The seed and the terrain

A flower in the concrete crack
 What is more important to have a plant, the seed or the terrain?


If the terrain lacks the needed nutrients or energy source (like sunlight), most plants would not grow. Still, a good terrain is not enough to obtain the desired plants. While uncultivated terrains mostly grow weeds, even for that you need some kind of seeds brought by wind.

Without any seed, even the best suitable terrain will not feed life. You need that seed to be able to transform nutrients into amino-acids and other organic compounds. Only a seed can spring life in a suitable terrain.

The seed is Information. The seed contains the recipe to transform minerals, water, carbon dioxide and light to organic compounds that can grow plants. This is the power of Information. Without Information, matter don't know how to transform minerals into something interesting and adaptable - like a beautiful flower.


It is true that a seed also includes a small "machine" to "boot" the genetic code program to create other small "machines" (cells) that can do something similar. While that small initial machine is essential, it is simple enough to fade as importance compared with genetic code (Information).

The chance for a good terrain to spontaneously develop life is so low that it takes billions of years for such phenomenon to happen. The Information encoded in genetic code is essential.

Sometimes different programs (seeds) are better adapted to a specific soils (dry of wet), to a lot of sunlight or low sunlight. For this to happen we have many "programs" into various seeds that can adapt to various terrains and grow different plants with different properties.

 

Genetics or Education?

We can use the above observations as a metaphor for the dichotomy between Genetics and Education.

For humans, Genetics is the Terrain, and the Education is the Seed. While Genetics contains the relevant Information for the seed, for the humans Genetics only contains the predisposition to develop into something we can call human. We know humans that grew into wildness don't develop language and are far from the full human potential.

While personal predispositions might make some humans to be more suitable for a certain kind of education, most individuals have the capacity to grow into something valuable. They just need to receive the right Education seed in order to transform their potential into something useful.

Maybe the analogy is not fully applicable. It is more likely that an uneducated human would learn to do something human specific by itself than for a soil to grow plants without seeds. Still, I think it is a useful analogy.

Genetics traits are important for someone to achieve great performance in a domain, but the lack of education is almost a sure recipe for an individual that is way below its potential and even harming for society.

As not all seeds are suitable to all soils, maybe education should be customized to different categories of people. Not all people learn in the same way, so education should take this into account. Maybe some people need more practical education, some others are more suitable to work with abstractions.


What do you think?



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