Echopraxia

The gut was not a long-range organ. Its grasp of culpability degraded exponentially with distance; there’d been so many arcane degrees separating the actions of Daniel Brüks from their consequences that conscience itself entered the realm of pure theor

people have an unfortunate habit of assuming they understand the reality just because they understood the analogy. You dumb down brain surgery enough for a preschooler to think he understands it, the little tyke’s liable to grab a microwave scalpel and start cutting when no one’s looking

Life was a struggle to exist at the expense of other life

Fourteen years is a long time for a species raised on instant gratification

The difference between Science and Faith, therefore, is no more and no less than predictive power. Scientific insights have proven to be better predictors than Spiritual ones, at least in worldly matters; they prevail not because they are true, but simply because they work

a science fiction writer and a reformed marine-mammal biologist.

Neurons do not fire spontaneously, only in response to external stimuli; therefore brains cannot act spontaneously, only in response to external stimuli.127 No need to wade through all those studies that show the brain acting before the conscious mind “decides” to.128,129 Forget the revisionist interpretations that downgrade the definition from free will to will that’s merely unpredictable enough to confuse predators.130,131 It’s simpler than that: the switch cannot flip itself. QED. If you insist on clinging to this free will farce I’m not going to waste much time arguing here: plenty of others have made the case far more persuasively than I ever could.132,133,134,135

It is the warped brainchild of Canadian poet Christian Bök,124 who has spent the past decade figuring out how to build a gene that not only spells a poem, but that functionally codes for a fluorescing protein whose amino acid sequence decodes into a response to that poem.125

A couple of isolated factoids. Fruit flies save energy in impoverished environments by becoming forgetful121;

That’s because we’re within spitting distance of a pill that puts your metabolism into hardbody mode even if you spend the whole day sitting on the couch snarfing pork rinds and watching American Idol.