"I would give anything to know what you thought at the moment you died," Pierce said. His voice echoed in the tomb. The flame went out. - Michael Crichton

But complex animals had obtained their adaptive flexibility at some cost — they had traded one dependency for another. It was no longer necessary to change their bodies to adapt, because now their adaptation was behavior, socially determined. That behavior required learning. In a sense, among higher animals adaptive fitness was no longer transmitted to the next generation by DNA at all. It was now carried by teaching.

This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right.

Each person bears a fear which is special to him. One man fears a close space and another man fears drowning; each laughs at the other and calls him stupid. Thus fear is only a preference, to be counted the same as the preference for one woman or another, or mutton for pig, or cabbage for onion.