Cambrian Explosion: afterthought (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, September 30, 2013, 15:53 (4072 days ago) @ dhw
edited by unknown, Monday, September 30, 2013, 16:18

DAVID: You cannot seem to understand the use of information by cells and want to call it intelligence. We are not discussing M1 or CIA intelligence. That is only information.
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> dhw: That is precisely the point I am trying to get across: it is the USE of information that constitutes intelligence, and cells/cell communities USE information. Yet again ... since you continue to ignore this repeated request! ... let me ask you what attributes you require in addition to the gathering, processing and exchange of information, communicating, decision-making, problem-solving (without self-awareness) before you will acknowledge intelligence.-But you have just defined where we differ: Of course cells USE information they receive, but they use it following intelligent instructions already embedded in the genome. The choices are automatic. bBella's lecture is an exposition of that. My leaf analogy is to the point. The color change tells us Fall is coming. All the leaf knows is that it budded out, made energy all summer and with a slight chill in the air, chemical reactions are set up to change color. Nowhere in Shapiro's book about epigenetics do I find a discussion of cell thought, just of automatic behavior and a built-in ability to automatically vary responses. In your thinking you have to allow for the strength of stimuli that elicit a response. This is not automatism like you pull the switch and the light comes on.-Here is an example of a bacterial transport system. sounds magical and automatic to me:-"The outer membrane of bacteria contains many proteins that form tiny pores. They are important for absorbing nutrients and transmitting signals into the cell. The research group of Sebastian Hiller, Professor of Structural Biology at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, has now shown for the first time at atomic resolution, that these pore proteins are transported in an unstructured, constantly changing state to the outer bacterial membrane. This landmark study was recently published in the scientific journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology.-"The current study by Hiller provides an exceptional and deep insight into this transport mechanism. The membrane protein is loosely embedded in the solid structure of Skp during transport and does not adopt on a defined spatial structure itself. "Amazingly, the unfolded protein changes its state constantly ... faster than thousand times per second and more than ten million times during the crossing," explained Hiller. ""- Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-09-erratic-proteins-insights-mechanism.html#jCp