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

by dhw, Friday, April 23, 2021, 13:24 (1098 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Excess is excess no matter how you contort it. You are proposing a light use of all neurons in the brain when enlargement occurs, and with heavy use later 150 cc of them disappears. Strange, so heavy use makes some neurons unnecessary? Heavy use in our current brain grows volumes of new axon connections, which tells us any heavy use simply enlarges axon networks.

dhw: You are now repeating my own theory in different terms, as if somehow that invalidated it! Yes, once the brain had expanded to 1350 cc, all cells would have been used. We don’t need your new category of light and heavy use, which glosses over the central issue of requirements.

DAVID: I'm only ignoring your twisted interpretation. I'll accept your all-over usage, but it must be light use compared to how our brain is utilized today. Look at all the things our brain does now compared to then.

Of course it’s light use by comparison. The “heavy” use would have been the new requirement that necessitated additional cells in the first place. This new requirement then became part of ordinary life, and the new cells would have continued to perform their new function, joining in the process of complexification to cover all needs, until the next “heavy” requirement – in our case, 2500 years later. I have no objection if you want to call that intermediate use “light”. The point is that the new cells were NOT excess: they met and continued to meet the requirements that first made them necessary until enhanced complexification made them redundant (= shrinkage).

dhw: […][…] it is possible that your God was the designer of the autonomous mechanism which you agree runs complexification, but which you refuse to even consider as the source of expansion.

DAVID: Look, my position is unchanged. God expanded all hominin/homo brains. The overexpansion does not fit your goal of a naturally caused expansion, unless the idea of light over-all use is accepted, which means still over expanded.

The expansion was NOT overexpansion. You have just agreed that the additional cells were used “lightly”, but you ignore my proposal that these additional cells came into being because they were necessary – as with all older brains – to meet what at the time would have been a major new requirement. I needn’t repeat the list of possible candidates for this major new requirement, but to stick to our simple example: new idea – make spear. Additional cells required for design, manufacture and use of spear. These new cells required from then on to continue making and using spears and for what you now call light overall use, which I’m happy to accept. (Period of stasis = no major new requirements.) But I absolutely do not accept that light overall use of new cells means that they were excessive, i.e. not needed. They came into being BECAUSE of the need for a new "heavy" use. And to forestall what I anticipate would be your next question, I have explained shrinkage above.

dhw: It is you who denigrate your God by claiming that he gave us excessive neurons which proved unnecessary. Now suddenly you change your tune: the 150 cc were not excessive – now you think they were essential for the way complexification worked, and they even gave us our free will (which denotes the autonomy of complexification). So why were they made redundant?

DAVID: A clever design by God which prepares for whatever uses we free-will humans invent is not any form of denigration except in your twisted view.
ired new networks (connections plus a degree of restructuring), i.e. complexification.

Something has got lost here, but I have never excluded the possibility that the whole system was God’s clever design. The denigration was yours, in proposing that your God gave us 150cc of “excess” (i.e. unnecessary) cells. I keep saying that they were not unnecessary, and now you tell us that they were necessary for complexification. Please make up your mind.

DAVID: There are thousands of languages. The excess cells allowed for precise networking to fit each language. Makes my point.

dhw: Then why do you call them excess if we couldn’t have managed to speak our languages without them?

DAVID: The excess cells allowed a special complexification of the brain for all the different types of networks needed for different languages.

“Excess” means additional and unnecessary. How can they have been unnecessary if they enabled the brain to complexify in the manner required for our languages?

dhw: …why do you persist in ignoring current knowledge, that the brain RESPONDS to requirements and does not rearrange itself in anticipation of future needs?

DAVID: Our brain responds with complexification, a mechanism planned, designed and given by God. Therefore it can rearrange itself whenever necessary. You have my response.

Thank you for at last answering the question. We have now established once and for all that the brain complexifies autonomously in RESPONSE to new requirements (using a mechanism you believe was designed by your God). Bearing in mind that the modern hippocampus actually expands, why then do you assume that in the past, brains were unable to expand autonomously, and did NOT expand in response to new requirements but had to be operated on so your God could give them additional cells in anticipation of unknown future requirements?