Money is the root of all evil!

Read your own post. Are we talking about what your brain needs for fuel (energy), or what your brain needs to function?

I'll save you the trouble - your brain needs energy to fuel it, and things like protein to make it function and repair itself. You just didn't understand what was being discussed when you jumped in:

 

Reese was clearly talking about fuel, as he was responding to @newjerseyrunner ridiculous claim that aliens would need lots of protein to fuel their big brains. (As if anyone on Earth has clue 1 about alien biochemistry.) You twisted what Reese said, for reasons I won't speculate on.

So you say, but why should anyone believe you?

You said "Your brain is constantly eating through protein to build new dendrites and neurotransmitters."
Prove it. Give us a cite, one that reports how much protein per day the brain requires. And the NIH article seems to imply that it's glucose, not protein, that fuels the generation of neurotransmitters by the way. And I can see how that might be, as the biochemical cycle for Acetylcholine, for example, doesn't seem to consume any protein as far as I can tell.

So, let's see some cites. I'm willing to be educated -- I'm not a biochemist after all -- but not by someone whose only evidence is "because I say so."
[EDIT: and it still won't be relevant to this thread, because aliens may not need any protein at all. It may be toxic to them, for all we know. Find out if we meet them, I guess.]

 

Plants do actually have some protein. When German settlers came to America they pretty much invented American style beer by trying to create the clear pilsners from their home country, but couldn't because the barley grown in America at the time had a higher protein content than the European variety, which resulted in cloudy beer. To solve this, they started using a mash of lower protein grains mixed with the barley malts, which got popular for some reason.

Also, depending on how alien these aliens are, they may have just never needed found a need for currency. If they all have some sort of eidetic memory, then they'd be able to remember complex trades and figures for their entire lives. Give them a form of telepathic communication on top of that and it would make lying almost impossible.

 

This started as a thread about money and evil. Now it's about brains and protein. It's also gotten very contentious and is generating reports.

It's closed for now.