<< It's too bad I don't believe genius is genetic, otherwise it might be
interesting to clone him [Hawkins]... (raises some fun ethical problems
too). >>
Yes, I have wondered often what would happen if one cloned Da Vinci, or some
other genius. Imagine his mind in todays technology?( Boggle)
Can we safely say that genius is not caused by mechanistic factors at all?
When someone says this or that characteristic is "not genetic"- it previously
meant: not passed down through heredity. Re cloning - this statement seems to
be made in a different light.
It raises, for me, the troubling and unsatisfactory definition of cognition
as "programs" running on a "wetware"- which I do not subscribe to. If our
brains are cloned, will they "think" in similar ways, will they hold same
attributes and "talents"?
If I am predisposed towards being good at say, math - or the arts, will my
clone also find these things easy? ( of course environment will affect these
things to a degree, but how can we know to- *what* -degree?)
Once upon a time I remember some feeble attempts on the list towards
redirecting a gender polarized debate on genius back to *definitions of
genius*.
If genius, or at least extremely high intelligence, is not genetic, what
combinations of factors will most nurture it? And can it be part of our
physical brain, or is it purely "programmed" in after birth?
With one of the main Extropian goals being improved intelligence, it is a
thread i would welcome.