If Nick Bostrom' simulation argument were correct: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html this might also solve the Fermi Paradox. If we are only living in a simulation, the simulators might not have bothered with details like alien visitors to Earth.

(1)  The young feel immortal - why bother with insurance? 
(2)  When anyone mentions motorbikes, I have a 
tendency to wonder whether they have ever owned one.  A powerful thing, tacit knowledge.

I am just starting a week off work, so I shall see how bored I get. Actually, I have not felt boredom in years. I am too busy with work and family. 
 
I do find that I enjoy quiet moments (on the bus, for example) more these days, and I seem to be thinking productively in such moments. But I already have a mental capital of reading and experience to draw on. 
 
I suspect one would get bored on the island in your thought-experiment (no pun intended). This is because man is a social creature, and the meaning of our thinking and activity really is in the context of broader humanity. There is an SF story about a man who is the sole survivor of a planetary extinction and finally gets his wish, to be left alone in a library to read. The tragedy in the story is that he breaks his spectacles accidentally, and can't read after all. But I don't think his reading would have had any value anyway. With whom could he share his insights? What would be the point of reading, say, Russian history, if Russia no longer existed? 
 
In my experience books and thinking are best as leisure. Books always seem more interesting as a break from one's normal activity. I am not retired yet, but I have wondered what it would be like, all that leisure. A lot of retired people are bored, I believe. Maybe even the intellectuals. 
 
It is wonderful to read and think, but there is always the "Omar Khayyam Effect", by which I mean that after reading a good book, one re-enters the mundanity of life, no wiser in any practical sense, no happier, the same man essentially. I refer to a point made in the most famous poem by "Omar Khayyam": 
 
"Myself when young did eagerly frequent 
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument 
About it and about: but evermore 
Came out by the same Door as in I went." 
 
In other words, knowledge does not leave one any wiser. 
 
Everbody overvalues what he has, and the intellectual overvalues his mind. Years ago, I did an experimental Ph.D and, although I remember a handful of exciting moments in the lab, mostly I remember the human experiences, the parties and the music. What you call "exogenous sensory arousal" is always going to be crucial. I know that some people are introverts - I am one - but introverts also need human contact, just less of it. No man in an island, and no man belongs alone on an island.

Preferring non-fiction to fiction will win you higher scores on the autism tests. I have always gravitated to the Non-Fiction section of libraries. The only fiction I have read in the last few years is some JG Ballard and a bit of Dostoevsky, plus some medical and spy thrillers. I know a lot ABOUT fiction and writers: I just don't bother reading fiction much. 
 
I wonder if not reading fiction CAUSES lowered social understanding, rather than that being a bit socially blind leads to less fiction reading. That is, I suspect that most people read fiction and watch plays and so on to help them have insight into others' and their own emotions and motivations.  
 
Sitcoms and even TV shows like CSI can teach one a lot about how to deal with life in general and life in the office. I am sure people watch them to learn what to do and what not to do in their lives; identifying with various characters. Since I became a "boss" at work, I have paid much more attention to the behaviour of the "bosses" in TV shows. 
 
I score high on autism tests, but I function pretty well socially. I suspect that one can learn a lot over a lifetime. I do find that I sometimes have to puzzle out why people, especially women, act the way they do (realising that women may be inconsistent in their wishes simply because of fluctuating hormones helps). But I think I understand people quite well. I am one of Steve Sailer's "people nerds", having a strong, objective interest in people. That is, I like sociology and anthropology, in a slightly nerdy way. 
 
I am a good non-fiction writer too. I have had some well-received pieces published. But I can't write fiction. 
 
Julian

Hi, Steve Sailer. Are you there? Do you regard yourself as secular? 
 
By the way, Fisher is the Odd Man Out in the above list of men of the evolutionary right. He was an Anglican. Perhaps WD Hamilton fits better. I believe he rather admired Mrs Thatcher.

Hamilton spent a lot of time reading Fisher's work while at University. In fact he said that he had spent so much time reading Fisher that it had affected the quality of his university degree. 
 
With such close study, it seems possible that Hamilton later unconsciously recalled Fisher's fundamental insight. It could have been a case of cryptamnesia.

"English Puritanism tended to have its roots in areas settled by Scandinavians, such as the Danelaw region in eastern England" 
 
Cf. 
 
"Other parts of the British Isles, like Northern Ireland, Scotland, Northumbria, Cumberland, from where Appalachian Whites can trace their roots, also had a considerable Viking influx. Unless you someone can show any sort of continuity in East Anglia from the 9th to the 17th century, say in marriage and fertility customs, I'd say it's completely accidental." 
 
My comment: There can have been no continuity because of the simple fact that the English were Catholic until the Reformation. There is nothing in Scandinavians, then or now, that is likely to give them a propensity to Puritanism. In any case, when the Scandinavians became Protestants, they became Lutherans, not Calvinists like the Puritans. 
 
I have seen the Domkirke (Cathedral) in Aarhus in Denmark. It looks like a Catholic Church after a bit of a tidy up. It seemed quite familiar to my Catholic eyes. That's because it's Lutheran not Calvinist. First Reformation, not Second Reformation.

I suggest that another useful way of presenting the data would be to have the size of the bubbles represent the ratio between the amount of coverage for a nation and its population. China's bubble for example would be much smaller. 
 
It would be interesting to do a similar plot for articles in The Economist and other magazines that make a point of providing worldwide coverage.

Another way of doing it would be to have the size of the bubbles represent the ratio between the number of column-inches and the population of the relevant country. In fact, that was what I thought you were going to do, but you don't seem to have. 
 
A problem with using bubbles is that it is not clear if it is the area of the "bubbles" that is the measure, or the apparent volume - since bubbles are three-dimensional in the real world. This is a classic representational problem, discussed in books like How to Lie With Statistics. 
 
It would be interesting to do the same thing for a magazine like The Economist, which aims to cover the entire world in an even-handed way. 
 
Julian

Yes, I meant that many men don't want to marry a woman who has already had sex with another man. I strongly suspect that men in many cultures are contemptuous of so many Western men's willingness to do so. 
 
The two reasons given above are no doubt partly true; but it has a lot to do with wanting exclusive access as well.

"White girls of today would be considered whores to white folks of 1900." 
 
Well, yes. 
 
This is the pendulum swinging back, driven by the clash of cultures. To many of the world's cultures, most white girls ARE sluts. 
 
Strangely enough, some men really don't want to go where a lot of other men have already been.

My blog "Biology Notes" 
 
http://julianodea.blogspot.com/ 
 
Julian O'Dea 
Canberra, Australia

Despite the stereotype of the red-haired Irish, a typical Irish colouring is dark hair and fair skin (and sometimes grey or blue eyes). It's a Celtic look (my wife and I both have it). Miss Iceland has the Irish colouring, but her features don't look Irish (Cf. The Corrs). Irish features tend to be heavier, not so delicate. 
 
Many Irish look like blondes with dark hair (how's that for Irish logic?)

Cavalli-Sforza edited a book on African Pygmies. He claimed that pygmy stature was related to a hot humid climate in the rainforest. There are various weaknesses in this theory. Modelling does not support the suggestion that the Pygmy body form, with short limbs, especially legs, will be advantageous in such a climate. Nor do actual experiments on heat relations of Bantu and Pygmy people in humid conditions and during exercise in hot conditions. If anything, Pygmies are worse off in such hot conditions. 
 
Another weakness with the heat relations theory of Pygmy/Negrito stature is that many such people live in cool, mountainous rainforests in places like New Guinea and the Philippines. 
 
I have published a theory that the small skeleton (and hence body size) of such people is related to low ultraviolet light levels under the rainforest canopy (they ARE low - I've measured them in North Queensland rainforest). Low UV means low vitamin D production in the skin, especially dark skin, and therefore reduced calcium uptake for skeletal growth and maintenance. I have also suggested that the "Hobbits" of Flores were simply extreme versions of the pygmoid body type, developing over a long time in rainforest. They were probably derived from Homo sapiens, possibly archaic Homo sapiens. 
 
Julian

I don't think that Catholicism is a "cultural religion"; or, if it is, it is a "multicultural" religion. A person of any nationality can become a Catholic, of course. The fact that Catholicism is more associated with some cultures than others is an accident of history. But there has long been, for example, a small indigenous English Catholic community, which apparently has its own particular religious culture. And there are Russian Catholics and Greek Catholics and so on. 
 
It is one of the traditional Catholic criticisms of the Orthodox and Anglican churches that they tend to be merely national churches. To be fair, Anglicanism is as much an African religion today as anything else, because of the British Empire. There are some African kids at my daughter's Catholic school here in Canberra, Australia, but - as it happens - they are all Anglicans. 
 
But, to return to my original point, the very name "Catholic" is intended to imply universality. 
 
Best wishes 
 
Julian

I am sceptical that the Reformation ushered in a "more equal" relationship between the spouses. (It was Luther who said that if women were worn out from childbearing, that was simply their lot in life.) As for the role of love in a normative Christian marriage, St Paul was directing husbands to love their wives in the first century AD.

I had a bit to do with charismatic Catholics here in Australia for a while. My impression was that it is a form of Catholicism that appeals to the young (with a lively fringe of the mentally unbalanced). The congregation here in Canberra, Australia's capital, had adopted habits from the United States, from Pentecostalism I believe it is called. I remember the priest attempting to introduce a sort of "holy communal clap" at one stage, which seemed of obvious American provenance. 
 
Nevertheless, Australians are not Americans, and Catholics are not Evangelicals. Catholicism has a long tradition of absorbing cultural elements from various sources, keeping what works, and moving on. 
 
I know of one famous defection of an American Catholic charismatic priest to Protestantism [I think there was a woman involved], but I also know of people who have moved from charismatic Catholicism to much more traditional forms of Catholicism. I also feel that the conservatism that sets in after youth will limit the endurance of the charismatic movement.

This reminds me of the "Dads" vs "Cads" discussion a few years ago, which I thought was in fact an idea from evolutionary psychology. Perhaps Rushton's ideas about differing reproductive strategies within the human species are also relevant.