Re: No nanotech before AI

From: Dana Hedberg (dah@signalinteractive.com)
Date: Wed Jul 12 2000 - 11:22:59 MDT


"Ross A. Finlayson" wrote:
>
> In terms of peoples' brains, there is change over even the last fifty years,
> not all good or bad or advancement or decline, yet it is change and humanity
> is as strong as ever for it, and thus it is evolution.
>
> Ross F.

I'd be interested in a source for this claim. I think there is a
difference between effects that cause the brain to develop better
(within an upper bound), such as good nutrition and a positively
stimulating environment, and those changes that can be called
evolutionary. I would believe the former on a time scale of fifty years,
but changes on the order of the addition of the cortex haven't been seen
in the last hundreds of thousands of years. Indeed, our general body
plan hasn't changed significantly for a much longer period than that.

What we need is a huge database of fMRI scans of people at various ages,
racial groups, gender combinations, and under specific environments.
Then we can establish some baselines for a number of different things,
such as what gross features and their functions seem to be a good
starting place for a common denominator. To my knowledge, this isn't
currently being done. Anyone else know differently?

-Dana



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