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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeremy Ackerman-Yost" data-source="post: 242961" data-attributes="member: 4720">On a spiritual level, it's debatable.  Biologically speaking, mind and memory are, as far as we can tell, confined to the nervous system.  Memory, in the usual sense, is confined completely to the brain, but motor memory and that kind of thing seems to be "learned" at the motor ganglion level (spinal cord).The microtubule idea is a good one.  And if it's correct, it may be possible to replicate it.  But even assuming it's partially right, if I had to guess, I'd say it's probably a very dynamic system that will not be intuitive.  Information stored in the changes rather than in a static form, or something like that.Actually, fitness through potential is exactly how WE work.  The most successful critters on earth are bacteria, algae, etc.  They reproduce FAST with short generation times, etc.  But there is essentially no variation between individuals, and environmental assaults tend to kill 90-99% of the population.  But the survivors refill the niche FAST.  Sexual reproduction and multicellularity tend to give individuals with widely varying characteristics within the same species.  An environmental assault (ice age, volcano, drought, flood, meteor, global warming, etc) will kill species that are very specified to their environment, but species which can be generalists will take a big population hit, but survive.  That's why mammals survived the extinction event that killed the dinosaurs.  The dinosaurs, while much more adaptable than lesser reptiles and amphibians, could not cope with the decreased temperatures, while mammals just packed on a little extra fur and fat, which they could dump once it warmed up again.</blockquote>

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