Cloudscape

A bit hypothetical: in a system of points, the average distance from one point to its nearest neighbour is equal to the third root of 6 by the point density:

r = ∛(6/n)


Average Minimal Distance.rtf

A simple formula in combinatorics: for a combination (n,2) (the number of possible pairs formed by n):

(n,2) = Tn - n

where Tn is the triangle number (eg T5 = 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 15). Proof in file.

(n,2).rtf

In biochemistry, any reduction tends to be mutual. For instance, the adenosine receptor, found ubiquitously in the body, slows down metabolism. Adenosine acts on it because it is the residue of burnt-up ATP, which is the “energy currency” of the body. The more ATP is used, the more adenosine will be available, as it is its final metabolite. This means less ATP, less adenosine. This is an ingenuous mechanism by which the body regulates its own metabolism: the higher the metabolism, the more it inhibits itself.

Insulin causes an increase of vasopressin, which explains why lack of insulin may lead not just to diabetes mellitus (characterized by hyperglycemia), but also to the lesser known diabetes insipidus (characterized by polyuria). Because of this, food intake will also decrease urine passage, which is why polyuria may also occur in anorexia nervosa.
The hypoglycemia caused by lack of insulin also causes a decrease of osmotic pressure in the blood plasma (glucose absorbs water). This may be responsible for the hyperhidrosis (excessive sweating) which is characteristic of hypoglycemia.

Unhealthy food has been associated with violence. This may be caused by a decrease in serotonin associated with excess omega-6.

Just like Leonardo Da Vinci based his plans of the first working robot ever built in 1495 on the human body, we will base our plans of the first working nanorobots on the human organelles. As nanotechnology already exists in nature, it's obvious that we can steal that technology from her. The only difference is that nanorobots would have to be controlled.

Older chromosomes have more base pairs: the Y-chromosome has 50 million bases in 231 genes, the least of any known chromosome, while the X-chromosome has 150 million bases in 1184 genes, placing it between the seventh and eight chromosome -- the Y chromosome is much younger because males haven't been around as long as females, what with asexual reproduction.
A possible explanation that older chromosomes have more base pairs is that the newer chrosomes removed redundant DNA. Perhaps, the number of genes of a chromosome is proportional to its age, and we can calculate, approximately, how old a chromosome is based on this. We can then know when the X- and Y-chromosomes arose, and therefore when femininity and masculinity arose - in the sense we know today.

As there is 15 kilogram biomass per square meter, the biosphere when spread out in liquefied form would form a layer of only 1,5 cm around the Earth, assuming the earth to be perfectly round. If this were how the biosphere was defined, it would be very thin indeed.

Live every moment of your life as if you had repeated your life just waiting for that moment.

There is one thing you know for sure about consciousness, and it is that you are conscious at this moment. All the rest is assumptions. It is insufferably ignorant and arrogant to claim with certainty that one can fully understand consciousness; for there is per definition no way to objectively prove something subjective, let alone subjectivity itself. As we can therefore not even conceive a way to prove what consciousness is today, one might ask if we even ever will.
To those who believe they know what consciousness is, I ask: do you have any proof of your claims at all? Are they even based on anything at all? Or is it merely intuition, rather than reason, which led you to these delusions?
When you can find decent answers to the following questions, I'll believe you:

1) What would happen if you'd stop time for a while and then resume it? Would you still be you?
2) What would happen if you'd separate every atom in your brain from every other and after a while replace them? Would you still be you?
3) What would happen if you'd destroy your brain and recreate it at the same moment? Would you still be you?
4) What would happen if you'd destroy your brain and recreate it a while later? Would you still be you?
5) What would happen if you'd destroy your brain and recreate several identical copies at the same moment? Which would be you?
6) What would happen if you'd destroy your brain and recreate another which has just very small differences? How much difference could there be if you were to still be conscious of that other brain? Would you still be you?
7) What would happen if you'd be cryopreserved and then reanimated? Would you still be you?
8) Do you have any guarantee that you will still be you once you've finished reading this sentence?

If the universe is infinite there would be an infinite number of exact copies of yourself. What would happen if you'd die instantaneously? Would you just live on in one of those copies, as if uploaded? If so, which one? Is this merely stochastic?
But if there can be no interaction between the copies, why would the consciousness end up in one copy rather than another, if they are all exactly alike? If consciousness is nothing else than patterns, then the "selection" of this copy is purely random, and therefore acausal.
This leads to an even more bizarre conclusion: no matter in which way you’d die, you’d always be revived in another copy. Even if your decease would take time, the moment you would forever lose consciousness would not. Therefore, your consciousness would simply be “transferred” to another copy just about to die, so that it is transferred to another, and so forth ad infinitum. If this would happen an infinite number of times, it would happen in an infinite number of different states: at the moment of death, anything can occur in the environment outside the brain. Because this change in the surroundings will recur an infinite number of times, it will be anything at all. This includes changes which may interfere with what happens inside the brain, some of which could save the consciousness just before it vanishes. Thus, in an infinite universe one can, in principle, impossibly die, because just at the moment one is about to lose consciousness, something would happen to preempt it - at least, if patternism is correct.
Also, when one dies, what suddenly becomes so radically different in the patterns of one’s mind that is so fatal? Even then, they will all be quite complex, yet they will no longer give rise to consciousness. If consciousness is caused by patterns, what is it in patterns that causes consciousness? Why will one pattern do so and another will not, even if they are both equally complex and continuous? Even if we can be certain that consciousness is brought about by patterns, there is much that remains mysterious about it: how do these patterns cause consciousness? There should be some sort of “language” which causes it: awareness can assume literally infinite forms, as there are infinite things one can be aware of. But then, what interprets this language, and, again, how?

… Humans trying to understand consciousness are like bacteria trying to understand humanity.