slime mold decisions: begins to study loners (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, May 26, 2020, 12:01 (1640 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: What you have carefully left out is the reasoning involved: bees: "we bit leaves almost a month ago and now there are flowers that weren't there before. Did one cause the other?" What you are ignoring, as a superior human, is the integrative thinking involved. 'What is it like to be a bee?' Nagelizing it shows what you miss. Only repeated biting under the same circumstances would prove it to the bees and probably to us after first time around. God may well have helped.

dhw: What you have carefully left out is my statement that nobody knows the origin of such “natural wonders”, but I would imagine a different dialogue. "Hey girls, I bit that leaf a fortnight ago and now it's flowered! Must remember that for next time, eh?"

dhw: I asked you whether you thought your God preprogrammed this trick 3.8 billion years ago or “stepped in” to teach bees a lesson in leaf-biting. These are the only forms of “help” (or guidelines) you have ever managed to come up with. If you think both of these to be unlikely, the only alternative is that bees observe, remember, and pass on information – not through human-type calculations or “contemplation”, but through their own form of intelligence.

DAVID: You've ignored my point that even humans would not trust one event. It might be an accident of timing, but your bee story lacks that insight and is lacking entirely if thought through. I've admitted long ago, I don't know how God helps. Directed mutations of the genome is obvious. I presented a study recently with two mutations changing/advancing evolution.

Now you are complaining that my bee doesn’t think like a human being! Of course it doesn’t. I do not for one second believe that a bee would say to itself: “Did one cause the other?” It would observe, remember and communicate. I asked you for your explanation of this particular case: did your God programme it 3.8 billion years ago, or did he give the bees a lesson in leaf-biting? Why don’t you give me a direct answer? “Directed mutations of the genome” does not explain how bees learned the leaf-biting trick! If you have no idea how God might have “helped” the bees to learn it, and you discount preprogramming and lecturing, you are left with bee intelligence. Not human intelligence, but bee intelligence.