Re: transgenerational data transfer, the mechanisms you are pointing out are far far weaker than complex speech
1. Epigenetics can only affect levels of protein expression. It’s not really transferring information, only adaptation. 2. Beavers building dams for their offspring isn’t a form of passing information, it’s just shaping the environment and isn’t really going to persist for many generations. If you had evidence that beavers learn to reproduce the damns they grew up in I’d be more convinced. 3. Mirror neurons only exist in a tiny fraction of species. They also carry no information about WHY something is done or how it works, only how to imitate it. I’d argue that why and how it works is the more important part of fostering future innovation
It’s a little bit like this meme
Your objection to the below thus strikes me as a little bit of a nitpick:
”The generation dies, and all of the accumulated products of within lifetime learning are lost.”
If it was rephrased to be:
”The generation dies, and iterative improvement to the accumulated products of its within lifetime learning doesn’t take place”
Caveat: I haven’t read the original post.
Re: transgenerational data transfer, the mechanisms you are pointing out are far far weaker than complex speech
1. Epigenetics can only affect levels of protein expression. It’s not really transferring information, only adaptation.
2. Beavers building dams for their offspring isn’t a form of passing information, it’s just shaping the environment and isn’t really going to persist for many generations. If you had evidence that beavers learn to reproduce the damns they grew up in I’d be more convinced.
3. Mirror neurons only exist in a tiny fraction of species. They also carry no information about WHY something is done or how it works, only how to imitate it. I’d argue that why and how it works is the more important part of fostering future innovation
It’s a little bit like this meme
Your objection to the below thus strikes me as a little bit of a nitpick:
”The generation dies, and all of the accumulated products of within lifetime learning are lost.”
If it was rephrased to be:
”The generation dies, and iterative improvement to the accumulated products of its within lifetime learning doesn’t take place”
Then the argument would still seem to hold.