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

by dhw, Monday, April 12, 2021, 11:12 (1320 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: But the true absurdity of your idea that every innovation was a preparation for sapiens comes out most clearly in the example of the gar fish eye:

DAVID: It evolved thousands of generation earlier than needed, and that is not pre-planning?

dhw: You seem to think the only creature that found vision to be an advantage was H. sapiens! Do you honestly believe the gar fish didn’t use its eyes to see with?

DAVID: The point of the gar fish article is the special pattern of nerve connection we share with them. Only some eyes/brains have it.

So how does that come to mean that thousands of generations of these eyes were not “needed”?

DAVID: You still haven't explained the overexpansion which resulted in 150 cc loss.

dhw: I have now repeated countless times that there was no overexpansion! Sapiens would have needed all his 1350 cc to implement whatever may have been the new initial requirement. ... Most of your post in fact goes on to repeat the same insistence that all innovations were preparation for sapiens, and God gave us an extra 150 cc which we didn’t need but which we needed so that we could learn to use the 1200 cc we needed!

DAVID: Overall volume is not the point.

Then why do you go on and on about the overexpansion which resulted in 150cc loss? Whenever I answer your questions, you skip off to another track.

DAVID: Look at the dramatic new size of the frontal areas in only sapiens and Neanderthal. That is selective growth which is the real aspect of this discussion, and I've pointedly raised it before, while you blithely worry about the size of the size jump. Yes, erectus grew their brain, but not as selectively as sapiens had happen.

So please stop harping on about overexpansion. The expansion of the frontal lobe would have been caused by new requirements that involved that part of the brain. We don’t know what the requirements were, but clearly they involved some form of abstract thinking etc. (e.g. new designs, new social requirements…who knows?) What exactly are you trying to prove? I thought your point was that your God had given us all these extra frontal lobe cells before we needed them, i.e. in anticipation of future needs. And my proposal is that we got them because we needed them at the time, and after that there was a period when the new size of the frontal lobe coped with all requirements until 245,000 years later it would not have been able to cope, but instead of expanding it enhanced its ability to complexify, and this proved so efficient that 150 cc of previously essential cells were no longer needed. As usual, you have totally ignored this proposal. Here is an interesting website on the frontal lobe that also lays emphasis on complexification:

Frontal Lobe - Physiopedia

www.physio-pedia.com/Frontal_Lobe

QUOTE: For many years, many scientists thought that the frontal lobe was comparatively larger in humans than in other primates. They thought that this was an important feature of human evolution and was the main reason why human cognition is different from that of the other primates. This view has been challenged by research. Magnetic resonance imaging was used to find the volume of the frontal cortex in humans, all living ape species and several monkey species. The human frontal cortex is not relatively larger than the cortex in the other great apes, but it is relatively larger than the frontal cortex in the lesser apes and the monkeys[5]. However, what sets us apart from other mammals is not so much brain size but reorganization of our brains in terms of connectivity and neurotransmitter changes.

Your comments, please.

dhw:[referring to hippocampus expansion): Yes, our existing cells can presumably complexify sufficiently to implement our immaterial concepts, but more cells were needed to accommodate memory. Now please explain why you continue to ignore the fact that we know the brain RESPONDS to new ideas by complexifying or, in one case, expanding. Why do you find it impossible to believe that past brains responded in the same way?

DAVID: They did expand under God's designs. The hippocampus has a special design for increasing memory capacity, while enough cells were given in the very enlarged frontal lobes to satisfy all future needs with less cells under complexification. Erectus did not have that frontal enlargement.

Every enlargement from preceding brains would have had a cause, but we don’t know what the causes were. That’s evolution for you. Thank you for confirming that the initial enlargement of the frontal lobes was adequate and clearly new requirements were met by enhanced complexification which was so efficient that certain cells became redundant. Only the hippocampus needed to expand. Now please explain why you continue to ignore the fact that we know the brain RESPONDS to new ideas by complexifying or, in one case, expanding. Why do you find it impossible to believe that past brains responded in the same way?