> At 12:35 PM 9/2/1999 -0400, you wrote: ... Joe Z Tsien
> >of Princeton University has used genetic engineering to create a mouse with
> >greater intelligence than any found on Earth...
>
> Philip Witham wrote: ...How could it be that nature didn't select for this? So simple, so apparently effective, there must be a down side, like - the brilliant mouse decides that having children would pinch her lifestyle. Mutation disappears from gene
> pool....
Exactly! Evidently most ecological niches offer little or no reproductive advantage to higher intelligence, so the species in those niches get no smarter. My contention is that humankind has created an ecological niche which not only offers no reproductive advantage to higher intelligence, there is in fact a *very large* reproductive advantage to stupidity and irresponsibility. spike