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http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=6116

Maybe we just need the right sort of developmental pressure.

You can write on hackernews, avians can't. I guess the answer is pretty straightforward.

What happens though if you give a avian or a tribe of sign language fluent apes.. a way to write things down permanently..

I seem to recall reading somewhere that most of our brain is just interior "wiring" and the actual thinking goes on in the outer few millimetres - i.e. most of the brain is just interconnections. If that is correct then I would expect that the amount of "wiring" (and so overall volume) would need to increase exponentially as the brain power increased.

...plus there is all that crap about us only using 2% of our brains etc.

The 2% thing and varriants are myths