News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The dark side of the new theories of success. Parent comment

Re:The dark side of the new theories of success by YogSothoth on Tuesday May 18, 2010 @07:15AM (#1357124)
Smacks a bit of Lamarckism doesn't it?

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The dark side of the new theories of success by dcx on Tuesday May 18, 2010 @08:22AM (#1357228)
That's true, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing. Epigenetics is a pretty hot topic these couple of years. Straight from Wikipedia:

As reported in MIT's Technology Review in February 2009, "The effects of an animal's environment during adolescence can be passed down to future offspring ... The findings provide support for a 200-year-old theory of evolution that has been largely dismissed: Lamarckian evolution, which states that acquired characteristics can be passed on to offspring."

This was shown to happen in humans and does make intuitive sense - Mealy machines are more efficient than Moore machines!

[ Parent | on HN ]