[libraryofbabel]

As I read it, the point of the dog story is really to suggest that there are probably limits to understanding at every level of intelligence. Sure, humans have a lot of cool tools for thinking about the world that dogs don't have (analogies, language, symbolic thinking, whatever). But it's only a kind of happy accident that they have also made us pretty good at doing science. Is it really so unreasonable to think that there might be things about the physical world that we can't understand with these tools?

> we are messing with our brains constantly looking for a way to make it better; may it be by genetic therapy (DNA mods), chemically induced (drugs) or hardware implants (artificial neurons).

What makes you so sure humans can bootstrap their way into ever higher levels of intelligence, ad infinitum? Sure, it's possible to take that view, but I would say it's incredibly optimistic. And not one of those ideas you mention has yet made humans any better at doing science (well, maybe 'drugs' - scientists do love their coffee).

[cutcss]

We don't need it to be ad infinitum; we only need it high enough to understand that which we still don't.