Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Thursday, April 01, 2021, 12:03 (1122 days ago) @ David Turell

Introducing the brain
DAVID: How else to explain the time delay in the brain?

dhw: The tiny time delay (half a second) might just possibly be explained by the fact that the sensation of pain has to travel from the finger to the brain, but the tiny time delay is so tiny that most people would think the sensation was immediate.

DAVID: Funny the trained neurosurgeon didn't understand that!

Apparently he didn’t want to understand it because according to you he only wanted to demonstrate how the soul works.

Tectonics and environment
DAVID: Using information that exists runs the process of living, and new forms are based on new information. The issue the source of the new information, more complex than the old info. I choose God.

dhw: The source of new information would seem to be changes in living conditions which either demand or allow changes in behaviour and/or the anatomy. Plants would not need to develop responses to drought if there was no drought.

DAVID: Living condition changes represent new external information. I'm discussing the source of new internal DNA information to handle the changes. Why dodge the point?

You see how very confusing it is when you use the term “information” so loosely? I would say that the DNA needs to make changes to itself (we don’t need to use the term “information” here) in order to handle the new information arising out of changes in conditions. According to you, 3.8 billion years ago your God preprogrammed every change in the DNA, or he popped in whenever necessary to perform operations on all the creatures affected. I propose that if he exists, he gave cells the powers to change their DNA themselves.

Engulfing adds function
DAVID: It was important for the evolutionary process to develop wide spread photosynthesis to free up enough oxygen to reach 21% of our atmosphere. And thanks to Lynn Margolis for recognizing the way to add a function by ingulfing another organism.

dhw: I’m delighted by your acknowledgement of Lynn Margulis’s theory of endosymbiosis. You will of course remember that she was also a champion of cellular intelligence.

DAVID: I'm quite convinced about Margolis' theory.

I presume you mean the theory of endosymbiosis. But I hope you will also respect Margulis's theory about cellular intelligence.

Nasty butterflies
QUOTES: Take this zebra longwing, Heliconius charithonia. It looks innocent enough.
"But it’s also famously poisonous, and its caterpillars are cannibals that eat their siblings. And that’s hardly shocking compared with its propensity for something called pupal rape.”

DAVID: Who knew? All part of the ecosystems they are in.

But also part of the overall picture, in which you have your God directly designing all the different organisms, strategies and lifestyles. What sort of mind deliberately designs life forms that eat and rape their siblings? Or is it possible that your God DIDN’T deliberately design them, but that they are the product of a free-rein evolution in which all life forms devise their own strategies and lifestyles?