Joinx of Earth

The finite lifespan of mammals is one of the Earth's great tragedies.  Virtually all the other animals secrete molecules that rearrange their cytoskeletal structures on a regular basis and cure their fungal infections.  Birds, for example, secrete a substance that interferes with the microtubules that interlace the body and causes them to constantly rearrange themselves.  It also interferes with fungal cell walls, leaving the organism relatively free of the mycelium that would otherwise colonize its entire body structure.  This adaptation gave the dinosaurs and their avian descendants an effectively limitless lifespan.  Mollusks, arthropods, turtles, sharks and crocodiles all have similar strategies.  Their lifespans are limited by predation rather than aging. When an organism achieves great age, certain troubles arise, the most prominent being the lack of telomeres.  Telomeres are repeating DNA sequences on the ends of chromosomes that are necessary...

Contrary to the way physics is commonly taught in schools on Earth, the future is not singular. It exists as a branching phase-space encompassing all the solutions to the Schrödinger wave equation. Prior to the development of quantum physics, Newtonian mechanics suggested that only one future was possible given a particular starting condition. Following the Einsteinian revolution this one-future, one-past model continued to hold with the caveat that space itself was malleable and time's passage was affected by one's speed and proximity to mass. Newton's and Einstein's equations remain in use because they provide a reasonable approximation of macroscopic reality, but they fail to describe the small-scale systems of which large objects are composed. Maxwell's equations of thermodynamics and the quantum mechanical laws derived from them reveal a universe far weirder and more baroque than primitive science understood. The Schrödinger wave equation, centerpiece o...

The nature vs. nurture dichotomy is a myth constructed by those who believe that the sentient animal can be transformed significantly after its conception.  This is not the case.  The cultures of sentients may be malleable, but we are still essentially the people who our genes mold us to be.  Witness the preternatural similarity of the identical twins who provide this lesson for even the most primitive races.  It all comes down to the proper organization of the brain.  Those whose brain systems are chaotically wired, distressingly common in the universe, are incapable of the long chains of causal reasoning required for rational thought.  If one cannot conceptualize reality coherently it is easy to believe anything stated with confidence, no matter how nonsensical.  Those sentients with disorganized brain states have an unerring tendency to retard the progress of races toward desirable equilibrium states of egalitarian freedom and creativity.  It i...