The origins of the State of Nature: How did humans get to be the way we are? In a burst of accelerated evolution, we gained some amazing superpowers.

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This was originally going to be a very brief page, but I was having so much fun with it, and it really does set the theme for a lot of what’s to come. Anyway, I did cut scads of fun stuff about social group size and structure, various takes on Dunbar numbers and brain size, specific genetic mutations beyond the FOXP2 you always read about, specific “wiring” in various bits of the brain for all these new developments like syntax in the left IFG/STG/MTG or emotional pre-emptive self-awareness in the pACC/r.DLPFC/SC-Pul-STS/etc or higher consciousness in probably the spindle-shaped Von Economo neurons (love that name) that make up about 56% of the AI and 58% of the pACC (and what about the claustrum?) and the high-speed connections that enable simulation, and how it all develops through childhood as pathways myelinize and etc, and theories on why we don’t have episodic memories from before learning to talk or perhaps even learning to read, and so many fun little throwaway asides and puns and digressions…

But I digress.

Lest you think this whole thing is a pointless digression, there is method to my madness. These final pages of this chapter will prove to be relevant (I hope), not only to what the Framers thought, but also to what we right here right now are thinking when we take sides on all the contentious issues of Constitutional Law.

Folks are going to disagree with my narrative here (lord, I hope they do), but if I do this right we can at least all start the next chapter on the same page!






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