Today's post, Protein Reinforcement and DNA Consequentialism was originally published on 13 November 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Brains made of proteins can learn much faster than DNA, but DNA does seem to be more adaptable. The complexity of the evolutionary hypothesis is so enormous that no species, other than humans, is capable of thinking it, and yet DNA seems to implicitly understand it. This happens because DNA is learns through the actual consequences, but protein brains can simply imagine the consequences.

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This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Evolutionary Psychology, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.