This was the first book I read a few years ago when I was getting back into reading, and it was also the start of my journey into non-fiction works that focus on biology and especially consciousness/the nervous system. This is a really fun book, and I bought it looking for ideas for my worldbuilding projects.
- P. 6: Nature is not unique to the visible world.
- P. 9: Natural selection and intelligent design are very similar.
- P. 20: Natural selection.
- P. 33: Convergent evolution and examples.
- P. 51: Reproduction can take place outside of the body.
- P. 67: Aliens can speculate on improved life, like we do.
- P. 75: Cost-benefit trade-off.
- P. 78: A magnetic planet?
- P. 96: Clam-like organism which bores holes?
- P. 105: Multimodal robustness & enhancement.
- P. 106: Communication is information produced by one individual and then transmitted, received, and decoded by another individual.
- P. 107: “Could you write poetry like that?”
- P. 108: Hearing can be implemented differently.
- P. 124: Smell language?
- P. 125: Electroreception.
- P. 129: Echidnas are electro sensitive.
- P. 135: Human intelligence allows us to run “mental simulations”.
- P. 140: Most intelligent behavior relies on a few core abilities, like the ability to learn, memorize, and make decisions.
- P. 142: Do lab experiments reflect real life?
- P. 158: Sea lions like music?
- P. 177: “I would gladly lay down my life for two of my brothers… or eight of my cousins.”
- P. 184: Prisoners dilemma.
- P. 196: Communication isn’t just about transmitting information, it’s about changing behavior to increase fitness.
- P. 205: Reliable communication is costly, or reflects fundamental shared interests.
- P. 209: Alien screams may be like our own.
- P. 213: Dear enemy effect.
- P. 221: Continuous sounds may be the way around the distortion problem.
- P. 229: Words that come next in a sentence can’t depend only on the immediately preceding words.
- P. 231: Infinite flexibility may be an emergent property of a complex grammar.
- P. 240: Arbitrary words may be common.
- P. 248: Sociality is a prerequisite for language.
- P. 261: Nature always seeks and reaches equilibrium.
- P. 287: Not even alien robots are free of natural selection or game theory.