Evolution: as immaterial information (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, June 16, 2022, 10:43 (890 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: So far all you have told me is that for the start of life, cells had to contain information. We agree that cells spend their lives interpreting information, but that does not tell us how life started, or HOW they are able to interpret information. Information itself, we agree, is passive. It requires mental activity if it is to be interpreted.

DAVID: We are not discussing how life started but the fact that information had to be part of it.

dhw: In yesterday’s post, when I challenged the blather, you replied “All it means is for the start of life the cells had to contain information.” All materials, animate or inanimate, contain information, so of course information is “part of it”! I’m not denying the existence of information! I’m complaining about the way the term is used to confuse instead of clarify the issues we are discussing.

DAVID: I'm not confused by using the term as you just have.

Of course you aren’t. And I suggest we go on using the term as I just have, instead of all the blather.

DAVID: You can't escape that without information life can't/doesn't exist.

dhw: All materials, whether animate or inanimate, contain information. That explains absolutely nothing.

DAVID: Stones carry static descriptive information we assign to them. Cells operate by interpreting instructional information to make them alive.

Why do you call it “instructional information” and not instructions? It is absurd to say they are “made alive” by interpreting instructions, since they cannot perform the mental activity of interpreting UNTIL they are alive!

dhw: No need for informational blather. We are back to discussing the theory of cellular intelligence and your refusal to distinguish between automatic repetition when conditions remain normal, and the need for new interpretations and decisions when conditions change.

DAVID: Cells respond to new conditions with automatic answers following instructions they carry and by adding methylation for epigenetic responses.

Exit information theory (thank heavens), and back we go to your definitive rejection of a 50/50 possibility of cellular intelligence. I find it hard to believe that 3.8 billion years ago your God provided cells with instructions on how to deal with every single new problem/condition/ opportunity that would arise for the rest of the future, or that he popped/pops in to issue instructions ad hoc.

Missing a part doesn’t matter
QUOTE: "Study of EG has proceeded on the assumption that other regions of her brain had taken up the task of processing language. That’s not as unusual as it sounds; the brain is a living organ, not a machine. Given an opportunity, it can shift burdens around (neuroplasticity.)

dhw: Doesn’t this suggest to you that the cells of which the brain is composed are able to respond intelligently to new demands by taking on new functions?

DAVID: Yes, brain plasticity processes take on new tasks.

dhw: The “plastic” cells of the brain make the necessary changes to conduct new processes to deal with new tasks. Why are you so reluctant to acknowledge that the brain is composed of cells?

DAVID: I never inferred the brain had no cells?

But you scrupulously avoid using the word, as you have done above: plasticity doesn’t take on new tasks. Plasticity is a quality of the cells. It is the cells that take on the tasks, i.e. I propose that they use their plasticity intelligently in order to initiate new processes in response to new requirements.

Entropy
dhw: […] Incidentally, the far-sighted Lynn Margulis was also a champion of the theory that cells are intelligent.

DAVID: Yes, they appear to be that way.

dhw: And what appears to be intelligent might actually be intelligent.

DAVID: So tell how they developed that intelligence, by chance?

dhw: Do I have to keep repeating that your God may have been the designer?

DAVID: I know that, but that doesn't tell me how it happens without God, which you seem to prefer.

How what happens without God? You claim that your God preprogrammed or dabbled every change in every organ and every organism, and I suggest he may have designed a mechanism which makes its own changes. I certainly find the latter more believable than the former, but I have also offered alternatives to explain how the former might be made to fit in with the history – unlike your own theory, which is so muddled that apparently only God can understand it. (See the thread on your theory.)