Evolution of Intelligence (Origins)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Sunday, March 31, 2013, 05:12 (4041 days ago) @ dhw


> DHW: It is beyond my own imagining that you could have read the passage you have quoted, and thought for one second that it means randomness and competition have produced the universe and life! It begins with criticism of David's Darwinian post for overlooking the concept of COOPERATION. It goes on to explain in detail how COOPERATION produces harmony, and competition may produce discord, and I challenge you to find any mention of randomness. The whole point of this alternative hypothesis is that I find both chance and a god equally unlikely as "creators" of the universe and life. The quest for a third way is not "willful disbelief", but an attempt to find a scenario that dispenses with two unlikely hypotheses.-No one has overlooked cooperation. The problem is that cooperation does not explain the unity of the design, not to mention exponentially complicating the issue of 'first intelligence' by making it happen not once, but numerous times. -
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>DHW: Unlike David's, your version of God allows for the possibility that the original energy was mindless. How do you think mindless energy might have acquired intelligence, consciousness, information, ideas, purpose? I've pointed out that being aware requires something to be aware of. Why would pure energy become aware of pure energy? We know that matter exists, energy forms matter, and matter always changes. So this is something energy might have become aware of: the changing matter it has formed and in which it is embedded. An analogy: the genome is "aware" of the changes in the matter around it and reacts accordingly (or if it doesn't, the organism perishes). Every chunk of matter may therefore contain its own energy and so gather its own information. You seem to think that individualized intelligence of any kind automatically means destructive egotism, and you "wilfully" ignore the principle of COOPERATION. I showed in my examples that it's even possible for egotism to lead to cooperation between entities if that is in the interest of all parties, as we see so often in Nature. We ALSO see competition, but that is not what creates functioning bodies. Your own body is a huge mass of cooperating cells ... and in my hypothesis that is the result of multiple "intelligences" that have evolved from multiple chunks of matter. And so instead of a single entity for some unknown reason developing a colossally brilliant mind of its own, we have chunks of energy in chunks of matter gradually evolving their own "intelligence" which increases in complexity as they merge with one another. I do not have a problem if you find it unlikely, but you should not claim that it's based on randomness or competition, when the key is "INTELLIGENCE" and COOPERATION. In return, perhaps you will now offer me your own hypothesis as to how a single, universal entity of mindless energy might have acquired its own intelligence.-
The Genome is a chunk of code that reacts the way that it is programmed to react. I have written code myself that can do the same in a much more simplistic manner. I don't ignore the principal of cooperation, it just does not explain the unity of purpose that I see in everything that exists.It also does not explain all of the chicken and egg problems that we see. (See The Flower and the Bumble Bee post) The type of cooperation you describe would be virtually impossible in discreet organisms, for communication reasons if nothing else.

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.