An inventive mechanism (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, October 01, 2014, 20:01 (3704 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Any innovation requires collecting, processing and integrating information, and working out new ways of using it. How this is done is the mystery we're trying to solve.
DAVID: Of course the process of information gathering and planning are needed, but you persist in leaving out the pre-existing information which is part of any mechanism that is collating the requirements (new information)for a new species.-I already answered this: "The “intelligent information” your God may have provided in the first place is everything that goes to make up the cell, including its ‘inventive mechanism' or ‘brain'". What other “pre-existing information” are you thinking of? -dhw: I repeat: I have never ever said that cells conjure up new species by influencing their genomes.
DAVID: But so far in research, the only DNA changes we know about are influences from cells. We don't know of other mechanisms that have been proven. We are theorizing.-At this stage we can ONLY theorize. But you are juggling with what “conjures up” what, and what “influences” what. The information gathered by the cells “influences” the genome in so far as without it, the genome has nothing to work on. But the genome (the ‘brain' of the cell) “conjures up” new species, based on the information it has about the make-up of the cell community itself and the environment with which it has to cope. This must also apply to your 3.7 billion-year-old computer-brain hypothesis, so I don't know why you're querying it.
 
dhw: In my hypothesis, your God's role would have been to invent the inventive mechanism, just as you might say your God invented the human brain, but humans invented the motor car.
DAVID: And just how did the first car appear? The first ones looked like wagons with simple motors. The human brain ( Ford and others) took previous experience, which was in their brains, and with reasoning and inventiveness combined the gasoline engine to the wagon. In the fossil world, new species come across better than the first autos. In our world natural selection by buyers quickly demanded better products which rapidly appeared. So we see the steps in the modern world, but those steps are not present in the fossil world. Darwin's itty-bitty steps don't exist. It seems to me those speciation jumps had a great deal of guidance to explain them, i.e., the Cambrian explosion.-My analogy simply demonstrated two stages of invention: 1) the invention of the mechanism (= the human brain), and 2) the evolutionary innovations invented by the mechanism (= the things invented by the human brain). However, if you insist on extending the analogy, the equivalent would be the variations and adaptations demanded or allowed by changes in the environment. That's why we have so many different “species of species”, once the prototype has established itself. The “intelligent genome” invents, and then goes on modifying the invention. Of course there are no itty-bitty steps. Each change has to work or it won't survive. -dhw: My hypothesis does not avoid design. It proposes that evolutionary innovation is designed by an inventive mechanism in the genome, and it allows for that mechanism to have been designed by your God.
DAVID: Which could then have included some instructions for future planning. I can see no other way for the mechanism to work, from the evidence we have from the gaps in the fossil record. For your approach to work, you have to make the assumption, per Darwin, that the gaps will be filled.-“Could have”... “some instructions...” You cannot have it both ways. Either the mechanism is capable of working out what to do, or it has to have full instructions. And if you believe in evolution, you have no choice: the instructions had to be there from the word go. I don't know why you refuse to register my constantly repeated argument that if the mechanism works, there ARE no gaps. Once again: an innovation must function straight away if it is to survive. But I'm not denying that my hypothesis requires astonishing feats of engineering by the cell communities that create the innovations (much as the first ant communities performed amazing feats when they built the first ant cities). However, the engineering did happen, and it can only have happened because cells cooperated to make it happen. If you believe in evolution, and if every single instance of innovative cooperation, not to mention environmental change, was not planned in intricate detail 3.7 billion years ago - a hypothesis that bothers you, and which should not be fuzzed with expressions like “some instructions” - what alternative explanation can you think of for this cooperation?