Biological complexity: more cell pore complexity (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, May 12, 2016, 17:46 (3117 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I'm happy to say I firmly believe that if there were no more weaverbirds around, I would still have my chocolate.
DAVID: An analogy: did you pick the cocoa beans yourself? Of course not. The interlocking interdependent relationships of human society produced your chocolate. The balance of nature is exactly the same. Evolution could not have continued without it, although the weaver's nest is not critical to the scheme, just an example of the widespread net of interdependence. Balance kept everyone who survived eating and now we are here.-Yes, evolution is a history of cooperating cell communities, and all organisms are dependent on some others for their survival. But what you call the balance has never stopped changing, and apparently 99% of those organisms are now extinct! All survivors, including ourselves, are “here” and dependent, but even now the balance keeps changing as species go extinct. Somehow, you seem to think the fact that we humans are here means that nothing else mattered to your God, and yet he took the trouble to “guide” the rest including those NOT “critical to the scheme”. It's the untold numbers of the latter that make your scenario so creaky.
 
dhw: The human brain is not an innovation, and there are many similarities between it and other brains. That does not mean human consciousness is not a huge advance on chimp consciousness. Of course it is. 
DAVID: Thank you for that admission.-I have never questioned the huge advance in consciousness. My point is that the human brain was not an innovation. 
 
dhw: They are simply different, and suit the organism concerned. That is how evolution seems to me to work: each organism finding (or not finding) its own means of survival and/or improvement.
DAVID: Each species has its own set of improvements, I agree, but if we agree that chance variation is not the mechanism, what must be present is an underlying 'drive to complexity and possible improvement sorted out in time but not necessarily competition between animals as much as competition with changing environment; Raup's book on extinctions and bad luck.-Why have you suddenly brought Darwinian competition into the discussion? It's obvious that all innovations and variations must somehow be linked to coping with the environment. Competition may be a reason for seeking improvement, or organisms may simply be motivated by new opportunities offered by changes in the environment. But complexity for its own sake to me seems utterly pointless. I don't see why even in your scenario God would try to complexify organisms just for the sake of it.
 
dhw: So Woese disagrees with Margulis. I'll leave that discussion to the experts.

DAVID: Woese doesn't disagree. Mitochondria were ingested. You are missing the point that bacteria have free floating DNA. To get to true multicellularity a nuclear membrane and other organelles had to be added to the complexity of the cell. Woese wonders how. It is neat how you stick to 'your' small group of experts!-Once again, you are switching the argument to how eukaryotes came into being. I am not sticking to “my” experts. I did not know there was controversy over the completeness of the endosymbiosis theory, but that has nothing to do with my point, which was: 
dhw: You can't use unchanging bacteria as evidence that humans didn't have to happen and therefore God geared evolution to the production of humans. As I keep saying, NO other life form had to happen.
DAVID: Exactly my point. WHY did life advance beyond bacteria? Humans did not have to happen, but they did. You cannot avoid the significance of that juxtaposition of events. Not HOW we appeared, but WHY?-And you continue to ignore the fact that it's not just we who appeared! NO other life form HAD to appear. And I keep suggesting that WHY is because there was a built-in drive not only for survival but also for improvement. And I do not think for one minute that every organism was saying to itself: “I wanner be human”, or that your God “guided” every extinct and extant organism, lifestyle and natural wonder in order to produce/feed humans.-DAVID: Complexity is not necessarily improvement: Whales!
dhw: My point is that evolution is propelled by the (possibly God-given) drive for improvement, which gives rise to complexity. […] whereas you quite rightly point out that the ‘drive to complexity' in itself would NOT necessarily mean improvement.

DAVID: Just how do individual 'organisms look to improve'? Sound very anthropomorphic to me. I still think the underlying built-in drive is for complexity which then may bring improvement.-How do organisms look to survive? (And in your scheme of things, how do they look to complexify?) Do you think God even has to instruct them to want to go on living? It makes more sense to me that an organism would say to itself in its own particular way: “I wanner survive/improve” rather than “I wanner complexify.” But in your view, they don't say anything to themselves. God “guides” them to complexify for the sake of becoming more complex - and apparently this sometimes leads to improvement, though apparently it's all been carefully planned to produce humans. Your scenario is getting fuzzier and fuzzier.