Logic and evolution: the giraffe problem (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, January 15, 2019, 01:14 (2138 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: There are many suggested but untestable hypotheses on the subject of the origin of life and of all evolutionary innovations. That is why discussion and research go on unabated. Darwin would have attributed the long neck to an advantageous mutation followed by natural selection, Lamarck thought it was a characteristic acquired by reaching up for food, and I know at least one person who believes that 3.8 billion years ago his God provided the very first cells with special programmes

DAVID: A perfect non-answer to the issue. How do complex design requirement animals like a giraffe come from? The fossils have no answer!

dhw: Nobody has the answer, and that is why I have offered three different answers, including your own. Shapiro, who believes in cellular intelligence, offers a fourth: “natural genetic engineering” (but I would add that cellular intelligence may have been designed by your God).

Of course there is no natural answer. There are no fossil predecessors! Were is the evolution?

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Under “Natural wonders”:
DAVID: [Amoeba] have amazing abilities that appear intelligent:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a25686417/amoeba-math/

dhw: Note the article says the amoeba figures out the best possible arrangement by itself, but the mechanism remains a mystery. My hypothetical solution to the mystery is that the amoeba figures out the best possible arrangement by itself. Of course once confronted with the problem, it would instinctively use its intelligence, which is not the same as saying that it is automatically following instructions issued 3.8 billion years ago, along with instructions for every undabbled innovation, econiche, lifestyle and natural wonder throughout the history of life.

DAVID: Very unfair tactic. My quote with the major point is omitted! I said the researchers set up a very clever mechanism whereby the slime mold, by using its only two automatic responses to food or light could solve the problem. It allows DHW to postulate intelligence where it doesn't exist.

dhw: How do you know it doesn’t exist?

DAVID: From the article: "the amoeba just reacts passively to the conditions" and reacts automatically.

dhw: It can’t change the conditions, can it? But why are you rewriting the sentence? It continues: “…and figures out the best possible arrangement by itself” – the exact opposite of “reacts automatically”.

By itself of course can mean automatically. It only reacts to light or food as the articled says..

DAVID: The only real intelligence is in the research team and what they designed! The article really fools unsophisticated readers.

dhw: Margulis, McClintock, Buehler, Shapiro all champion cellular intelligence, as does this article itself. Apparently anyone who disagrees with you is “unsophisticated”. This is not the level of debate we are accustomed to.

Quote from article: " Physarum polycephalum is a very simple organism that does two things: it moves toward food and it moves away from light. Millions of years of evolution has made Physarum abnormally efficient at both of these things." Where do you see intelligence???