More "miscellany" PART ONE (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, December 20, 2022, 08:40 (464 days ago) @ David Turell

PART ONE

Giant aquatic arthropods 470mya

DAVID: Cambrian shale is all over the Earth with recent African findings.

dhw: Correct. So why do you think the “combing” of Chinese shale marks the end of the search for possible Ediacaran and/or Cambrian links?

DAVID: in a 410,000 years gap? yes, tiny ones.[…]

dhw: […] The gap is not the only period in which earlier fossils might provide a link to the Cambrian fossils. Who knows what unknown forms might have existed during the 96 million years of the Ediacaran? In any case, 410,000 years – as we have discussed earlier – may seem a short time in relation to the 3.8 billion years of life on Earth, but it is long enough for...I don’t know, let’s say 41,000 generations of species. How many generations are needed for one species to undergo the changes which will enable it to cope with or exploit a new environment?

DAVID: We don't know the generational time period for Trilobites or any other for that matter. We have seen some transitional forms in the fossil records, but they are rare, not common. Your theoretical math is just that.

Of course. All aspects of this subject remain theoretical.

Intelligent octopuses

dhw: I’m quoting the article. If new cognitive abilities and behaviours require new cell types, but the new cell types do not provide new cognitive abilities and behaviours, why would your God have supplied them? Did he say to himself: “I’m going to make this pre-octopus think new thoughts and behave new behaviours x, y, and z, and therefore I need to insert new x, y and z cells to obey my instructions”? And in parenthesis: ("Otherwise I shan’t be able to design humans and their food.")

DAVID: Scientific articles cannot mention a deity. I am here to show how God created living biochemistry thrugh evolution.

dhw: I’m suggesting that maybe your God – if he exists - designed intelligent cells, and I’m asking you why he would have supplied the cells if they did not provide the new cognitive abilities and behaviours.

DAVID: God makes all cells to operate according to His designs and information.

Yes of course he does (if he exists). So if he designed them to operate autonomously, their autonomy would have been according to his design. I don’t know what information you’re referring to – perhaps all the information necessary to ensure that cells are able to think and act autonomously?

INFORMATION

QUOTE: "The famous American physicist John Wheeler did not shy away from seeking to understand the most fundamental aspects of our universe. Wheeler coined the aphorism “It from bit” to describe his conviction, born of the many discoveries in particle physics and cosmology in the twentieth century, that information (characterized by the computer storage term “bit”) preceded and produced everything else (“it”) (dhw's bold)

dhw: Religious folk had better change their prayers:
“Our information, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come…”

DAVID: Yes, God supplies all the necessary information. All life exists by using the information it possesses.[…]

dhw: […] You can say God provided the information. But John Wheeler apparently said that information preceded and produced everything else. In my language, information never produced anything. It has to be used to produce things. But we’ve had this discussion before. If you want to believe that information produced you, go ahead.

DAVID: Life runs on the information God gave it.

Exit John Wheeler with his tail between his legs.

Bipedalism

dhw: I’m not dismissing it. I’m merely suggesting that before we dismiss a perfectly rational explanation for bipedalism, it would be helpful to study chimps in other similar areas to see if they also stand upright in their trees.

DAVID: What is rational may be entirely wrong. Only evidence like this study tells us the answer, and I agree, when confirmed by other studies.

Then we are in agreement.

Cellular intelligence

dhw: You never stop seizing on the automatic processes that result from what Shapiro calls the cognitive sentience of cells, which “act and interact purposefully to ensure survival, growth and proliferation”, and possess “sensory communication, information-processing and decision-making capabilities.” I know you don’t accept his theory, but you do not disprove it by leaving out all the mental processes that have to take place before the automatic responses are set in motion.

DAVID: The bold from Shapiro is right on. Cells are enabled to process the information they possess in their genomes.

dhw: Why do you ignore their ability to process information coming from outside themselves, plus all the other abilities listed above? And please stop ignoring all the mental processes required before the automatic responses are set in motion.

DAVID: There are no mental functions if it is all automatic.

Of course. And there ARE mental functions if it is NOT all automatic! That’s what the disagreement is all about!


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