Cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, January 26, 2022, 11:42 (821 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I am pointing out that every organ in our bodies requires cell connection and communication. No point in your sneering: “Telepathy?” unless you believe cells do not communicate. Do you?

DAVID: The point vis not all cells connect with all other cells as below:

I am not saying all cells connect with each other! Do you or do you not believe that cells communicate?

dhw: My proposal is that new requirements (e.g. new tools, ideas, discoveries, environments) resulted in general brain expansion, which was heritable (as it must have been after your God's overnight operations), and which meant that over generations, brains grew bigger and so did babies.

DAVID: Over what generations? Now no gaps? In your mind they just disappear.
And
The fossils demonstrate large gaps, which you cannot ignore. Why not use facts to support theories?

One generation = one mummy and daddy, and the next generation = their offspring. We know the erectus brain capacity gradually increased: One website says that 1.7 million years ago, the average was 885 cc, but 200,000 years ago it was 1,186 cc. Doesn’t this suggest to you that brain size increased over generations? And we get excited when we find one fossil, but you want at least one fossil per cc.!

DAVID: The new brain that already exists is the only one that can respond to new uses.

dhw: The sapiens expansion (not "huge" compared to late erectus) would also have been a response to new requirements, and from then on it responded through complexification (which was so efficient that the brain shrank). The process is always requirement first, and you have never offered a single reason for rejecting this logical theory.

DAVID: Size change is the issue since complexification comes with each new-sized brain. My reason is the fact example of our brain, much too large for current use when it appeared. What requirements made it so big at its start?

How many more times? Nobody knows what requirements led to each expansion, which is why I have offered you a list of possibles (new ideas, inventions, discoveries, environments). Once pre-sapiens brains had expanded they would have used complexification of the then existing cells to meet all new requirements – just as ours do – but when new requirements exceeded the existing capacity, they expanded. In ours, expansion ended and the existing cells enhanced their ability to complexify (so efficiently as to shrink the brain). Yet again: why is this theory illogical, especially when compared to yours, in which your God operates on groups of individuals who wake up one morning with bigger brains and birth canals?

Camels' noses
dhw: I’m delighted to see your flexibility. A couple of days ago, the camel’s nose was so complex that it was “far beyond dhw’s wishes for cellular intelligence”, but now it is nothing major. […]

DAVID: With further evolved thought about camel noses I can go either way and accept epigenetics, a God-given mechanism, as the cause.

dhw: […] since epigenetics = a mechanism which apparently does not require your God’s direct intervention, I am more than happy to accept your belief that such complexities can be designed by cells independently of your God.

DAVID: And my problem, and really yours is we have no current evidence of epigenetics being capable of this degree of design complexity, which complexity you recognize.

You've just said that with your “evolved thought” you CAN accept epigenetics as being capable of this degree of design complexity! But of course we don’t know the ultimate possible degree, which is why Shapiro’s theory (and mine) remains a theory, just like the theory that a God keeps operating on all the noses, brains and birth canals he didn’t preprogramme 3.8 billion years ago.

Molecular binding controls
QUOTE: "Using the detailed information they gleaned from studying these interactions, the researchers created their own synthetic molecule capable of binding extremely tightly to a protein called ENAH, which is implicated in cancer metastasis.

DAVID: this study shows how molecules know with whom to combine or react, automatically, no thought involved because of the design. Cell intelligence is in the design, not autonomously active.

Borderlines are blurred. Generally, molecules will indeed behave automatically in order to preserve an established system (though new systems will have been originated through intelligence.) If they don’t find the "right" combination, there will be problems. These may be the “errors” which your all-powerful God was incapable of avoiding and often of correcting. The example mentioned here is cancer – but these cells have found their own way of surviving. They “eat” us. In many cases, cells will also respond to invaders by developing new defences. This is where again I suggest automatic behaviour ends and intelligence comes into play. I know you disagree, but we should distinguish between automatic actions that maintain the status quo and actions that change the status quo (innovations) or constitute new responses to preserve it (as in the immune system or in adaptations). These are the circumstances in which autonomous intelligence comes into play, as opposed to your God directing or preprogramming every single response to every single new requirement for past, present and future evolution.