Brain expansion (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, June 24, 2020, 08:52 (1611 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: […] Stasis resulted from the fact that there were no new thoughts that required enlargement - not surprising if homos were able to survive as they were.

DAVID: Same contradiction: your soul wants new concepts to develop, but delays after the adequate new brain is present for them to reach fruition. Why the wait?

What delays are you talking about? In my theory, expansion happens when the existing brain does not have the capacity to implement (bring to fruition) a new concept thought up by the soul. The process of implementation leads to the expansion. From then on, there may be no new concepts (stasis) or any new concepts will be implemented through the existing capacity for complexification until once again the capacity proves inadequate, and we have the next expansion. What wait are you talking about?

DAVID: We differ in the main start to this discussion. 1) You want the soul to have thoughts without a proper sized brain to develop the thoughts. 2) You don't and I do believe the soul in life can only create thoughts by using existing brain circuits. 3) And we disagree constantly about implementation. Design is hard, implementation is easy in my opinion having performed those mechanism many times.

I’ve inserted numbers for the sake of brevity: 1) Correct: each expansion is due to the fact that the existing capacity for complexification is not sufficient for the material implementation of a particular new concept. 2) Wrong. Of course the soul has to use existing brain circuits – they provide all the information on which the soul’s original thoughts are based. 3) Implementation includes design. You have clearly forgotten our example, so here it is again for the umpteenth time. Small-brained homo: “Me want kill animal; me go close, me get injured; me need weapon to kill from distance.” THAT is the new concept. Nothing more. From now on, the process of implementation begins: it incorporates every facet of design right from scratch, every calculation, every experiment, every movement: it is not confined to the action of fixing a sharp stone to a stick – which seems to be your definition – because even the idea of a sharp stone fixed to a stick has to be developed from that first thought. The process begins with existing information, but from then on expansion results from the soul using the brain to provide more and more information in an ongoing learning process as the original thought is transformed into a material reality.

dhw: The answer to your own question is that complexification was so efficient that certain cells were not being used, and if something is not used, it will disappear. What is your theory? God created an oversized brain and then stepped in to remove all the cells that were not needed?

DAVID: No His complexification mechanism ran on its own.

Thank you. And if he could create an autonomous complexification mechanism, why do you think he was incapable of creating an autonomous enlargement mechanism?

DAVID: See the video for today, noting all new species arrived competently designed and fully functional, no Darwain gradualism.
https://youtu.be/aJua-0FpmnI

dhw: Thank you for this excellent video. In our context, however, the discussion is not about new species in the sense of totally new organs and phyla. The brain already existed, and expansion did not constitute “novelty”.

DAVID: The point of the video is not your sidestep. Each form arrives completely designed to function completely, nothing left out for the stage reached. No aspect of adaptation found. Gaps are not explained by any natural mechanism we can think of.

The video does not deal with the development of a single organ, but with SPECIATION! Of course every fossilized “form” functioned completely – otherwise it couldn’t have lived, but every “form” in the video means every new species. Every fossilized homo had a brain, but that does not mean each brain was a jump from something that never existed before! Nor does it mean that your God stepped in and dabbled with a group of homos, enlarging their brains, skulls and pelvises overnight.

DAVID: Note Eldridge and Gould both agreed about the gaps and invented a weird punctuated equilibrium theory, that was entirely descriptive and of no real value.

dhw: As above, you have switched the discussion from the development of an existing organ to the origin of species. I disagree with you about the value of “punctuated equilibrium”, but that is a totally different subject.

DAVID: No it isn't. We are arguing about sapiens' brain and how it arrived and why it is in the form it is at arrival.

My whole theory explains how and why it developed from earlier brains. “Punctuated equilibrium” provides a perfect explanation for the stasis that seems to bother you so much. After each expansion, there was little or no development for hundreds of thousands of years. That = equilibrium. Our homos were fine as they were. Then the equilibrium was broken by somebody having a bright idea which the existing brain could not implement – hence the expansion. Repeat until H. sapiens, whose expansion was followed by another period or stasis or equilibrium, and then came more bright ideas (implemented by complexification) to end it. Please explain why this theory is not acceptable to you.