Cell response to electric field (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, April 07, 2013, 23:32 (4047 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: The difference, as I keep stressing, lies first and foremost in innovation. ............Once the innovation functions, the cells will preserve it, and act like automatons, although even then they may have to take their own decisions. The ability to use information and create something new with it is the kind of "intelligence" I mean here.
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> DAVID: That is not intelligence as I define it. The genome has intelligent information, gleaned from an originating intelligence. We are just learning about innovation in the epigentic studies. The genome acts automatically with the information with which it has been supplied. It does not think, and to me intelligence implies thought.-The genome contains instructions. You are not using the word 'intelligence' as I would define it. There was a primary intelligence which formulated the instructins and put them into the genome codes. The cell molecules react automatically under these instructions to changes in the conditions affecting the cell. As the cells modify, the new changes are not information but simply modifications which can be carried forward for the life of the cell and at times for the new organism.-
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> dhw: The section you have omitted is the section which deals with innovation! I gave sex, legs, livers, eyes, wings etc. as examples. Innovation is what leads to new species.- Ignored purposely. We know that new species have new innovations. What we also know is that the fossil record does not show the gradualism of Darwin. Species arrive de novo and we do not know the mechanism. -> dhw: The second phase of preservation (with variations or adaptations) is what you are commenting on. Let me repeat: you can either attribute innovations "to random mutations, to your God creating or preprogramming each one separately, or to an inbuilt mechanism which comes up with its own inventions.-I doubt the 'random mutation mechanism' since most mutations are harmful or neutral and mutations do not seem to add 'new information' and may actually destroy existing information, a point which has been demonstrated. Choices two and three are birds of the same feather: pre-programming is a built-in mechanism.-> dhw: That is what we agreed to call "the intelligent genome"." If you do not agree that "the ability to use information and create something NEW with it" is a kind of intelligence, perhaps you could give me your own definition.
I have disagreed above. The intelligence wwe are discussing is prior to the genome's formation. The genome is information and instructions. The genome acts as if it is intelligent, appears intelligent, but it is only an automaton responding to its coded information. This is equivalent to Dawkins telling us evolution looks designed, but that is only an 'appearance of design'. The genome is designed to act as if it were thinking things out. It really doesn't.