Robert J. Bradbury, <bradbury@www.aeiveos.com>, writes:
> On Sat, 4 Sep 1999, John Clark wrote:
> > Even more impressive the
> > Doogie mice learned much better when their old ideas no longer worked;
> > after a while the tone still sounded but the shock no longer came, the wild
> > mice were much slower in figuring out that the tone no longer meant danger.
>
> Again, a new "memory" (discorrelation), on top of an old memory.
> You are implying that understanding that something only works 3 out
> 10 times is intelligence. I would call it simply majority rules "logic"
> where the critical improvement is the ability to more accurately store
> the number of successes and failures.
>
> > To quote from the article " transgenic mice are quicker to learn
> > to disassociate the previously paired events". You can't do that
> > with improved memory alone.
>
> The comparison & selection part of the thought machine has remained the
> same, what has improved is the ability to remember the events and recall
> them for comparison with a higher signal-to-noise ratio.
Keep in mind that these are MICE. They're not going to be inventing the theory of relativity. Do you claim that mice simply can't shed any light on the mechanisms of human intelligence, because they don't have any? What would constitute intelligent behavior in mice, as compared to simply memory improvement?
Hal