Evolution: as immaterial information (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, June 17, 2022, 13:05 (673 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

dhw: 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!

DAVID: They do become alive by interpreting their instructions they're are given. That had to happen when life was started.

How can they possibly interpret instructions before they are alive?

DAVID: Just to emphasize it, instructions are always information.

Yes, yes, you have instructional information, descriptive information, propagating information, operational information, static information…You have information in your ears, coming out of your ears, and appearing in articles that are so confusing that the only way you can explain them is by telling me not to take any notice of them.

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: You find it hard to believe in God, so I'm not surprised at your view. Living one-celled Archaea started knowing exactly how to handle themselves or nothing would have evolved. Do you have any thoughts about first life's capabilities? I've given it lots of thought.

We keep dodging between bacteria and archaea in our discussions of first life. Your question relates to both, and in both cases I would suggest that they did indeed start by knowing how to handle themselves and, crucially, not only how to reproduce but also how to adapt and diversify, and ultimately – through cooperation and communication – to build increasingly complex organs and organisms in the process we call evolution. The mechanism I propose is - surprise, surprise - a form of intelligence which enabled them to do all these things. And - surprise, surprise - I regard it as possible that this mechanism was designed by an unknown intelligence we call God.

bacteria
QUOTES: "Those studying bacteria and viruses tend to look to mutations as the major source of evolution.
"But really, both forces – mutation and existing genetic diversity – "can contribute sequentially, simultaneously, and even synergistically to the process of adaptation by natural selection", the researchers say."

DAVID: That mutation and diversity are equallly important seems a logical finding to me. This is a pure Darwinist study with no reference to intelligent design and I present it for general interest.

“Mutations” are generally associated with randomness, which would indeed be Darwinist, so I’m surprised at your acceptance of the term, but if we take it as simply meaning “changes”, then I would say that changes arising from adaptation to or exploitation of new conditions cause diversity.

Missing a part doesn’t matter

dhw: […] 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.

DAVID: And I view the neurons as programmed to handle all new tasks given to them.

Yes, I know. And you know I suggest that they have the intelligence to handle new tasks.

DAVID: How do cells become intelligent without God's help?
And:
I have asked you to explain the intelligence of cells without a God existing? You are either or. That is the other side of your agnosticism I'd like to hear about.

Once again, a cheerful goodbye to blathering information, and so we’ll be able to close this thread, but I must answer your question (yet again) since you have never quite understood the nature of agnosticism. I find the argument for design (in this case, that of the intelligent cell) perfectly logical, and am therefore open to the possibility of there being a designer. However, while I find it difficult to believe that chance (the other option, given an eternity and infinity of possible combinations) could create such complexity, I find it equally difficult to believe that there is an eternal, immaterial mind that had no source, and has simply been “there” forever, somehow creating vast quantities of matter out of its own immateriality, and exercising its powers of psychokinesis to manipulate the materials into galaxies and solar systems, bacteria and dinosaurs, humans and the duckbilled platypus.