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Genetically Engineered "Smart" Mice
Lucius Lucanius writes "A smart gene that helps mice learn faster has been discovered. This follows recent discoveries about neuron generation in monkeys and the creation of doogie the smart mouse. Excitement abounds in the "smart pet" industry, but will it ever be applied to humans?"
I wonder if I could train a "smart" dog to have dinner ready for me when I get home?
If I use a smart mouse, will I be better at Quake II Arena?
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
for Algernon ...
Personally, I can't wait. Maybe we can get smart humans, instead of the dumb variety we have now. (want proof? Read at 0).
www.eFax.com are spammers
I guess i'm the hunter/killer doogie mouse now.
Lets find the Karma gene! I bet we could extract it from Signal 11. And while we're at it, lets eliminate the Troll and Flamebait genes.
---- I made the Kessel Run in under 11 parsecs.
Excitement abounds in the "smart pet" industry, but will it ever be applied to humans?"
Who would want a smart human as a pet?
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
You mean my peecee mouse will know to click on porn before I do? ;)
___
Intellimouse
---- I made the Kessel Run in under 11 parsecs.
Come on guys, do we really NEED smarter mice? What happens when they "learn" what a mouse trap is? What happens when they "learn" to open the fridge? Come on, THINK before you act people!
:-)
http://kered.org
Well, if Gattaca is round the corner, I better start saving up for college *and* genetic engineering for my kids. At 24, having finished university this year. Sigh. But on the bright side its a good excuse for putting off fatherhood, "honey if we wait till next year, we can have an even smarter kid!"
I would think the folks at PETA would be the first in line for testing. That would kill two birds with one stone.* * This is an "expression" and is not intended to suggest that it is okay to kill birds.
forth ?love if honk then
If someone does start marketing smart pets, we'll probably see all sorts of disruptions in nature. Smarter mice would quickly outcompete the dumber, unmodified ones. How well would they do against unmodified cats?
I forget what 8 was for.
A smart gene does not bode well for its continued existence. -- Feel free to mod to -1 troll; I dont care, my pet dog can probably beat you at checkers anyway.
It's Pinky, it's Pinky and the Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain....
Please, I beg of you, do not moderate this down or reply in flame because you disagree! I'm only trying to make a point (that you may or not believe in) for the sake of discussion.
Evolution has held before a process of survival of the fittest. OK. This is very over-simplified, but let's just leave it at that. We can assume that there are minor differences in every creature, and those differences which prove beneficial tend to be passed on, thus evolving the species. I know we now know that there are conditions that can alter the rate of evolution, but again, for the sake of discussion, let's keep it simple.
The problem that I've always seen is that humans have stopped evolving. At least according to this scheme. Sure, we keep attaining more knowlege, but for the most part the biological (and this includes mental) aspect of humanity is not changing (at least in no way that is caused by the strictest sense of evolution). This is because we no longer abide by "survival of the fittest".
Sure, just because someone is smarter / stronger / etc than most gives him/her a huge advantage in life, but doesn't necessarily affect the outcome of survival. With some exceptions, no longer do the fittest survive only, but all do. This means that weak genes are just as likely to be passed along as strong ones. Evolution, for the most part, no longer applies.
Have we reached the stage where we need to evolve ourselves? Where we are in control of evolution? It's a scary thought. Granted, this article only hints of what may be possible in the future, but it's a concept that is relatively new and frighteningly, very feasable. The ability to modify genes in an unborn embryo.
Isn't this controlling the specie's evolution? No matter how many laws the nation or world passes, if the technology exists it will be used. There is not, however, any way to stop the progress.
Personally, I don't think the question is if we ever are able to control our own evolution, how to we stop it, but, when we are able to control our own evolution, how will we mold it?
Something to think about.
Peace,
DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
Shh! Nobody knows I'm gay!
I wonder if we can train it to go and search and destroy missions? "Quick Intellimouse! Eliminate the neighbors and bring their caffeine to me!" =).
-Antipop
Secret of NIMH, probably on my favorite movies as a kid. And now it's all possible...
Interesting fact from that movie, Shannen Doherty did the voice of the little mouse Teresa.
Anyone else notice how OLD all of this news is ??
We read these papers in journal club last FALL !!
Yet Hemos is posting it now. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
In tests, the "Doogie" mice significantly outperformed genetically unmodified mice in such tasks as running mazes, recognizing objects in their environment, and solving such problems as how to get themselves out of a pool of water and up onto a pedestal.
When I haven't been drinking heavily, I can allready do all these tasks to a moderate degree...Bring on the wings and gills! Lets get Jiggy with this genetic engineering!
air and light and time and space
For now I'll try out designing my child here
I'd love a smart me!
Am I the only one reminded of the book "The Rats of Nihm" which Disney later destroyed with the movie "The Secret of Nihm"?
Basically the story of some Lab Rats and the widow and children of a Lab Mouse all of whom could read and reason beyond normal animals... (they even 'borrowed' electricity from the local farm for their own use.)
Ahhh... the great days of childhood fantasies... eirie how they may come true...
...some days you're the dog, some days you're the hydrant...
And what would the consequences be if we were to take this discovery and apply it to humans? Why couldn't something like the movie Lawnmower Man happen (of course on a smaller scale)? We need to think long and hard before putting these types of discoveries to use.. we need to ask ourselves why these changes haven't evolved by themselves, in the same way they've been doing for millions of years.
--
Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Pinky?
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
You can bet genetic scientists are looking at experimenting with this gene on humans.
If similar genes are found in the human genome, then there will be a lot of clandestine experimentation to find the "higher intelligence" switch. Once there is sufficient scientific proof of children with IQ>150 on a regular basis, the race will be on to market gene therapy for couples to ensure their children are super-geniuses, who will all go out and found dot.coms and make a fortune.
We can hope that when the majority of the human race has increased intelligence, education, health care, space exploration, and other necessary programs all get the support they deserve without evil politicing stealing away resources.
But in the short term, it will bring a whole new level of meaning to "haves" and "have-nots". Gattaca anyone?
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Maybe if we find a smart gene in humans, we'll be able to break the crap music stranglehold and see Britney Spears and Christina Agulara and all those other idiots for what they are - idiots.
Actually, in my not so humble opinion, what we need to encourage is intellect, wisdom, speed, strength, and agility. I have no qualms with playing with our genes to turn humans from the backwards animals we are now into a race of superintellegent muscle-covered speed demons. By selective breeding, horse trainers and breeders are able to make faster and stronger horses, and I'm sure that we can do the same thing. But by figuring out how to do this with our genes, the process can be speeded up considerably.
Chris 'coldacid' Charabaruk Meldstar Entertainment
I wonder how many references we'll see to Flowers for Algernon. That was a great book, by the way.
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
you can see a picture of the engineered mice here.
Go get your free Palm V (25 referrals needed only!)
funny... they had all this learning retention drugs called nootropics. Unlike Protien Design Labs which humanizes drugs, it looks like these guys are de-humanizing them.
;)
cad-fu: finally community for CAD/CAM/CAE
We escaped from the lab about two years ago - a rather famous lab that's had some problems "losing" things, maybe you've read about them? Anyway, we'd like to say things are working great - we built a library underground and have a small city there. Our first generation is a sight to behold - already at a mere four months they are already grasping the fundamentals of trig.. oh, the beauty.. *sniff* but that's not why I'm here.
You see, we try to stay out of the way and content ourselves with trying to take over the world in our free time at night (not related to a cartoon with a similar plot, puh-lease!).. well.. it's been going well. We were able to convince some "judge" who calls himself a "jackson" to destroy our only rival.
We're right about ready to license out our compiler and new chip architecture under the MGPL (Mouse GPL), as well as the MouSE OS, which is a simple form of AI life I'm sure your scientists will like. This AI will quickly infiltrate the 'net and hold all pr0n ransom, allowing us to control you feeble species. You see, we've been watching television and understand that you humans are very reliant on your taboo pr0n and we intend to leverage our OS into the pr0n market and take it over.
Thank you,
- The Mouse
``We injected olive oil into the brains of rats and found we could facilitate GAP-43 phosphorylation,'' he said. ``In dietary studies, corn oil was especially useful in facilitating memory.'
Researcher:"Okay, hold still, I'm going to inject olive oil into your head."
Human Subject:"OUCH! That hurt! And it made my brain feel all squishy! I don't want to be in this experiment any more!"
Researcher:"See! You're smarter already!"
Joe Sixpack is dead!
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
So this means what? That instead of mindlessly running in a wheel, mice will be using the wheels to stay fit (because after all, those sunflower seeds go straight to the hips)? Or, instead of running mazes for food, they will acquire jobs in the real world and run rat-races for a quick buck? Instead of multiplying like--for lack of a better term--'mice', they will instead start taking birth-control pills and limit themselves to 2.4 micelings a family? Will white mice hate black mice? Will female mice be underpaid? Will leader mice become impeached because they were only as faithful as their options?
We think we're so smart. I say, "Leave mice the way they are." If (insert your deity here) wanted mice to be smart, they would have been made that way.
-={(.Y.)}=-
Thank you for reading One Man's Opinion. No participation necessary. Offer void where deemed by law or PATRIOT Act.
Anyone read The Reality Dysfunction by Peter Hamilton (or either of the sequels). It describes geneering, where peoples genes have been fiddled with to enhance them as their parents have seen fit.
Personally I'm in the 'don't mess with something you don't _really_ understand' camp.
james
--
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!
Now that they've invented smart pets, someone is bound to get a patent on them, and then all kinds of people will get sued for illegal copying. On second thought, maybe they'll just sue the pets.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Now maybe they will be able to remove the stupid gene from dogs and ASP developers!!
The thieves apparently entered the cafeteria late at night through a ceiling heating duct and lowered themselves to the floor using a stolen fishing rod. After disabling the security motion detector, they picked the combination lock on the cupboard and stole various food supplies, including American cheese singles, peanut butter crackers, and java-chip power bars.
"It's really strange," said cashier Fred Tunalu, "that heating duct is really, really small."
In a completely unrelated story, Pets.com has been suffering from an abnormal increase in fraudulent credit card transactions, resulting in (continued on page 42)
Hrm, here is a concept as a Quake player... nah, never happen.
Involve rubber pants? *smack* No,what I always ponder, how to take over the world!!!
But will it play Unreal Tournament and kill all my enemies and capture flags automatically? And will it automatically scroll down when i'm done reading a page?
(yes i know it isn't THAT kind of mice...)
It scares me to know (not think) that eventually this is going to be applied to humanity. Of all the apocalyptical scenarios envisioned by science fiction writers, the genetically-bred humans vs. natural humans forwarded in media such as Star Wars and Gattica seems the most real and most likely. While aliens or meteors may come out of the sky, there's a certain lack of denial that eventually human beings are going to genetically alter themselves in more than trivial ways, and given human nature, it's not a stretch to imagine a way peeking its head out of such a development.
The only hope I draw is from Mother Nature herself. Everyone talks about this being a step in evolution, but what if there's a reason we haven't evolved there yet? I like stories like Ender's Shadows that posit what corrective measures nature may have preinstalled. Card's certainly not alone in his view, either. What isn't as interesting as a genetic super-mouse is the development of a genetic super-mouse. Is it normal in every way except for intelligence, or will other genes be affected by this one being turned on, genes that may lead to super strength or self-destruction.
Our view of gene structure is simplified. We turn a gene on and consider it a success. Nature, however, does not live in a vacuum. Everything is balanced tenuously in nature, and turning on one gene may disrupt that balance completely. So when, not if, we make these leaps, the study shouldn't be about the object being modified, but about the way that nature reacts to those modifications, for that will be where the real benefits are found.
Years ago, some aspiring scientist was on a vacation with his family to Disneyland. He was scarred for life, when in one unthinking moment, the Mickey Mouse actor removed his costume head to get a drink of water.
The world will never hear the end of this.
-={(.Y.)}=-
Thank you for reading One Man's Opinion. No participation necessary. Offer void where deemed by law or PATRIOT Act.
I think it's time we started experimenting with uplift a la David Brin: giving intelligent animal species (e.g., dolphins, chimps, gorillas, etc.) sentience.
--
Kyle R. Rose, MIT LCS
[ home ]
Not only that, but in a group of people all the same, how will we differentiate ourselves? Right now I can say that I'm different than my mom, and my brother, and my community.. but what if I only knew 10,000 copies of myself? I'll tell you what I'd do - I'd compete to be the best version of me!
So we have competition, international tensions, a social (and quite possibly economic) division between the genetic have and have-nots.. Marx would have some words about this..
Let me lay out the scenario in plainer terms: Reduce entropy, reduce the ability to survive.
The whole situition reminds me of a book Beggars in Spain. The idea was that we had figured out how to turn off the gene that causes us to sleep. Now, that's great but the vast majority of people still need to sleep and the nonsleepers are the minority. Does this seem to hit anyone with any ideas of what the "superintelligent" children would have to deal with? I mean it's all great. We can make a superintelligent mouse and maybe that means we can make a superintelligent anything. However, no one is going to give this away so that means the intelligent will be outnumbered by the "dumb" normal masses. This will lead to a new kind of perjudice. But that's just my opintion.
What does this spell out for the power struggles between Tom and Jerry, Itchy and Scratchy, Mighty Mouse and assorted bad guys, Danger Mouse and Baron Greenback (not a cat, but probably in the same union)?
Please add to the list. Those damn cartoon mice get away with murder.
zaugg
``It maintains the juvenile character ... the childlike appreciation of things,'' he said.
I suppose this is where Mickey asks for tenure...
Whatever you come across in life.. as long as there's no money in it,... it'll probably be alright.
I'm not sure how much this will affect humans? All this is based on the fact that mice have the same brain function as us. I remember when they had made this super anti-cancer/aids vaccine for monkeys (saying that it function on humans too) and the results were horrible. Only side-effects, and nobody was cured or protected from it.
So you get a smart gene "installed" in your child- Who owns it? I was just reading this scary story at Wired News about the Monsanto/Farmer sue-sounter-sue situation. Supposedly some Monsanto-patented genes made it into his field- They accuse him of stealing, and he counter-sues because the genes made it into his crop without his knowledge or consent. -Freaky stuff. Will you have to pay a yearly licensing fee for some of you're childrens genes? What if you didn't want those genes there in the first place? How do you compartmentalize genetic material?
air and light and time and space
Evolution is not just about survival, it is about breeding. Individuals with poor genes may survive, but no hot chicks will want to fuck them, so they will not pass those genes on.
Many 'nerds' and other less-than-prime specimens are able to attract women through their high salaries and material security. However, studies have shown that up to 50% of their children were actually conceived in extra-marital affares with hot young studs, because women have a deep instinct to get the best DNA for their offspring.
Many people with what would be considered 'undesirable' genes are able to mate quite easily with other ugly, stupid people. Just look at an episode of Jerry Springer for evidence of this. There is a theory that these people are breeding faster (a girl's IQ is proportional to the age at which she first gets knocked up, and inversley to the number of children she eventually has) and therefore evolution is decreasing our average IQ.
Many of the markers developed by evolution to pick out potential mates are actually quite accidental 'red herrings' that are now propogated through the mechanism of evolution, but serve no real purpose. For instance, one day a caveman decides he finds large breasts attractive. He marries a girl with big tits. All his children inherit his desire for breasts, and also look for wives with big knockers. Eventually, having large breasts is considered a desirable quality in a mate, even though it serves no real purpose.
Abashed the Devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is
"The problem that I've always seen is that humans have stopped evolving."
This is the foundation of your entire post--but you have not backed up this assertion. Cro-Magnon appeared, what, 25,000 years ago (can a paleontologist supply us with a real number, please)? Not much evolution happens in 25,000 years.
In any case, remember that evolution isn't really "survival of the fittest"--it's "reproduction of the survivors". It doesn't matter how long you live (due to glasses, neighbors, organ donors and other miracles of modern science). What matters is: Did you have any children? If not, the species "evolves away from you". If so, it "evolves towards you".
And there are plenty of modern-day factors that create "reproductive differentials": attractiveness, diseases that people survive but that leave them sterile, income (I realize you can't literally inherit wealth--but if wealth was biologically linked, like through racism, it might be/become a heritable characteristic), etc.
This is not to say that some species don't change very slowly or not at all over time--for instance the modern cockroach is nearly identical (or so the story goes) to it's ancient predecessor. But again, that just means that it is "evolving in place"--every time a cockroach is born that is different, it dies--current cockroach design is apparently optimal for it's niche.
In other words, no, there is no need to "evolve ourselves". There is no target we are trying to hit that we are getting behind on. Evolution is merely the process of fitting a species into a niche. If we fit, we're OK.
--
Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
The same thing they do every night. . . .
Try to take over the world!!!
(or is that Microsoft???)
We are not 'dirtying' our gene pool with people who have disabilities! The very definition of evolution is such that, if we frame a disability as a trait, that in certain environmental circumstances a trait is a disadvantage, useless, or an advantage. So that means that if we start throwing things out of our gene pool, we lose evolutionary power because we won't be able to match those genes to future cases because they happened to fail on past cases.
In this case, a disabled person can have *perfectly* healthy/good genes and an unfortunate environmental circumstance. Like mothers who take drugs during pregnancy. Or we have extreme cases, like Steven Hawkings, where a disability is paired with a bonus.
Evolution is still alive and well! As long as there are factors that control our birth rate and survival rate, evolution is at work!
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Wow, now all I need to make my self smarter is shitloads of olive oil, a syringe, and a hole in my head so that I can inject it directly into my brain!
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
You need to understand that surviving as a species and surviving as a civilization are two different things. There are absolutely NO threats to our species on a large scale (with the exeption of outside factors such as Nuclear Anihilation, Ecological Destruciton, or Gigantic Meteors). The "Quality" of humans as a species, while arguably stagnant, is certainly not biologically on the decline. That being said, physical and mental disability are present in ALL species of animal, and chromosomal abnormality is present in ALL forms of life. This is mutation, NOT evolution. Secondly, the disabled rarely procreate. Its not like we are breeding a race of mongoloid mutants. Support and compassion are what make us human, beyond our Dioxyribonucleic makeup. When we stop supporting and caring for those that are not able to care for ourselves, we do more for the species than "Good Breeding" could ever do.
i read a short story once about a couple who were having pioneering gene manipulation to produce a genius-child. one night they receive a message from their child in the future, sent backwards in time, telling them not to create him. apparently all humans who reach a certian IQ figure out a way to erase their own existence and hence achieve nirvana.
Abashed the Devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is
Not with the post it's self, but...
Most people replying seem to think that we as a species have not been recording our history for long enough to notice evolution happening.
Thats crap, Evolution of the human species only stoped last century. People who could not have survied childhood 50 to 100 years ago are now haveing children or grandchildren with the same genetic problems.
Lesser problems abound also, like those able to breed but not smart enough to realise that thier wage can't support more than a couple of children!
Before we go on fixing the human species we should learn how to manage it, and it's environment.
Tokyo Joe
Few people realize that evolution will not provide the best of all designs. yes, mice might compete better with smarter genes. Why didn't they evolve them? well, evolution is completely random, and usually doesn't kick in unless there is some major changes going around. its a system of punctuated equilibrium. So what you end up with is a bunch of life, good enough to survive, but not great. Why shouldn't we try to improve it.
"My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett
Over their trade mark "IntelliMouse".
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
I will name some factors that influence our birth rate, our propogation, and our survival. By those very factors then the human race is evolving because they are selecting survivors.
AIDS is going to change the landscape of very many countries over the next 2 generations.
Affluence and technology seems to very effectively strangle the population growth of a country, again effecting birth rate and growth rate.
Religions and beliefs the encourage large families affect the growth and birth rate as well, and these will also effect human evolution.
Affluence and technology also seems to retard the age of conception, and this will change the way in which humans select, reproduce, and care for our young.
So no, there are still evolutionary forces in action, even if we try our best to get rid of them!
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
But the cat was kind of scary.
Don Bluth was a genetic pioneer
-JTB
When has nature ever proven it knows better than us? I can't think of a case, can you? Inteligence hasn't been an "alpha" trait in any species for long enough to matter. Human's started that with breeding programs - and THAT has affected certain species in what seems to me to be a positive manner. I've never mat a truly wild dog, and I never want to! I even believe a domestic guard dog would beat one in a fight by being more aware - and, likely, healthier.
"Survival of the fitest" - at best a gross oversiplification - no loger applies to humans. The "alpha -male" bit still does, but it does not focus on pure inteligence - I'd more call it ingenuity, or "Savvy" maybe. Think about it, Bill Gates is a great business man... his daughter is gonna be prime meat too... (sorry for the slur - it seemed fitting).
Anyway, if anything, animal breeding results has shown we're not actually wrong about wanting to encourage specific traits, and I'd bet we could apply it to ourselves sucsessfully. Anyway, if you wanna think Drawback, read the new Ender book "Ender's Shaddow" By Orson Scott Card.
Everything and everyone is an aspect of Gd. So remember to show proper respect!
Evolution is still proceeding, just along different lines. As you state, almost all genes survive to breed, not just the fittest. So the genes that propagate the most successfully will be those belonging to the people who have the most offspring. Therefore we are evolving into Catholics.
(Warning for the humour impaired, this isn't serious).
tangent - art and creation are a higher purpose
postmoderncore - art and creation are a higher purpose
When will scientists actually do something useful and create a smart woman. Discuss!
Gaelen
New kids on the block
Humans stiff competition
Beware, mice from NIMH
------
------
You are in a twisty little maze of open source licenses, all different.
I've thought this for a while, but whenever I try to explain it, people sort of look at me funny and go, "What?" ;)
Anyway, I think you're right. One of the more disturbing prospects for human evolution was in the Star Trek: Voyager episode in which travel beyond "Warp 10" causes a couple of crewmen to hyper-evolve into giant fish-slugs.
Great...
To draw on another sci-fi source, Simon R Green has a series of (five? six?) books called the "Deathstalker" saga. All silliness aside. the first book features a mysterious and ancient alien artifact which induces evolution, to the point where the characters who pass through it develop abilities and strengths beyond normal humans. That's an interesting thought: We've halted our own evolution, so we have to do it "manually." Would we cause everyone to evolve the same way? That would kind of defeat the purpose...
Okay, enough stream-of-consciousness. I heartily agree with you.
===
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Are the rest of you as tied of this "I know I'm gonna get marked down for this, but..." shit as I am?
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Does this prove the feared and hated Bell Curve right?
I mean in the intelectual sense. I do not have a problem with animal experimentation.
But, what if we make a mouse so smart that you can not feel OK about experimenting on it anymore. I realize that it has not come to that far yet. Maybe someday it will.
I just read "candle" by John Barnes. Aside from the fact that it got kind of incomprehensible toward the end, it got me thingking about "memes" - programs that run in people's heads. Assuming this is plausible, why not write a sort of background meme (TSR-style?) that "optimizes" brain power, or maybe organizes knowledge or something. No more mucking about with genes. .
It's just a thought. IANNNHEBASOGEOFTMAEIAOT
(I am not now nor have ever been a scientist or genetic engineer or for that matter an expert in any of this)
===
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
I find that when I play Mozart around the house, the mice that hang around the place get smarter, steal the cheese without setting off the traps, and all that. It's much cheaper than genetic engineering, and more practical too, unless you don't like Mozart. (I don't. I wear earplugs during the experiments. Pretty soon the mice will be smarter than me am.)
/. science section next month.)
Right now I'm trying to build one of those newfangled robots with the two lamprey neurons, to see whether Mozart makes it (err, them?) smarter too.
If that works, I'm going to try it on the fungus that grows in my shower. (For this I may have to do a little 'shaping', since fungus isn't very bright to start with. For example, I'll zap it with a shot of Tilex every time it pushes the wrong button. I'm optimistic about the whole thing. Look for my paper in the
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
That would be Eugene by Greg Egan, which can be found his collection of short stories, Axiomatic . His stuff is some of the best science fiction I've found, and I suspect the average /. reader would appreciate it...
And The Moral Virologist (also found in Axiomatic) still makes me uneasy...
Either way, here's a list to chew on;
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Rats of NIMH are coming! ;)
There's always a lot of talk about "improving" the human species. But what really would we want to change?
Let's look at intelligence. Most people tend to focus on that. Do we really want to blindly engineer people with IQs of 150? I've known a number of people who have had PhDs, yet also had the worst interpersonal skills I had ever encountered. One person I knew had a PhD in physics, yet chose to work in retail. A roommate of mine in college carried a 4.0 average in a 5 year mechanical engineering program, but had the personality of a rock and smelled like a goat. On the other hand, I've also known people who barely made it through school, but were the best organizers of people and events. Maybe there IS an inverse relationship between classical IQ and the ability to work in groups. Humanity has advanced though its ability to work in groups. Occasionally, a bright individual appears and influences the group, but this doesn't happen often. The history of civilization is more the story of newer groups standing on the shoulders of the older ones to build newer things. Within humanity, there are people who are best at organizing, there are people who are best at following and there are those who are best at working alone, needing no direction and offering none. These three personalities merge together to give us the humanity we are most familiar with. Humanity is not just a collection of individuals, it is a dynamic, supremely adaptable mass greater than the sum of its parts.
Are we still evolving? That depends on your point of view. Humanity has left the bush. It's less likely that odd populations will become so isolated as to allow genetic mutations to create new breeds or species of humans. Today's focus in genetics lies in curing diseases. Can we create a smarter person? Quite possibly. Can we force that newly created person to act intelligently? Quite probably NOT. Humans CHOOSE to act stupidly. That act of intelligent decision making requires WORK - and there are LOTS of lazy people.
When changing the genetic behavior of individuals, the group aspects must be considered.
Its obviously too late... They implemented this technology on me years ago..... =)
My little sad piece of the internet: www.mtndewd
Now, I assume that ingesting the neurotransmitters would cause them to break down. However, with all the current power juices out there supposedly providing intellectual stimulation, wouldn't it be possible to synthesize this NMDA neurotransmitter and give it to people in injections. Who cares about the mice, as long as it is known to work in humans to increase memory and facilitate learning, then lets get some!
My idea: since the gene has already been isolated, just put this gene into some common bacterial DNA. The bacteria will produce lots of the stuff, just isolate it somehow (centrifuge, etc), purify and then bottle the stuff. Maybe it will need to be refrigerated and have a short shelf life like insulin, but whatever. It'll still be valuable even if it has to be frozen in liquid nitrogen.
Now who wouldn't pay for a super drug that actually increases brain power? Use it before cramming for finals, before taking a standardized test, before a technical interview, etc.
Now the FDA takes forever to approve drugs, and rightly so. However, this is a natural part of the human body, and maybe not so dangerous. Also, put the manufacturing plant in Mexico or Brazil where you can buy all kinds of things like viagra and penicillin over the counter.
So who's going to go look for venture capital with me. The IPO is in a month and a half!
"Politics is for the moment, an equation lasts eternity" -A. Einstein
I will try not repeat the many good arguments posted previously in the thread.
;) if you survive you belong to that mythical race of "the fittest". You survived, therefore you are fit to survive. Sure, that is no longer biased (at least in cities) to how good you are at hunting buffaloes with a spear. Because that is no longer a relevant description on "fittest".
You seem to be concerned that "the fittest" are no longer the only ones surviving (and more importantly, reproducing.) I disagree. Totally. Completely. Absolutely. By definition (of course, your definition may be different
On the other hand you seem concerned about the fact that more people are surviving than previously. How is that a bad thing? That is the point of evolution (sorta). To make organisms better able to survive, reproduce and expand. (On the pessimistic side, you just have to wait for a bit and Malthus will come around. Unless (maybe) we go to the stars...) Also, think information, think entropy, think rich, diverse gene pool.
Finally (and I guess I repeated more than I intended) think scale. Sure, we appear to not have evolved much in the last few hundred years. Pretty much nothing ever does in that puny timescale. And if you extend your definition of evolution to include more than physical characteristics of the individual (not proper biology, I know,) we *have* evolved to an amazing degree in an amazingly short time.
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The opinions posted do not reflect the opinions of my employer, myself, the poster or Mr. AC. The administration takes no responsability whatsoever for damages. Or anything else.
PLEASE Moderate this up...it is hilarious!
Once again man, great post!
Social selection has been at work on ants, bees, wolves, etc; anything with a social structure where the existence of the structure aids or hurts the survival of the species.
Look at *sterile* ants, bees, and insects, yet they very much reproduce, evolve, and survive.
Look at pack/pod/social creatures where some never get to mate, while others get all the eggs. They survive, reproduce, evolve, mate, etc.
We are no different.
We have not outsmarted evolution. By it's definition of 'survival of the fittest', anything, social, genetic, or otherwise, that enhance reproduction, survival, and mating, is encouraged, while anything that reduces the three is discouraged.
Culture can both help and hurt; religions that want people to breed like rabits work in one way. Culture that value quality of living(and less children) push it the other way. Culture that encourage diversity, growth, and success help us, where culture that suppresses it hurt us.
There are socio-genetic cultural forces that enact evolutionary forces on us. AIDs, birth rates, quality of living, hormones in our food, contaminated environments, diabetes, drugs, etc.
So to say that 'another form of evolution is at work' now is misleading, because this force has been here from the dawn of time.
We're just smart enough to minimize the 'natural' process of the more brute force eat/die/mate/breed selection, while encouraging the other more secondary terms instead
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Yes, it's true - super-intelligent mice threaten the very existence of our species. Check out this report for yourself:
http://www.circling.org/articles/sm artmice.html
Unfortunately, this is the real (insidious) reason the Pope has taken such a strong stance against birth control. He sees the influence of the church waning, as the western world becomes richer and better educated, thus more capable of defining their own moral compass, so to speak. The solution? Damn millions of people to lives of miserable poverty by harnassing their natural human impulse for recreational procreation and using it as a weapon against them. A person with many children will be unable to achieve the same prosperity their neighbors enjoy, and will therefore be more likely to become seduced by the same murderous pyramid scheme of religious insanity that repressed their parents and grandparents to the seventh generation. More children = morte tithes = more political influence.
Disagree? Visit any south american country (including texas). You'll realize the mind-numbing truth, just as I did. The vatican is a scab, a festering scab, that must be lifted from this earth if we are ever to achieve our birthright as a sentient species.
imuho
one flaw in the smart gene: a huge lag.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
I strongly agree, and think that this is a consequence of today's highly advanced medical technology. No longer are pesky genetic problems (tendency for diseases, congenital defects) a reason to die anymore.
Now, I'm not saying that I want all of those people that do have these problems to die -- that's just plain immoral. But we have to fact that because we no longer have to compete with each other for survival, then we're not going to evolve.
If we're not careful, these smart mice are going to just keep on evolving until they seize control of the world from we non-evolving humans. At least I'll be satisfied in knowing that all of these supersmart mice will be using Linux. :-)
Intelligent mice
Now, instead of India
Outsource to rodents
The obvious answer is that there is a significantly lower incidence of 4th of July fireworks injuries in this population.. but seriously, where have you read that IQ is decreasing?
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And my title was cooler...
I don't think so.. Sure, it's not the same because we no longer live on caves, and probably people with less education/money (posibilities to actually live longer or better on a modern city) will have more children. But, who controls evolution? There is not a "god" that controls evoluon.. Evolution results from the convination of a lot of factors. So, if we start srewing with ourserlves, thats another factor, a new, and very interesting factor, not seen on other species before.
Of course, to see actual evolution we would have to wait a _LOT_ of time, at least when it's the result of the known factors.
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Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
Wonderful! Now all we need to do is procure grant money for the National Institute for Mental Health and give them a few years to be able to bring one of my favorite books as a child to life!
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...after the next big die-off.
The bright ones will leave the planet and be free to expand exponentially. The dim-witted ones will be left behind for Malthus to deal with. Once some of our eggs are out of the one basket, I give it a century before Holy Terra goes up in the Holy Fire of the Atom.
The ways of Nature are harsh, but just.
BTW, what are breasts made of? Mostly fat. A woman with large breasts and a small waist is well-fed but physically fit (and not pregnant), add in a good set of child-bearing hips, long legs (indicating maturity), and regular facial features (indicating both health and a genetic history of being able to attract the best mates), and you've got an ideal mate. In modern society, large breasts due to implants are also a sign of wealth, something people rarely admit to looking for in a mate, but never turn their noses up at. They are also a sign of willingness to surgically tamper with one's own body for some gain, which may turn out to be a damned adaptive trait in the coming years of cybernetic enhancement.
now let's say that this sterile member tends to become a caregiver that helps the rest of the population survive. Then that strain would have better survival characteristics than a strain without the sterile members.
Just look at hive insects. Ants, bees, termites, wasps: all mostly sexless workers caring for a breeding female and a few shiftless males.
when I posted the original with a score of 1 someone promptly marked it down 'offtopic' - hence my rant - and yeah I was wrong it wasn't Asimov/s
Geez dude, pull your head out for a minute and think of the REAL uses for this tech; you get genetically enhanced cat, smarter than hell and make it a deal: it helps you out with a small task and you hook it up with catnip and cheap, easy kittens from the pound for life. You and the smart cat go to bistro, theater, McDuck's, wherever Ms. Portman happens to be spending some time. The smart cat goes and works that cutesy, feline bullshit that cats do on Natalie, she goes apeshit over cat, you rush over, faking loads of concern over the cat's whereabouts and strike up conversation with Ms. Portman without her goons beating the everliving hell out of you for approaching.
Admittedly, you could attempt this with a regular cat, but given the risk of the cat running to a hairy, fatty named Helga or pissing all over Natalie when the cat runs up to her, you'd better hold out for the enhanced model.
Deo
Brystol Meyers Squibb (subsidary of Mead Johnson) is currently in the development of developing a first of it's kind drug that has been proven to increase baby's IQ's and make them learn quicker. This project has been nicknamed "Project Einstein" and has been kept top secret. It is still in testing (and probably FDA approval), but when it hits the market it will be the first of it's kind for infant intelligence development.
- Detritus
"I never really liked computers, but then the server went down on me"
Think on that for a second
Then consider the pack behaviour of most of the more successful species (Lions, even some sharks)
Then consider the more caring, less callous, nature of the more successful societies on earth.
Evolution isn't as simple as it seems to fascists.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
Animal rights people should thanks us for the millions of dollars we as a country have put into improving the genes of mice. If it weren't for us mice wouldn't be able to find the cheese, in those complicated mazes you see everywhere, nearly as fast.
Those who have moderated the above posts as insightfull, must think twice.
:-)
1) first point: "evolution takes place on a scale of tens of thousands of years".
Wrong: see the other replys.
2) second point: "Bill Gates wouldn't last a week in the savannas where australopithecine thrived; none of them would ever be able to live in a human city".
On a personnal note, using Bill Gates in this context seems a bit stupid.
But the real problem here is that you are confusing biological evolution and cultural differences. Take Bill Gates'baby, and send it to the savannas where he will be educated by local tribes (or vice-versa), will he have fewer chance to survive than the other? I'm not convinced. (it works also the other way..).
As for the final chapter, I have nothing to say
If they can train my next dog to
(a) never sh*t on my carpet (or anywhere in my home)
(b) always be obediant.
(c) never to stick his/her nose in one of my dates' crotches....
hell I might be interested.
Otherwise, nevermind.
[Connection closed by foreign host]
How long, I wonder, until we can "uplift" a few other species? Apes, dolphins, dogs, pigs, parrots all seem good candidates. Myself I'd love that; the variety would truly make things interesting.
If you think about it for a minuite, why are humans basically rulers of the world?? Because we are able to adapt to our environment through our inteligence. eg we can survive in cold climates because we realise that we can put on warmer clothes or make a fire or heat our houses. If we were to use this breakthrough on ourselves the possibilities for human achievement would be endless. Besides that, how much easier would our lives be if everybody was smarter.
Study of the evolutionary process showed a new species is most likely to evolve at the presence of two basic conditions:
1. The presence of a harsh external environment or a significant change in the environment.
2. A relatively small, isolated population.
The theory of evolution is easy to understand when you compare it to math - especially to the evolving of a non-linear system.
Our mathematic world is the gene space. The enviroment represents the boundary conditions. The genes of each living creature represents a local minima in the gene space. Random mutations are not very likely to take it out of the sink, and new species is not likey to evolve.
Once there is a change in the boundery conditions (environment), a species is likely to find itself out of the local minimum, or at a shallower sink, which gives an opportunity to a new species to evolve.
Mutations are totally random. However, the first changes in a population are usually not due to new mutations, but to an increasing frequency of certain genes that where previously scarce in the gene pool of the population. While a larger population have a bigger gene pool, two things are less likely to accur at a large population: the revealing of recessive genes, and the chances to single out winning combinations.
The reason why the human species is not very likely to evolve into a new one is none of those conditions is likely to occure. First, we are at a very stable local minimum. No reasonable change in the environment is likely to pull us out of the local minimum, because of our ability to adapt ourselves.
Second, we do not have small, isolated populations. We live in a global world. Each mutation, even a possitive one, will be assimilated in our gene pool, and may lead to more variability, but not to a new species.
An interesting (and worrisome) question is: can we go backward? If there is no active selection - everyone is "fitting", even the dumber, uglier, weaker persons, are we facing a risk of deteriorating? The reasonable answer is, yes, but only partially. Since we are all around a local minimum, any change make take us out of the local minimum, up to a limit where we do not fit even as humans. The result is: we will still be around the local minimum. Some individuals will be closer, but variability will increase, and the average will be further away from the local minimum.
So, if we fill the valley (local minimum) of genes, doesn't it mean we may slip out of it, and create new species? Not realy. The reason is "bad" mutations are much more likely than "good" mutations. Each "good" mutation will be assimilated in the general gene pool, and is not likely to create a new species.
The only change is scattering. If for some reason we will be scattered into small groups, living in harsh environment, the high variability in our gene pool would create differentiations between the different groups, and several new species may evolve rather quickly.
Could this scattering be also sociological? I don't know. All we can do is wait and see
Dolphins would be good;)
That's why the pet industry is so excited.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
Evolution IS subtle and I DID oversimplify. But it's even trickier than you've laid out here.
For instance, your hypothetical 10% sterile strain. Consider each potential mother in the pool: which mother does it benefit to be the one that bears the sterile offspring? None of them. For each mother, they are better off bearing an fertile child. Therefore there is pressure to do so. GIVEN a sterile child there is a way for that child to be useful and contribute to the gene POOL of the SPECIES--but selection happens on an individual (or lower) level. That's why we never see such a thing (except, as someone pointed out, in social insects--who have different mathematical genetics).
As for "don't have too many children or it will use up the resources": BZZT! Wrong! Genes don't do any long-range planning, let alone allowing for the offspring of other individuals. The effects you see are probably the result of a subtly different cause: The parent evaluates the amount of resources currently available (or likely to be available at birthing time) and has the maximum amount of children that those resources can support. Note that this is different from "don't exhaust the ecosystem" connotation that your "overuse of resources" gives.
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Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Willard
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I don't think this has anything to do with a bunch of scientists. The mice have obviously seen fit to humor this attempt at genetic modification, probably in an odd experiment on human behavior. It's only a matter of time anyway that they show their true form and start taking over the world (the program should be finished by now)... And they're not going to be happy that us humans have been polluting a world that they paid for. I think we should be pouring money into space colonization just in case we decode a message from the dolphins saying "So long, and thanks for all the fish!"
Dave
Yes, but I don't think they've been defined in the films. Perhaps it is a referance to wars fought with cloned troops, or a cold-war type of war where top diplomats etc. are replaced by clones working for the other side or something like that. AFAIK it's still up to Lucas to tell us what happened; unless I missed something.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Truth to tell everytime an article like this shows up there is always the question of ethics that gets included, WHY? I really have to ask that! This is a no-brainer(no pun intended) folks, if there is a way to improve humanities lot in life, just do it. Evolution has moved us as far forward as it can. We have one or two break out above average people come along each generation, thats true. Still this really isn't moving us forward as a species. These individuals do pass along their genes, but usually their mate is just another average person. Even when two above average people do get together it many times doesn't make a huge difference as they are just as likely due to the uncertianies of genes to have only average children. Let me offer and example: If evolution were still involved, along with a natural selection, and we were moving forward as a species, we would be talking about the Einstein family and not just Albert. We having(or at least developing) the technology to change our own species fate and lot in the universe have the obligation! to use it. I'd be the first person to volunteer in fact. I have above average intelligence, but I'd love to be able to run faster. Maybe I might someday have a child who can't run at all...I would certianly want everything possible done to change that condition. Our Species no longer has the conditioning factors that allow us to become something greater, we have in fact breed and medicate evolution out of existance.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
News of a smarter mouse now means that the proverbial ball is back in the proverbial court of the inventors. Human inventors that is simply MUST come up with a better mousetrap to stay ahead in this arms(?, . . . BRAINS) race.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
If you laced a few cheese balls with some of this gene therapy, maybe the mice in my house will move out. They will quickly learn that the house is not fit for any animal, human or rodent.
The only reference to the Clone Wars in the movies is in ANH, when Obi-Wan give Luke the lightsaber and tells him (the half-truths) about Anakin.
Of course we got where we are by helping each other...but if you're going to use the pack animal analogy, I would like to point out that packs will often abandon or even kill their own injured/retarded/sick members.
Not saying we should go shoot all of Jerry's Kids or anything, but I do agree we could stand a bit of herd-thinning.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
This is very old news. It was reported in Scientific American several months ago (and
was `old news' at that time).
Please, can you editors try to stay current
if you are going to try to lend some respectability to this site by posting science
stories?
I get the sense that sci-fi isnt really sci-fi, it's more like time travel. these movies are nothing more than the next millenium's historical fictions... What happens when you get addicted to being "smart"? oh yeah! I know! you switch operating systems! -Vanguard "linux:Braveheart :: Microsoft:Papillion"
"I think, therefore I get paid."
I think we should genetically engineer "smart" apes. It would be great. We could domesticate them and then make them smart enough to do certain tasks that no one else wants to do. They could do yard work. They could be toll booth workers. They could do house work. It would be great. Then , maybe, in the future they would evolve to understand english and eventually overtake the planet.
:) I would not mind Corneilius being my leader though. :)
And those damn bloody apes would then make us into their slaves!!
Can you see Iron City here?
Of course, average IQ is always 100 by definition.
Do you really have evidence that the quantity of intelligence measured by IQ 100 is actually decreasing? I don't think so.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
The way I see it is that we have substituted genetic evolution by memetic evolution (= culture).
Just as hardware is less flexible that software (hence the names), genes are less adaptable than memes.
Science and culture have taken the human species to the Moon and other interesting niches. No species has genetically evolved to reach this (well, some species have evolved to parasite/symbiotize humans (rats, lice, seagulls), and so they follow humankind in our evolution
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
...see "Building a Brainier Mouse" from April's Scientific American. It has a super-cute graphic of a mouse reading Scientific American inside a maze.
"Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure." --Robert LeFevre
Our Neural Chernobyl by Bruce Sterling
is part of the Globalhead collection of his short stories.
Hackers get smart gene and put it into a retrovirus which gets loose and infects other species...
Oops..
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
Nancy Kress' "Beggars in Spain" (handy, this Google thing) deals with "genetically-bred humans vs. natural humans " and how changing a gene involves other changes in genes and finally in society.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Apes and dolphins, maybe. Dogs and pigs could probably be made a smart as apes and dolphins are now, but parrots? Why, because they seem to be able to talk? There's no way, their brains are waaaaay too small.
"Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure." --Robert LeFevre
You realize it is not survival of the fittest, but reproduction of the fittest that determines the fate of a species.
That may imply that the least fit people are those who produce the least children.
Put aside your coding and start a family! We're all doomed!
See, this is the evolution that will happen if we continue to get smarter & smarter, become less & less active. We no longer have to chase down zebras with a spear just to get breakfast. We're not as active. We've lost almost all our hair, since we no longer have to be wooly mammoths to keep warm. heck, just turn the Heater on! And we're losing the hair we have anyways just because of baseball caps (ok, just a theory of mine about hats) Aliens are white, because they don't just program all-nighters, but all-monthers. They don't see the sun months at a time.
See, just because we don't HAVE to survive Nature's environment doesn't mean evolution has stopped. We now have to survive our Technology environment we created. We'll be flying in spaceships soon, and nature is slowly disappearing anyways due to Yet-Another-Suburb(tm). We're already slowly turning into a society where brains can get you ahead. And even starting to get more and more a MUST. For instance... it used to be a big deal to finish your High School, then it was college. Now everyone goes to college. Soon, it'll be triple PHD, and we've already seen the small small rift in Computer-ese vs. NonComputer users.
Evolution is happening! Even if we're sociologically morally allowing People with disabilites to live and procreate, and as another poster said, "all the poor people are having 20 kids, so there'll be all these genes with dumb people spreading", blah blah. Yes, see.. that is evolution. Maybe just not in the direction you're thinking of.
Ok, here's an anology. Let's say that the government made it really cool and easy to get Welfare. Infact, they make it desirable to. (wait, that sounds familiar) Get to watch all the day time crap TV you want! And get payed! So more and more trailer park trash (another poster's words) start to procreate and join welfare. Pretty soon we've got GENERATIONS of Welfare people. See, that's evolution!
Then! All the money dries up because there were only like 10 of us going to work, and 95% of our money went to taxes. So now all of a sudden there's no longer any Welfare cheese to survive on, and they all start to die because they have the "I-dont-know-how-to-work" gene. Another step in Evolution!
This actually happened with a certain type of moth in England. All the trees in this region were birch or something (white bark, being the key here). All these moths were white, and could survive because they blended into the white. Well, once in a while, genetics would make a freak, and a black moth was born. Usually he got eaten by the birds, and no more black moths in that family.
Well, the industrial revolution came for a visit, and spewed forth black soot in the air (and haven't stopped since, i'd wager) Anyway, the trees started to get this darker and darker and darker color to them from the polution. All of a sudden, the freaks of nature that were dark colored moths continued to live and pass their "freaky" gene on, as their white bretheren started to become easy to find on the black trees.
So the point is, we're all slowly turning into non-action related brainy people. If a catastrophe happened, and we'd all have to haul our fat asses after the zebra to eat, instead of driving to the grocery store, yea, we're screwed. But if this catastrophe doesn't happen, then its ok, because we're creating an environment where it's cool to be an out of shape, porphyric, attrophied, possibly fat, computer geek. Yea
Rader
"Now, I'm not saying that I want all of those people that do have these problems to die -- that's just plain immoral." I think that speaks for itself. We are the only species that is moral. Very rarely do mothers and fathers eat their offspring when starving or threatened. It is also rare that females decapitate or eat their mate. If all the other gazelles felt sorry for the slower, fatter gazelles and tried to help them out, they would be screwed. Of course, natural selection and evolution have a lot to do with who their natural enemy is, and either hiding from them (moths that look like tree bark, chamelons, etc) or running away (gazelles, etc) or making themselves poisonous (various insects and frogs) or taking flight, or growing lungs, or mass-producing, etc. Just about every species has devices for this. The thing is, we don't really have a natual enemy, except for maybe disease. We humans only have intelligence and morality. The fact that I'm typing this thought into a computer speaks volumes. My cat doesn't give a shit about this thread and is trying to hunt a bird. He has very keen ears and can notice slight movement in the dark, but he doesn't have a MBA from Harvard (from the dilbert cartoon about ratbert and his external brain pack). Since our only enemy is disease, the only way to fight it is to become intelligent enough to kill it. Or, leave it up to the %5 of us that survive to reproduce like rabbits. Perhaps morality doesn't foster evolution. We can help out our slower, fatter brethren and not have to worry about being eaten. Of course, in a very Shakespearean (sp?) way we lose morality when it comes to large crowds and our own life and death. When someone yells fire in a theater, you'd run over someone's grandmother to get out. And if you're small and weak, yer already screwed. I just saw on VH1 a story about the Who concert where (I believe) 11 people were either injured or killed. Or, if you believe every scene in the movie, Titanic showed how one would rather be labeled weak, inferrior, a pussy, etc just to get in the lifeboat with the women. You'll do anything to survive, it's instinct. So morality only exists when we're all rational.
Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll...
http://www.sciam.com/2000/0400issue/0400tsien.html It's interesting, if a bit technical.
hi, I'm a neuroscience grad student, and I have to comment that basically all of the discussion going on everyone here seriously misunderstanding what this result means. I'm in a hurry, so I can't go into great depth. But to make things simple, the protein they overexpressed in those mice is involved in synaptic modification. So they made mice with more modifiable synapses. The title of the paper is "Enhanced LEARNING after genetic overexpression of a brain growth protein." Learning is not the same thing as intelligence. No one is claiming that anyone made smarter mice except the journalists. The researchers made the brain more modifiable, so the mice could learn a piece of information more quickly. That doesn't mean they could remember it as long, that they could think as well as normal mice, etc. There are a million other factors, but the bottom line is that all they demonstrated was that the transgenic mice were better at a certain task than wild type mice. This could be because they learned faster, or it could be for any number of unrelated side effects (such as ones involving changes in vision). This is like demonstrating that fighter pilots can do some maneuver 95% on cocaine and only 92% normally, and from this extrapolating that it would be beneficial for everyone to install cocaine dispensers that keep them high 24/7. This particular study has no serious implications for evolution or a society of superhumans. The relationship between genotype and brain phenotype is way too complex for anyone to come up with a one-gene solution to creating greater "intelligence." Anything like that will likely involve many genes and large-scale screening of individuals followed by correlations with some measure of the person's intellect, but I won't even start on the problems involved in a study like that...
I think there is a definite difference between humanity showing compassion and natural elimination, don't you?
Mice WILL be the smartest animals on Earth!
\//
Our ability to modify ourselves through intelligent analysis of ourselves and our environment is really just another mutation. Same as big boobs or a 3rd leg.
We've been close to our present level of sophistication for what, 2-3,000 years? More maybe? Still just a blink of an eye in terms of the long haul. The last 200 years have seen what looks to be a boiling point of sorts in terms of our ability to modify ourselves and our environment. To what end? Who knows?
The jury's still out - only Time will tell if this mutation stays or goes!
**>>BELCH
Dogs and pigs could probably be made a smart as apes and dolphins are now, but parrots? Why, because they seem to be able to talk? There's no way, their brains are waaaaay too small.
I've seen on a TV documentary a parrot able to make such abstract distinctions as "what color?", "which one is metal?", "how many blue?", "which one is square" - getting it right first time, from amongst many objects which differ along all these axes at once.
The small brain size is confusing, but perhaps running a parrot body doesn't take much processing power, so there's more left over for smarts.