Years and years ago, I read some blurb (I don't know how accurate it is) that said something to the effect of "If humans kept growing at the rate they do when born, then by age 9 they would be as big as Earth [or some such startling size]." (This growth rate can be seen, for example, with Trixie.)
Similarly, children learn amazingly fast. I've read that neurons can have as many as 15,000 synapses (connection with other neurons, to my understanding). And up until age two, babies form 2 million synapses per second! They actually learn by pruning those neurons, like the way that neural nets 'learn' by changing the weights of connections.
Dorothy's walking ability has been getting noticeably better on an almost daily basis. That fact got me to thinking: If humans could keep learning and improving their skills through life as fast as they do during their childhood years, people could someday be like super-ninja movie superstars. You know, be able to walk a tightrope and fight off bad guys at the same time, then do a flying back flip; read and speak 10 different languages; do advanced code decryption; etc. Our brains probably aren't big enough to handle all of that, but who knows. At our rate of learning, and given the fact that the super-learning window closes by the end of puberty, it shouldn't be surprising that at most people can become a master at only one task. But what if your learning rate didn't slow down, and didn't end?...
Posted by Tom Nugent at March 23, 2005 05:38 PM