Biological complexity: feedback loops are vital (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, September 30, 2019, 19:00 (1881 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: [...] information is not active (and not intelligent and not functioning), and it requires the intelligence of organisms to use it. Perfectly simple.

DAVID: In regard as to how organisms operate, let me ask a question. Have you ever followed instructions from a pamphlet or book to create something or respond to something? That is how I view organisms and information. You used the information actively and created.

dhw: Precisely. I am an intelligent organism (I hope you’ll agree), and I actively use my intelligence to create something out of whatever non-intelligent, non-functioning instructions/information are at my disposal. Thank you for an excellent analogy.

DAVID: The organisms are programmed to automatically respond to instructions in the information. It is a complexity created by God.

dhw: If they are programmed to respond automatically to the instructions, it means they have instructions on how to use the instructions, so what do they use to follow the instructions on how to use the instructions in order to create or respond to something? Whether the complexity was created by God or not makes no difference to the process whereby organisms actively use non-active information.

The organisms work just as you do in the analogy. You are free to act. They are automatic with programmed reponses to the instructional information.

Under "Natural Wonders":

QUOTE: "Like a brain, an ant colony operates without central control. Each is a set of interacting individuals, either neurons or ants, using simple chemical interactions that in the aggregate generate their behaviour."

dhw: This is the analogy I have often used myself, and it illustrates perfectly how intelligent cells/ants cooperate to produce a functioning brain/colony.

QUOTES: "From day to day, the colony’s behaviour changes, and what happens on one day affects the next."
"Ants use the rate at which they meet and smell other ants, or the chemicals deposited by other ants, to decide what to do next...".

DAVID: As with bridges, automatic individual reactions make the whole colony operate as a unit.

dhw: They take new decisions every day according to individual reactions, but clearly they retain memory of earlier successful discoveries (e.g. how to form a bridge). Where have you found the word “automatic”? Do you really believe your God dabbles each new decision, or preprogrammed it 3.8 billion years ago?

DAVID: You miss the point above. The individual ants are programmed for exactly the same responses in each situation. Results differ for the whole colony because of those individual responses under different circumstances.

dhw: It is you with your “automatic” and “programmed” who have missed the point above! In situations for which solutions have already been found, individuals will combine to repeat the same actions. The information has been passed on. It is when new conditions arise that individuals pool their intelligence to find new solutions (“from day to day the colony’s behaviour changes” and they “decide what to do next”…) Your theory means that your God programmed the first cells to pass on instructions for every single day-to-day decision taken by the ants (not to mention bacteria, and not to mention instructions for every single undabbled major adaptation/innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in the history of life). Thousands and thousands of millions of programmes, all specially devised to cover the time before your God's "humans now" programmes either switched themselves on or he popped in 21 million years ago to start dabbling with a vertebra.

You should go back to ant bridge studies: individual ants do what they are programmed to individually do in that circumstance as all other situations. The overall colony acts through these individual actions, as the Article shows..