Cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, February 07, 2022, 07:16 (1018 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Please tell us […] why a God who could create a mechanism for autonomous complexification could not have invented a mechanism for autonomous expansion of cells and skulls.

DAVID: What you keep ignoring is a three-part problem. DNA from father and mother combine into baby DNA producing a new larger skull. Mother's pelvis must respond simultaneously. The cells from all three individuals do not communicate in a way that God can create an autonomous mechanism by themselves. […]

I asked you to read my post of 25 January, which dealt with this supposed example of your theory that your God speciates in advance of requirements – a theory already discredited elsewhere. This was my response:

"You have forgotten that we are talking about the ORIGIN of the process! Your “just-so fairy tale" is that overnight, a group of women woke up with new birth canals and pelvises to accommodate bigger brained babies which had not yet even been conceived. God had been and gone and done it.
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. Bigger brained babies required bigger birth canals etc., i.e. birth canals etc. RESPONDED to the new baby size. They did not expand in anticipation of conception! In due course (no doubt after many deaths in childbirth, which even today causes problems) the changes in brain, birth canal and pelvis became the heritable norm. Please explain why you find this less credible than your fairy tale."

You later pooh-poohed the idea of changes taking place over generations, but reproduced an article by Mirouze which made the same point.

DAVID: As for new larger brains, I thought we agreed new brains are larger, then capacity is used and new larger size appears.

dhw: Yes, new larger brains are indeed new and larger, and they appear when the existing capacity FOR COMPLEXIFICATION has been used up and new cells are needed to meet a major new requirement.

DAVID: The degree of new brain use is directly related to present required activities of dailliving, a concept you ignore.

Of course it’s used for present required activities, and when new activities become present, it’s used for them too, until a new requirement demands extra capacity, which is when the brain expands.

DAVID: We differ on cause and that difference won't change as long as you invent no-God scenarios that do not fit the known facts as I see them.

dhw: Yes, we differ...I suggest that the new cells are necessary to meet a new requirement, and the same cells continue to be used – through complexification – until once more their number needs to be increased to meet the next major new requirement.

DAVID: Ignoring not many new neurons are immediately used.

I didn’t know you had witnessed each phase of brain expansion and observed which neurons were not used. And my theory is not a “no-God scenario”!

Fire spot

DAVID: Cave-dwelling earliest homos did not use much of their brain capacity! Face the fact. Shrinkage shows our brain came oversized for use, as you noted above.

dhw: I noted no such thing! I maintain that they used ALL their cells, and any new requirements were met by the efficiency of complexification.

DAVID: Your love of complexification is pure confusion. The advanced use of a new need, like London cabbies results in a thickened complexified area!!! That is a tiny example of enlargement, but we also know modern heavily used brains shrank 150 cc and also had London cabbie regions!!!

Yes, the odd instance of enlargement provides clear evidence that enlargement is also an autonomous process independent of your God’s involvement. Thank you for remembering that. But most of our requirements are met by autonomous complexification, not autonomous expansion. And shrinkage, yet again, is caused by the fact that cells which had been useful in the past are no longer needed because complexification has proved so efficient that it has made them redundant.

dhw: Why do you think the brain is now “fully” used? […]

DAVID: Our God-given brain can handle all the new knowledge in the future. No future expansion ever.

If it is going to be used in the future to handle all the new knowledge, how does that come to mean that our brain is already “fully used”?

Transferred from “More Miscellany”:
DAVID: The studies clearly show the inner workings of cells on information in their genome they follow.

dhw: The studies clearly show that some cells remain the same and some can change, and the latter sometimes appear to act intelligently […] the studies show that cells absorb, process, remember, communicate and act on the information they absorb. You believe your God provided them with instructions, some scientists believe the above processes denote autonomous intelligence, and I suspect many scientists would rather not delve into the possible source of what appears to be intelligence. Please stop kidding yourself that your theory is the norm.

DAVID: Enter ID to see their norm.

I was not aware that ID-ers now represented the norm in the scientific world. In any case, cellular intelligence and ID are not incompatible.