Intelligence & Evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, November 04, 2013, 15:02 (4036 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: The diversification of life through innovation can ONLY take place through cell communities undergoing changes and cooperating with one another, whether preprogrammed or not. But for all we know, each successful "committee" is counterbalanced by ten thousand unsuccessful committees. We know of the innovative successes, but not the failures. With regard to adaptation, however, we do know there have been successes and failures: dinosaurs failed to adapt and died out; bacteria adapted and lived on. Perfectly understandable in the case of ungodlike cell communities pursuing their own "agenda": you win some, you lose some. But if your almighty planner was behind it all, how come he had so many failures?-DAVID [two comments telescoped by me into one]: If you follow David Raup, bad luck not failure. [...] That is why I have automatic a,b, and c choices. Creates variation and adaptation. And then the bad luck failures.-What sort of lottery is this? Bad luck for the failures, and divine pre-planning for the successes. Ugh, and there was me thinking that there was you thinking that God had the progress from eukaryotes to humans all worked out!-DAVID: Find a biochemist who doesn't describe an automatic chemical series of answers to stimuli.-As I keep repeating, most of our own immediate responses to stimuli are chemical, but how we adapt our actions and create something new is a different process. You assume that chemical is synonymous with automatic, but you take seriously the suggestion that human intelligence emerges from chemical interactions between billions of cells. So why not other forms of intelligence? You also take seriously the suggestion that these chemical interactions can be controlled by an unknown mechanism that gives us free will. Maybe there is an unknown control mechanism (Albrecht-Buehler's "centrosome") in all cells and cell communities. And you also take seriously the possibility that the intelligence which emerges is NOT dependent on chemical reactions, because it is able to survive death. Biochemists frequently talk of bacterial/microbial intelligence, and collective intelligence, but they don't know its source, any more than they know the source of our own. According to you, however, 90% of them are atheists, which leaves 90% presumably believing that cells have some form of intelligence that is not preprogrammed by your God. And who knows what the other 10% would think of your theory? (See below.)
 
dhw: They are observed to cooperate, but no-one has observed the original invention of the organs that led from eukaryotes to humans, and so no-one can say what enabled the cells to produce the innovations. That gives us both room to speculate.-DAVID: Your speculation is based on cells doing more than just cooperating. They are realy programmed to do just that and no more. Where we are not level is that cells cannot plan for complex organ operations and functions. They just do what they are instructed to do.-That is your assumption, which may or may not be right. Nobody knows how cells managed to produce our organs. You wrote earlier: "At least my speculations have a basis in reality". I asked you what basis, but you have not responded to my question, so I'll repeat it: "Please tell me which biology reference book provides scientific evidence that an unknown and unknowable power preprogrammed the first cells to pass on to their descendants all the programmes needed to produce countless innovations, that this same power also preprogrammed choices to create minor variations, and that this same power directed evolution so that it would end up with humans. Your speculations have no more basis in reality than mine. Still level pegging!"