Cellular intelligence: Animal Algorithms reviewed (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, November 20, 2021, 12:52 (1097 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The issue is really not intelligence, but the source of new information to create new species. Where did the information for the Cambrian explosion come from?

dhw: Of course the issue is intelligence. I don’t know why you have to muddy the waters with the vague word “information”. Nobody knows the cause of the Cambrian Explosion, but it is not unreasonable to suppose that there was some kind of major change in conditions (perhaps an increase in oxygen). We know for a fact that some life forms are able to adapt to new conditions by making minor changes to themselves. This means their cell communities are capable of engineering their own mutations. The theory of cellular intelligence proposes that these same cell communities are also able to make major changes to themselves, resulting in what we call innovations – and hence the origin of new species. You know all this, and the issue is whether cells are intelligent or not.

DAVID: The issue is simple. Do living cells have the ability to create the new information needed to design a newly formed species from a previous form? Major innovations contain major new information. Information is not a vague subject, but over the last 50 years the subject of massive development of understanding which has been required for internet transmission as one example. And it has been applied to studies of evolution, especially by ID folks.

In your terms, the “ability to create the new information” is what I call intelligence. The issue is whether cells/cell communities do or do not have that ability. (See your bolded statement above). There's no need to faff around discussing the importance of “information” over the last 50 years, or the sources of “information” for the Cambrian, or the different uses of “information” in all sorts of fields. You say innovations are caused by God's dabbling or 3.8-billion-year-old programme for all innovations, lifestyles, solutions, natural wonders etc., and you refuse to accept the (theistic) possibility that he might have given cells the autonomous ability (intelligence) to design their own innovations, and bees and weaverbirds the ability (intelligence) to design their own dances and nests. That IS the issue! I doubt if we can take the discussion any further, other than by discussing new examples of intelligence. And I must thank you for so frequently providing such examples!