Rapid evolution or epigenetics? (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, March 01, 2011, 15:08 (5016 days ago) @ David Turell

Following on from various articles David has alerted us to, I suggested a revolutionary concept: the intelligent cell which, in combination with its fellow cells, is able to innovate and pass on its innovations. The Nobel Prize was beckoning, only to be snatched from my grasp by a scientist who, unlike me, knows what he's talking about.-DAVID: These blast or stem cells are pluripotential, and can make everything. But once they have made everything, they are generally turned off, and under control not to take off and make something uncontrolled like a cancer.-I am now genuinely asking for enlightenment here, so please correct me wherever I go wrong. The common explanation for innovations is that they are caused by beneficial mutations, i.e. beneficial changes in the DNA sequence of a cell's genome. (Epigenetics may explain adaptations, but not innovations, because the species remain the same.) Such mutations are generally attributed to chance. Your own theory, however, as I understand it, is that the relevant cells were pre-programmed by a UI to produce these beneficial changes. My question, then, is why should they not be the result of intelligent experimentation by the cells themselves instead of by chance, or through pre-programming? -You may of course be right that this is the product of a runaway imagination, but let me try your patience a little further. We know already that intelligence is not confined to our human concept of it. Once upon a time, people would have laughed at the idea of intelligent animals and birds. We now know better. Your UI would be a form of intelligence which is independent of the human brain, and for which there is no evidence except the existence of mechanisms too complex to have come about by chance. Microscopic organisms show signs of intelligence which we believe to be merely mechanical, but how do we know that there isn't more to it than blind instinct? New organs and new species have come into existence somehow, and whether it's by chance or by pre-programming, the process is the same ... genetic mutation: a new sequence, survival and development via natural selection. And so let me ask again: instead of by chance (far-fetched), or through the planning of some unknown outside intelligence (equally far-fetched), why not an inside intelligence? What would be the difference in procedure and outcome between chance or pre-programmed mutations and self-initiated mutations?-(N.B. This would not, of course, solve the problem of the origin of life or of the mechanisms themselves. I am focusing only, and very narrowly, on the problem of innovations.)