Genome complexity: what genes do and don't do (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, January 30, 2019, 13:02 (2124 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You have agreed that information (a passive data base) cannot possibly serve as instructions, and you cannot passively "be instructed" without instructions. You have said unequivocally that “the information just lying there is inactive, of course, but the cells are totally aware of it and use it in various required actions.” I would say, then, that life "runs on" cells being aware of and actively using the passive information that is lying there inactive. All your own words.

DAVID: I agree.

I would regard your agreement as another red letter day in the history of the AgnosticWeb, but experience teaches me that agreements are not always what they seem.

dhw: [...] To this I would add that I do not accept the term "reaction information". Information is passive, and new stimuli provide new information. Cells, as you say, become aware of it and use it. I don't believe passive information can actively instruct passive information to become active.

DAVID: 'Reaction information' is my term for instructions as to how to respond to various stimuli.

Why mess about with language? Information means passive facts or details about a subject. Instructions are not facts or details, they are commands. And the article you initially agreed with said specifically that the passive data base could NOT serve as instructions.

DAVID: What are your thoughts about this issue of information in this context of what makes life operate?

dhw: My thoughts favour the hypothesis described above, using your very own words: “life "runs on" cells being aware of and actively using the passive information that is lying there inactive.” To complete the picture, I must add that for me there is a 50/50 chance that the active awareness and ability (or intelligence) of cells to use the information may have been designed by your God.

DAVID: Agreed.

Still hope for a red letter day!

dhw: […] in the context of heredity and evolution, I need to repeat the caveat I have always offered in response to your posts highlighting automaticity and ignoring origins and problems. Every innovation does require “de novo” instructions from the cells, but once any process has proved successful, I agree that the cells will then follow “stored instructions”, as the successful process has to be passed on. And the cells will go on performing that process automatically unless problems or new conditions arise. It is the solution of new problems that provides us with the evidence that cells (including bacteria) are aware of passive information and, in your own words, “use it in various required actions”. That is when they create instructions on the hoof/de novo. And that is the basis of my hypothesis: we know cells can solve new problems and can restructure themselves in response to environmental change, and although we don’t know the extent to which they can do this, I suggest that by the same process they can also invent the new structures that constitute evolution.

DAVID: We disagree about automaticity, since I think almost all of what cells do or respond to is automatic in multicellular organisms.

That may well be so, but the crucial word in your statement is “almost”. Once the process has been successful, it has to be repeated “automatically”, as described above. Only when there are problems/new conditions do the cells have to – in your own words – become aware of them and actively use the new information to perform the required actions. Your "almost" is the area in which cellular intelligence comes into play.

DAVID: Shapiro's work is on bacteria which is a whole different ballgame. They have to have some way to alter themselves. That doesn't really translate to what happens in multicellular. I also disagree with cells cannot create new species. That requires design beyond their capacities.

Correction: you disagree with the hypothesis that cells can create new species. I know you do. We also know that bacteria, like all cells and cell communities, “have some way to alter themselves”. That’s what the discussion is all about! Shapiro thinks it’s cellular intelligence, and I keep emphasizing that since we have never witnessed any innovations leading to new species, cellular intelligence as the means of innovation is a hypothesis. So too is your fixed belief that your God designed every species so that they could all eat one another until he designed the only thing he wanted to design.