By FRANS de WAAL on animal cognition (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, April 13, 2016, 15:07 (3145 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I remind you bacteria are still here, with the new ones found that are even more simple than the ones we knew about. They did not complexify. For life to continue, multicellularity did not have to appear. That is a step natural pressures do not explain. It is an event as mysterious and unexplained as the origin of life.
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> dhw: If the new ones are simpler than the ones we knew about, then maybe they did complexify!-Strange simple new bacteria as still the same strange newly-found bacteria, nothing else.
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> dhw: I admire the boldness of your latest counterattack. Over and over again, and as recently as two days ago, you have emphasized that humans and their great minds appeared “for no apparent reason in nature's pressures”, and over and over again, and as recently as two days ago, I have reminded you that “nature did not require any advance beyond bacteria. EVERY innovation is therefore the result of a drive towards improvement.” (I would include multicellularity among the innovations. Wouldn't you?) And over and over again, and as recently as yesterday, I have said that nobody knows how innovation happened. That makes it mysterious and unexplained. So what are you reminding me about? And how does it prove that the drive for survival and/or improvement is unnatural?-Survival was solved by the original bacteria. Dynamic improvement (i.e. the Cambrian) is a striking leap. I feel like 'Thru the Looking Glass'. Which side of the mirror are you on? We seem to be discussing two sets of different logic from the same facts. IF bacteria represent early life, and have total survivability in their 3.5 billion year existence, then why did multicellularity appear? Either life comes with a drive to complexity built-in, which means bacteria waited about 3 billion years to use it, or complexity appeared as a saltation. The Cambrian is an extreme jump in complexity, more than the wait for enough oxygen can be used as an excuse that 'the conditions were not right'. Darwin admitted the Cambrian was the 'monkey wrench' in his theory. It still is. His theory works only up to that point, but you keep returning to it with the survival/improvement argument you just presented as though it applies beyond that point. It doesn't.