Cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, January 29, 2022, 08:04 (817 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Sizeable jumps of 200 cc in skull size will kill the babies. Still no explanation accept design.

dhw: You seem to think that these jumps happened overnight -...And as usual, you want fossils for every cc.

DAVID: The many erectus fossils over much time and differing areas indicate gaps since we NEVER find evidence of itty-bitty stepwise changes you viewpoint demands.
I have pointed out averages are the middle point between lows and highs, and that the progression from an early average of approx. 900 cc to a late average of approx 1200 cc confirmed that brain size would have increased over generations. You chimed in that your God might have “helped”. This sounds like itty-bitty changes to me, whether your God conducted his overnight operations or not. But as usual, you expect to find one fossil per cc of growth.

dhw: All our ancestors would have lived like one another and like our fellow animals, with survival the basis of their actions. But homos gradually developed more sophisticated MEANS of survival. For instance, tools and weapons.

DAVID: The bold above is significant. Gradual development using a bigger brain, which allows it, is my point.

dhw: Your point was that there was no change in lifestyle. Now you agree that there were gradual changes. And the other “point” is that we don’t know what requirements led to each expansion, but of course once the brain had expanded, it was used and would have complexified (just as ours does) in response to whatever was required, until some major new requirement would have exhausted its capacity for complexification, and then it would have needed to expand.

DAVID: You make my point. Each bigger brain has capacity used up and then it jumps to a bigger size until that size is used up.

That is my point, too. The difference between us is the CAUSE of expansion. I say new ideas, intentions, conditions, problems etc. exceeded the complexifying capabilities of existing cells, and so more cells were needed to RESPOND to these new requirements. Your cells change because your God operated on them in anticipation of later requirements. Just as you have him changing legs to flippers before pre-whales entered the water.

DAVID: … existing cells complexify in the same sized brain. They are there waiting to be used. […]

They complexify in the same brain until a new requirement exceeds their complexification capacity, and then they need additional cells. Only when sapiens arrived did existing cells increase their ABILITY to complexify, thus making expansion unnecessary, and this was so efficient that the brain shrank.

DAVID: They enlarge after full use. Each new size and neuron complexity comes large in preparation for new uses. Illogical??

Yes, they enlarge when their existing complexification capability cannot cope with new requirements. Yes, the new size will contain enough cells to deal with requirements until it’s used up its complexification capacity. But no, the complexity doesn’t “come large” in preparation. The mechanism for complexification remains the same, and the complexity increases as the brain meets new requirements. Only in sapiens has the mechanism for complexification “improved” sufficiently to make expansion unnecessary. To sum it up: early brains increased in size when the mechanism for complexification in existing cells could no longer RESPOND to new requirements, and so more cells were needed. In sapiens, the complexification capacity of existing cells became great enough to meet all new requirements, and so our brains became increasingly complex instead of increasingly large.

All this has been discussed before, and you have only raised it because it seems to be your last defence of your theory that all evolutionary changes- except for plants and in the Cambrian! - take place BEFORE conditions change rather than in RESPONSE to changing conditions.

Molecular binding controls.
DAVID: In cancer there are new responses which are distortions of what normal cells do automatically.

dhw: Agreed. But cancer cells unfortunately find their own means of survival, and they process and communicate information just as normal cells do. If you believe in common descent, then every evolutionary innovation will entail a change from what some cells “normally” do automatically.

DAVID: Agreed. New automatic processes appear.

They only become automatic when they are established. You keep refusing to acknowledge that every system must have a beginning, and if you believe in common descent, then that beginning will take place because of cells that do NOT automatically follow an existing pattern. Intelligence manifests itself when cells are confronted with new problems, conditions, requirements, opportunities.

Light sensing proteins
DAVID: Simply, God is the active designing intelligence.

I fnd it difficult to envisage as “simple” a 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for every single evolutionary development in life’s history, to be switched on at every appropriate moment with all the appropriate instructions. And the image of God popping in to perform operations on all these micro and macro organisms in all sorts of conditions doesn’t sound simple to me either. One invention would save him all that trouble: the good old intelligent cell.