h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

i first heard of the Mayo Clinic from a Far Side cartoon. as you would guess, the cartoon had a bunch of mayonnaise jars
i like the south park movie, too. the best part was when Cartman let loose the longest string of obscenities i've ever heard, gathering his powers to strike down whats-his-face. remember that? that was awesome!
and, there ARE way too many of us about. i like your typo . very cute. and there ARE far too many fat folks around, too! at least in minnesota, USA.
hey, do you wanna hear my theory on why depression runs rampant in modern society?

Peter OUT!

I would like your theory yes.

The obsenities from Cartman are ion the film. He has to sware to make the V chip overload and kill the devil or Saddam Husein or someone like that.

PS How old are you?

or something like that
i'll try to minimize the rambling...
millions of years of evolution, "powered" by survival of the fittest.
thousands of years ago, hominids appeared. brains increased to the complexity such that intelligence became sufficient to muck up with the "natural" process that had been going on for millions of years, since the primordial soup.
the "mucking up" is this: we have been hard-wired over millions of years to engage in behaviors that promote propagation of our genes. as our genes' survival machines, we derive "pleasure" from engaging in such gene-propagating behaviors [having sex and raising kiddies]. now, this was all fine and dandy until we started to extend our lifespans to beyond 40 years or so. before this happened, our entire lives were devoted to engaging in hard-wired behaviors [reproduction]. women were baby producing and raising machines until they died. men impregnated women until they died. because our entire lives [back then] where spent in accordance with our hard-wiring, we enjoyed a lifetime of "happiness", "fulfillment", "satisfaction", etc...
now, we live a good 40 to 50 years beyond our reproductive years, essentially without any "hard-wired" purpose. we find ourselves with the bulk of our lives unable to engage in behaviors that intrinsically provide us with ongoing "pleasure", "fulfillment", etc...
instead, we go about our lives, desperately searching for something that will give us "pleasure"...trying to find something in this modern life of ours that is in accordance with our eons of hard-wired pleasure-producing behaviors...
make sense?

and, to answer your question of how old i am, do you mean my chronological age or my mental age?
i came out of my mommy's uterus about 30 years, 1 month, and 6 weeks ago. but, my mental age varies from anywhere between 3 yrs old to about 90.

hey, this tickle smiley is kinda cute, too, isn't it

Peter OUT!

You do like to type don't you Pete?

You do have a valid point.

OOOOh, what are you like on your 'I am 90 today' days?
Sounds interesting.

Do you realy think we have mucked up the natural processes?
We may be now living what is natural whereas we couldn't before due to us not living very long lives.


I am off to bed now, I have another long day tomorrow. I am not saying I will sleep, but I am going to have a good try at it.

Amanda out.

my typing speed is well over 100 wpm, so i can get my thoughts down without inordinate lag time
on my 90 yo geezer days, i'm kinda tired of life in general. pretty sad, isn't it? that's when i get so F*cking sick of everything.
on my 3 yo days, i have separation anxiety and all that cool toddler stuff
most of the time, i act about my age, but i'm probably one of the most laid-back docs at Mayo. i haven't been mayo-ized yet... this is definitely a good thing, as silliness is not possible after one has been mayo-ized.

"Do you realy think we have mucked up the natural processes?
We may be now living what is natural whereas we couldn't before due to us not living very long lives."

My take is that there are superimposed processes going on nowadays, that are, in a sense, at odds with each other...
You got the millions of years of "natural" evolution
and, on top of this, you get this thing that humans have been doing for thousands of years now... this technological/cultural/societal "progression" that seems to be escalating at increasingly rapid rates... good or bad? who knows...
Now, little PeteY thinks that things were just fine, when all organisms were going with the super-slow, "natural" process...
"slaves" to our genes... deriving "pleasure" from acting as gene survival and propagating machines... life was good, eh?
And, then this recent "progression" of humankind has caused a deviation from "natural", leading to "suffering", etc... so rampant nowadays...
i also tend to think that the emergence of the human intellect has done more "bad" than "good" in that it seems to have made suffering inevitable...

ok, good night! or i should say, good morning!

btw, do you have any other deep questions for me? i have some kind of an answer to everything , although many of my answers are, "We just can't understand it."

Peter OUT!

ps: anything else less depressing that you like to talk about?

Mayonaise is not depressing.
I love it. On everything.
BUT this does not make for a good conversation.
We may have been an experiment by someone/thing. This is suggested by loads of people and is probably wrong, but could be right. We could be in a massive bottle or orb or something, being watched by 'aliens'.
Or everything could be a figment of our imaginations and non existent except for in our heads.

Mayo and kebab is best.

Amanda Out.

i like mayo on and i strongly feel that tuna is toxic without mayo
did you watch Men in Black 2? the end is pretty cool. it's like your big bottle/orb idea
and the "Reality is a figment of our imaginations" was well done in the Matrix. you've seen that, right?
you know that ST TNG episode,Tapestry, when some alien probe interfaced with picard and made him "experience" a lifetime on the alien planet during the course of 25 minutes of real time...?
well, when i'm feeling really down , i fantasize that the same thing is happening to me and i'll eventually wake up to a more palatable reality

so, how bad is your insomnia?
part of my depressive syndrome is awful sleep. i get up about 5 to 8 times per night. terminal insomnia is the worst.
do you have anhedonia? abulia? i do, sort of.

and, back to Eurodance , you gotta check out this on-line store http://www.markski.com/
i've ordered many times from them.
the mixes are the best, especially for working out to.
my faves are
http://www.markski.com/album_detail.cfm?index=2165
http://www.markski.com/album_detail.cfm?index=1505
http://www.markski.com/album_detail.cfm?index=1642
http://www.markski.com/album_detail.cfm?index=2011
http://www.markski.com/album_detail.cfm?index=2308
http://www.markski.com/album_detail.cfm?index=838

peter OUT!

I never saw the Matrix.
The Star Trek episode was The Inner Light.
Innsominia is under control for the moment.



Amanda out.

it's so cool
here's a list of some other movies that you HAVE to see in the upcoming year:
Terminator 3 [july 2003]
Matrix Reloaded
Matrix Revolution
X-2 [X-Men sequel]
The Hulk
of course, if your taste in movies somehow differs from mine , then i suppose you could get by just fine without seeing any of 'em

hey, i typed out my 20 points on life and everything at home. i forgot to bring it so i could post it here. i'll get around to it later, though. it's an absolute must-read for anybody who really wants to understand how things are

hey, if i tell you that one of the ST TNG episodes was titled "Clues", could you tell me which one that was?

oh, one more thing. if you haven't seen "signs" yet, please DO NOT under any circumstances watch it. i beg you not to !
it sucks SO bad that one cannot even conceive of such an awful movie until one sees it

do you have any fave movies? i recommend "Waking Life". animated. very philosophical. good for people with short attention spans, like me.

peteY out!

i'll be off-line for a couple of days. if maniac1701d is struck by any revelations in the meantime, do share

oh, a couple of points on my 20 LIFE ideas list are:
1 Life has become absurd
2 Happiness is more a function of one's intrinsic neurobiological state[s] than a function of what one has done in life. [although, the latter affects the former]
i bet you can't wait to hear the other 18, huh?

Peter OUT! i can't get over how adorable this is!

Clues? En route to investigate a mysterious planet, the U.S.S. Enterprise passes through a "worm hole" in space which knocks everyone but Data unconscious. As the crew begins to revive, Data tells Picard that they were out for 30 seconds, and when Riker remarks that the ship's instruments indicate an entire day's travel, Picard blames the discrepancy on the wormhole. Data talks Riker and Picard out of going back to investigate the planet, sending a probe instead. When the probe reaches the planet, its reading conflicts with the crew's original assessment. Data blames this on the wormhole as well. However, when a botany experiment Beverly is conducting exhibits a full day's growth, she brings her findings to Picard's attention, forcing him to consider the fact that Data may be lying.
Confronted with Dr. Crusher's experiment, Data offers a flimsy explanation and is dismissed by Picard, who then orders a covert investigation. Geordi soon discovers that the ship's chronometer, which only he and Data have the power to reset, has been tampered with. Unable to ignore the fact that something is causing Data to lie, Picard orders the android to undergo an examination.
Geordi examines Data and tells the captain he found nothing unusual. Picard then dispatches Geordi to investigate the probe Data sent out. Soon afterward, a dizzy Troi is frightened when her reflection indicates some creature is inhabiting her body. She dismisses the incident as a hallucination just as Geordi returns with the news that the probe Data sent out was rigged to disguise the abnormal planet the starship originally encountered. Picard confronts Data, who reveals that his actions are not his choice.
Later, Beverly informs Picard that Worf sustained a broken wrist that has been reset and treated -- all during the period the crew was supposedly unconscious. Picard replies that he believes Data is lying to protect the crew. He orders the crew to retrace their steps toward the mysterious planet in order to find out what really happened and clear Data's name. Data begs Picard to turn back but refuses to explain why. The captain instead demands to know who ordered Data to lie, and is shocked by Data's revelation that he himself gave the order.
Believing Data, Picard then orders the crew to follow the android's instructions. Data explains that the U.S.S. Enterprise has invaded the space of extreme isolationists who stun intruders, take over their ship and send it out of their space. Since Data was unaffected by the stun and would know of their existence, the aliens insisted the U.S.S. Enterprise be destroyed. As a compromise, Picard agreed to have the entire crew's short-term memory erased and ordered Data to hide what happened, but Beverly's plants and Worf's wrist gave the trick away. Luckily, Picard is able to talk the aliens into giving them another chance, and orders the crew to make sure not to leave any clues.

Signs. I loved it! Am I mad?

Manda out.

Amanda, Your account of "Clues" was astonishing "holy" crap! i just watched it yesterday [an old recording]. oh my "god"! i'm totally blown away. just for that, i think i you. now, for extra points, what was the name of the alien race? and you "loved" Signs?! are you mad? umm... nah... i won't even hold it against you what i didn't like was this: 1. i think it's extremely unlikely [and therefore, somewhat absurd] that an alien race would come to Earth to attack us/harvest our bodies for ?food. Any alien race with the technology to make it over here to Earth all the way from their home planet would have to travel across enormous distances through space, necessitating technology FAR more advanced than ours is at the moment. Now, any alien race with technology THIS advanced would almost certainly have much much MUCH easier/more convenient/quicker methods for acquiring energy than going out into space on a random, haphazard, very very VERY low-yield search for biological packets of energy [like humans]. so, the whole alien invasion thing to me seems totally preposterous. does this make *ME* MAD??? 2. it was so freaking boring! 3. the aliens looked too much like humans. 4. how the F*ck can an alien NOT be able to break out of a pantry? 5. OK, THIS BUGGED THE SH!T OUTTA ME: MEL GIBSON WENT FROM HAVING NO FAITH IN GOD AT THE BEGINNING OF THE MOVIE BECAUSE HIS WIFE WAS KILLED, REFUSING TO PRAY, THINKING EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS IS JUST RANDOM CHANCE, ETC... [THIS ROCKED ] TO RE-ESTABLISHING HIS "FAITH" IN GOD AND MEANING/PURPOSE IN LIFE WHEN HIS LITTLE BOY'S ASTHMA ATTACK PREVENTED THE ALIEN'S POISON FROM ENTERING HIS LUNGS... [THIS SUCKED A$$ ] 6. the f*cking alien at the end holding the boy was moving in super slow motion... ridiculous... is that enough ripping on "Signs" for ya? hey, did you watch "the Matrix" yet? you gotta! please! oh... there's this h2g2 member "hasselfree" who says she had a "near death" experience and believes in life after death and stuff... i'm not knocking her or anything. quite the contrary. after reading her stuff, she sounds super smart but, what's your take on re-incarnation? here's the line of posts, if you're interested... http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/F55607?thread=215069&latest=1 PETER OUT!

ok, amanda. here it is... what everyone's been waiting for...
before you read it, i must warn you that this is a skeleton outline of my ideas... i'm almost certain that it is NOT self-explanatory.
also, i AM aware that it's pretty f*ckin' cynical...

on life and everything

1 life is 3,4-dihydroxyphenylethylamine [dopamine]

2 life has become absurd

3 our big neocortex makes us miserable

4 amoebas are better off than most humans

5 most humans are oblivious

6 most humans go about life as zombies

7 most humans just 'get by' until they die

8 life has become a bitch

9 human 'progression' superimposed upon eons of 'non-senscient' evolution has led to misery

10 biological uselessness for decades leads to misery

11 happiness is more a function of one's intrinsic neurobiological state[s] than a function of what one has done in life [however, the latter affects the former]

12 most humans are unhappy most of the time

13 for most humans for most of the time, life is worse than non-existence

14 even CONTEMPLATING the existence of God is preposterous . it is illogical/irrational to even WONDER if there is a God or not.

15 the most fundamental mind block of most humans is the absolute inability to distinguish between what SEEMS to be and what ACTUALLY is. almost all humans believe that these 2 things are identical.

16 how things SEEM to be is simply a result of the peculiarities of the human mind

17 how things 'actually' are is unknowable. we can only guess. in fact, the very notion of an 'actual' state of things might be, in a way, nonsensical . this notion could be a product fabricated specifically by the human mind.

18 an absurd argument for the existence of God: as humans explore the universe, they discover that it follows mathematics. therefore, the universe must have been designed by an architect, God, who used mathematical rules as a set of guidelines for the blueprint of the universe.

19 the argument above is preposterous . the universe is the way it is. or, better put, it is the way that it SEEMS to be to humans. humans have used the human mind to come up with a numerical system [mathematics] that seems to describe the universe as humans see it.

20 life, simply put, is:
a to exist
b to promote the continued existence of information unique to oneself [gene copies + ?ideas]
c to maximize both the intensity and the duration of one's positive [psychological] state[s]

21 humans are slaves to eons of evolutionary hard-wiring

22 because we are slaves to our hard-wiring, SUCCESS in maximizing our positive [psychological] state[s] IS DIRECTLY RELATED TO CLOSENESS IN RELATION of our actual lifelong behaviors/activities to our evolutionarily hard-wired behaviors/activities [sex and aggression and ?]

23 all of my ideas seem to me to be unusually lucid, therefore, seeming to me to reflect a more accurate representation of life and everything than most. however, i cannot rule out the possibility that my ideas are just as illusory as anybody else's, if not more so.


any thoughts? you can rip me to shreds, if you'd like

Peter OUT!

You might be right about signs. I had looked at it as a source of entertainment, but you have dismantled it and shown it for what it is.

You are a little cynical.
"12 most humans are unhappy most of the time." You think so?
I dont think this is right really.

The world has gone mad.

Non existence is nothing, and so it can't be better than being something as we would not know if we were nothing as we would not be anywhere/anything.

I have a confession. I stole the description of Star Trek's Clues from a web site. It was easier to copy and paste it than to type it all out from memory. (I deceived you, please do not hate me)
And as for the alien race, I could look it up but can't be bothered at the moment.

"8 life has become a bitch " OK, you might be right on this one.

"4 amoebas are better off than most humans"
They can not drive, do not celebrate things, do not get drunk, and can not talk endlessly about life and stuff on the internet. We are obviously at an advantage to them.

I am off as I am starving.

Amanda out.

those aliens were called "Paxons".
and, you tricked me?!
there i was, falling in with you and it was all deception

actually, if you really knew random TNG episodes to that detail, i'd be pretty scared

YOU: "12 most humans are unhappy most of the time. You think so?
I dont think this is right really."

ME: maybe i'm seeing things thru depressed lenses? like, i'm sad most of the time, so i think everybody is . but, i still think that it's true. i mean, aren't most people at any give time doing something that they don't really want to do and/or they would rather be doing something else?

KEY POINT! KEY POINT! KEY POINT!

i think that everybody is born with a certain hedonic set point.
this is the biggest determinant of one's lifetime happiness.
i was screwed over because my hedonic setpoint is too low.
and, you can't really change your hedonic setpoint all that much, just like you can't change your set or natural bodyweight.

AGREED? as picard would say

would you say that YOU are sad most of the time?

YOU: "The world has gone mad."
ME: the world is going to hell in a handbasket.
i think everything went awry with the emergence of the first proto-hominids.

YOU: "Non existence is nothing, and so it can't be better than being something as we would not know if we were nothing as we would not be anywhere/anything."

ME: my head is spinning
i see it like this.
being happy is better than nothing, but nothing is better than being miserable.
look at it like mathematics.
happiness is greater than zero.
non existence is zero.
sadness is a negative number.


YOU: "8 life has become a bitch " OK, you might be right on this one.

ME:

YOU: "4 amoebas are better off than most humans"
They can not drive, do not celebrate things, do not get drunk, and can not talk endlessly about life and stuff on the internet. We are obviously at an advantage to them.

ME: for some silly reason, i am inordinately amused whenever me or someone else refers to amoebas and human activities i especially like your point that amoebas "do not celebrate things" .
i think that an amoeba is almost non-existence. so, if we go back to my mathematical formula, then they would be just above zero. now, i'm supposing that humans are way below zero; negative number for sure. so, i think, if you do the math, you'll come up with amoebas being better off

what did you eat?

i'm off now to lift weights. it's around noon here. i don't know what time it is over there

PETER OUT!

Oh, yes Paxons, name rings a bell. I would never have remembered it though.
I had a bacon sandwich.

YOU actually, if you really knew random TNG episodes to that detail, i'd be pretty scared. The scary thing is some people do.!!

I am a lot of the time, but that's cause I am mad.

Are mad people ?
I am confused now. If you are mad you would probably be happy cause you would not be thinking about how Sh*t the world was.

Amanda out.

or ?
before i forget, you had a good point about Signs. you suspended disbelief and just enjoyed the movie, which is something one must do for almost all sci fi. take star trek, for example. hasn't the enterprise always been confined to the milky way galaxy [and only a part of it, too]? now, according to Drake's equation, the chances of so many alien races in such a "small" part of the universe is extremely low. plus, why do all the aliens look just like people with some bumps and ridges . and if you're an alien race, how the hell do you have a name like "Paxon"?

YOU: I had a bacon sandwich.
ME: BLT? or just bacon? i bacon cheeseburgers. actually, bacon is like mayo. it's yummy on everything!

ME: actually, if you really knew random TNG episodes to that detail, i'd be pretty scared.
YOU: The scary thing is some people do.!!
ME: have you ever been to a star trek convention? my brother dragged me to one once b/c DAX was there and he over her. to put it mildly, i've never seen such a high concentration of people. i felt like doing this!

YOU: I am a lot of the time, but that's cause I am mad.
ME: so, are you saying you're crazy ? or you're pi$$ed off at life because it's a b!tch?

YOU: Are mad people ?
ME: crazy people are often happy. dumb people are also happier than smart people. i think we're too smart and that's why we're


YOU: I am confused now. If you are mad you would probably be happy cause you would not be thinking about how Sh*t the world was.
ME: oh ... it sounds like you mean "Crazy" when you say "mad"... well, you have to be a certain kind of "mad" to be happy.
dumb and psychotic is the best combo if you wanna be happy

i'll post my cool hedonic setpoint --> happiness theory in a sec.

petey OUT!

THE MOST IMPORTANT DETERMINANT OF ONE'S LIFETIME HAPPINESS.

the sad state of things [for people like me , and maybe, you] is that every human is born with a genetically determined HEDONIC SETPOINT.
this determines one's baseline level of lifetime happiness.
of course, life experiences cause our happiness to fluctuate, but it fluctuates around this SET baseline [this hedonic setpoint] of happiness.

i don't like this one bit because my hedonic setpoint is too low . if one would arbitrarily designate zero as euthymia, then i would say that my baseline is negative.

it is just like all other homeostatic systems in our bodies. a good example is our bodyweight and bodyfat percentage. we all have a homeostatic set point for this. that is why it is hard to lose weight if you are "supposed" to be heavier. this is why dieters get hungrier and hungrier as they lose weight and why they tend to gain their weight back

one might propose that even those folks with lower hedonic setpoints can be happy if they have "positive" life experiences. unfortunately, the way it works is that no matter what the life experience is [no matter how "positive" it is], one's brain will adjust TO GO BACK TO the prior BASELINE HEDONIC STATE [back to being , if one's setpoint is low, like mine ].

AGREED?


btw, which one is cutest?


peter OUT!

They have been out of the Milky way aint they?

I dunno.

Talking of conventions, I am going to London tomorrow. There is a Star Trek Experience on there. It's starting it's world tour in Covent garden. They have the sets and everything.

It's just a bit of fun really. A day out.

I just had bacon. and of course mayo.

By mad, yeah I mean Crazy,

Amanda out.

i think voyager had to be way out of the galaxy.
as for the rest of 'em, it seems like they were confined to the galaxy cuz whenever the Enterprise was thrown "REALLY FAR" away, like when Q flung them to the Borg, don't they always say something like, "We're halfway across the galaxy..."? i could be wrong, though.
speaking of Q, he rocks! i wish i was part of the continuum
does that star trek thing have guest speakers? i think that's the best part.
just bacon and mayo, eh? wouldn't want to ruin it by adding something healthy like lettuce, huh?

so, are you psychotic at all?

peteY out!