Had an interesting conversation with Sophie over the weekend.
Our eldest, A, started learning Chemistry at school this term, and loves it.
At the same time I'm spending more time studying computer programming and building software projects.
It struck me that for both myself and A, the hardware required to acquire these new skills, was already there at birth. Yes, our brains grow when we are kids and can develop into adulthood, but there is nothing "new" in either our brains, which specifically allows us to learn these new skills now.
I could have learnt computer programming at 12, with principally the same "hardware" I have now.
This reminded me of something Lawrence Krauss talked about in an interview about his then new book, The greatest story ever told, so far.
He talked about the fact that Isaac Newton, nearly 500 years ago, could not conceive of the world we live in now, even though he was possibly the smartest human on the planet. But, if you dropped him into 2022, it would not take him very long to adapt and possibly become just as renowned as he is to us.
And, because of the very slow pace of evolution, we can be pretty sure there was no material difference between Newton's brain and mine, or yours for that matter.
I think that is pretty awesome. We somehow have this brain which allows us to create and discover new worlds, constantly, with no need to upgrade or replace the hardware.
A's early love of Chemistry also resulted in this little joke, which Sophie laughed at out loud, because she understood it. A had to explain it to me:
Q: Heard any good jokes about Sodium?
A: Na
Our eldest, A, started learning Chemistry at school this term, and loves it.
At the same time I'm spending more time studying computer programming and building software projects.
It struck me that for both myself and A, the hardware required to acquire these new skills, was already there at birth. Yes, our brains grow when we are kids and can develop into adulthood, but there is nothing "new" in either our brains, which specifically allows us to learn these new skills now.
I could have learnt computer programming at 12, with principally the same "hardware" I have now.
This reminded me of something Lawrence Krauss talked about in an interview about his then new book, The greatest story ever told, so far.
He talked about the fact that Isaac Newton, nearly 500 years ago, could not conceive of the world we live in now, even though he was possibly the smartest human on the planet. But, if you dropped him into 2022, it would not take him very long to adapt and possibly become just as renowned as he is to us.
And, because of the very slow pace of evolution, we can be pretty sure there was no material difference between Newton's brain and mine, or yours for that matter.
I think that is pretty awesome. We somehow have this brain which allows us to create and discover new worlds, constantly, with no need to upgrade or replace the hardware.
A's early love of Chemistry also resulted in this little joke, which Sophie laughed at out loud, because she understood it. A had to explain it to me:
Q: Heard any good jokes about Sodium?
A: Na