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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (66215)	12/16/2004 5:11:51 PM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

I think I used the number 10K not 100K- in case that is what sent you on your journey; that's when he sees us as beginning this enormous development, but I went looking for some of the sections in the book on this topic in case I was misquoting. I haven't found the one about brain hardware yet, but here was one interesting para: The genetic engineering effected by biological evolution over millions of years of life on earth has done more to change the face of this planet than wind, fire, rain, and water. Darwinian evolution is incredibly powerful, but it's also glacial in its rate of change. It requires thousands of generations to test even the most minuscule of mutations in the population. Then, after competition has determined the fittest, it takes thousands of generations for the superior organism to dominate the species and, by dominating, spread its superior traits. For major architectural changes to an organism, the change takes tens of thousands of years-- like expanding the size of the brain and the cranium that houses it. What the book then goes on to say is that we have "tweaked" the system by learning tricks to learn and improve our processing speed. One tool is the computer. The author proposes that our brains our infected with a virus-- Knowledge. He applies the rules of genetic evolution to cultural evolution, which seems to me to be more what we are seeing than actual bio. evolution? We have gotten better at communicating, processing, storing. First language, then written language when it all began to explode because it could leap across time. But the basic biological state remains very much the same. At one point, the computer says, "Those people" (referring to ten thousand year ago beings that the computer had simulated in VR)"have hardware identical to yours and that of the people you know. Not that there aren't smart and dumb people during this time and their own. But the base level of biological evolution has not changed between this and modern time." He even says, give me two neandertals and raise them now, and they can make B's in community college. Or something like that. Not sure I agree. Although I see some people around here that we could send back to Neandertal time and I bet they would fit right in. That was a joke. Well, sort of. The population thing reminded me of another of his ideas-- he theorizes that this knowledge, this "virus" is often met with great resistance. Existing knowledge defends itself against new ideas by persecuting its proponents. (Boy, do we see that all the time). Knowledge reproduces by communication and evolves by way of survival of the fittest. And when knowledge was threatened, when wars threatened the survival of civilizations and reposited knowledge, then the parasitic virus fought back by reproducing massively with the Information Age and computers. Lots of fun theories and ideas anyway. I now have to go look up the Flynn effect.

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (66215)	12/17/2004 1:03:25 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

The human skull has only been a human skull for 100,000 years: But early humans used fire and made tools about 800,000 years ago. Maybe even 1.5 million years ago. Controlling fire is something that only humans do. news.bbc.co.uk The differences in skulls probably has more to do with language than anything else. Also, cooling the brain pan. Efficient use of energy by our muscles and brains gives a strong reproductive advantage, but the brain needs to be cooled.