Cambrian Explosion: mutation rate (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, September 20, 2013, 22:26 (4082 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: Not much of a description, is it? But please note, I do not dismiss your God Theory. I respect it. I simply challenge your right to dismiss a serious hypothesis as poppycock when your own serious hypothesis is no less nebulous and no less unscientific.-My problem with discussing cell activity is you don't understand the biochemistry. Your hypothesis and my God theory are horses of different colors. I am trying to follow the philosophic approach of 'theory to the best explanation' for what we see. You have invented your panpsychic cell theory that makes no sense in the biochemistry of cells. I admit my God theory explains everything, but it is an extrapolation to best explanation, with no basis of proof.
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> dhw: You agree that there is "conscious intelligence" in the cell and in cell communities, and yet you keep disagreeing!-Yes there is conscious intelligence in cells, but it is under tight control in the genome, coded into the DNA, and it allows the cells to make epigenetic changes.
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> And this is the nub of our disagreement. You constantly ignore the point that I constantly emphasize. On 18 September at 15.44 I wrote: "I prefer "intelligent" to Margulis's "conscious", which is too readily mistaken for human-type self-awareness." On 19 September at 19.43 I wrote: "Margulis is careful to avoid anthropomorphizing her bacteria / cells." (She wrote: "Of course bacterial awareness is more limited than that of a human mind.") No-one is claiming that ants, bacteria and cells think and plan self-consciously or "aesthetically" in the same manner as humans. The whole point is that they have a degree of intelligence that enables them to link up and create something new. ....... Your alternative, as I keep repeating, is for your God to have preprogrammed every innovation, and even you have rejected that.-In the cells and in the ants there is preprogrammed intelligent information that the cells and the ants can use, but as relatively automatic responses to their stresses or other changes. Chance did not invent the kidney. The odds are enormously against it. Pre-programming is the only conceivable way.
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> Dhw: Perhaps because they are possessed of an independent, intelligent decision-making mechanism, which may or may not have been invented by your God.
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> DAVID: And you want it invented by chance? Add the word automatic and you've got it.
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> dhw: Another distortion. I do not want it invented by chance. I have no idea how it was invented. I keep repeating that I am only trying to figure out how evolution works. "Automatic" is a denial of independence, and again involves preprogramming.-Exactly.
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> dhw: How can information be used for innovation without the user being possessed of intelligence?
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> DAVID: Explained in my last post. Basically intelligent processes as responses to stress are available to be chosen for use, with the characteristics of the stress guiding the choice. 
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> dhw: I don't think innovation is caused solely by stress. ..... You have agreed that conscious intelligence (but not human self-awareness) is present in cells and cell communities, and that cells are capable of independent invention and self-perpetuation. That is what I mean by the intelligent cell.-We go round and round. I am using 'stress' to mean any change that requires the organism to respond in phenotype change. Yes, the cell is intelligent in that it has intelligent information available to use. You admit cells don't think. That means their responses are relatively automatic.