Cambrian Explosion: afterthought (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, September 24, 2013, 19:18 (4078 days ago) @ dhw


> 1) "There is an enormous amount of information in cells which they use, roughly as automatons. -> 
> dhw:I appreciate the acknowledgement of subjectivity here, and hope I'm not exhausting your patience by trying for some more concessions! 
> 
> 1) What do you mean by "roughly" automatic? Either the user is an automaton or it isn't. -If the user is automatic but is given a choice if several responses, in the epigenetic area of the genome, then 'roughly' applies. As I envision it, the controlling mechanisms allow for a,b, or c, depending upon the challenge to the organism.-
> dhw: Most of our own activities are based on the enormous amount of information stored in all our cells (especially the brain), but how can consciousness "be" the information? Consciousness is the user of the information. -No, in my view, consciousness supplies the information embedded in the genome. The cell responses as in the lecture supplied by bbella shows tight controls over those responses, no thought by the cell invonved.-
> dhw: BBella interprets the lecture as a clear indication that cells make decisions and exchange information (which you categorically said did not happen), and this is even clearer in the far more detailed article I quoted on bacillus subtilis, which adds cooperation, diversification and even anticipation and prediction to the list. Thought/consciousness/intelligence can be on different levels. Leaving aside the super-level of self-awareness, how many more attributes do you require for your definition of intelligence?-Look carefully at the lecture slides. Everything is very clearly, to my interpretation, tightly controlled. This is the way biochemistry has been since I went to medical school ,and the exhibited research is following the path I predicted in my first book of more and more complexity of these tight controls. The research does not show cell thought. A bacterium is attracted to food by automatic sensors in its membrane. What could be clearer. DNA is exchanged, but not by consciousness, but built-in mechanisms that allow that exchange.-> 
> dhw: 2) "The cells have to dig in...to try a new approach". What digs and what tries? Yes, it is your theory that the "Construction Planner" is an automaton preprogrammed to find God's instructions and produce his pre-planned goods when conditions are right (though it seems a strange sort of divine preprogramming that requires trying out). Another possibility is that the "Construction Planner" is the unpreprogrammed intelligence of the cell,-The cell does not have intelligence. It has information. "intelilgence inplies consciousness. I will not budge from this point. It has mechanisms that allow it to use this information, not consciousness.-> 
> dhw: 3) You wrote: "This is information presented in the genome by a conscious intelligence and it makes it seem that the cells themselves are acting consciously." 
> Margulis said, after studying the antics of her "conscious bacteria": "The idea that only people are conscious makes me laugh." This suggests that she would not agree with you, and the word "seem" is inappropriate.-Since I can't discuss my view with her directly, either I go to a Medium, or we are stuck at this disagreement.
> 
> dhw: You wrote: "We are conscious and can plan intelligently. Our dialysis machines are very poor substitutes for a naturally functioning kidney, and you want some sort of individual cells to plan one? That is why your theory is poppycock." This is a distortion. It is not a matter of a few individual cells saying "Let's make a kidney". ..... I'm suggesting that from the original "invention" (the individual cell) have sprung all subsequent "inventions", as a result of zillions of generations of cell communities cooperating and sharing their accumulated knowledge over thousands of millions of years. - Cells do not accumulate knowledge. They work on implanted information. No matter how often you repeat this example, no matter how long you would like it to take, cells cooperate at a biochemical automatic response level as shown in bbella's lecture. These are clearly automatic responses. If you think the slides are complex now, wait another ten years and the research will make the slides even more stupifyingly complex. The research follows my reasoning by looking for all these automatic pathways and finding them. Only if you have followed this from 1951, my biochemistry course in med school, can you fully appreciate what I have seen develop. More and more explanation of how cells seem to acting on their own, but no, they are rigidly controlled responses. -To make a kidney or a liver, there has to be a pre-existing plan. The cells alone cannot conjure up the plans. And chance attempts can't do it. You are empowering cells with much more than they are capable of individually or in groups. I know of no biochemical research that could support your contentions.-You are working from a non-belief system, I am strictily working from what science shows me.:-http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-we-should-choose-science-over-beliefs&WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20130924