> Michael quoted:
>
> "The group is now collaborating with molecular geneticists to try and
> tease out which genetic changes have made their fruitflies so smart."
>
> I don't see that intelligence and being easily trainable is the same
> thing at all.
Not to bust Joanna here, but statements like this are pretty silly. It elides between two different meanings of "easily trainable." The first is, obviously, that an organism has a greater repertoire of abilities, enabling it to be able to perform a wider and more complex variety of tasks. In this sense, humans are far more "easily trainable" than fruit flies or ibexes or hedgehogs. The second is that the organism has no volition of its own, its actions are mainly reactive or behaviorally reinforced, and can thus be "trained."
I run into this when people assert that cats are smarter than dogs, because while dogs are easily trained, cats are too smart to let themselves be trained. It might be a cute joke, but a lot of cat owners actually take this as a reasoned scientific argument. (Fact is, cats have a limited repertoire of abilities-- that repertoire serves them well in what they do, but it's limited. Dogs are far more intelligent, and can do a great many more things than cats-- helping the blind, for example.)
> As to the drawbacks of being intelligent, my son explained it all to me
> when he was six. He said, "The trouble with being smart is that someone
> can put a gun to your head and ask you to tell them everything you know."
Then you'd get to live longer, because there's more to tell!