I was out in front of my house with my 3 year old. She looked up and said "train."
She was referring to the train horn she was hearing from about 4 miles away in Encinitas. She said this before my own brain had tossed my own hearing of this in to /dev/null, so I got to hear what that train horn sounds like from 4 miles away in a coastal town in the early evening.
That baby has been creating beauty in my life for more than 16 years and she is only 15.5 years old. Most recently I have been teaching her to drive, pushing all sorts of behaviors down in to her cerebellum so that her conscious mind can worry about pedestrians and cars stopping suddenly in front of her. Happily for me, it is hard for me to imagine more fun or exciting tasks than teaching her to drive.
I've always been more of a theoretician, but it's important to try one's hand at practical problems from time to time. In that vein, I've decided to try three simultaneous experiments on major Less Wrong themes. I will aim to acquire something to protect, I will practice training a seed intelligence, and I will become more familiar with many consequences of evolutionary psychology.
In the spirit of efficiency I'll combine all these experiments into one:
She's never seen Star Wars or Doctor Who.
She's never seen David Attenborough or read J. L. Borges.
She's never had a philosophical debate.
She's never been skiing.
Never had sex, never been hugged or even been licked by a dog!
She has so much to look forwards to...
(Though she'll be very boring for several months yet!)