Saturday, September 25, 2010

Notes on Chapter 14: More than Human

This chapter was largely about speculation: what cognitive abilities might Boskops have had?  Why did the Boskops die out?  What might the next steps in human intelligence be?

In the section "Brain and Superbrain" where the authors talk about why Boskops might have died out they raise the point again about how being super-intelligent is not that useful if you don't have a society to pass your insights on to.  While the average high school student may not be the equal of an Einstein in math, they do start out with knowledge gleaned from several thousand years of studying mathematics.

"The Final Path to Humans" points out that genetic control over brain structure is likely to be rather imprecise hence trying to engineer a human with superior cognitive abilities through genetics alone is liable to be very difficult.

The section, "Inconsistent Brain," talks about how Dmitry Belyaev domesticated foxes.  The reason I found this interesting it shows how simple breeding style genetics can result in behavioral changes.  Further investigation of exactly what produced a friendlier fox - was it a change in brain structure, hormones, something else - would be a fascinating study.

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