Brain expansion (Evolution)

by David Turell , Wednesday, June 24, 2020, 19:07 (1611 days ago) @ dhw

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?

dhw: 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.

'Implementation' means the appearance of the new invention at the time the new brain appears. Yet we both agree about a stasis period.

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.

dhw: 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... 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.

Again not my concept: implementation is easy, concept difficult, and in my view the soul cannot think in life without using whatever brain circuits exist, and they must have enough complexity to allow complex concepts.

DAVID: No His complexification mechanism ran on its own.

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

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I've told you He can with guidelines, which you inexplicably won't accept. Do you think the complexification mechanism is simple to design?

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.

dhw: 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.

Exactly the point: each new species is fully formed to function properly, not simple adaptation.

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.

dhw: 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.

Exactly backwards: every new-sized homo brain creates more advanced artifacts. Advanced size and complexity allows advanced inventions to be thought of and produced. Explained over and over. How can 'advanced' ideas force enlargement when the brain complexity does not allow their thought to appear? In life, the soul must use the thought quality of brain it has to create new thought. Proven by artifacts that appear.