Clever Corvids: using tools (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, September 10, 2015, 11:51 (3151 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: One cannot tell the difference between using intelligence and following intelligent information they have been given. Example: I wanted to be a physician, but could not intelligently act in that role until I had the training (given to me) to then perform intelligent acts as a physician.-dhw: An excellent analogy. Thanks to your intelligence, you were able to absorb and process all the information necessary for your role and then use it appropriately. You are not an automaton. Thanks to their intelligence, bacteria are able to absorb and process all the information necessary for their role and then use it appropriately. They are not automatons.-DAVID: But you haven't challenged the point of my analogy: one cannot tell the difference. On the outside looking in there are always the two possibilities, and you always pick one only, while seeing both. I do the same, but based on other biological situations I've mentioned over and over.-Oh my God, then you're a robot!-But you are quite right: on the outside looking in there are always the two possibilities, and you always pick one only, while seeing both. I do the same, but based on the biological situations mentioned over and over again by Shapiro, McClintock, Margulis, Pfeffer, Albrecht-Buehler....-DAVID (under "Nature's Wonders”): Mealy bugs survive because they have onboard two bacteria, one inside the other, to produce the necessary amino acids to survive and to share genes:-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130620142954.htm-QUOTE: "Mealybugs only eat plant sap, but sap doesn't contain all the essential amino acids the insects need to survive. Luckily, the bugs have a symbiotic relationship with two species of bacteria -- one living inside the other in a situation unique to known biology -- to manufacture the nutrients sap doesn't provide.
"The net result: The bacteria get a comfy mealybug home, and the bugs get the nutrition they need to live.”-Once more, huge thanks for sharing these wonders with us. -If these organisms have not worked out their own symbiotic relationship, who or what did? Are you telling me that God preprogrammed the first living cells to ensure that the mealybugs and bacteria would eventually get together? Or he dabbled to make them do it? You are faced with the same dilemma as with the weaverbird and its nest, the wasp that lays its eggs on a spider's back, the monarch butterfly that reproduces four times before emigrating, etc. You have finally conceded that these organisms may have an independent inventive intelligence of their own, but bacteria, which perform similar miracles of intricate design, have to have direct instructions from your God, because you cannot conceive of any intelligence without a brain. I still wonder why God has bothered to preprogramme such minutiae when apparently all he really wanted from evolution was us humans. But perhaps we humans can't exist without the mealybug/bacteria symbiosis.