"For example, there are famous experiments in which people apparently make free decisions at certain moments and yet it’s found that the decision was actually made a little bit earlier, but their own perception of time and their actions within time have been sort of edited after the event"
This would also be the only way to simulate consciousness in AI. Makes total sense. We're AI.
In bodybuilding terms, "cutting" is being under calorie deficit. It can wreak havoc with your mood systems and that's why people can't keep it up. Start small.
Hey, I'm a 21 year old undergrad who's been freelancing part time. I primarily use oDesk and as long as you have a good understanding of english you've pretty much got most jobs under your belt. Execution, however depends on your skillset.
I started out at $5 per hour back in 2011. These days I make(on average) $100/hour working on small-medium tier Ruby on Rails and general front-end projects.
Good luck and I hope you find what you're looking for!
Web services that DO use Ruby today are almost always IO bound. For web services that don't require data crunching CPU bound processes, Ruby as a language is hardly the bottleneck.