Evolution: more genomic evidence of pre-planning (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, February 19, 2021, 10:55 (1371 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Nobody knows the cause of brain expansion, but we know that each stage was followed by a period of stasis. [I shan’t quote the rest, because you obviously didn’t read it properly, so I’ll try again below.]

DAVID: You totally ignore when the brain arrived in its roughly current size, few new brain uses were required as shown by the appearance of very few new artifacts. Also your implied stepwise enlargement never happened.

I don’t know how often you want me to repeat the line above: nobody knows the cause of brain expansion. For some reason you restrict yourself to the current brain, and you restrict yourself to artefacts. And stepwise enlargement refers to the different expansions from one species of human to another, not from sapiens to sapiens.

DAVID: Read the following article about our brain since Luther:
https://nautil.us/issue/96/rewired/martin-luther-rewired-your-brain?mc_cid=12a60281c6&a...
Actually don't bother. It simply describes Protestantism pushing reading for all and how our brains obviously changed by its designed plasticity.

I did bother, since your caveat illustrates a point that you desperately try to avoid, and which is repeated in the very first line of the article:
QUOTE: Your brain has been altered, neurologically rewired as you acquired a particular skill.

Rewiring in our brain is what we have called complexification, because the modern brain has stopped expanding. The principle could hardly be clearer: a particular skill results in changes to the brain. There is no known instance of the brain changing in preparation for a particular skill. Summary of my proposal: every brain change throughout hominin/homo history resulted from the effort to respond to something new: e.g. an idea, a change in conditions, a new discovery. Every expansion has been followed by a period of stasis until the next new requirement appears. The sapiens brain would also have resulted from some unknown requirement, and after a period of stasis, more new requirements were met, not by expansion (perhaps because further expansion would have been too damaging to the anatomy) but by complexification, and it is a known fact that the modern brain changes in response to new requirements, not in anticipation of them. Please explain why you find all this impossible to believe.

Shapiro

DAVID: Again stretching Shapiro's findings into your cellular intelligence theory.

dhw: (after quoting Shapiro’s theory): Please stop pretending that Shapiro does not mean what he says.

DAVID: His presentation the Royal Society was a more measured presentation. And I presented it here in the past. Perhaps you should refresh your memory.

dhw: I remember it well, and there was nothing in his presentation to contradict his theory of cellular intelligence as the driving force behind evolutionary innovation. Perhaps you should refresh your memory. Alternatively, please pinpoint the passage in which he says he no longer believes that cells are cognitive entities which self-modify to produce evolutionary novelties.

DAVID: He never did that, as you well know. He simply softened the import of his theory.

Then please stop pretending that I have stretched Shapiro’s theory, or that he did not mean what he said.

Behe

DAVID: Devolution does exist and is recognized by folks not at all related to ID. Much of the article discusses the difficulties in identifying the devolutionary mutations. Many articles are referenced in this review article. So, Behe's theory is well known outside ID.

dhw: The word used throughout this article is adaptation. Behe’s theory related to speciation, and I agree that there is no fixed dividing line between adaptation and speciation, but this does not alter the fact that in new conditions, some genes and traits will no longer be needed. That does not mean loss of traits CAUSES adaptation/speciation. It accompanies adaptation/speciation. So what are you hoping to prove?

DAVID: Obviously the article does not help us in knowing how speciation occurs. This is simply more information that adaptation can result from loss of genes, as you note.

I did not note that at all. I said that adaptation can be ACCOMPANIED by (not result from) loss of genes, and I explained why.

DAVID: The oddity is in that adaptation seems to require loss of information or a rearrangement of information so necessary previously hidden information can appear. Proof: it appears necessary future information is planted beforehand, in anticipation of need, just what you reject.

My suggestion is that it does not REQUIRE loss of information (I don’t know why you’ve switched from genes to information) but is accompanied by the loss of information/genes that are no longer relevant to the organism’s situation. And you have forgotten the fact that the process is accompanied by NEW genes. (Initially, you even denied that there were any new genes!) NEW genes were not “planted beforehand”!