Deleting Certain Gene Makes Mice Smarter 259
An anonymous reader writes "Deleting a certain gene in mice can make them smarter by unlocking a mysterious region of the brain considered to be relatively inflexible, scientists at Emory University School of Medicine have found. Mice with a disabled RGS14 gene are able to remember objects they'd explored and learn to navigate mazes better than regular mice, suggesting that RGS14's presence limits some forms of learning and memory."
Cool, it's like Intel Upgrade Service for a brain. (Score:5, Funny)
I can haz turnkey upgrade for 50$?
Re:Cool, it's like Intel Upgrade Service for a bra (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately it's likely not. Evolution or God (your choice) rarely gives something for nothing. This gene is likely there for a reason. Disabling it will have some drawback, and it may not be an obvious connection.
I remember watching a show about genetics. They were talking about how humans have a genetic defect in a gene which governs the size of our jaw muscles. This defect means we bite with far less force than a chimp. But the show pointed out that a smaller jaw muscle, due to the physical attachments, allowed our skull to grow larger and with it our brain. Considering how well chimps are doing as compared to humans, I'd say the defect was actually a good thing.
Re:Cool, it's like Intel Upgrade Service for a bra (Score:5, Insightful)
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Genetic modification still limits you to a body of flesh and blood. I'd say that mind uploading is the way to go. Apart from solving the problem of mortality, it would allow your mind to grow without worrying about the limits imposed by the size of your skull. And it only becomes a better bargain as we begin to expand into space.
Re:Cool, it's like Intel Upgrade Service for a bra (Score:5, Insightful)
Evolution isn't causal. It's, well, non-anti-causal, which isn't quite the same thing. That is to say, traits don't evolve in response to things, stuff without appropriate traits gets wiped out by those things. The difference is key. A trait doesn't persist because it's an advantage, it persists because it's not a sufficiently bad disadvantage, which is a weaker constraint. In the context of TFA, a gene that makes mice "dumber" doesn't mean that the gene provides a hidden advantage that has a better tradeoff, and it doesn't mean that being dumb provided a big advantage. All it means is that being dumb wasn't a disadvantage. Or, at least, wasn't a disadvantage strong enough to hurt the mice's reproductive chances. Due to statistics, and something called "neutral drift", an allele that is "neutral" in that it doesn't result in a significant disadvantage to reproduction, has a fair chance at taking over a population, over enough time. Not that it will happen a lot. But, "fair" chance here means it's not vanishingly small.
So, if a gene breaks comes into being that makes mice dumb, but being dumb doesn't stop them from finding food, evading predators, and having sex, then it's a neutral gene. So while not guaranteed to happen, there's nothing unusual about this gene becoming dominant, or in fact, part of the entire species. It certainly doesn't mean that it provides some sort of advantage as a trade-off. Genes that provide an advantage are much more likely to be passed on, until the entire species has it. But, ones that aren't strongly disadvantageous can be, too. All mammals have a gene that lets them make vitamin C. Some primates, including humans, have a broken version and so cannot produce vitamin C. That's because out ancestors ate mostly fruits and berries, which are full of vitamin C. So, when by chance we lost our ability to make it, it had no effect. This doesn't mean it provided a hidden disadvantage. It was simply not needed, so when it broke, natural selection did not kill animals who didn't have it.
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Actually, it's very possible for an allele that provides a small negative impact to spread throughout a species, just due to pure luck. After all, evolution has no way of differentiating between someone who has very successful offspring and someone who has very lucky offspring, and occasionally the latter will occur. If it spreads widely enough, it will become entrenched in the species' gene pool, despite being deleterious.
Also, it's not like evolution gets to pick perks and add stat points like in an RPG;
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"In the context of TFA, a gene that makes mice "dumber" doesn't mean that the gene provides a hidden advantage that has a better tradeoff, and it doesn't mean that being dumb provided a big advantage. All it means is that being dumb wasn't a disadvantage. Or, at least, wasn't a disadvantage strong enough to hurt the mice's reproductive chances."
Since it's a single gene, it's pretty likely that mice without that gene would have arisen at some time. Probably more than once. Assuming we don't usually see mic
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Re:Cool, it's like Intel Upgrade Service for a bra (Score:4, Insightful)
I would be very cautious with such statements. We did not get rid of diseases by growing immune to them or by developing a natural defense, and we are not the only things on this planet that adopt to changes. We are dependent on our culture and way of living to keep our environment livable. Hygiene standards, medical treatment and a steady supply with fresh drinking water and food prevent widespread plagues in the industrial nations. Let that break down only for a few weeks on a national scale and we will quickly see how "unnatural" our selection really is.
Though the big panic of the 80s and 90s has calmed down, HIV is still killing scores in the First World. $deity help us all if it ever finds a way to spread over the air.
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All humans have managed to do is delude themselves into believing that they are superior to every other species on the planet so that they can slaughter innocent animals in order to satisfy their taste buds, even when there are other sources of food to eat that don't suffer just as we do.
Yeah those damn insensitive humans oh and don't forget those wolves too I mean the forest is full of yummy berries and even mushrooms but all they want to do is eat those cute innocent deer.
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All humans have managed to do is delude themselves into believing that they are superior to every other species on the planet so that they can slaughter innocent animals in order to satisfy their taste buds, even when there are other sources of food to eat that don't suffer just as we do.
Yeah those damn insensitive humans oh and don't forget those wolves too I mean the forest is full of yummy berries and even mushrooms but all they want to do is eat those cute innocent deer.
FWI: Wolves will supplement their diet with fruit and vegetable matter; they willingly eat the berries of mountain ash, lily of the valley, bilberries, blueberries and cowberry. Other fruits include nightshade, apples and pears. They readily visit melon fields during the summer months.
Re:Cool, it's like Intel Upgrade Service for a bra (Score:5, Insightful)
"For such an 'intelligent' species, humans sure seem shortsighted"
You do realise that humans are like... completely different people, and the few can ruin things for the many? Like, if you find somebody with a 50 IQ, you can't determine from that that "humans are a stupid species"; the fact that there are people with IQ's of 50 doesn't discredit the work that people with IQ's of 150 do, just as rapists don't invalidate the work that the charitable and selfless do, and the fact that you paint a species of 6 billion with a single brush doesn't mean that there aren't people who can tell different people apart exist.
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People are shortsighted compared to what they need to be, but not compared to other animals.
It's organizations of people (and, of course, mobs) that are really shortsighted. It's the difficult problem of credit assignment. How do you ensure that the person making the decision is charged with either the rewards or penalties that result? It's the more difficult as the decision is usually shared between many different people, some of whom made the best decision available, and others the most self-serving.
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A person is smart. People are stupid
ah, a student of Kierkegaard! The crowd is untrue!
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Abuse of the word "like" there I think. A few Islamic extremists didn't get two countries invaded; countries don't tend to be invaded these days for single reasons, invading a country's a big thing that has to be more worth while doing to more of the major players than it will cause harm to the major players, and usually that will means that there are various people which for various reasons have a vested interest in the removal of an enemy. Anyone who thinks that complex things happen for a single reason i
Re:Cool, it's like Intel Upgrade Service for a bra (Score:4, Insightful)
(yes, I'm being optimistic, we're probably going to design human weapons before we cure cancer, but it's going to take time anyway, so I'd prefer to think that we have a future rather than an apocalypse awaiting us)
Probably A Hardwired Response (Score:4, Interesting)
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Unfortunately it's likely not. Evolution or God (your choice) rarely gives something for nothing. This gene is likely there for a reason. Disabling it will have some drawback, and it may not be an obvious connection.
Dejumpering RGS14's apparently increases memory, the desire to tinker with things, reduces social ability, and keeps up glued to the interwebz. Slashdot lives on dejumpered RGS14 basement dwelling rodents already.
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Remains to be seen if it's an upgrade (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I'd say it remains to be seen if it's an upgrade or a downgrade. Forgetting stuff or needing more than one case to form a rule are there for a reason. If you met someone "upgraded" who upon seeing a yellow cat automatically forms the full connexion that all cats are yellow, and/or is unable to break that connexion afterwards, the thought would probably be less "upgraded" and more like "poor idiot".
The general evolution of the brain has been towards smarter. Something which only needed a gene to break
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Re:Remains to be seen if it's an upgrade (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, at least theoretically it's conceivable that it would be possible to do a better job with the regulating proteins than nature did. After all, nature itself did an increasingly better job by trial and error, and it would be presumptuous to presume that whatever we got is nothing short of absolute, unsurpassable perfection. So, yes, it's conceivable that one day someone would encode a better protein than that gene does.
I'm not sure if we're at that point, yet, though. We know how to copy genes and we know how to break genes, but I don't think anyone really knows how to make a better one, or really even design one that only causes the effect to differ by a small amount.
We're essentially like a clock maker who knows how to copy a cog or lever from another clock, or how to break one, but even designing a 10% smaller cog is well outside the realm of what he knows how to do. That's really the state of genetic engineering nowadays. Fortunately, we have billions of clocks and trillions of cogs to copy around us, which is why we can still do some useful stuff. But designing a new one is really still right out.
So, yeah, it could happen. Given enough time, it probably _will_ happen. But if it needs to be more complicated than breaking or deleting or replacing that gene with one from a existing organism, I'm not holding my breath that it will happen in my lifetime.
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Sure. Althouhg, the push-button upgrade to give you the intelligence and dexterity to operate keys is a little more expensive...
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O, HAI!
See also:
U has got it nao?
HTH.
KTHXBAI!
Maybe it just works by overclocking? (Score:2)
And maybe the gene is there to limit the mouse brain from burning out too fast? It would be interesting to see if there were any differences in how long both groups live.
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unlocking a mysterious region of the brain
It's no mystery, obviously it's the upper multiplier. Probably just needed a Bios upgrade.
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10 FOR X = 0 TO 65535
20 POKE X, 0
30 NEXT X
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Be careful what you wish for. People with Hyperthymesia (total perfect memory) describe it as being "as non-stop, uncontrollable and totally exhausting." This could be the gene that locks that down and keeps us sane.
http://www.physorg.com/news129561635.html [physorg.com]
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I personally don't have photographic memory although I am quite able to remember where I've heard or read something even
Re:Cool, it's like Intel Upgrade Service for a bra (Score:4, Insightful)
As I have contemplated what makes some people with above average intelligence different and how they can either tone it down or otherwise adjust comfortably into society, it occurs to me that this is just something that can't be "turned off" or "learned away."
Now that's just plain wrong.
In my youth, I lacked the discretion I gained with age. Thus, in my younger days, I spoke in a manner far exceeding the accepted capacities of my age, causing me to be looked upon as odd, unlikeable, or "the weird one."
As the years passed, I learned to "tone things down," suppressing my abilities in day to day interactions. I spoke simpler, broke down things that others considered complex to something understandable, and overall integrated as a more "normal" person. Note that I continued to get 90-100%, but because I was such an easygoing and average/fun person, my peers considered my intellect to be just natural and accepted rather than something to ostracize me on. Some considered it to be advantageous because, hey, get that guy on the project and BAM! A+!
So y'know, toning things down isn't impossible. My completely anecdotal evidence counters your anecdotal evidence. It's a learned skill just like any social skills. The only folks that probably can't tone it down are those with autism. For those who actually have Asperger's instead of self diagnosed, it's doable but more difficult to do without outside support.
I don't really consider "toning it down" to actually be dumbing yourself down. Speaking in a manner that isn't a pretentious a-hole is like speaking another language. Sure I can talk to the Chinese guy in English and demand he understand what I say, but that's not exactly a stellar way to present yourself. Learning to speak their language shows greater prowess on my part and puts them at ease too.
I gotta say though. I've been at it for way too long. Talking all educated like to my profs makes me stumble all over my words. Unless I effect an English accent. For some weird reason if I put an English accent on, I become less stumbly and more smooth.
And enough with the "I'm so smart! I'm an atheist!" shtick. It's been feeling masturbatory for a while.
Re:Cool, it's like Intel Upgrade Service for a bra (Score:5, Insightful)
And to continue the theme: I'm an atheist, intelligent, knowledgeable, and a snappy dresser!
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Normal is a horrible thing to be. Statistically it's normal to be poor, and uneducated, living under a despotic regime. Even in western societies normal is uneducated, ugly and boring. By virtue of being born somewhere decent, we are all better off, and education only helps that. If I had to swap with anyone I went to high school with, I'd kill myself moments later.
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Think about genetics as being the thing that determines your reason for being alive. It is not to be rational, not to be smart... understanding the world around you is helpful only in that it may help you make more things like yourself. Whether it be offspring or useful ideas, the point of your existence is to perpetuate your own genes and those like yours (you are 99.99% the same as me even though you don't know or care about me). Evolutionarily, having homosexuals in a family is like having grandmothers..
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I wonder if this or similar genes could be responsible for "above average" intelligence in some people. It would seem to explain why the majority of people seem to maintain their seemingly low average.
Not quite sure what you mean by that - but the intelligence of the majority, as measured by IQ, has been consistently increasing for generations now, it is called the Flynn Effect. [wikimedia.org]
Re:Cool, it's like Intel Upgrade Service for a bra (Score:4, Interesting)
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Also, most people DON'T seek to take the test. Their parents or school do. Most IQ tests are taken when people are young as a way of checking for disability or for advanced placement in the education system. Very Rarely does someone go to a Psychologist and say "I want to take an IQ test."
I was waiting for someone to make that point, I knew I missed it the moment I clicked 'Submit'.
Ok, but the fact that any person would choose to either take or administer the test is going to change the result. The school wants to improve its methods, the parents want to "improve" (guide, whatever) their children. Even if they don't change the result for the current batch of people being tested, it's going to change the result for the batch after that. One of the reasons that the test is there is so that we
Re:Cool, it's like Intel Upgrade Service for a bra (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but you come off as very elitist; "I don't fit into society, but I'm way above average and everybody else is too stupid (to understand me). That's reasoning in order to maintain a certain position you clearly dislike, but giving purpose to it by telling yourself you're "above average".
"Intellingence" is a very wide subject and is sensitive to interpretation: A bushman wouldn't be able to "do the intelligent things you consider intelligent", but you wouldn't survive long in his world. It's relative, but you victimize yourself and place yourself on top of other in a egocentrical "I must be better".
Oh, woo me, the intelligent creature who suffers and is "always on". All those other stupid fucks sleep well and go about their meaningless lifes...
I'm sorry, but that doesn't take "above average intelligence". And by all means, by the age of 10 you do not have a "need for a god" in a western midclass world where you're shielded from life, certain life events later who will make you cry you wished there was something or someone who is godlike. At 10, you lack certain insight and experience. I'm not telling you I believe in a god, but at that age you lack experience.
TV isn't life, get out, live a bit.
They're not around because they don't like hanging out by an isolated guy who feels superiour in his self-explaining of his isolation.
Don't mix intelligence, a sense of superiority with your sexual preferences and religion. You're not discussing on topic, you're just being an egocentric shortminded selfentitling dumbfuck.
I'm sure you feel you have all figured out already as well :)
Re:Cool, it's like Intel Upgrade Service for a bra (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'm sorry, but you come off as very elitist; "I don't fit into society, but I'm way above average and everybody else is too stupid (to understand me).
Elitism usually draws envy and resentment from the lower classes. We're sorry you're upset at us for being smarter than you, we really are.
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This will probably be modded into oblivion, but I am compelled to say this as simply and as honestly as I can. I can take a hit to my karma, and I understand that it may be off topic.
I was once an overthinker, still am sometimes. My mind was always moving contemplating everything, and I like it that way. Sometimes I wondered if my thoughts were out of control, but then pride set it and I would think that I was the smart one and that people who didn't think like me were too dumb to know better. I wanted to l
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I am compelled to say this as simply and as honestly as I can.
tl;dr
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Well, I guess I'm glad you found something that would work for you. Perhaps. A lot depends on things you *aren't* saying. E.g., do you feel that your way is the only way? That everyone else should follow it? If so, then I'm *sure* you gave up on philosophy WAY too soon.
I also found gods. Plural. (Actually, several different times I found a god, but it was different gods at different times.) I'm quite convinced that they are real, but also that they aren't a part of the external universe. Think of t
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I have contemplated what makes some people with above average intelligence different and how they can either tone it down or otherwise adjust comfortably into society,
Drink early, drink often;
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Can't have much of one without the other I'm afraid. Being able to remember things is an important component in visualizing and contemplating a thing. I can't speak for anyone else who learns things, but when I learn things, I have to "absorb" it into my mind in some way and then make it fit in with other bits and pieces of information in my brain. My tolerance for what "fits" with other pieces of knowledge tends to be rather low as certain details mean a lot to me when I seek to understand something. (
Whats the odds (Score:2, Interesting)
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"Whats the odds that there are people quietly trying things like this on humans somewhere?"
Given the race for military/economic supremacy - highly likely.
NamTar (Score:2)
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Whats the odds that there are people quietly trying things like this on humans somewhere?
1 in 0 if they aren't, 1 in 1 if they are... so the odds are 1:2.
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Maybe, but they're probably not getting too far. Humans are a PITA as lab animals. They eat a lot, they're a pain to keep and they take forever to get to reproductive age, or even useful testing age.
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It's FORTY-FUCKING-TWO
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Yeah! (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, let's make lab mice smarter! What could possibly go wrong?
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Re:Yeah! (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, let's make lab mice smarter! What could possibly go wrong?
Not much [wikipedia.org]
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Re:Yeah! (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, maybe I'm a pessimist, but I was more like reminded of Flowers For Algernon [wikipedia.org].
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Well, we might find out the Question whose answer is 42. After all, it is the mice's job.
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Re:traps built by lab mice (Score:2)
"When scientists get caught in traps built by their lab mice, they know they went too far".
But on a more positive note, I think I smell cheese just around yonder corner...
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Wait... that's not cheese... it's an iPad... and it's running Linux! Oh so cool.... SNAP!
Inability to forget is hardly smart (Score:5, Insightful)
To call an inability to forget "smart" is a display of misunderstanding what learning actually is. Forgetting comes in many flavours, and while intuitively believe some forgetting may be related to "making more room", extinction learning is a rather finely-tuned mechanism of filtering relevant input from irrelevant input. Making that filter wider is hardly smart.
Re:Inability to forget is hardly smart (Score:4, Insightful)
And here I thought... (Score:2)
...that Pinky & The Brain was fiction.
Hmmm (Score:3, Funny)
I used to watch a documentary about this as a kid. Apparently this causes 50% of the mice to turn incredibly stupid, while the other 50% want to take over the world.
Makes sense (Score:2)
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It may be reasonable to hypothesize that deleting the certain gene makes you smarter
Think how smart you'd be if they deleted *all* your genes!
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It may be reasonable to hypothesize that deleting the certain gene makes you smarter
Think how smart you'd be if they deleted *all* your genes!
I'm not so certain about that, but then again I'm not not certain about much of anything at all.
what about adding? (Score:2)
And adding certain genes to humans makes them more.. mentally handicapped..
Smart Brain (Score:2)
Makes mice smarter you say... (Score:2, Funny)
The other's insane.
They're laboratory mice
Their genes have been spliced
They're dinky
They're Pinky and The Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain
Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain
Brain.
Turns out (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe (Score:2, Insightful)
it only increases the ability to recognize objects and navigate mazes (visual memory), but hurts other brain activities (reflexes, creativity, thoughts). Navigating mazes isn't really a trait that mice evolved towards.
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In the wild, mice live in tunnels under tree roots and in hills. House mice have adapted to living with humans and taken advantage of the warmth provided by human dwellings. Either way, they have to remember where food and water can be found, and the safest places to sleep.
Just about every creature with a hypothalamus (where route memories are stored, as well as being wired to the vision and audio pathways) will be able to remember all these things.
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Also, I don't understand why they link memory to intelligence.
As you know, there are a lot of different memory types, like visual, auditory or abstract memory (we can observe the specialized memories in autistic people).
Disabling the gene might increase the visual memory, to the detriment of the other ones, like having autistic mice.
In other words, the mice might be able to exit a maze, but not be able to locate their natural enemies by their ears or whatever sense they use.
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Don't try this at home! (Score:2, Interesting)
Intelligence, a genetic deformity of the brain (Score:2, Interesting)
More evidence that high intelligence is pathological in a species and that nature actually works to suppress the development of intelligence beyond a certain rudimentary level. Look how long dinosaurs ruled the Earth without intelligence. Understand how long they had to develop it and did not. Humans somehow got off the reservation a couple of hundred thousand years ago. Not only did we develop vast intelligence, but we developed abilities that ANTICIPATED the need for them. Why did we develop the ability t
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I wouldn't say that. It's more like there's a tradeoff: A bigger brain needs more energy to keep it working. If you're doing fine with a small one, there's no selective pressure in favour of a bigger one.
There was no ne
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Not only did we develop vast intelligence, but we developed abilities that ANTICIPATED the need for them.
Poor choice of words, that, but I have wondered roughly the same thing for quite some time, now.
Why did we develop the ability to drive 60, 70,-100 miles per hour or more while weaving in and out of traffic?
OK, this is a bad example. We drive 60, 70,-100 miles per hour because that happens to be what our cars can safely operate at when driven by a creature with our reaction speeds. If we had the reflexes of a cat, we'd be driving faster.
But you do raise an interesting point, and I'd like to point it out for anyone that might miss it because of that bad example: our intelligence predates our use of it by a very large
"I for one welcome our new murinian overlords" ;-) (Score:2)
Haven't we always known they ran the world anyway? [wikipedia.org]
Just my 42 cents...
Has no one yet welcomed our new squeaky... (Score:2)
cheesy overlords? No. No! I did NOT mean Christine O'Donnell. Really.
did any one see deep blue sea where they mess gene (Score:2)
did any one see deep blue sea where they mess with sharks genes and made them smarter?
Who knew? (Score:2)
The most intelligent life already (Score:2)
But I thought that mice were already the most intelligent life on Earth :-)
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You are confusing space mice with earth mice.
This is actually the origin story for the secrets of nym.
What people haven't realized is that with sufficient motivation the mice can produce telekinetic abilities.
Not that hard to make a "smarter" mouse (Score:2)
This is hardly the first report that increasing or decreasing the expression of certain genes in the mouse can improve performance on certain laboratory tests of intelligence. However, these tests are very regimented and simplistic compared to the complex cognitive demands that a mouse encounters in the wild. The investigators used two standard tests of cognition: novel object recognition (does the animal remember an object that it has seen before, as judged by how interested it is in examining it?) and the
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Flowers for Algernon is a hard one. It's a good story, but there's not really a common quote, or stand-out line that you can quickly drop to reference it.
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Hey, i first-posted a joke about Intel Upgrade Service in this thread over two hours before your post. I'm not trying to be a prick about it; I'm just curious. I find it interesting that you made the same connection in the same thread without seeming to notice mine.
Do you not read the threads at all, do you just skim over them, do you reply to the summary then read, or do you filter out posts moderated "Funny"? Maybe you filter out posts made by me, in which case I'd probably never get a reply, but you're n