Human evolution; savannah theory fading (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, August 09, 2022, 10:13 (835 days ago) @ David Turell

Brain expansion

DAVID: I've not closed my mind to complexification in which cells design their own improvements.

dhw: Even if you are now only open to that proposal, it’s a great boost to the theory that if God exists, he provided cells with the intelligence to “design their own improvements” throughout the history of evolution. Thank you.

DAVID: Amazing, another agreement. God designed brains that could complexiify on their own. That doesn't mean He put in an expansion mechanism working on new designed larger brains without His full input of new design (dabble).

dhw: After all these delightful agreements, you proceed to muddy the waters with an incomprehensible post. You have agreed that he could have designed the mechanisms for complexification and expansion (= cells multiplying), so how does the mechanism for expansion “work on new designed larger brains”? The mechanism for expansion produces the larger brain when complexification can no longer cope with new requirements. The new cells meet the new requirements. So what “new design” are you talking about that requires your God’s full input, if he has already designed the mechanisms for complexification and expansion?

DAVID: Yes, complexification is a God-given built-in system. Larger, better brains are by God's design, not cell committees. […] The cell committees know how to complexify, nothing more.

You accept the possibility that cell communities are able to produce “better” brains through their autonomous intelligence (to “design their own improvements”), but are you now doing a volte face on your agreement that if your God exists, he would have “designed the mechanisms enabling cells to multiply and to complexify”? Why do you think autonomous multiplying is beyond the capability of cell communities which can autonomously design their own improvements?

Human evolution; new study says our brain did not shrink

dhw: Of course it didn’t arrive with overcapacity! Capacity relates to size (the number of cells). At all stages, the brain evolved by increasing its capacity as soon as its existing capacity proved inadequate to deal with new requirements. At each stage, it then complexified until once again it needed greater capacity (hence expansion). The same process went on until some new requirement once again resulted in the expansion to our current capacity. Then once again complexification took over (the capacity remained adequate) – but eventually, when new requirements arose, instead of increasing capacity (= expansion), the process of complexification was enhanced,

DAVID: How did the 'enhancing' happen: by chance, by cell committees, or by God's design?

dhw: If God exists, and if he designed an autonomous mechanism for cells to do their own complexification – as you have agreed above – then it’s only logical that the cells themselves would have done the enhancing, just as they would previously have organized their own multiplication.

DAVID: Same old secondhand design. Cells are not intelligent enough to design future forms.

The theory is that cells design forms in response to present requirements, not in anticipation of conditions that do not yet exist. You wrote – quoted above – “I've not closed my mind to complexification in which cells design their own improvements.” Don’t you think enhancement means improvement?

DAVID: How about God designed it big enough for all future needs? What our brain has done factually shows exactly that either from God or chance or cell committees.

dhw: Thank you for quietly dropping your attack on me for rejecting your theory of “overcapacity”. You are obviously right to say that our brain is big enough for our needs, since it hasn’t expanded. I don’t know why you think your God has to intervene in order to specially design our brain, since you accept that he had already set up the mechanisms for expansion and complexification for all the earlier brains. But I guess this lies at the heart of all your theories: even though you have now opened your mind to the possibility that “cells design their own improvements”, you still want your God to design every improvement himself!

DAVID: God designed all previous hominin/homo brains. I've never changed that opinion. I've agreed from above: "The cell committees know how to complexify, nothing more".

Please tell us what else he designed, once he had designed “the mechanisms enabling cells to multiply and to complexify” – which we have agreed were already present in previous hominin/homo brains?