Natures wonders: Crocodile tools (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, December 10, 2013, 03:41 (4000 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You love to juggle with "that word information".
> DAVID: Yes I do, because you seem to have a reluctance to view what is in the ant genome is information, and you can't or won't give me a source for it. 
> 
> dhw:No-one knows the source of the information in the human genome either. You like to juggle with the word because it enables you to switch the focus from behaviour indicative of independent intelligence to the unknown source of ALL intelligence. -Information and intelligence are two separate items. I can't seem to get you to recognize the difference as one thinks about the genome. The genome, as we both know, is a code. Information is something that intelligence uses. In our experience in life we know tht information is supplied by mental intelligence and codes are made by mental thought or intelligence. This means to me there is a conscious intelligent source for the code and information in the genome. Granted from that point on we can dsicuss the possible sources all year long, but there will never be a proof we can find or agree upon for who or what that source is. -> 
> dhw: We ALL operate from information in the genome in the brain, but we regard our human capacity for processing and using information, communicating it to others, cooperating with others, taking decisions etc. as an indication of independent intelligence. "Most of it" is not "all of it", and it's the non-instinctive part that constitutes intelligence.-Agreed, but most of what animals, not humans, do is instinct.
> 
> dhw:"Mostly" again. So what is the rest? Life only exists in the form of living organisms, and so your last sentence should read: "God lets the living organisms figure it out or he dabbles?" (I'm glad you've omitted your other theory that the ants' teaching or the bees' dance was just one of the zillions of programmes God planted in the first living cells). "Figuring it out" demands intelligence.-I will agree at the corvid/ ape/ dog level that they can do some figuring out wbhich is basic intelligence. But not at the bacterial level. That they think I will never agree to.