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Old 09-22-2005, 11:03 PM
goofball goofball is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2003
Posts: 43
Default Re: The Sklansky Chimpanzee Question

I don't know the answer. I'm inclined to say yes but that it would take many many many years (shorter than our natural evolution, much longer than the human lifespan).

I don't think this is original. In a neurosciecne class I took at cty camp when I was young we were supposed to come up experiments to propose if we had a million dollar grant. The question I came up with was not your but very similar. Essentially the question was would chimps taight sign language (or how to communicate in other ways), teach that to their offspring,a nd if so how effectively. I still believe this lies at the root of your question as well, because first, it doesn't matter what knowledge your species acquires if it can't pass it on, and second, the scientists could only fake it for so long and only so effectively. Anyway, I don't know if my idea was original or not, I went into physics instead and never did the research, but if I could come up with it at a young age I'm sure someone in the field has come up wiht a similar more sophisticated question.
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