hal@finney.org wrote:
> I suspect he was mostly taking advantage of the opportunity to embarrass
> his rival due to the unexpected and somewhat awkward result. But you
> can't help wondering whether the small number points to something we're
> missing.
Either human (and hence primate) genes don't look like normal vertebrate
stuff (unlikely), or we have a compact encoding. If you've got all the
ion channels machinery already encoded, all you need is something which
plays with morphology. It doesn't take many bases to make a large brain.
If there's indeed a gene or a gene group responsible for that, it would
indeed offer excellent ROI, albeit one three decades delayed. Contrary
to primates in the wild, a child with a supercharged brain wouldn't starve
in civilization. While a larger brain doesn't necessarily mean high IQ,
finding the right mix of genes and environment should be possible.
Interesting times, indeed.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:56:39 MDT