INDEX TO POSTS



This page is under construction. Please find below a clickable, chronological list of the posts in this blog.

Post number, title, subject areas, and a capsule description/keywords are followed by the post's publication date. I anticipate that all posts will eventually have capsule descriptions instead of keywords.

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#77.  How the Cerebellum May Adjust the Gains of Reflexes [Neuroscience]
An old theory of the cerebellum, coordination by tapped delay line, is revived in the context of coordination of the meeting of inhibition with excitation within the brain itself, to produce precise outputs indirectly. 12-13-2022.


#76. Role of personality in the human swarm intelligence [Population]
The big five personality traits mediate rapid social change. 10-15-2022.

#75. A Tripartite Genetic Code [Genetics]
A second and third genetic code are proposed for multicellular morphology and single-cell morphology, respectively. 09-01-2022.

#74. Extended Theory of Mind [Evolution]
The latest innovation in Human evolution is having theory-of-mind ability for those not present. 06-09-2022.

#73. How Enhancers May Work [Chemistry]
Enhancers activate promoters probabilistically rather than deterministically, by expanding the surrounding chromatin by mutual electrostatic repulsion. 10-19-2021.

#72. Why There is Sex [Evolution]
Sexual reproduction evolved as an escape from the trade-off between evolvability (as mutation rate) and fertility. 09-13-2021.

#71. The Checkered Universe [Physics]
A theory of everything based on a foam model. The "bubbles" are a 50:50 mix of "black" bubbles and "white" bubbles. We live on a brane somewhere inside. 07-25-2021.

#70. How Noncoding RNAs May Work [Chemistry]
Multiple long noncoding RNAs may form an autocatalytic cycle within the nucleus to recognize a promoter gestalt and respond with a protein co-expression gestalt. 06/30/2021.

#69. Storming South [Evolution]
A version of human evolution that focusses on how ice-age stresses may have turned us into environment modifiers and warriors at the same time. 05/23/2021

#68. Consciousness is Google Searches Within Your Brain [Neuroscience]
An account of consciousness in terms of operations by the cerebral cortex that seems to explain the richness of conscious experience. A corollary is that only mammals, and to some extent, birds, are conscious. 12/06/2020

#67. The Trembling-Network Theory of Everything [Physics]
A TOE inspired by the ubiquity of networks. 10/31/2020

#66. Neuromodulators as Peril Specialists [Neuroscience]
Human-characteristic behaviors are all mosaics of various primordial responses to perils.
06/16/2020

#65. Baryogenesis [physics]
The inflationary era of the Big Bang was when protons were created by self-replication from the first proton, a process that cannot occur in the present era for lack of the necessary energy. 04/27/2020

#64. The Drill Sergeants of the Apocalypse [population, evolutionary psychology]
Society spontaneously generates tricksters and mischief-makers as nature's way of doing penetration testing of our social defenses against adversity. 03/25/2020

#61. Stress and Schizophrenia [neuroscience]
A cybernetic theory of schizophrenia. 12/19/19

#60. Gender is Pecking Order [evolutionary psychology]
A theory that predicts that extreme changes in social status can reverse gender identification. 12/19/19

#59. Disaster Biology [evolution, evolutionary psychology]
An explicit recognition of Earth's disaster-proneness (EDP) seems to be a factor long missing from theoretical biology. I present my early conjectures formulated with EDP in mind. 12/14/19

#58. A Rising Tide of Refugees [evolutionary psychology]
In which I propose a remedy for the refugee problem. 11/28/19

#57. Where are All the Space Aliens? [evolution]
We are alone in this galactic neighborhood because we evolved to intelligence egregiously fast. This is because Earth poses especially many evolution-promoting challenges to organisms (meteor crashes, glaciations, etc.) but never wipes them out entirely, a rare circumstance. 11/24/19

#54. Reality is Virtual but the Host Computer is Analog. [physics, chemistry, neuroscience]
Introducing a new theory of everything and intellectual playground made of abstract loops that represent order and abstract strands that represent time. Euclidean space is deemed an illusion. 6/13/19

#53. Advanced Human Depopulation Model [Population, Evolutionary Psychology]
An attempt to explain the greatest destructive events of history, biased/informed by my own experiences with humanly willed destructiveness. Includes notes on Islam as a promising repository of remedies. 5/23/19

#51. A Theory of Christianity [Evolutionary Psychology, Population]
Why preaching resurrection combined with ethanol microdosing may prevent the worst of human behavior. 3/16/19

#50. A Naturalistic Theory of Worship [Evolutionary Psychology, Population]
Hypothesis: human destructive behavior is largely driven by overcrowding, as established by Calhoun for lab rats. This effect could be mediated by two evolved and unconscious pieces of wetware that have halting signals. These halting signals are imitated by common modes of worship to enhance the survival of individuals and civilizations. 2/27/19

#49. The Re-entrant-pathway Theory of Mental Illness [Neuroscience]
Mismatches in the growth of different parts of the human brain due to rapid, ongoing evolution may produce mental illness by causing the development of cyclic synaptic chains, which produce symptoms by causing brain activity unrelated to the outside world. A different degree of the same mechanism resulting from organic brain damage could explain epilepsy. 1/31/19

#48. Science and Proto-science [evolutionary psychology]
A dialectic that seeks a synthesis of theism and atheism. The key step is to call God a theory, to permit comparison with Darwin's theory of natural selection. Thus, theism is seen as an approximate theory to Darwin's subsequent exact theory, analogously to the flat-Earth theory being the approximate theory to the round-Earth theory. The earliest theories in any field are unscientific, belonging to the realm of protoscience. 12/31/18

#47. Body-mod Bob's [evolution, evolutionary psychology]
Speculations that technology will eventually begin interacting with human evolution. "There is another theory which states that this has already happened." (Douglas Adams)  12/30/18

#46. The Goddesses of the Glacier [evolutionary psychology]
Many of us can grow waist-length hair if we want because this trait evolved as thermal insulation during the last continental glaciation + notes on beards. 12/6/18

#45. The Denervation-supersensitivity Theory of Mental Illness [neuroscience, evolution, genetics]
Mismatches in the growth of different parts of the human brain due to rapid, ongoing evolution may produce mental illness by causing the development of denervation supersensitivity, which would produce symptoms by causing brain activity unrelated to the outside world. 11/18/18

#44. Sunshine in Covey's Gap [evolutionary psychology, neuroscience]
A meditation on emotional self control and its sources. 11/18/18

#43. A Discovery of Hackers [population, evolutionary psychology]
Parallels are drawn between 16th century witches and contemporary hackers, with non-incendiary predictions. 9/7/18

#42. Corporate Sin [evolutionary psychology]
A search for insights that might help individuals survive structurally-entrenched oppression. 7/25/18

#41. The Sadness Cycle [evolutionary psychology, neuroscience]
A theory of oppression that emphasizes emotions and signals. 7/20/18

#40. The 1950 Ramp [population, genetics, evolutionary psychology, engineering, neuroscience]
On the probable existence of a human negative-feedback controller of population density in our brains, and how it might work, with a digression on mechanisms of brain evolution. 6/1/18

#39. Can Irreducible Complexity Evolve? [genetics, evolution]
It can if the basic unit of change--the mutation--becomes complex. 5/26/18

#38. The Fallacy of Justice [evolutionary psychology]
behavioral program, crime, dispersal, emotions, evil, gamete, God, history, natural selection, post-zygotic gamete selection, reason, religion, technology 4/4/18

#37. Two Kinds of War [evolutionary psychology, engineering, neuroscience]
anger, Bible, Calhoun, dispersal, history, neural mechanisms, overpopulation, pharmacology, reason, Santayana, war, zeitgeist 3/17/18

#36. The Thought Process Through the Ages [evolutionary psychology]
aesthetics, emotions, gamete, God, history, post-zygotic gamete selection, reason, religion, thought 2/1/18

#35. The Pilgrim and the Whale [evolutionary psychology]
anger, behavioral program, dispersal, history, morality, reason, religion, unhappiness 12/26/17

#34. Emotions [evolutionary psychology, genetics, neuroscience]
behavioral program, biochemical mechanisms, Dawkins, emotions, evolvability, gamete, genome, God, hypothalamus, molecular biology, natural selection, post-zygotic gamete selection, religion, sexual reproduction 12/17/17

#33. Big-electron Theory [physics]
levels of description, nature of matter, quantum mechanics, relativity, vacuum, wavefunction 9/13/17

#32. Climate Change [engineering]
history, Suzuki, technology 6/18/17

#31. The Russian-dolls--multiverse Part II [physics]
big history, nature of matter, origin of universe, theory of everything, vacuum 6/5/17

#30. The Russian-dolls--multiverse Part I [physics]
big history, levels of description, origin of universe, physics, quantum mechanics, space, theory of everything, vacuum, wavefunction 6/3/17

#29. The TOE (Theory of Everything) [physics]
nature of matter, quantum mechanics, relativity, space, theory of everything, wavefunction 5/31/17

#28. The Origin of Consciousness [neuroscience]
brain, classical conditioning, emotion, emotions, hippocampus, hypothalamus, neural mechanisms 5/19/17

#27. Why Organized Religion? Theory Two [evolutionary psychology]
altruism, dispersal, emotions, evolvability, genetic diversity, God, hypothalamus, morality, natural selection, post-zygotic gamete selection, recombination, religion 4/3/17

#26. The Phasiverse [physics]
levels of description, nature of matter, origin of universe, quantum mechanics, relativity, space, theory of everything, wavefunction 3/29/17

#25. Proxy Natural Selection from the Inside [evolutionary psychology, genetics]
altruism, behavioral program, biochemical mechanisms, dispersal, emotions, genetic diversity, God, history, hypothalamus, molecular biology, post-zygotic gamete selection, sexual reproduction, war 3/26/17

#24. The Pictures in Your Head [neuroscience]
brain, Laplace transform, neural mechanisms, space, technology, zeitgeist 2/12/17

#23. Proxy Natural Selection: The God-shaped Gap at the Heart of Biology [genetics, evolution]
altruism, biochemical mechanisms, brain, Darwin, emotions, evolvability, gamete, genetic diversity, genome, God, hypothalamus, natural selection, neural mechanisms, recombination, sexual reproduction 2/6/17

#22. The Cogs of Armageddon [evolutionary psychology]
altruism, behavioral program, classical conditioning, dispersal, evil, hypothalamus, morality, natural selection, sociobiology, zeitgeist 1/27/17

#21. Is Higher Math Really Undiscovered Physics? [physics]
levels of description, nature of matter, origin of universe, space, theory of everything, vacuum 1/16/17

#20. The Two-clock Universe [physics]
big history, nature of matter, origin of universe, quantum mechanics, space, theory of everything, vacuum 11/25/16

#19. Explaining Science-religion Antipathy also Explains Religion [evolutionary psychology]
Dawkins, God, history, natural selection, protoscience, religion, technology 10/30/16

#18. The Zeitgeist [evolutionary psychology]
Bible, big history, Dawkins, God, morality, reason, religion, sociobiology, zeitgeist 10/9/16

#17. Hell's Kitchen [evolutionary psychology]
crime, evil, God, sociobiology, unhappiness 9/25/16

#16. The Intermind, Engine of History? [evolutionary psychology]
artificial intelligence, biochemical mechanisms, brain, classical conditioning, dispersal, emotions, evil, evolvability, genetic diversity, God, history, natural selection, neural mechanisms, sociobiology 9/21/16

#15. The Insurance of the Heart [evolutionary psychology]
Berne, evil, genetic diversity, natural selection, sociobiology 8/29/16

#14. Three Stages of Abiogenesis [evolution, chemistry]
big history, biochemical mechanisms, molecular biology, natural selection 8/16/16

#13. The Neural Code, Part II: The Thalamus [neuroscience, engineering]
hippocampus, Laplace transform, neural code 8/15/16

#12. The Neural Code, Part I: The Hippocampus [neuroscience, engineering]
amygdala, hippocampus, hypothalamus, neural code, neural mechanisms 8/7/16

#11. Revised Motor Scheme [neuroscience]
experimentation machine, hemispheric asymmetry, instrumental (operant) learning, neural mechanisms 8/3/16

#10. The Two–test-tube Experiment: Part II [neuroscience]
brain, classical conditioning, experimentation machine, hemispheric asymmetry, hypothalamus, instrumental (operant) learning, neural mechanisms 7/30/16

#9. The Two–test-tube Experiment: Part I [neuroscience]
brain, experimentation machine, hemispheric asymmetry, instrumental (operant) learning, natural selection 7/24/16

#8. What is Intelligence? Part II. Human Brain as Knowledge Base [neuroscience, engineering]
artificial intelligence, behavioral program, brain 7/17/16

#7. What is Intelligence? Part I. DNA as Knowledge Base [genetics, engineering]
artificial intelligence, biochemical mechanisms, eukaryote origins, genome, molecular biology, natural selection, recombination, recombination hot-spots 7/4/16

#6. Mental Illness as Communication [neuroscience, genetics]
biochemical mechanisms, brain, experimentation machine, meiosis, molecular biology, natural selection, neural mechanisms, recombination hot-spots 6/27/16

#5. Why We Dream [neuroscience]
artificial intelligence, behavioral program, brain, classical conditioning, dreams, emotions, experimentation machine, instrumental (operant) learning, neural code, neural mechanisms 6/18/16

#4. My Attempt at the Theory of Everything (TOE): Taking Space Apart, then Time [physics]
big history, levels of description, nature of matter, origin of universe, space, theory of everything, vacuum 6/9/16

#3. AviApics 101 [population, engineering, evolutionary psychology]
anger, brain, evil, history, Laplace transform, Malthus, neural mechanisms, war 5/31/16

#2. The Iatrogenic Conflicts of the Twentieth Century [population, engineering]
brain, history, Laplace transform, overpopulation, war 5/28/16

#1. Intro [evolutionary psychology, physics, evolution]
big history, eukaryote origins, evolvability, God, molecular biology, natural selection, nature of matter, protoscience, religion, space, theory of everything 5/25/16



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