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To: zonder who wrote (7671)	3/8/2004 1:08:51 PM
From: redfish	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20773

I haven't read Stephenson's new one, I checked it out at the library but was only 400 pages in when the due date came up. I've read The Diamond Age, which I thought was very good and cyberpunky like Snow Crash. The best of his work imo is Cryptonomicon, which takes a while to get into but very worthwhile. It is somewhat cyberpunk, in that the central concern is the flow of information. The best part is the one set during WWII and efforts of each country's cryptologists to one-up each other, really fascinating stuff.

To: zonder who wrote (7671)	3/8/2004 3:49:00 PM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20773

I was only attempting to point out a distinction between the dynamic chemistry of learning, and the more fixed chemistry of heredity. To cope with modern life, for example, there appears to be a tendancy for a whole new layer of brain cells to survive, under genetic and evolutionary pressures. Modern medicine, especially C-sections have allowed this variation (and it's expanded skull size) to increase. This extra level of connections allows the recipient to cope a bit better in a changing environment. When the connections are not just so, and this being a new feature in human anatomy is not yet as precisely adapted as it will be, leads to autism or aspergers syndrome. example: eurekalert.org On the other hand, I completely agree that learning processes have a great deal of effect on future learning. In my studies of artificial neural networks show that strong but incomplete training can lead to local minimums in the topology. This leads to good, but not great answers. The nurons often have to be shook out of this condition using random "artificial anealing" algorythms that some people suggest is similar to humor for our brains. An uncomplicated description of the effects of learning is: geocities.com TP