By FRANS de WAAL on animal cognition (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, April 14, 2016, 15:49 (3144 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: If the new [bacteria] are simpler than the ones we knew about, then maybe they did complexify!
David: Strange simple new bacteria as still the same strange newly-found bacteria, nothing else.-True, but if some are more complex than others, and bearing in mind that bacteria form communities, and some scientists believe that they are individual, cognitive, sentient, intelligent, communicative, decision-making beings (your God may have made them that way), might it not be possible that a particularly intelligent bunch of cooperative single cells, perhaps inspired by a dramatic change in the environment, finally hit on the great idea of multicellularity? After all, what is multicellularity if it is not a cooperative community of individual cells? -dhw: ...what are you reminding me about? And how does it prove that the drive for survival and/or improvement is unnatural?
DAVID: 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. -Nobody knows why multicellularity appeared. Why did your God wait 3 billion years to do his complexifications? Do please answer. EVERY innovation can be called a saltation, since by definition something new could not have existed before, and we can only speculate on why it happens. A change in conditions perhaps (see below), or a particularly clever set of cell communities (just as particularly clever humans come up with new ideas)?-DAVID: 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.-Once more: nobody knows the answer. Why did God wait till the Cambrian before deciding to dabble so dramatically? Or why did he set his 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme (which you don't believe in) to jump into such frenetic action at this particular time? Do please answer. If you can't, then don't expect Darwin or me to answer. Many scientists have proposed that an increase in oxygen was the trigger. If it was, that would only tell us autonomous organisms exploited it (my hypothesis), or it spurred God into action (your dabbling), or it set his 3.8-billion-year computer programme into action. Why did he wait 3 billion years to increase the oxygen, or was it by sheer chance that the oxygen increased? Not much planning there, then. If increased oxygen wasn't the trigger, tell us what was. If you can't, and if you can't tell us why your God waited 3 billion years, then please stop telling Darwin and little old me that we have a problem. Our problem is also your problem.