Junk DNA: goodbye! (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, July 28, 2014, 10:05 (3553 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: However, as usual, you insist that humans and - to a lesser degree - our fellow animals are capable of making their own spontaneous decisions, whereas other life forms from bacteria onwards are automata. THAT is the difference between us.DAVID: Again, either I've not been clear or you misunderstand. we humans hae different sets of cellular controls. My kidney acts autonomously and automatically on its ow, just like a bacterial cell. But I have a brain which is some sort of a basis for consciousness, and I am in control of my consciousness.-Your view is perfectly clear: you reject the case Margulis, Shapiro, Albrecht-Buehler & Co have made for regarding cells (including bacteria) as intelligent, sentient beings. Under “Cell Memories” I wrote: “...much cellular behaviour is undoubtedly automatic once an innovation has established itself”. It is not the repetition of established modes of behaviour that led the above researchers to their conclusion, but the solving of new problems through innovation and adaptation. No-one is claiming that bacterial intelligence is the same as human consciousness. The parallel lies in the capacity for processing information, communicating, and taking decisions.-dhw: ..let me point out that if the different “life plans” of the fruit flies were not preprogrammed, the cell communities of which the fruit flies are composed must have cooperated in making all the decisions that led to their particular life plan. If those decisions were not preprogrammed, they cannot have been automatic.-DAVID: Let me point out that we both accept evolution, and in my concept of it, life and body forms respond to various challenges of nature. [I agree.] Life forms are designed to contain the information to make appropriate responses, and that response can be inheritable as shown in recent epigenetic research. [I agree.] They have plans of adaptation, not pre-programming to the tinest degree.-Either detailed plans for adaptations and innovations are already present in all life forms (= preprogramming), or they have to be worked out by the organisms themselves as and when the need or opportunity arises (= autonomous intelligence). Even the tiniest details must work perfectly or the response will fail.
 
dhw: Incidentally, the article - like many you have recently quoted on this thread - emphasizes that so-called junk DNA is not junk. An article in today's Guardian reports on the claim by researchers at Oxford University that: “More than 90% of human DNA is doing nothing very useful, and large stretches may be no more than biological baggage that has built up over years of evolution.” As is so often the case, scientists themselves can't agree. Back to the picket fence, everybody!-DAVID: You have quoted the atheistic version of the battle about junk, and in my opinion the Guardian always represents that side. You have forgotten ENCODE with its consortium of hundreds of scientists who showed function in 80% of DNA.-You have been quoting ENCODE on this thread, which is what I meant when I said “scientists themselves can't agree”. ENCODE scientists claim 80% function, Oxford scientists claim to have found very different figures. So long as there is no scientific consensus, how can the layman believe or disbelieve the claims of the different researchers, let alone the conclusions they draw from them?