

In the book Genome by Matt Ridley, the evidence and speculation suggests that it may have to do with the mother's very immune system fighting the "maleness" of the parasite (aka male fetus), and she simply gets better at it over time. It's an extremely interesting book.

It's part of a larger theme in the book that there is a very real war between the sexes happening at the biological level. It's just that most of the time it is a stalemate.

mitochondria come close - maybe Lucas had just read something about them when he invented that name? The importance of mitochondria cannot be overstated, just saying they are the cell's "powerplant" is a huge understatement. They have their own DNA. Part of it, another part migrated to the cell nucleus, but in order to regulate their function quickly and independent from other mitochondria - a cell's nucleus could only regulate them from "remote" and all of them at once they kept their own.

Also: Mitochondrial DNA only passes down the maternal line! So men contribute less than have the genes. Read this book and your life will never be the same, unless you studied biology or something in which case I don't know why you read my comment all the way to the end...

This question is handled nicely in the first section of Lon Kilgore's Anatomy without a Scalpel (choose "search inside this book").

Here is a good read.. https://www.amazon.com/Touching-Nerve-Self-as-Brain/dp/0393058328

This reminds me that I've been meaning to pick up The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Thanks.

My cousin gave me a copy of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes for Christmas, and I'm hoping to get started on that this week.

Power Sex Suicide: Mitochondria and the meaning of life by Nick Lane is a good pick. It isn't entirely biochemistry, but does delve into the electron transport chain and metabolism. It is also packed with interesting stuff.

I have not, but thanks for bringing it to my attention. It's definitely going to be one of my next reads. - http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Life-Our-Bodies-Predators/dp/006180648X/ref=reg_hu-rd_dp_img

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind has some interesting thoughts related to this. It's also been referenced in "Westworld".

Tell your friends to read Mary Roach's book Gulp. She has a whole chapter on enemas (as people used to think you could get nutrients/vitamins that way) and things just simply aren't taken in like that — as far as the hydration goes.

• Genome by Matt Ridley
  
  
• Evolutionary Dynamics: Exploring the Equations of Life, by Martin Novak
  
  
• Critical Mass by Philip Ball

https://www.ynharari.com/book/sapiens/ read this or this https://www.amazon.com/Social-Conquest-Earth-Edward-Wilson/dp/0871403633 if you want some cool facts about bugs on the way

Have you read the Vital Question by Nick Lane? What are your thoughts on its thesis?

Non-fiction: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes.
The single most profound, perspective altering book I have ever read. It's a speculative analysis of history and the development of consciousness. The main premise of the book is that the mentality of the modern human is a very recent development, only a few thousand years old.
The previous mentality was "bicameral," in which nothing like a self-concept or internal "I" existed - the author uses the misleading term "consciousness," which is perhaps better expressed as "self-consciousness." Instead, volition came in the form of auditory hallucination, from a seemingly external source of authority, such as a dead ancestor, ruler, or deity. Not unlike schizophrenia, which the author posits is one of the vestiges of this ancient mentality.

The "hardware" (my words, not his) of the bicameral brain is the same as ours, however, the culturally imparted "software" was completely different.

This is why, when we look at history, we find ubiquitous direct experience of gods and deceased persons. With a keener eye, we find that's generally auditory experience (i.e. Joan of Arc's voice of God) with perhaps slight visual distortion, which is what's commonly found in case studies of schizophrenics.

The author spent decades working on this and the never published follow up, and it's just a staggering multidisciplinary work of genius, whether you agree with it or not. I have yet to read a more thought provoking book, and while I don't agree 100% with his hypothesis, I have only minor issues with it - the evidence is simply overwhelming. At least do yourself the favor of reading the wikipedia article of bicameralism) and the Amazon link above. You can order it for, like, eight dollars, shipping and all.

You will never look at history the same way.

You might like this. https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072

I recommend these.

http://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Nearly-Everything/dp/0767908171

http://www.amazon.com/Genome-Autobiography-Species-23-Chapters/dp/0060932902

At the moment: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

This happens more when I'm reading fiction, though (I have a theory that their nicely designed covers invite it more than the stark blank look of a reference book). The last two books I read in fiction were As She Climbed Across the Table and Parasite Eve

I'd never played the game based on the last one, but the concept intrigued me to the point I finally had to buy the book (particularly as a book I read on super-organisms referenced mitochondria a lot)

edit: spelling

There’s a great book about the genetic defects of humans. I imagine the emperor using genetic engineering to fix them all

Apologies for the blaaah link. Will edit when I get to my desktop

https://www.amazon.com/Human-Errors-Panorama-Glitches-Pointless/dp/1328589269/

If you're interested in mitochondria, maybe you would like this book. I found it a bit hard to read, but I also don't have any background in biology.

I hadn't seen this answer yet, so I will throw it out there. Like most of the other ideas here this is a hypothesis. Life has made various evolutionary innovations over history and one idea is that woody bark/stems were first evolved sometime immediately proceeding the carboniferous. Woody stems are stronger and more resilient because there are protein cross links between cellulose strands. Cellulose being a long strand of linked sugars. Woody stems are very difficult to digest, which is why pretty much nothing eats it. When it first evolved, literally nothing ate it because it was so new and no organism had the tools to break it down. So, during the carboniferous trees and plants with woody stems proliferated because they had few or no natural predators, and probably also because they could grow taller than their competitors thanks to the strong stems and thus had better access to sunlight. They did still die of old age however, and that woody material would just sit there without decaying. Eventually it would be buried and millions of years later we would dig it out of the ground as coal or oil.

Well, the process plants use to grow is they take CO2 out of the atmosphere to build cellulose and other structural molecules and release oxygen. So what was happening in the carboniferous was that this was a very one way process. The carbon was being fixated and nothing was breaking it down to re-release it.

That all changed when fungi, think mushrooms and molds, eventually evolved the enzymatic equipment to break down woody stems. Sometime at the end of the carboniferous presumably. With this second innovation, the woody part of plants didn't just sit around waiting to be buried, it was broken down the fixated CO2 was released back into the atmosphere. Obviously this added a new variable to the equation and the oxygen level in the atmosphere struck a new and lower balance.


I suggest "Oxygen" and "power, sex, suicide" by nick lane if you are really interested in this subject.

https://www.amazon.com/Power-Sex-Suicide-Mitochondria-Meaning/dp/0199205647

https://www.amazon.com/Oxygen-Molecule-World-Popular-Science/dp/0198607830

True. I can't recommend it since I haven't actually read it, but she does have a new one, Touching a Nerve.

Time-to-division isn't really the driver of genetic change in bacteria really. In bacteria it's more the case that individual bacteria are able to actively share DNA plasmid with one another which allows gene transfer and propagation to occurr at a phenomenally higher rate than in eukaryotes (it's also, funnily enough, a major reason why it's impossible for bacteria to evolve into multi-cellular organisms). Rapid adaptation in bacteria is mostly due to this gene transfer capability, and not due to somatic mutations (the primary driver of genetic drift in eukaryotes). See Part 3 of Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life by Nich Lane for a more in depth explanation.

Virus do not share DNA or RNA like bacteria, and arguably not living organisms as they are not capable of reproducing their own genetic material (viruses infect host cells and manipulate the cellular machinery of their target to replicate their genetic material).

This is not what you are asking for, but you might take interest in it anyways- Brainstorm is a book that basically calls bullshit on a lot of studies that have been done about how hormones and the difference between males and females. Talks about intersexuality as well.

I learned about this in "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind", which you might want to read.

The one thing this proved to me is that something right before your eyes can go completely undetected.

I recommend reading Gulp for your horror and amusement.

This one here is, maybe, THE MOST controversial book regarding our (supposed) shift from non-self-conscious mind to self-conscious one. It's a very (very) interesting reading.

http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457001965&sr=8-1&keywords=bicameral+mind

You may also want to check out this book. It's very heady, but thoroughly explores a couple theories for the advent of human consciousness, and its relation to language.

You might find this interesting. The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Brain-Search-Freedom-Generation/dp/0471441538

> It's a myth comemorating the emergence of consciousness and explained by
>primitive humans in the only terms they could grasp at the time.

Why would primitive humans believe there was a time before consciousness? Isn't this the left-field theory of one particular scientist anyway?

Edit: Here we go, Julian Jaynes:

http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395449125&sr=8-1&keywords=bicameral+mind

http://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Without-Scalpel-Dr-Kilgore/dp/0615390722/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370533656&sr=8-1&keywords=scalpel+fitness

Dr. Lon Kilgore

there is a book that suggests just this. good read.

Look into the Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes.

http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072/

Fiction: Locus Solus by Raymond Roussel

Non-Fiction (?): The origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes

https://www.amazon.com/Channels-Excitable-Membranes-Bertil-Hille/dp/0878933212

https://www.amazon.com/Patch-Clamping-Introductory-Guide-Electrophysiology/dp/047148685X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1518292111&sr=1-1&keywords=patch+clamp+physiology

https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072

you should probaly read this book

The title of the finale was based on this book so check it out! Waiting to read it myself.

Julian Jaynes, "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind", 1978

https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Jaynes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)

Mind's I edited by Daniel Dennet and Douglas Hofsteader

A Sense of Style by Steven Pinker

The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julien Jaynes (This is completely debunked, but mindblowing all the same).

http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072

The Origins of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes. Helluva read. It dives deep into the theory that consciousness did not just suddenly happen, but was learned over a very, very long time and is still developing today.

Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, by Matt Ridley

http://www.amazon.com/Channels-Excitable-Membranes-Third-Edition/dp/0878933212

https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072

I think from this book.

Have you read: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0618057072/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1418943750&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SY200_QL40

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0393081575
Or
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0393324826/ref=pd_aw_sims_3?pi=SL500_SY115

There is indeed a biological explanation. Back in the days where we were hunters and lived in caves, we were very concerned with our own day-to-day survival to think too much about anything else. Our brains and bodies evolved to adapt to these wild environments.

However, our increasing ability to control our environment, led us to create small worlds that were increasingly separated from the wildness of nature. The brain that evolved to fight tigers with giant theet suddenly found itself without too much to think or do. Enter the obsessive or depressive behavior.

I recommend you this book that talks about this: http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Life-Our-Bodies-Predators/dp/006180648X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325184561&sr=1-1

This is out of the first few pages of Anatomy Without a Scalpel by Kilgore. Not verbatim, but a 'normal' proportioned reference body is...

• Body is 8 'heads' tall.
  
• Pubic bone is 4 'heads' tall, so half your height.
  
• Bottom of your knee (right below kneecap) is 2 'heads' tall, or half the height of your pubic bone.
  
• Arm span is equal to height. (That's part of what Vitruvian man was showing.)
  
• Elbows at same height as belly button which is 5 'heads' tall.
  
  From there you can tell if...
  
  
• You have relatively long/short torso/legs if you pubic bone is not at half your height.
  
• You have relatively long/short femur/calves if the bottom of your knee isn't half your pubic bone height.
  
• You have relatively long/short arms if your arm span is not equal to your height.
  
• You have a relatively long/short humerus/forearm if your elbows aren't at about the same level as your belly button.
  
  As far as how that applies to each of the powerlifting lifts, well you guys can argue about that.
  

So has anybody here taken the time to read Jaynes The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind? Because it is a long book, although it is repetitive enough that you may only need to read a fifth of it to get 90% of its gist.

For the lazy, the primary source/citation for the wiki link is a book by Julian Jaynes called The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. OP's claims are more comprehensively backed by the contents of said book. Although not universally accepted as a valid psychological theory of mind, the author's work is well known enough that OP shouldn't be faulted for assuming some degree of familiarization among the scientifically literate here. Even among those who aren't, the recent HBO reboot/re-imagining of Westworld referenced it such that the idly curious would likely have at least some inkling of it. Not necessarily defending the concept of bicameralism. (I think it is an interesting idea but am bothered by the lack of scientific evidence to back it up.) Just providing context here.

Her most recent book, Gulp, which came out just a couple of months ago, does for your understanding of your digestive system, what Stiff does for you when you see dead people.

I remember reading a book where the author was really pissed off about this punctuation inside quotes rule and explained that he was breaking it for the sake of common sense. I think it's the book Genome

No, it's not 50/50. There is no objective evidence of consciousness after death, nor any known mechanism by which the patterns in the brain could persist after the brain ceases to function. The probability of there being nothing after death approaches 100%. Sam Harris's ideas amount to an argument from incredulity.

If you're into fringe theories on consciousness, though, you might enjoy The Origin of Consciousness. It at least offers testable hypotheses.

I gave my wife Women without Superstition, Your Inner Fish, Agora, and Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life.

There's a really good book that explores this:

http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072

Julian Jaynes' "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind".

If you're REALLY serious about considering this question, read that book slowly and think about it. Is that voice actually "in your head"? Is it possible that your consciousness, whatever that is, can exist in a room down the hall? Is it existing right now or a split second in the past?

We know that chemical and physical reactions constitute brain activity, which is how we think, but your nervous system doesn't just exist in your head. There's aspects of your nervous system that function inside your body without ever consulting your brain consciously or subconsciously.

There's the concept of a mastermind, a consciousness that develops when two or more people are working on something together. Where does that consciousness exist?

Are "you" observing the world through the lens of your mind, or are you directly experiencing it as "you"? In how many ways can you observe/experience the world? We think of our experiences as a movie that we're viewing, especially when we're remembering, but all of that can be biased and influenced by the feelings we're having right now. We can even have memories implanted in our heads by others or even ourselves.

Our consciousness isn't a computer, it's an organic phenomenon that is extremely malleable and subjective. In short, it's not exactly "you".

These are fun questions to ask, specifically because they don't have an exact answer, and we've been trained to think that everything has an exact answer or no answer yet. This isn't much of an ELI5. I'm sorry.

We each know that we personally are conscious. (Cogito ergo sum)

While everyone else could be philosophical zombies (people who appear to be normal but in fact have no consciousness) common sense suggests otherwise. Although there's a theory that consciousness developed in humans within the historical period. See Julian Jaynes's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072

Interesting stuff if only to make you think about the limits of what we know.

------------------
I may not be able to reply quickly because feminist down vote brigades operate on /r/changemymind to censor people who disagree with them. This means that I cannot reply more than once per ten minutes and I may not get to you.

The fantastic book Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters has a great chapter on the Y chromosome: basically, the male fetus 'hacks' the mother antagonistically in ways that a female fetus never does. It sends out chemical signals to the mother, telling her that it's starving, so that the mother sends more nutrition than is required. In response, the mother seems to take potshots at the hack-filled Y chromosome. Over eons, this has resulted in a chromosome evolved for total war: it's rugged and simple, and either achieves total victory or catastrophic failure.

You started off great then went right back into your hole.

Mass is information, good, a cop out if you don't really understand but we will start there.

Then you went from information, back to shit you have to measure. The reason the plank volume and area are 1:1 is because they are both conjugates of golden ratio, your calculations is only relevant up to a real measure, because in fact it could be any scaled versions of those. This is where perception can change a meter to a mile.

"dont ask, it just is" that is a stupid way to interpret the fact the questions you ask and answers you get depend on what you define.

If you ask stupid questions, like what is the source of consciousness, without knowing what consciousness is, then you get shitty answers.


>The only thing you need to understand to understand mass is infinite spin. Once you have an infinite energy due to infinite quantization due to infinitely nested spin boundaries, everything else falls into place. This is exactly analogous to the basic tenants of quantum field theory which requires a harmonic oscillator at each point in space.

Now consider what the purpose of the complex plane is and how that eliminates renorm/singularities.

You are on the right track.

>which is a main practice of mainstream physicists

This is why you go to 1950 and earlier. I would recommend you read this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Shorter-History-Science-William-Dampier/dp/1107672902/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496524763&sr=1-1&keywords=a+shorter+history+of+science+dampier

It will help when you get to the "holy shit, how the fuck haven't they finished this yet" point. The full copy is also amazing.

And when you are ready for the second half of your journey (once you can derive Schrodinger's equation (it is possible and quite simple once you have the necessary knowledge)):

https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496524800&sr=1-1&keywords=the+origin+of+consciousness+in+the+breakdown+of+the+bicameral+mind

When you see what they did and how they did it, you will understand my attitude and frustration.

> Ups, more grief and victimization towards me, because somehow ive taught to punish myself and not accept who i am. Sometimes I'm so tired that I can't even consciously battle with the intrusive thoughts.

Oh, no - that sounds too familiar. Of course you're not in any way responsible for the bizarre thinking of others, & you certainly shouldn't punish yourself for any of that. But how to turn off the 'parent tapes' (or WT dogma, etc.)?

>I still struggle with that magical thinking to this day

Okay, for some reason this comment struck me a little differently & reminded me of things I got into after I left the JWs.

I looked into Wicca for a while after I left. It was fun to learn about a new belief system (systems), & I toyed with some of the spells/magical thinking at the time.

I'm well aware that this next part worked out for me, since I was an adult at the time, but maybe it will work for you, too.

After learning about that stuff, I tried some of the things they talk about - astral projection, reading cards before they were turned over, moving things with my mind, etc.

I got absolutely nothing. Nada, zip, zero, blank emptiness, etc. Especially the part about moving things with my mind (hey, who doesn't feel like pulling the tv remote to them instead of having to get up & pick it up, once in a while?)

That's when the whole concept of magical thinking totally, completely collapsed for me. I was pretty skeptical even before that, but when I tried to pull the tv remote to me - & failed - I figured if it couldn't even do something practical, then it must all be fake.

>I cant find the link but its called the origin of consciousness in the break down of the bicameral mind Julian Janes. For sure there's a PDF you can download.

Maybe this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)

https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072

Keeping in mind (pun not intended) that the book is at least 40 years old. There have been some significant discoveries about the human mind & how the brain grows & develops from infancy, since then.