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Are We All NPCs?

Let me answer with what I think right away. To me, this is not one of those yes-or-no questions because it's impossible to tell. Simply put, the theory behind the question is most likely unprovable. Not from the inside anyway. 'Simulation Hypothesis' and the phrase 'non-playable characters' are relatively new concepts, born not that long ago, when digital computing came to be fast enough to produce graphically demanding multiplayer games sophisticated enough to hint at this question and the probability that we might also be inside one of those simulations. And to dispute the question about the nature of reality is quite useless, because everything that surrounds us, no matter how strange we think it is, can also be real and not part of the code. Even if our reality were simulated, its origin would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to prove. By design, nothing inside the simulation could be able to see the lines of the code, only the outcome of its work. In order to say that we are all NPCs, something extraordinary has to happen. Something unexpected, like a bug in the code. A glitch that would clearly break the laws of physics.


On the other end, in the future, near or far, the engine behind simulated characters in games would be even more sophisticated in a way that all characters would be able to easily pass Turing's test. To act just like you and me. The AI behind them would be so advanced that they would be equal to the human players. Or much better. So to speak, one game in particular has already achieved this goal. The Chess. When asked about chess engines, Magnus Carlsen, the current world champion, said exactly this: "I find it much more interesting to play humans. And also, of course, now that they have become so strong in a game like that, I wouldn't stand a chance". I love chess, but I have to admit I disagree with Magnus—playing against computer bots became more and more indistinguishable from playing real people. In the most popular chess.com engine online, I solely play against computer personalities behind the Komodo and Stockfish engines, and I have enjoyed them for years. But I agree that playing against humans is much more fun. For now. Let's revive this talk again in a decade or two... Or three... When chess bots develop more of their personalities. More non-chess features. A sense of humor, maybe.

In any case, the main problem with simulation theory is that it lacks a definition of reality itself. What it really is. Is this what we are living in? If it is simulated, where is it simulated from? If we skip all the philosophical views so far solely based on Nick Bostrom's book 'Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?' and stick to the physics realm only, I think that simulation of any reality or anything at all requires two prerequisite conditions to start with. One is that there is a high probability that the system performing the simulation should be distinct from its simulation, and the second is a large complexity behind it, something that Jonathan Bartlett from the Blyth Institute explained with "The problem with that [simulation in general] is that it always takes more stuff to simulate something than the thing you’re simulating".


Additionally, we are kind of looking at the simulation hypothesis today through the gaming lens, in which simulated reality must have 'real' players from the original coder's reality. But what if our reality, if being simulated, is not a multiplayer game? What if it is a zero-player game? Or not a game at all? In that case, we all could be NPCs, and there would be no real players. Because original and simulated reality could be two completely incompatible actualities. What if simulated reality is not a computer program at all? What if it is something else entirely?

I know I post a lot of questions here, but bear with me. If we follow the logic of a more complex, upper reality, which is distinct enough from its simulated creation, what would I think of first? For me, it's shadows in Plato's 'Allegory of the Cave'. In his famous work, Plato describes a group of people who are chained to the cave, facing a blank wall. All they saw were shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them. The shadows are the prisoners' entire reality, while the objects before the fire represent the true forms of the items that they can only perceive through reason. Plato goes further elaborating on his mind experiment, but for our topic, let's focus on the shadows themselves. They are just two-dimensional images of something coming from the upper third dimension. They are distinct from the original objects and certainly less complex and the product of a comprehensive setup.


Well, the final question arises by itself. Is it possible to cast three-dimensional shadows of four-dimensional objects? Just like a square represents a cube from the third dimension, the cube could be just a shadow of a tesseract's fourth-dimensional counterpart. The casting in this scenario would not be as simple as in Plato's story, nor would the shadows be what we mean by the term, but it's definitely something worth giving a second thought. One hypothetical four-dimensional reality would be an ideal source of three-dimensional simulations, and there's even a scientific theory that 'casts' light in the right direction. It's called the 'holographic principle'.

The origin of the theory lies in black holes, and the best is to quote my fictional self from the 'Revelation of Life', a hard science short story I wrote a couple of years ago: "If Hawking was right, any black hole, no matter how massive, would evaporate over time. When that happens, all the information swallowed inside would be lost. The problem is that quantum dynamics is clear about it—nothing, especially information, can ever be lost." The solution to this paradox is that the information belonging to the objects swallowed by the black hole should not be part of the three-dimensional reality in the first place. The holographic principle states that "the description of a volume of space can be thought of as encoded on a boundary to the region", or the dimensional boundary surrounding the entire universe, while our familiar space-time continuum might be just a (holographic) projection of the entities and events located outside.


Finally, and to get back to the original titled question, in this reflection we indeed could be all NPCs in a hypothetical simulation originated from the upper dimension. Just like in a famous zero-player game invented by John Horton Conway, a mathematician from Princeton University, a simulated three-dimensional world can only be a setup, created with an initial state and left to evolve on its own. Just like we culture bacterial colonies in a Petri dish. Or it can be a more complex setup with added life forms driven by conscious artificial entities or even by 'real' people from the upper dimension. For the question of why such a simulation would be created in the first place, there is no good answer. The reality of a fourth (or fifth, sixth, etc.) dimension would be something we wouldn't be able to fathom right away. Or at all. Nevertheless, I thought about one simple reason and embedded it in the 'Revelation of Life', but if you are eager to read it, please watch 'Game of Life' first, a short film that precedes it.

Game of Life (Simulation story, prequel)
https://www.mpj.one/2016/08/game-of-life.html

Revelation of Life (Simulation story, a hard science fiction)
https://www.mpj.one/2020/10/revelation-of-life-part-one.html

Refs:
https://builtin.com/hardware/simulation-theory
https://mindmatters.ai/2021/01/jonathan-bartlett-on-why-we-do-not-live-in-a-simulated-universe/
https://chesspulse.com/is-magnus-carlsen-better-than-a-computer-2/
https://www.chess.com/terms/chess-engine
https://medium.com/@jacksimmonds89/are-you-an-npc-this-may-disturb-you
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle

Image ref:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139809/
 

Is Infinity Real?

Sooner or later, computation hardware and artificial intelligence algorithms will inevitably reach the point of enough sophistication that the creation of a simulation of enormous proportions, for example, the size of the entire universe, will be effortless. So to speak. These god-like engineers of such future simulation will indeed face a decision point regarding which degree of limitation to create for their simulated entities or artificial intelligence units in order for them to never reach the point of finding the proof that their world is in fact nothing more than just a series of electrical or optical currents of one inconceivably powerful futuristic computer.

If created right, there's no doubt that the inner world of all those hypothetical units would seem to be as real to them as our own very reality is to us. So, considering the state of obvious, the question arises by itself: if our own reality is such a simulation and we are nothing but AI units within some alien quantum computer, what exactly is the limitation?


To me, it always has been infinity. My own limited mind always struggled with understanding what it really meant. Aristotle, who buzzed his head with infinity quite a lot, concluded that infinity is only potential in nature. We can always add a number to any number to the point of infinity or divide something into infinite parts, but in reality, he thought that it was impossible to exceed every definite magnitude for the simple reason that if it were possible, there would be something bigger than the heavens or something smaller than the atoms (Greek origin: άτομο, which means without volume and uncuttable).

Today we still can't find the proof of bigger or smaller volumes than we can see or understand. If we look up toward the heavens, we are pretty sure that we cannot see beyond the Big Bang or 14 billion light years in all directions due to the limitation of light speed. The same goes with understanding the smaller volumes of microcosm for which we think the current boundary is around the scale of 10e-12 Picometres due to the quantum limitation of observable micro space without disturbance by the observer.


All things considered, as proposed by mathematics, infinity might be just the other word for really, really big, or extremely small, or very old, or too far away. In every way, simply put, infinity might be just beyond our reach. Perhaps if we are really living in the simulation, this is our limitation, and we are pretty much designed in the realm of simulated physics to never reach it and to never learn what is behind the horizon. Ironically, the ultimate truth could be that there was nothing there. It might be where simulation ends and where alien software developers' backdoor is located. Their own reality could be entirely and unimaginably different.

But what if we are not living in a simulation? What if all the laws of physics were not invented by an ingenious developer and were instead real, perfectly natural, and not artificial in origin? Would we have a volume larger than heavens or smaller than quarks and strings? Or just maybe these two extremes are somehow connected and twisted in a loop with no need for infinity at all? Perhaps, ultimately, the size could be irrelevant and not a factor in all cosmic equations.
 
1 +  = ?

http://sten.astronomycafe.net/is-infinity-real/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity
 

What Jupiter and Mercury Have in Common?

Before we jump to premature conclusions with easy answers such as 'nothing at all' or 'at least they are both orbiting the Sun', perhaps we could do some quick research, just in case... With Jupiter's equatorial radius almost thirty times bigger than the same property on Mercury, the obvious composition difference between one gas giant and a small rocky planet and all the other major differences in mass, density, temperature, orbital inclination, and orbit period, and with almost everything we could compare the two, it is very hard to find the slightest similarity. Not to say that Jupiter in its arsenal is in possession of moons equal to or even bigger in size than the smallest planet of our solar system.


However, within the past couple of seasons, what they had in common was the fact that they were under the spotlight of all of us who, from time to time, enjoy gazing at the sky with our naked eyes or through modest telescopes with a strong feeling of being the witnesses of our own solar system at work. It all started at the end of last year with a rare Jupiter-Mercury conjunction when two planets came close to each other to the size of two moon-diameters. It was easily observed without any optical aids just after the sunset on December 21, 2018.



Even better, the show was on June 12, 2019. On that day, the giant planet was closest to Earth during the celestial event known as Jupiter’s opposition. At its closest point, it came to within 641 million km from Earth. We took the chance to point the telescope and observe the mighty planet and its four largest Galilean moons: IO, EUROPA, GANYMEDE, and CALLISTO. If you watch the video, you'll find the entire story of the event and more facts about the history of the most famous moons, along with short footage from the Sky-Watcher and references in the video's description.



Culmination in our amateur astronomy happened a couple of days ago on November 11, 2019, with the celestial transit of Mercury over the face of the Sun. It was the last transit of the small planet for a while, and the next time it is going to 'eclipse' the mother star again will be in 2032! It was hard to take the photo of the event since it was fuzzy and cloudy with the sunset approaching rapidly, but we made it at last, and it was worth all the efforts.

Stay tuned for more celestial events in the future and maybe some more stories and photos from the active heavens, along with our first long-exposure astrophotographs from outside the solar system.
 

What is Intelligent Life?

I remember reading an article in the Guardian last year with the title "Our galaxy may contain billions of planets with the same mass as Earth". Surely, it is a valid scientific guess as it is, but if it is really true, my first thought would be that intelligent life as we know it (assuming we are intelligent species) is as rare as we can imagine. If they are not, the big question is, why are we still not able to detect any single proof of their existence, or are they still not eaten by some violent alien species? The only logical answer, that we are the first ones to walk on the edge of impossibility, is logical to me. Most likely we are missing something important—a discovery as important as fire was.


While this statement is still accurate and generally speaking plausible, let's think a little more about it. So to start with the original statement, are there really that many planets with Earth-like properties in our galaxy? Ever since I read the Drake equation for the first time (shown above), I couldn't get rid of the feeling that there was nothing spectacular I could conclude from it. Come on, really, this is just another scientific speculation at best, as we simply don't have any valuable information about star systems other than our own. Not until the recent year did we have any observations of local star clusters related to potential planets. The only scientific data coming in this regard is the one from the Kepler mission, and after two and a half years, it still didn't find a single hint of an Earth-like planet. Yes, this is just the beginning, and the Kepler spacecraft only searches for changes in brightness of the nearby stars looking for planets, but still there is nothing so far. Just giant Jupiter-sized or supermassive rocky planets. I wanted to sound optimistic, but I would expect at least one stable candidate in these 2.5 years of Kepler's. Maybe it is there in scientific data still waiting to be revealed, or maybe those giant planets harbor Pandora-like satellites? Or nothing's there? The future will tell.

Next, there is a common interpretation that life-supporting planets exist in large numbers, but intelligent life is rare, or we are, by some rare possibility, the first one. As this sounds plausible on first glance, it is not. We simply have this one-time experience with Earth, where one single cell needed almost one billion years to evolve and almost three billion for the first multicellular creatures to arrive, not to mention that the first plant evolved only half a billion years ago. So, a life-supporting planet or satellite requires many billions of years of evolution, not many times interrupted with cataclysmic events. If we take this for granted, then it seems that complex life, like us, needs a small amount of time, astronomically speaking, compared to less complex ones like trees or grass. Therefore, again astronomically speaking, if we find a greenish environment on some planet, the chances of finding intelligent life on that planet in some sort of statistical existence are pretty big.


Ok, what's next? Oh yes, intelligent life... Is that what we are? Are these Hawking's famous sayings right? "Primitive life is very common, and intelligent life is fairly rare. Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth". If you ask me, it is only half right. I'd say if primitive life is common, then complex life could be common as well, but the second statement is pretty much accurate. I don't want to sound pathetic, semi-scientific, or too philosophical here, but there is a simple fact that what differs humans from animals is that big rational brain of ours. On the other end, what is pretty much similar to animal life is that still hyperactive emotional or reptilian part of our inner head. I am not sure what the next centuries will bring to us, but it will be either further development of the rational brain at the expense of the emotional one or vice versa.

I am not saying that we must completely suppress emotions like Vulcans or try to augment people to reach this goal, but I am 100% sure that all human misbehavior today, like wars, global crises, hunger there and overfilled bellies here, and cultural or religion-based animosity between people, relatives, or neighbors, is simply caused by a reptilian complex deeply hidden in the center of the human brain. Of course, I really can't imagine living a life without emotions at all, but simply put, this part of human beings should not be in charge over reason. It's been proven too dangerous so many times.


So, in a nutshell, as soon as this part of the brain evolves down under the border of no return, I guess we should not call ourselves an intelligent species. Until then, it is unwise for some interstellar species to give us technology to leave the Earth—the chances that we would use it for star wars are bigger than that we would go to the next level and use it for peaceful exploration of the solar system and beyond.

The last and probably the most important from my original statement last year was the hint that we were missing something important, like a fire-like breakthrough discovery. Is that what we are missing—some space technology or a warp drive? Sure, this is the necessity; we definitely can't populate other planets or go interstellar with today's rockets, but in today's spirit, it seems that it is definitely something that will help our rational brain to become the real boss in our heads. Only then can we step further and say that intelligent life finally emerged on Earth. Only then can we say that our railguns are only made for mining the asteroids and not for killing people because they look different.

Is this possible?

Sure, if we are spared by some major cataclysmic event within the next couple of centuries or if we don't create one ourselves. I have all my hopes in the evolutionary process but also little doubts as well. But, when the day is bright and cheerful, I also have all my hopes that tomorrow humanity will overpass this current stage of evolution and head for something more.

Image credits:
http://eugenius330.deviantart.com/art/Message-413092189

Search for habitable planets:
http://kepler.nasa.gov/

Refs:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/oct/28/galaxy-planets-mass-earth-life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolution
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sumer_anunnaki/reptiles/reptiles14.htm
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/stephen-hawking-no-biological-life.html
http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious/Topics/seti/drake_equation.html
 

Is Life a Zero-Player Game?

Think about it. If life really is some sort of game and we are just characters in one giant artificial intelligence play, then... Well, let's just say that we can safely recognize not very enjoyable rules we unconscionably must obey. They are simple. We must play the game. We can't quit the game. We can't win. Oh, and yes, if life really is a game, then we are only either slaves in one master-puppeteer god-like performance, or we could be just a bunch of units interacting with each other in a sort of limited free will world or a world where free will is just an illusion. Now, if life really WAS a game, what would you prefer?

Olivia Wilde & Garrett Hedlund in 'Tron: Legacy'*

It is obvious that the first option is what we easily recognize as a religious world. If you ask me, this is a simple marionette type of world in which we, being game units, have little or no influence in the game, and we must obey divine rules and please the puppeteer. From my point of view, let's just hope this is not the case. However, the second scenario is something worthwhile to give further thought to. If life is something like one large simulation with characters playing the game independently without creator influence during the game, then we are just participating in one giant zero-player environment that started eons ago in the point of history where evolution began with a predefined start pattern. And evolution is nothing more than just a set of rules in the complex game algorithm, and time is just an iteration flow in patterns changing from one state into another by following the rules.

Confused?

Ok, let's simplify the scope and check one famous zero-player game that might help understanding the basic principle. The inventor is perhaps one of the great minds in the world, John Horton Conway, a mathematician from Princeton University, who tried to simplify the original John von Neumann idea to explain evolution with the creation of a mathematical model without explosive growth over time, using just small initial patterns with unstoppable and unpredictable outcomes with a set of rules as simple as possible, which would drive the entire system forward in time. Conway came up with a brilliant two-dimensional matrix where one dot represents one living cell. Cells obey four simple rules:

1. Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbors dies (death by underpopulation).
2. Any live cell with more than three live neighbors dies (death by overpopulation).
3. Any live cell with two or three live neighbors continues to the next generation (survival).
4. Any dead cells of exactly three live neighbors will come back to life (birth).

Conway's matrix is, just like life, infinite in size, but for demonstration purposes the following example is finite matrix that. Just FYI, as a single cell is clickable, I couldn't make it mobile or any small display friendly. To try it out, you would really need to use an old-fashioned computer screen and mouse pointer. Please feel free to play and create your own pattern and see what happens. This is, of course, a zero-player game, so your godlike intervention in this game is only to create the initial organism. The Conway's game of life then operates on its own, and you can only watch.


Conway's brilliant experiment is only a two-dimensional game with a small number of simple rules, yet it opens endless fun and endless variations in the evolution of different patterns and their interactions. Now, is it possible to create, hypothetically speaking, a very complicated game on a molecular level with complicated rules within the realm of chemistry? And instead of an endless matrix, use the three-dimensional surface of a planet? Is that what the Earth is? One giant playground with molecules in endless interactions with each other, and we are today just a snapshot in the game's current evolution stage?

It surely fits the world surrounding us and the one in the past. In this game, the world before was less complex than it is today, and the world today is less complex than the one from the future. Living units in the game are evolving due to infinite interactions, and if we go to the very beginning, to the first pattern of living cells, some 3.8 billion years ago, approximately 750 million years after Earth was formed, it is clear that we indeed might be living in a complex biological game. The game is without players and puppeteers and only with living organisms with developed conscious minds. In order to neatly describe the current stage of the game, I will just quote Stephen Hawking: "We humans are highly complex biological machines behaving in accordance with the laws of nature. Our brains create and sustain our conscious minds through an extraordinary network of interacting neurons. That consciousness creates a three-dimensional model of the outside world: a best-fit model that we call reality."

Red Pill or Blue Pill?***

You might be asking now where free will fits in the game. If we are not players per se, then do we even possess such things? Are we able, being units in the game, just by following the rules, no matter how complex they are, to choose our own course of action without constraints and fate? If the game model like this one is correct, then I am pretty sure we can stop thinking about free will. There is no such thing, at least in the raw meaning of the word. Yes, we are able to control our actions and to choose certain paths, which gives us the illusion of free will, but even if we choose one path in favor of another, we are not really capable of calculating where this chosen path really leads to or where it ends. There are simply too many unknown variables on the way. Not to mention that we are completely incapable of knowing who or what we will stumble on on the chosen path and how this new interaction will play out in the game.

But the beautiful thing in this mind experiment called "Game of Life" is that even though we only have limited free will, as it seems, there is no fate as well. And even though the rules are definite and inexorable, due to the enormous size of the game level and complexity of the rules and the infinite number of organisms and molecules, it is really impossible to calculate the outcome of the game or any of the game's parts separated either in space or in time. At least from the inside of the game. And as it appears, there is no outside of the game as well. If there was, then, like in Conway's game embedded in this post above, there could be a "reset" button somewhere. "The button" that has perhaps been pressed about five times so far.****


But, like in any game, there might be glitches, lags, and bugs (like fabulously portrayed in Tron movies and series*). And I definitely had that in mind when last summer Viktor and I filmed a short movie with the same name** that exploits this very scientific thought. It's our first and only movie so far, so it's full of imperfection, but to sum it up, its plot tells a story about a young boy who's following a glitch in the system, presented in real life as a firefly, through numerous portals to the place where he meets a man with the final orb, the artifact that seems to be a way in for full understanding of life itself, its origin, and the rules it is built on. The entire movie is embedded above, and for more about all the filming and production, please find the referenced link within.

Image refs:
* http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104001/,
** http://www.milanzivic.com/2016/08/game-of-life.html
*** Cornell Math Explorers' Club

Code ref:
** https://codepen.io/RBSpatz/pen/rLyNLb

Refs:
**** http://www.milanzivic.com/2015/06/the-sixth-great-dying.html
http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/lexicon/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway_Game_of_Life
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-player_game
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Horton_Conway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann
http://www.hawking.org.uk/videos.html
http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_life.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9841/
http://www.iep.utm.edu/freewill/
 

What's Wrong with Society?

It's simple, really. Nothing is wrong with it. Society, like anything else created by our social behavior, has been following human evolution ever since we started living together within small and functionally organized communities. In the beginning there was a simple need for this—it was impossible for just one man to hunt down one, for example, mammoth or to defend a family from the herd of prehistoric saber-tooth tigers, and the only solution was to get together and organize a little for the mutual benefit. Not to mention the everlasting need for prolonging the species, which also required, sort of, well, socializing with a member of the opposite gender.

Mammoth hunt and prehistoric society*

We can only wish that things were as simple as they were millennia ago. If we disregard the fact that socializing in order to save the species didn't change much from the times when humans shared the habitat with mammoths, all other aspects of human society, due to the thousands of years of human evolution, changed a lot. We multiplied to enormous numbers, spread to the farthest corner of the Earth, used many different languages, started worshiping the divine and prominent members among us, created a money-based system of rewards, kept original differences between us and created new ones, built villages, cities, and countries to live inside, and ultimately developed a society as it is today with all its flaws and bright sides.

The question is "Did we do it wrong?"

Could we do it better, or was this the best we could do? Did we make wrong foundations in the first place, and is what we have now just a consequence of our ancestors's decisions and their poor vision of humanity as it is today? Or whatever they did, we would eventually evolve into this by its nature?

Let's not buzz our brains with "what if" questions too much. We can't change the past and explore different paths in human social evolution. Instead, what I want to write a little about in this post is just to "examine" some of the foundations we live in or use on a daily basis and take for granted as if they were always there. But before I just want to state something obvious—in this little mind experiment I am not trying to change something that needed thousands of years to emerge. That would be mission impossible. For example, we can try to advocate that living in big cities or dividing ourselves with borders and countries is not wise for many reasons, but in reality, efficient "canceling" of this way of life overnight is not possible. If we use the political metaphor, that would be similar to a revolution of some kind in order to change, for instance, an already established political system. We know from our history that all the revolutions didn't end without violent conflicts with lots of casualties and spilled blood. The less "bloody" disappointment, this time in the realm of information technologies, was felt by the mighty Google a couple of years ago when they tried to speed up the evolution of e-mail and tried to replace it with "Google Wave", an ambitious project with the power to bury email service forever with its sophisticated layers and new technology. I remember they advertised "The Wave" service as "how the e-mail would look if it were invented yesterday instead of twenty years ago". Like in the political arena, in a way, Wave was trying to revolutionize an already recognized system and expectedly failed big time.

Money, Money, Money**

No, social evolution is a very slow process, and just like the evolution of species, it is based on many tries and errors. Very few revolutionary methods succeeded in affecting it on a large scale, and I can't recall anything in the past that did it without turbulence.

But that doesn't stop us from using our imagination and trying to see one hypothetical future if we change some ground foundations a little. Just for fun.

So, for the very first ground property of our lives, let's think about how to improve the system behind the "money". Probably rudimentary trade in the form of simple barter was born with the very first societies long ago, but over time, when the amount of goods and services had risen to the point that simple exchange couldn't work anymore, it was natural that using a medium of exchange was something that was inevitably invented very soon. The history of the "medium of exchange" is very interesting, from the very beginning, when people in early civilized societies used barley grains to exchange things, through the times when different commodities were used as money, like shells, alcohol, cigarettes, and even cannabis. Today, after a long period of using gold, silver, and copper coins, we successfully created a system of banknotes that, by the beginning of the 20th century, all modern and industrialized countries accepted as the only means of use for all kinds of trades. However, even though an intermediary in the form of money was inevitable, it added other dimensions to the people's daily lives. I am sure greed existed long before money was invented in its rudimentary form, but in modern societies it received its pure meaning, or simple desire to acquire or possess more than one needs. Perhaps the only way to fix the basic problem with money, in which many people started to adore shiny banknotes more than the goods you can buy with them, is to remove one of its properties out of the equation. Cash. We need to ultimately stop using cash and replace it with a full electronic system. This way, "home money collectors" will be eliminated, and the system of individual wealth will become more transparent in many ways. I am sure "individual greed for money" would be significantly reduced, even though, as a psychological concept hidden deeply in our emotional brains, greed is simply impossible to remove.

Politics and Power***

On the other side, hypothetically speaking, removing worldwide banknotes and replacing them all with several or just one planetary electronic monetary value (let's call it credit or bitcoin?) could be possible, and that would efficiently remove so-called "corporate greed for money" and force worldwide stock markets to deal more with goods and services instead of dealing with money alone and their exchange rates. Not to mention the medical benefits of not using papers and coins that travel from one hand to another all the time. Payments in the future must be done completely without touching of any kind, preferably by wirelessly reading fingerprint-protected ID cards. Of course, there will still be people who will start worshiping 'credits' now instead of green banknotes, but hopefully their number will be significantly reduced due to a lack of physical connection in the hypothetical new system.

Ok, now that we fixed the money problem ;-), what else are we enjoying every day for granted? What is that thing that the average human being worships the same along with wealth and collecting treasures of any kind? Yes. The power. There is no society in nowadays planetary kingdoms, republics, states, provinces, or even the smallest municipalities with no rulers recognized and worshiped by the majority. No matter if they use simple dictatorship, communism, still live in African tribes, or live within highly evolved democracies, everything is organized within one or a couple "alpha" leader(s) in power, followed by the people designated in lower ranks ("betas" and "omegas" if we use the wolf herd analogy). These behaviors also came from our emotional inner beings, which we inherited from our animal origins. Fixing this problem is easy, and within current societies (evolutionary speaking), I can't see a better system than democracy. People are different in many aspects, and it is necessary that the majority select the rulers, and the only thing we need to do is improve democracy as it is in the current stage. In simple words, instead of voting for political parties that, if elected, govern the society for several years until the next elections, it became necessary to find a way to involve people and the voting system more frequently and for each and every agenda that requires important decisions to be made. Instead of voting for politicians, elections should be organized for each chairman, so to speak. Electronic voting is now possible, and counting the results can be done almost instantly, so we need a way to vote for the prime minister alone as well as for each member of the government. Also, voting should be selective, and it should not allow all members of the community to vote every time. For example, hypothetically speaking, why would I be involved in the election of the ministry of health when I committed and educated myself within the food and agriculture industry? I don't even know anybody from the medical institutions, so how would my vote be relevant? The same would be for the election of the ministry of agriculture, and only relevant people within this realm should participate in this election, and there is no need for doctors and nurses to bother voting for something that has so little in common. Anyway, a real democratic system requires many changes, and nowadays technologies allow the transformation. The only problem is that politicians would suffer the most and almost become extinct in the process, making this change as hard as the exchange of CRT television sets with flat screens. But it is inevitable, and in one way or another it will happen. Like in the case of "Cathode Ray Tube" TV sets, no matter how old technology spreads its roots, it is destined to die eventually.

Five Myths About Education****
So far we have encountered financial and political systems that actually create the rules responsible for one society's health. But what is even more important than these? Who is actually behind these systems? Yes. People. Individuals. But how did they come to be in the first place? Where did they learn all that they know? Yes. This is the final social link we need to improve. The Education. We all once were kids. No matter how talented we were, we needed to go through the educational system to become what we are today. This is where everything started and therefore the system that is the most responsible for the outcome of one society. What we have now in our societies, basically everything bad and good in our human existence, more or less, has to thank education. If one man or woman became a successful scientist responsible for some kind of breakthrough discovery that would change the world, the big portion of gratitude would go to the education institutions where he/she spent early days learning and acquiring knowledge and skills. The same amount of credit goes to the education institutions that actually provided installation of a mass murderer, serial killer, or lunatic war general, or at least didn't do enough to prevent their misfortune. The bottom line here is that the educational part of any society is something that must be the most important of them all. Sadly, there is no country in the world that prioritizes this part over anything else. Not even the highly evolved democracies and technocracies recognized the full potential and danger of one educational system. We now have mediocre politicians and bank employees that enjoy a wealthier life than highly educated teachers and university professors. Not to mention that military budgets in ALL countries are way bigger than their counterparts in educational and scientific systems, directly or indirectly funded by tax money taken from people. When I think of nowadays societies all over the world in relation to education and science, the title question, "What's Wrong with Society?" might not be accurate. Maybe the better question would be "Why is society turned upside down?"

Yes, education in private schools and universities is way better by the quality of given knowledge compared to tax funding and state institutions, but looking at it from the global scale, there are only a few of them, not to mention that the price of scholarships is way above the average income of the society they are located in, automatically excluding potentially extraordinary students from participating in the first place. The solution I have in mind is based on further fragmentation of class groups. Schools, especially elementary schools, are gathering kids away from their families every day, and it would be only fair to provide a family-like atmosphere inside the classroom. If we consider this, it seems reasonable that the number of students should not be bigger than 5 per group. These small selected groups would be enjoying classes in a more relaxing environment and over time get better results than a group of 15-30 pupils like today simply because each member of the smaller group would be more active on a daily basis. A family-like atmosphere would allow active tutoring of poor or lazy students as well as better acceptance of those who came from dysfunctional families. Furthermore, bright students and their interests would be spotted much earlier and therefore provided with more time in targeted education following their recognized talents and interests. The goal is also to get much better insight into the development of young people during their childhood and adolescent periods, when they are the most vulnerable and easy targets for various influences.

I will stop now and probably leave some more foundations and brainstorming about their improvements for some future posts (for example, dealing with social security with respect to medical and elderly insurance or demographic separations of different societies). The baseline here is that nothing is written in stone, and there is nothing wrong with thinking of how to change some social foundation, even though it has been in use for centuries. Times are passing fast, and sometimes we might be unaware that some technology already developed can help us live much better if we only try and dare to use it.

Without revolutionizing anything, of course.

Grisly find suggests humans inhabited Arctic 45,000 years ago*
http://www.sciencemag.org/grisly-find-suggests-humans-inhabited-arctic

Money, Money, Money**
http://sploid.gizmodo.com/holy-wow-you-can-actually-swim-like-scrooge-mcduck-in-1481547007

Politics and Power***
https://www.masonreport.com/donald-trumps-campaign-rhetoric

Five Myths About Education****
http://www.thepolisblog.org/2012/11/education.html
 

Why Do We Age?

Did you know that there are certain species on the face of the Earth that are truly and literally immortal? Yep. They never die. Of old age, that is. I am not talking about some microscopic bacterial life or stubborn viruses in existence. No. Real animals. Take these two: turtles and lobsters. They literally don't age. When it comes to first one, I can't resist not quoting article in below refs* I read online—to the logical suspicion of endless turtle lifespan and why in the aftermath they don't crawl everywhere we look today, they answer, "Of course they die; otherwise we'd be swimming in turtles, but the weird thing is, they never seem to die of old age. It's always a disease, or a falling boulder, or Master Shredder". And this is a real truth, actually, including 'Master Shredder', who might be just a metaphor for us killing turtles for food or purses and belts or whatever we do with dead turtles. Joking aside, the very research of big turtles shows no evidence that their bodies change or mature after they pass their teenage years. They are literally capable of sexual reproduction until the end of time. And again, the glimpse from the noted article stating the obvious: "They can breed and lay eggs until the day they drop dead, and that means that, technically, a turtle can live and have sex forever". The same is with lobsters—well, I am not sure about the sex thing, but they don't age either. Just grow bigger and bigger and bigger until they finish their lifespan in the kitchen of some fancy restaurant. When they got so big that their shell couldn't sustain them anymore, they just got out and started growing a new one. I am sure somewhere out there in the bottom of some sea or ocean there are lobsters today old enough that they are actually living witnesses of Darwin's "Beagle" sailing out for her historical voyage around the world in the early nineteenth century.


I am sure by now you already started growing an ultimate regret about why on Earth you weren't born on one of the Galápagos Islands, hatched out from some egg, and spent eternity practicing martial arts—and instead ended up being a human. But seriously, the title's question is real and open for scientific discussion. And for theatrical purposes, let me repeat it: "Why do we age?" And ultimately die? Surely, if we find out why, the next question is, of course, can we cheat it? Expand it? Live forever? If we find out that is possible, the third question in the row imposes. Should we do it?

But, before we dive into deeper thoughts and evaluate leading theories and hypotheses, I remember when I started with a blog, one of my early small posts in the humor thread was a couple of famous quotes about life itself. As far as I remember, many of them were really plain and intelligent jokes, but the one said by Ronnie D. Laing, a Scottish scholar who dedicated his life to research of mental illness and psychosis, was probably hitting the target in the bullseye. He said, "Life is a sexually transmitted disease, and the mortality rate is one hundred percent." If we extract the humor from this one-liner, what we really get is, perhaps, the ultimate truth. Reaching your or my old age, or death itself, might be nothing else than a genetic disease, in a stretched form of the definition of the word 'disease', and we might be able to do something about it.


Well, contrary to lobsters and turtles (and some other 'immortal' species like certain types of whales, seashells, sponges, hydras, etc.), we are mammals, pretty different kinds of anim... ahem, species. We are different in many ways, genetically speaking, and compared to, for example, reptiles, we cannot regrow our teeth or entire body parts as well, and our DNA, as it seems, has limited regeneration ability that fades with years and ultimately gets exhausted the moment before death. For those lucky to die of old age.

Two leading theories have been posted until today. First, it was proposed that living organisms have some sort of genetic expiration time, written in DNA. In other words, we are all combinations of genes of our parents and their parents and parents before them, all the way back in the history of our families, and this lucky mixture of genes, written in all of our cells, is built to last only a limited period of time. Even though this theory seems so unbelievable and far-fetched, it is actually hinted at in labs. In some genetic research of worms, altering their genome and some specific genes 'produced' the worms who actually lived four times longer than their unaffected peers.


If those genes with encoded expiration dates really exist, finding and rewriting them might be able to increase our lifespans. However, the second theory is much more appealing and easier to understand. It simply says that our cells die at the end of the cycle due to too much damage they suffer over time. To simplify it, there are two types of DNA in our cells: nucleus DNA, which defines us, located in the cores of cells, and mtDNA, residing outside the nucleus and in special parts of the cells called mitochondria. While nucleus code is used during the cell's division to produce another cell with the same DNA, mtDNA is there mainly to produce energy for the cells from the food we consume. And both DNAs can be damaged over time due to various factors, and as time passes over years and decades, the damages become more severe, and at the end of the process, which we know as aging, the entire organism dies. If we focus on mtDNA first, it's logical that these 'power plants' of our cells endure way more pressure than their fellow DNA in the nucleus, as they are in the first front lines hit by influences of the food we eat. From that food they produce energy and, in the process, a very bad byproduct called ROS, 'Reactive Oxygen Species', which are a variety of oxygen-based molecules that are very dangerous for the power plant itself and very capable of ultimately damaging the cell and mtDNA to the point of full destruction in the process of unwanted mutations. Basically, if you are now thinking that a special sort of diet or simply eating less food would give you a longer life, think again. In fact, if you do so, it is logical that more DNA in mitochondria will survive over time in their intact form, but on the other side, restricted diets in lab animals show that they grow slower than normal, reproduce less than normal, and have more endangered immune systems than usual. We need food. It is essential. So, don't stop eating, but try to do it properly and in the most healthy way possible. But the theory of lifespan directly related to the healthy mtDNA is proven in poor lab mice in which scientists encoded a faster genetic mutation of mitochondrial DNA, which resulted in faster aging and a shorter lifespan—they actually lived three times shorter than their 'normal' friends and cousins. So oxygen is bad and ultimately kills you. And yet we cannot live without breathing, can we? A paradox of creation, especially if you are a believer.

What about nucleus DNA in our cells? Are they also causing aging in the process of mutation? Yes, due to mutation of the nucleus, DNA cells end up in a cancerous or non-cancerous state, which is pretty much a defect and the cell's death. During an organism's growth, cells divide in the process called 'mitosis'—one 'cell, by using code in the nucleus, DNA, divides into two new cells, which are exact replicas of the parent cell. Even after an organism has fully matured into its adult stage, cells still continue to divide for the purposes of reproduction and replacement of lost or dead cells. However, as it seems, both resulting cells are not really and exactly the same as their predecessor cells. Yes, the code in chromosomes is the same, but the ending caps of the chromosome structure are getting shorter after each division. These caps are called 'telomeres', and their main purpose is to protect the end of the chromosome from connection with other chromosomes. After numerous divisions of the cells, telomeres run out, and this is pretty much the end of it. The cells are after that doomed. But this is not the end of all the ways of the one-cell doomsday scenario. According to Aubrey de Grey, one of the leading scientists in biogerontology, the scientific subfield of gerontology concerned with the biological aging process, over the years the cells accumulate various molecules that are no longer useful and potentially harmful. And not just within the cells, but also in the space outside cells. Those molecules are scientifically called 'intracellular and extracellular aggregates', but their real names are 'junk molecules', and, like the name suggests, the more of an accumulation of junk, the more dysfunctional the organism becomes. Dr. Aubrey de Grey proposed even more processes, on the cell level, influential in aging, and thanks to his research and the entire scientific mainstream, which is still ongoing research, we definitely understand it more than ever.


Benjamin Franklin once said that in this world nothing can be said to be certain except for death and taxes. I, for one, would definitely like to see the end of death and taxes for sure, and even though it is very hard to imagine a world without taxes, death, after all, might be a very different story. Well, understanding aging is one thing, and finding the cure for it is surely another, not to mention manufacturing a 'cheating-death' pill is not really in the realm of possibility anytime soon. Even the 'genetic pill' that will be able to slow down aging or the one capable of reverse engineering that would replace the mythical fountain of youth (or Lazarus Pit from the DC Comics franchise) is far away from the horizon. However, what is on the horizon and even much closer is the effort and research. Last year Google announced a plan to invest lots of money into California Life Company, aka Calico, and if you go to their website, the first thing you will see is their motto, "We're tackling aging, one of life's greatest mysteries." If you dive into the current stage of IT-leading entrepreneurs and futurists, it seems they all are sharing the same enthusiasm in the "curing death" realm, and I can't help but state the similarity with A.G. Riddle's new novel called "Departure", which pretty much influenced me to write this post, even though I was planning it for a while. I will not spoil the reading for you, but in a nutshell, one of the background stories in it is dealing with immortality, which, in one way or another, resulted in the end of civilization as we know it. I am encouraging you to read the book; it is definitely one of the best novels of the year in the sci-fi realm. In short, in the aftermath related to immortality, one of the leading characters from the novel, Sabrina Schröder, was portrayed giving a TED talk about cheating death and why we should avoid it on a large scale. That's all I would say. Sorry, but you would have to read the entire book to understand everything. I will just say that I hope Riddle's 'Titans' are not predictions for 'Googlers' or 'Applers' or 'Calicos' or whatever the name they come up with in the upcoming breakthroughs in aging research.

As for me, I am sure I wouldn't mind prolonging life a bit, or a little bit, or a 'frakking' long bit, but avoiding death is raising lots of other dilemmas in morality and everything else. It could be handy on long interstellar voyages, though, but it is not far from the truth that reproduction and further evolution of humans would be in real danger if everybody took the immortality pill and if we were stuck in the current stage of evolution without offspring of any kind. Morality issues of a potential cloning of a human being and making it immortal might not be too different.


Extending the lifespan is a very different story. I would always take the red pill and jump into the rabbit hole without hesitation. Life is way too short. After all, lifespan is something nature and evolution have been working on for centuries. If we learn to push and help a little with science, I would definitely be aboard.

Refs:
http://www.calicolabs.com/
http://www.medicaldaily.com/cure-aging-google-plunks
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/.../trying-to-cure-ageing.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._D._Laing
http://genetics.thetech.org/original_news/news10
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/05/age/
http://www.agriddle.com/departure/sabrina
http://www.agriddle.com/Departure
* http://www.cracked.com/animals-that-are-immortal.html
http://www.aboutdarwin.com/voyage/voyage03.html

Image credits:
http://nocamels.com/2013/12/stop-aging-to-prevent-alzheimers/
http://nocamels.com/2015/06/genetic-sequencing-evolution-cancer-brca1/
 

Who's Behind the Wheel?

Have you ever been in a situation to answer somebody's question with 'Yes and No'? Well, it is definitely one of those answers they are teaching politicians to answer every time they need to use some evasive maneuvers in order to avoid discussions they don't want to get into. But in this case, the answer to the question from the title, or expanded a little with "Are you really behind the wheel of your body?" is really "Yes and no". And nothing could be closer to the truth. The keyword is, of course, parasitology, a very complex scientific research that is trying to understand properly all the macro- and microorganisms that can't live without other living beings and usually do that without their consent and rather use them to live their entire or partial life, which in most cases leads to the host's malfunction, to use a raw mechanical word. They only leave hosts in case of their death or if the host's environment is exploited to the level of uselessness for parasitic survival or simply to follow the natural circle of life, i.e., to lay eggs outside the host environment.

Toxoplasma gondii—a single-celled protozoan*

This blog is not a medical source or place for studying biological entities of any kind, and I am surely not really qualified to provide any advanced knowledge about parasites and how to avoid contamination or heal after. But I am always interested in scientific edges and research that provide unusual results, to say the least, and this post is more about whether or not some parasitic species, like Toxoplasma gondii, are able to affect the human mind in a way that the personality of the host could be changed to the level of influencing their entire social life. However, some basic information can't hurt in order to better understand how biology works. For example, if we are talking about macroparasites or entire sexually developed tiny organisms with complex 'teen' and 'adult' lives with stages of infecting hosts, feeding, laying eggs, and contaminating surroundings, then we are talking more about different kinds of worms (shaped as round, tape, hook, whip, etc.) invading hosts through raw meat, contaminated water, or unclean food. This is the most common way of intrusion, but parasitic eggs can be spread everywhere and through the simple touch of infected handles, phones, appliances... anything at all. When inside, they eat your digested food or even your blood vessels and cells. And they spread a wide variety of diseases, even though they can stay dormant for months and years. They are truly microscopic monsters, very similar to those 'Alien' types in horror movies.

However, the bigger they are, the better they are studied and understood, and today, contrary to the Dark Ages, when parasitic infection was able to spread severely among huge numbers of people, treatments are very successful if detected as early as possible. The smaller they get, like the single-cell deadly microorganism known as Plasmodium (the malaria parasite), the tougher the fight is for knowledge and treatments for diseases they are causing. And for some parasites, disease, in the form we define it, is just the final stage of their complex life. As it seems, they are also very much able to force their hosts to do their bidding as well. In the most intelligent and cruel way. Let's see what Toxoplasma gondii is capable of. Sometimes it is hard to believe all the scientific facts. And believe me, 'believe' is the right word for this little alien and hostile invader of hosts' minds. Humans included.

Cats and Mice: It's Complicated*

All parasite species tend to complete their lives from the stage of being born till the end of their lives. Toxoplasma gondii's ultimate treat is the cat. This is what it is designed for, and this is where it wants to finally multiply and end its life. But it is hard to find a cat when you need it, right? So there are lots of potential intermediate hosts on the way. Before they ultimately end in the intestine of a cat-shaped animal, they find the drive in the cysts of the brain and other tissues of a warm-blooded species, including humans. If they move into rats or some other rodent animal, the parasite recognizes its intermediary and alters the host's behavior for one purpose only—to be an easy victim for cats. More precisely, they induce high levels of dopamine, a neurotransmitter known to alter novelty-seeking and enhance the host's neuroticism. In other words, the mouse becomes a curious adventurer of its surroundings and loses fear of cats and everybody else. Uninfected rodents have built-in protection from their native predators and always try to avoid areas marked with cat urine or odor, but after the infection, the parasite brainwashes rodents to even go into craving cat urine and directly into the trap. Toxoplasma gondii can only sexually reproduce in the feline gut, and there you have the answer to why cats love mice and rats so much. Even more surprisingly, all the symptoms in infected lab rats stay after parasites die in the rodent, suggesting permanent changes in the host's neural system.

But what happens if T. gondii finds the way and invades the human body? And according to research, it is apparently capable of infecting us on large scales, and up to one-third of people around the world are estimated to be potential hosts. And we are sort of a dead end for their travel. If we exclude sporadic cases of tigers and lions attacking and eating humans, cats actually can't thrive on us. Well, yes, domestic cats don't eat human beings, but still, there are other ways of transferring parasites from humans to cats, and it seems that Toxoplasma gondii, like in rodents, is also trying to use its unprecedented ability to alter host behavior, all in favor of parasitic life fulfillment. For the simplicity of this blog post, we can make a difference in parasitic life inside an intermediate human host compared to rats and mice. In its acute form, I would say after the parasite realizes there is no way out, or due to some other reason in the mixture of the parasitic and host's life, the human host can go into severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia, suicidal behavior, or the performance of slow mental activity and thinking. Within a large amount of time, in the parasite's latent form, the host is going through light personality changes that are very difficult to recognize as a disease. The latent toxoplasmosis might even be immune to treatments and antibiotics, and some hosts, like our distant rodent relatives, could even change their response to cat odor as well.

The Veneration and Worship of Felines in Ancient Egypt*

Perhaps a decade ago, one comprehensive study was finished at Charles University in Prague, in the Czech Republic, by Jaroslav Flegr, and numerous researchers ended with extremely interesting findings published in the paper "Induction of changes in human behavior by the parasitic protozoan Toxoplasma gondii" (referenced below). Over the years, they tested many cases of infected men and women against 'Cattell's personality factors' (a sort of scientific personality test designed to reveal aspects of an individual's character) and compared them to those performed by non-infected people. Both infected men and women had significantly higher apprehension and levels of social fearfulness, with significant differences in results between the two groups. Infected men showed lower superego strength (rule consciousness), higher vigilance, were more likely to disregard rules, and were more expedient, suspicious, jealous, and dogmatic. Women, on the other end, showed higher warmth and higher superego strength, suggesting that they were more warm-hearted, outgoing, conscientious, persistent, and moralistic. And all those human properties are not considered a disease of any sort. Remember that the latent stage of toxoplasmosis can be the case for one of three people you can meet on the street, including yourself and me. All those people would behave differently if they were not under the influence of small microorganisms only visible under the eye of an electronic microscope!

Now, it is very much close to all sorts of logic that human culture, isolated or widespread, can alter individual personality. In simple words, if you are a member of a herd of sheep, you are most likely a white sheep and behave like all the other members of society, well... the herd. However, the same logic goes for humans and the other way around—that cumulative personality might shape cultural dimensions through the collective behavior of individuals. And if you got yourself a society of humans, all or most of them infected with T. gondii (which is not far from the truth, especially in the early history of mankind ever since ancient Egypt and the domestication of cats), their cultural self would no doubt be shaped far from the case if they were all uninfected and healthy. And if you glimpse again the personality of diverted subjects above, with increased apprehension and decreased superego with men and highly sensitive women, if you ask me, the very own free will could be in question along with increased susceptibility to superstition and religiosity.

Well, I am not saying it, and surely there's lots more research to be done, but if one small society in the history of humanity should thank a small microorganism for, i.e., the rise of religion and everything that implies, you have to wonder...


...about a nice plot for a novel. And that is exactly what Tom Knox did with his thriller called "The Deceit", an amazingly wrapped plot that connects the origins of all religions, ancient Egypt, domesticated cats, Toxoplasma gondii, and everything that might come out of this twist glued together. True or partially true or not at all, this book inspired me to learn something that I didn't know before and, of course, pushed me for a little web research that ended with this blog post. This is actually a second time that Tom Knox, a.k.a. Sean Thomas, forced me to do some more reading about the background of his novel, and needless to say, I recommend both books and am looking forward to more of his work. I have already hinted at "The Marks of Cain", which apparently offers similar travel through the history of man. Stay tuned.

T. gondii refs:
http://jeb.biologists.org/content/216/1/1.short
https://web.natur.cuni.cz/flegr/pdf/induction.pdf
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/273/1602/2749
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/04/070403-cats-rats.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2526142/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16PF_Questionnaire

* Image refs:
https://www.science.org/content/article/.../toxoplasmosis-parasite-lab
http://www.ancient-origins.net/history/veneration-and-worship-felines-ancient-egypt-003030