Biological complexity: more cell pore complexity (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, May 13, 2016, 16:01 (3116 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: So what. As long as nature keeps its balance throughout evolution, everyone eats.
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> dhw: No they don't. 99% of species have disappeared. Your concept of balance seems to be that if humans are here and able to eat, nature is and always has been balanced.-Of course it always has been balanced until we humans have started upsetting it. Things arrive, things disappear, always balanced, always my concept of balance, from the beginning of life, a vital system.-> 
> dhw: The odds against chance producing life in ALL its different forms are enormously enormous. What is this “process of life”? It sounds as if you are now suggesting that the process of life works independently of your God's plans and instructions.-Correct. Any branch of the bush of life has high odds, if one proposes it must arrive. In my view complexity is the main drive with God dabbling to guide it.- -> 
> dhw: We are talking about the course of evolution, not the unsolved problem of consciousness. The human brain is a physical entity which has clear links with the brains of our animal ancestors, and as such is a variation, not an innovation.-You cannot separate consideration of our brain without including the development of its consciousness, even if we don't know how consciousness develops from it. It is the same as your argument trying to separate origin from evolution. You can't. 'I want to think about this but not about that' is discontinuous reasoning.-> 
> dhw: No innovation or variation would have survived if it had not somehow helped the organism to cope with its environment. Yes, you are making the argument that complexification takes place for its own sake and improvement is secondary, and I am asking why an organism or your God would create a new complexity just for the sake of complexity.-Perhaps by driving complexity it allows evolution to advance through survivability as an automatic mechanism, with God stepping in the dabble as necessary. Complexity explains the weird branches of the bush.
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> dhw: Then it's not for the sake of complexity - it's for the sake of improvement, unless you believe your God produced humans because he wanted a creature with lots more twiddly bits than a bacterium and not a creature with lots more useful attributes. - I don't believe the crazy sentence about God you proposed above. Of course with complex improvement survivability will guarantee that useful attributes for that organism are present. Complexify and see what variations are better and survive. Makes God's work easier.