Now, a normal organism would not let this faux pas ruin its week. One introduces itself, only to have the other gently remind it that they’ve already met before. Picture this: two of these mammals encounter each other in the woods. Anxiety, depression, and insecurity could overwhelm the brain at any moment. While the brain will afford these new organisms the sublime pleasures of, say, reading “Gravity’s Rainbow” and lying about having understood “Gravity’s Rainbow,” there are many potential pitfalls. ![]() In their spare moments, their brains will allow them to perform a brand new cognitive function that I call “thinking about stuff,” which, in rare cases, will lead to the dazzling breakthrough of “coming up with stuff.” Haiku poetry, quantum physics, electric toothbrushes, Abstract Expressionism, lava lamps-the sky’s the limit! These new animals might even build a few churches and worship me, because, between us, the crocodile has been a pretty big letdown in that department. (My favorite is diphtheria!)īut these mammals won’t spend all their time trying to have as much sex as possible before dying-just most of it. No, this brain will allow the mammals to make traps, weapons, clothing, shelters-whatever will keep them alive long enough to reproduce before succumbing to one of the 32,048,395,981,422 things that I’ve designed to kill them. As a counterbalance to the myriad corporeal shortcomings this species will have, I plan to use your grant money to develop a sophisticated computational head organ called a “brain.” But not just any brain! It won’t be your average, walnut-sized, regulate-breathing-and-pooping-and-that’s-it deal. You may be wondering how this new creature could be expected to survive at all. ![]() Additionally, just as it’s about to fall asleep, it will sometimes realize that it has an itch, but when it scratches the itch another itch will inevitably take its place somewhere else, and so on until the organism wonders if it should have just ignored the first itch. Too slow to outrun most predators and too weak to defeat the rest, it will also lack the bodily insulation that keeps other large animals from freezing to death. What will set this new organism apart? For starters, it will be physically deficient in virtually every way.
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