New Miscellany 1 & 2: evolution, brain, intelligence etc. (General)

by dhw, Thursday, April 17, 2025, 10:42 (1 day, 22 hours, 40 min. ago) @ David Turell

Evolution

DAVID: If God created the history of everything, then He evolved us!!! It is not straightforward!

dhw: You simply won’t stop juggling with language in order to avoid the senselessness of your theories. If God exists, he created the world as we know it. That does not mean his one and only purpose was to design us and our food, that he specially designed every species, that he messily, cumbersomely and inefficiently had to kill off 99.9 out of 100 species that he had specially designed, because they were irrelevant to the only species he wanted to design, or that we are descended from the 99.9% of life forms that had no descendants.

DAVID: Again your usual distortion of evolution. Of course all go extinct as new forms take over. We are reduced to an ordinary outcome in your senseless view. Sapiens are a marvelous miracle and you remain blind to it.

Once more you simply ignore the absurd illogicality of the above theories and stoop to equally absurd distortions of my personal views of life. Humans are indeed a miracle, and so are all forms of life, and all the natural wonders you present us with. I love and appreciate life every bit as much as you do. Please stop dodging.

The human brain

dhw: Do you, then, think he inserted the cells in order specifically that, for instance, we should be able to send a rocket to Mars 3000 years later, or do you think he left it to us humans to use the new cells and the existing method of complexification to respond to all unknown future requirements/ opportunities/concepts etc. as and when they arose?

As usual, you ignore my question.

DAVID: Isn't this below a sufficient answer??:

No.

DAVID: The big brain like preceding ones used complexification to handle all new needs. This required a store of functional neurons in excess of original needs to supply the complexification processes.

dhw: Once again you’re telling us the new neurons were not used (excessive) but simply hung around for thousands of years doing nothing.

DAVID: Don't you understand 'functional neurons' are working???

Don’t you understand that if functional neurons are working, they cannot be called excessive?

dhw:...If your God popped in to insert the non-functioning functional neurons, why didn’t he simply wait till they were needed, as you presumably think he did with all earlier brains? Now please answer my question above.

DAVID: Answered above. My answer infers all preceding new brains were larger than needed for their time of arrival.

Yes, it infers that the new, “excessive” cells hung around for perhaps thousands of years doing nothing. Now please answer my original question: rockets to Mars, or unknown future requirements? The reason for my asking is that I’d like to know what you think your God saw in his crystal ball.

Evolving a bipedal birth canal

DAVID: Quit the argument. It worked!!!

dhw: In millions of cases, it didn’t work because the design was faulty. And even now, it's one of the most painful experiences a woman can have.

DAVID: Not with the right local anesthetics applied, as in subdurals.

And so what you hailed as an amazing design turns out to be a rotten design made bearable only by humans finding a way to modify its faults. But all credit, apparently, to your God.

Logical ordering of bacterial genes

DAVID: God uses de novo developments when needed. Note the Cambrian explosion.

dhw: When needed for what? The article emphasizes the fact that evolution works through changes to existing organisms that will improve their chances of survival. This can only happen through trial and error, but you say it doesn’t. So are you telling us that your God created today’s brands of bacteria “de novo”?

Not answered.

dhw: As for the Cambrian, the vast majority of species also failed to survive. Your whole theory of evolution is one of 99.9% error!

DAVID: Since when did you start to believe in chance mutation advancing evolution?

I rejected chance mutation long before I opened this website. Do you think this question removes the illogicality of your own theories? And have you already forgotten that I find Shapiro’s theory of evolution through cellular intelligence a very feasible alternative?

Consciousness from edge of chaos

QUOTE: the neurons that power this process are super slow. It takes 10 to 20 milliseconds for a signal to travel from one neuron to another.the neurons that power this process are super slow. It takes 10 to 20 milliseconds for a signal to travel from one neuron to another.

999 milliseconds are still a fraction of a second. What distance does the ball travel? How slow is “superslow”?

QUOTE: Wilder still, they say they used the mathematics of quantum mechanics to develop a model for what’s going on in the human brain, and that allowed them to quantify how “critical” the state of a brain is. They then used functional MRI brain scans from over 1,000 people, and found that using this measure for “criticality” they could tell apart people who were awake from those who were sleeping.

I can think of simpler ways.

DAVID: This article DOES NOT give us any new information. It is just very theoretical.

Yes indeed. I think Sabine is reviewing a parody.