More "miscellany" PART ONE (General)

by dhw, Saturday, May 27, 2023, 13:06 (307 days ago) @ David Turell

PART ONE

The human brain

DAVID: Your view cannot explain how our brain could complexify so beautifully over 315,000 years unless enough neurons were present for all new necessary circuits required for complexification.

Why do you keep repeating what I keep telling you, and omitting the mistakes you kept making? YES, when our brains expanded to their present size, they contained enough neurons to meet all future requirements through complexification. They were never “excessive”, and the brain was never “oversized” because at the time of expansion – as you have now agreed – the neurons were used! You have now agreed that they did not lie around for thousands of years doing nothing! They could only have been used to meet a new requirement at the time.

DAVID: We haven't stopped complexification as yet, but if and when our brain reaches that point, a new more complex brain with more neurons is needed. Did Lucy have the same number of neurons as Erectus? Erectus as sapiens?

Thank you for yet again repeating my argument: all past brains complexified until they reached a point where new neurons were needed to meet new requirements. Then the brains expanded. They did not expand in anticipation of requirements that did not yet exist, but just like ours, they were used to respond to the requirement that they had not been able to meet. Ours has stopped expanding, and maybe it never will expand (apart perhaps from the hippocampus), and is still using its original neurons by enhancing its powers of complexification.

DAVID: The extra neurons were alive and likely had minor tasks for the simple times in which they arrived.

dhw: Thank you again for confirming that the extra neurons were not excessive and the brain was not oversized. Only the bold to go (new cells are added in response to and not in anticipation of new requirements), and we shall be in complete agreement!

DAVID: you wish!! ;-)

You have already done so, but you keep trying to prove that your agreement is a disagreement! If the new neurons were needed because the capacity for complexification had been exceeded, and if the new neurons were used straight away – as opposed to lying around for thousands of years doing nothing – then they can only have been added in response to a new requirement. Hence your agreement that they were not excessive, and the brains were not oversized.

Cellular intelligence: the cancer problem

DAVID: I do not believe chance mutations which cause cancer are within God's controls. These are the mistakes we have discussed under theodicy in the past. The mutations allowed the cancer cells to act as they do intelligently.

dhw: Now what are you saying? Normal cells are not intelligent, but chance mutations change them into intelligent entities? And your God had no control over this extraordinary metamorphosis! And as your God is all-knowing, he knew it would happen, but despite his being all-powerful, he was powerless to stop it? Well, at least that lets him off the theodicy hook, but it makes your version of him even more messy, cumbersome, inefficient, and self-contradictory.

DAVID: The point is cancer cells are rogue living cells not like normal cells and are beyond God's control.

Yes, that is also my point. According to you, they have used their intelligence for destructive purposes, and your all-powerful, all-knowing God – who must have given them their intelligence – can’t control them.

DAVID: I do not think the cancer cells are intelligent enough to invent the mutations that make them so independent and act with such seemingly intelligence.

So despite your “obvious evidence of cellular intelligence”, they are not intelligent enough to invent the mutations which led them to work out their nasty methods of survival. Then who did? Obviously only your God could have done it! He must have provided them with instructions for the nasty deeds they are not intelligent enough to perform! Curiouser and curiouser.

Role of the centromere

dhw: Buehler’s book explains why he believes in cellular intelligence, and you have dismissed it because you think that new instruments have shown things he couldn’t see. And so I’m asking if the new instruments have disproved his theory?

DAVID: The centromere has disappeared as the cells were studied by newer methods.

dhw: The article you quoted was on the role of the centromere. I’m surprised to hear that it’s disappeared. My reference to Buehler was made because of my faulty memory. It was the centrosphere that he suggested was the seat of cellular intelligence.

DAVID: The point I am making is the centromere seems of no significance in current articles describing the workings of the cell. Your memory is correct, Buehler had a theory that the centromere ran the cell.

There’s a big difference between disappearing and being of no significance, but Buehler thought it was the centrosphere that ran the cell. Have modern instruments disproved his theory?


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