Intelligence & Evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Tuesday, November 05, 2013, 17:36 (3822 days ago) @ dhw


>dhw: A non sequitur. You believe that human intelligence can emerge from cooperation between human brain cells, but you are unwilling even to consider the possibility that other forms of intelligence might emerge from cooperation between other cells.-Exactly. See my most recent entry on brain DNA complexity.-
> dhw: However, it's always worth remembering that 90% of biochemists in general reject your theory of divine preprogramming!-Because they have faith in atheism.-> dhw: I have considered three hypotheses, all of which start with biochemical reality (cells must cooperate in the production of new organs),-You persist in missing the point. Cells do not, of their own volition cooperate. They are forced to follow an organizatinal plan in the DNA they are given. 
> *****
> 
> dhw: If you google bacterial/microbial intelligence, you will find 191,000 references. I have chosen three quotes just from the first page which are unequivocal ... one of them being from my favourite expert in the field.-I know this approach. Sounds good. 
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> "While the number of bacteria in a colony can be more than 100 times the number of people on Earth, bacteria are twittering (" bacterial twittering" or "chemical tweeting") to make sure they all know what they all doing (by exchanging "chemical tweets"); each cell is both an actor and a spectator in the bacterial Game of Life. Acting jointly, these tiny organisms can sense the environment, process information, solve problems and make decisions so as to thrive in harsh environments. In better times, when exposed to an environment containing abundant nutrients, instead of rushing to exhaust the available resources, as human communities often do, bacteria save for the future and make sure to be prepared for hard times that might befall them in the future."
> www.tamar.tau.ac.il/~eshel/html/intelligence_of_Bacteria-html
> (I've had trouble getting back to this one.)
> 
> dhw: "So how does a colony of bacteria decide which genetic mutations afford the greatest chance of survival and expansion? Jacob, Becker, Shapira, and Levine, hold that bacteria communicate among themselves, writing, "It is clearly essential to figure out how the bacteria can obtain semantic meaning, so as to initiate, for example, the proper context-dependent transitions between different operating states of the genome (370-371)." Though the researchers do not understand the process(es) by which bacteria code messages and send them, Jacob, Becker, Shapira, and Levine do conceive that bacteria have shared social communicative abilities, which, because of the nature of language, implies a shared knowledge of the semantic meanings of their codes (371). Based on these speculations, it would indeed appear that not only are bacteria sentient (by choosing), and intelligent (by communicating), but that they are also socially organized (but civilized?)."
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> www.justburrus.blogspot.com/2010/03/bacterial-sentience-intelligence.html
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> dhw: MARGULIS: People think that if you can't talk, you can't be intelligent. But you know that's not true if you have a dog. You can communicate with them without talking. If you define intelligence as speaking American English, well maybe they're not. But if you define it in the much more broad sense of behaviors that are modified on the individual level, that involve choice and change and response to the environment, there's every bit of evidence that intelligence is a property of life from the very beginning. It's been modified, of course, and changed and amplified, even, but it's an intrinsic property of cells.
> www.astrobio.net/interview/211/bacterial-intelligence-I did not remove any of this. I've read this stuff over and over in the past. It is fun to discuss it this way, but the cells work by biochemical code processes, as in the bolded sentence above. It is part of the Gaia Earth philosophy to which Margulis was a worshipper..