Cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, March 19, 2022, 07:49 (978 days ago) @ David Turell

Carnivorous plants

dhw: An instantaneous response that fails to kill the invader is not going to add a new volume to the library. The need to produce new antibodies makes it abundantly clear that the disease and the protection do NOT arrive simultaneously! (dhw’s bold)

DAVID: Neutrophils are spontaneous first responders.

dhw: How does that come to mean that any failure to kill the invader denotes the simultaneous presence of disease and cure?

DAVID: The immune system we have is a stepwise response, first the attack cells and then antibodies.

Thank you for agreeing that the disease and the protection do NOT arrive simultaneously after all.

BLOOD BRAIN BARRIER CONTROLS

DAVID: Must be designed all at once at the time the first real brains appeared, or brained life would not have survived.

dhw: It's possible that just like all other organs and organisms, they were subjected to toxins and antigens, and in what you call “the constant war to survive by eating”, in due course they developed their own forms of protection. No doubt many would have died before the cells were able to design this means of survival. Again, the attack would have preceded development of the defence. Just a theory.

DAVID: More just-so wooliness.

dhw: No more just-so and woolly than your theory that an unknown and sourceless conscious being preprogrammed all these processes 3.8 billion years ago, or alternatively kept popping in to deliver new instructions, give courses, or perform operations. (If that being exists, I would regard the process as less woolly if he simply endowed all organisms with the ability to design their own forms of attack and defence.)

DAVID: God gave us great defenses. Developing defense systems on the fly takes too much time.

You have just agreed that the your God’s defence system proceeds stepwise, and unfortunately it is such that vast numbers of organisms can die before the system comes up with a cure. In fact sometimes, we ourselves have to step in to give it a hand. That doesn’t fit in too well with your image of an all-powerful, all-knowing God, does it? Whereas if he created an autonomous mechanism to handle attack and defence in the constant war to survive, inevitably there would always have to be winners and losers.

Bird migration

dhw: What's your theory?

DAVID: God. Another just-so wooliness theory. we are considering thousands of miles just to find a spot.

dhw: So why is it OK for God to choose a spot thousands of miles away, but just-so woolly if birds do it?

DAVID: Tell me a logical way for birds to decide on a winter resort over 10,000 miles distant and do it every year?

I told you last time. It would have originated with a search, and when a suitable spot was found, it was remembered and the details were passed on. Now would you please answer my bolded question.

How cells communicate

DAVID: dhw how do cells exchange design ideas with these molecular signals?

dhw: These molecular signals are their language. If they can notify each other of threats, why should they not be able to notify each other of means to counter the threats, and of means to threaten others in what you call “the constant war to survive by eating”?

DAVID: You have not described the ability to think to accomplish complex design in your favored cell committees.

dhw: And as usual you have ignored my question. As I said in my response to the article supporting cellular intelligence: I agree that it doesn’t necessarily extend to innovations. That is why we only have a theory and not a fact.

DAVID: And your theory still is cells can design for their future. How?

As you well know, my theory has NEVER been that they design for the future. They design in response to current conditions. If they can adapt to or exploit these conditions, they will have a future. Now would you please answer my bolded question above.