Biological complexity: feedback loops are vital (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, October 02, 2019, 10:26 (1880 days ago) @ David Turell

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

dhw: If organisms work just as I do, and I am free to act, how do you manage to conclude that organisms are not free to act but are automatic and your God preprogrammed them 3.8 billion years ago?!

DAVID: The 'organisms work as you do' following instructions, as in the analogy. You think as you follow instructions. They are programmed to act automatically and follow them.

So your analogy ceases to apply as soon as we reach the all-important point of how organisms use information! Let’s move on.

DAVID: 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.

dhw: Once again: the bridge would have been the result of individuals pooling their intelligence to find a solution to a problem. Once the solution had proved successful, it would have been passed on, and so of course subsequent generations would follow the same procedure.

DAVID: The bridge study specifically said each ant did its own programmed response.

Once a strategy has proved successful, each ant will know (or will have been taught) what it has to do. That doesn’t mean your God provided the first cells with an ant bridge-building programme to be passed on through billions of years.

dhw: It is when new conditions arise that individuals pool their intelligence to find new solutions. This is what “the article shows”: “from day to day the colony’s behaviour changes” and they “decide what to do next”… Not “3.8 billion years ago God supplied the first cells with a programme to pass on for whatever ants do next, on a day to day basis.”

DAVID: it is true that older ants teach younger ones and that a leader ant will make a trip-change- in-direction decision, but all the following ants will automatically follow the leader. The colonies' memory is mainly due to the individuals' constant similar responses.

In all societies there are leaders and followers. That doesn’t mean the leaders and the followers are all automatons! You refuse to acknowledge that every form of behaviour has to have an origin. Once it is established, of course individuals will perpetuate the responses. But the article makes it crystal clear that new decisions are taken every day. If you really think every new decision was preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago, so be it.