Memetics…genetics….I pose this at Dave because I see memetics as a quasi-function of genetics…meme splicing, mutation, blending, fecundity, mutation…etc. Ok dave is open to it…

From Dave: As a cursory answer, we would compare the concept in the article to the threshold / tipping point /critical mass cconcept….not to memetics…although I’m open to how it relates to memetics…..Since we don’t know what the gene does or what protein(s) it codes for, we can’t simply measure that molecule and say that humans have more than chimps who have more than rats, etc…and that is what makes us human and capable of
much  higher level of thinking than the other animals…

A question Dave asks:
“What if we had 400 copies, would we be superintelligent?  We won’t knowthat till we know what the gene does….”

Multiple Copies of Mystery Gene May Make Us Human

A newly discovered mystery gene may have helped build the modern human brain, researchers report today.

Scientists don’t know what the gene does. But they do know that humans have more copies of it than chimpanzees, monkeys, rats and mice. And they know that the gene makes a protein that is found in the human brain. That suggests that it may help to give the human brain its unique ability to think and reason, they say.

“This really is a remarkable discovery,” says Thomas Insel, director of the US National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, which was not involved in the research and did not fund it. “People are going to argue about it and be fascinated by this, because it takes us in a couple of directions we haven’t really been in before.”

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