Interesting discussion; I've heard it postulated that having a significant prefrontal cortex allows us humans to -if we work really really hard at it- achieve something that isn't pure evil. That said, we -as a species- don't really like to use our prefrontal cortex all that much. We prefer to act based on emotion, action<->re-action. That's much easier. We have a pretty strong evolutionary precedent for acting on what serves us in the short term, the long term nearly always can only be considered to beneficial to others, not us, not directly.
But what about yeast? How intelligent is yeast? Are there yeast cells that become aware of the walls of the petri dish? Do they tell their neighbors? Do the neighbors shout them down, calling them unpatriotic, traitors, communists, etc? No, yeast cells probably don't ever become aware of the walls of the petri dish, probably never become aware of the depletion of the agar. But then again, neither do we. So, as an experiment goes, this is a pretty good one, and the empirical results are pretty telling. Intelligence? Where? _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
