Engineering massively emergent systems is not something we're familiar with. But it doesn't mean it can't be done. You know the fitness function, let the system design itself.
I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm saying it can't be done by one person. I'm saying the discipline requires the interaction of many scientists.
Molecular neuroscience allows you map molecular events in their impact on structure and function. We're at the beginning here, but there are a lot simple parameters there (as well as terribly complex ones) for tweaking.
While this hasn't been done, inflating the neocortex should result in a smarter critter. And that's a trivial parameter.
I know you are all probably getting sick of me talking about how all of this is complicated, but it really is. Hearing that inflating the cortex is a "trivial parameter" grates on me terribly.
Inflating the cortex would require, apart from a huge increase in metabolism and female pelvic diameter, lots of control structures so that this new cortex does something useful. Any new functional modules in the brain have to be carefully balanced against the structural and functional characteristics of existing ones or there are a great variety of mental illnesses that can result. We are already skirting the envelope of cognitive dysfunction, as evidenced by the number of people with psychological problems.
You might, for example, have a system that is now incapable of resonating at frequencies that the brain expects to work at, and now you've "broken" consciousness. Or perhaps this new super genius is constantly wracked by crippling grand-mal seizures, because you've failed to apply the correct amount of neuromodulatory control to your new cortical real estate.
Also, you've just increased the required amount of blood flow by perhaps double resulting perhaps in a massive increase in strokes due to larger and more numerous arteries.
These are very real problems that evolution is constantly grappling with. You might hear about the rare cases of encephalitic babies with very oddly shaped brains that are fully functional members of society and think that human brains are heavily robust. What you don't hear about are the much larger number of stillborn children with brains that didn't work properly.
Trivial parameter indeed.
-Brad
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