Intelligent Design / Evolution (2)

[Trogool]

It's chemotaxis that is doing this. When neutrophils home to a site of inflammation, do you think they're doing because they consciously decide to? No, there are chemical mediators that direct the process.

Oh lol, hadn't even thought of that. This should prove entertaining.

 

[DaneaFL]

I can't help but wonder if that isn't a type of human vanity. We all like to think of ourselves as SO much more "intelligent" than other forms of life that are composed of DNA. Is a dolphin "intelligent" in your opinion?

Maybe we're not as vastly more intelligent than a dolphin as we'd like to think; but obviously there is a difference... and that difference is what we casually call "intelligence."

So, to avoid having to play creationist word games with you, I'll accept that the slime is "intelligent" in the same way one of those little hexbug robots that my cousin plays with are intelligent -they will move toward a light source or navigate a maze.

Call it 'sentience' or 'self-awareness' but that's the quality we are talking about that the slime doesn't have.
You know what we mean anyway... don't play silly semantics games... you are getting dangerously close to the AV/dad zone with tricks like that.

As far as your assertion that anything with "goal oriented software" must be intelligently designed, that's just silly. They can program algorithms that learn complex behaviors based on a few simple math equations. Likewise, DNA, the "language" of life, can obviously allow very complex structures but at it's base it's just the chemical reactions of 4 simple molecules... and unlike the robot, no intelligent programmer is needed for chemistry to work.

 

[Greg1234]

Maybe we're not as vastly more intelligent than a dolphin as we'd like to think; but obviously there is a difference... and that difference is what we casually call "intelligence."

So, to avoid having to play creationist word games with you, I'll accept that the slime is "intelligent" in the same way one of those little hexbug robots that my cousin plays with are intelligent -they will move toward a light source or navigate a maze.

Call it 'sentience' or 'self-awareness' but that's the quality we are talking about that the slime doesn't have.
You know what we mean anyway... don't play silly semantics games... you are getting dangerously close to the AV/dad zone with tricks like that.

As far as your assertion that anything with "goal oriented software" must be intelligently designed, that's just silly. They can program algorithms that learn complex behaviors based on a few simple math equations. Likewise, DNA, the "language" of life, can obviously allow very complex structures but at it's base it's just the chemical reactions of 4 simple molecules... and unlike the robot, no intelligent programmer is needed for chemistry to work.

So accept that single cells can already learn, interact, reproduce, plan and think but you're simply reducing to other parts?

 

[Greg1234]

A better example is mosquitoes, which rely heavily on following CO2 and volatile organic compound gradients from the breath of animals.

So would you consider mosquitoes to be conscious?

 

[DaneaFL]

So accept that single cells can already learn, interact, reproduce, plan and think but you're simply reducing to other parts?

Yes... isnt that how dna works? Its just the physical reactions of a few molecules. When you put them together they form complex shapes all by themselves. The double helix forms by itself. No guiding hand of god required for the chemitry to work.

What about snowflakes? They are complex and beautiful. Did god hand carve each one as they fell from the sky?

No. The properties of water makes that shape by itself when certain atmospheric conditions are eached.

 

[DaneaFL]

So would you consider mosquitoes to be conscious?

You keep using loaded words like 'think' and 'conscious'.

Of course they dont think like humans. Thats a silly question.

 

[Greg1234]

Yes...

Cool . Glad we're past that.

isnt that how dna works?

Is a factory conscious? When you have people functioning as a single unit by following a set of implemented instructions, is that single unit, as a unit, conscious?

What about snowflakes? They are complex and beautiful. Did god hand carve each one as they fell from the sky?

So what do bees make?

You keep using loaded words like 'think' and 'conscious'.

Of course they dont think like humans. Thats a silly question.

So are they conscious?

 

[Michael]

Maybe we're not as vastly more intelligent than a dolphin as we'd like to think; but obviously there is a difference... and that difference is what we casually call "intelligence."

Mirror test - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A number of different species have even demonstrated a true "self awareness" to human satisfaction, not just simple awareness of environment.

So, to avoid having to play creationist word games with you, I'll accept that the slime is "intelligent" in the same way one of those little hexbug robots that my cousin plays with are intelligent -they will move toward a light source or navigate a maze.

From the perspective of psychology, I find it fascinating how many self professed atheist keep comparing these "behaviors" (authors word) to "intelligently designed" systems. That's really my point in a nutshell. DNA has all the characteristics of being "intelligently designed" from the start with the express and sole intend of providing "awareness" and "intelligence" with a way to physically express themselves through a MYRIAD of "forms", all customized to thrive in UNIQUE environments.

Call it 'sentience' or 'self-awareness' but that's the quality we are talking about that the slime doesn't have.

Well, it may not be "self aware", but it does display a rudimentary "awareness" of environmental factors, and a RECALL capacity, and an ANTICIPATORY capacity requiring rudimentary intelligence of some kind.

You know what we mean anyway... don't play silly semantics games... you are getting dangerously close to the AV/dad zone with tricks like that.

FYI, I provided you with PEER REVIEWED and PUBLISHED materials to support my statements.

As far as your assertion that anything with "goal oriented software" must be intelligently designed, that's just silly. They can program algorithms that learn complex behaviors based on a few simple math equations.

I believe if you ponder that statement, you'll see that it's ultimately an oxymoron. If it takes 'math' to program in the "behavior" it's going to require "intelligence" to figure out which formulas to use.

Likewise, DNA, the "language" of life, can obviously allow very complex structures but at it's base it's just the chemical reactions of 4 simple molecules...

Actually it requires water and many other molecules. The communication across the DNA strands only uses those four chemicals.

and unlike the robot, no intelligent programmer is needed for chemistry to work.

You just ASSUMED something that you cannot empirically demonstrate. That's called a "leap of faith". When did you intend to provide me with PEER REVIEWED and PUBLISHED material to support the assertion DNA forms spontaneously, or is that kind of a "dad" comment? You can't demonstrate DNA occurs "on accident." Chemistry alone isn't the issue, it's the DESIGN that's the issue.

 

[Michael]

You keep using loaded words like 'think' and 'conscious'.

Of course they dont think like humans. Thats a silly question.

How about a dog? Does it "think" as in "I'm hungry", "I'm afraid", "I'm tired"?

 

[Michael]

Yes... isnt that how dna works? Its just the physical reactions of a few molecules.

That is another statement of faith by the way. It's not JUST anything other than just LIFE!

When you put them together they form complex shapes all by themselves.

Another dad comment I presume with no peer reviewed or published support? When did any experiment spontaneously create life on "accident"?

The double helix forms by itself. No guiding hand of god required for the chemitry to work.

I'll bet you have no peer reviewed support for that comment dadette.

What about snowflakes? They are complex and beautiful. Did god hand carve each one as they fell from the sky?

From my empirical perspective, ABSOLUTELY!

No. The properties of water makes that shape by itself when certain atmospheric conditions are eached.

Sure, but who or what creates those atmospheric conditions.

 

[Michael]

From the thread before the split:



They used the word "intelligent", YOU used the word "aware". Two vastly different things.

Not really. It's hard to act "intelligently" unless you're "aware" of the environment around you. It's certainly "aware" of the cold cycles and it's proactively responsive to them.

It's chemotaxis that is doing this.

Without any peer reviewed or published support for that claim, it's nothing more than a claim you pulled out of your back pocket. It's definitely a "dad" move.

When neutrophils home to a site of inflammation, do you think they're doing because they consciously decide to? No, there are chemical mediators that direct the process.

You're sort of missing the point of the study IMO. The study does suggest that even at the single cellular level, there is a primitive "intelligence" present. You may may not personally be "aware" of the local conditions throughout your body, but that doesn't mean that none of the cells of your body are not "aware" of that inflammation, and proactively doing something about it. Lots of life forms live inside and outside of our bodies that we are not typically "aware" of.

 

[BobRyan]

World renown cosmologist Martin Reese and Physicist Leonard Susskind did a project called "What we still don't know". In that project they are explaining and promoting their "multiverse" solution to the design problem.

It boils down to the observation that a universe tuned down the the accuracy of 1x10^-120 power is beyond all limits of reason for "random chance" given one single universe. That observation "alone" would obviously dictate intelligent design.

So they came up with the idea of "imagining" 10^500 other universes which then makes our 10^-120 level of precision more believable as a "random outcome".

In other words they are willing to "imagine entire universes" if that is what it takes to avoid logical conclusions from real life observations dictating intelligent design.

Here then is the smoking gun for our atheist friends.

in Christ,

Bob

 

[Jro]

Hmm. Since the authors themselves did not do that, asking me to do that is a bit like asking the fox to guard the hen house isn't it? You're really going to let ME stick words in THEIR mouth like that?

I think you're applying a different definition than one I'm used to- I certainly don't think that the scientists from the study would be comfortable with the leaps you're making. :]

That would include "intelligently designed" behaviors then, and frankly I'm quite comfortable with that inclusion because I believe DNA *IS* intelligently designed. Either way, it's a sign of intelligence (real time or in the design) IMO.

That's like saying "I found a robot with legs, therefore legs must have been intelligently designed." Neural networks and learning programs were explicitly modeled after biology.

I would certainly consider ants to be intelligent. They even 'herd' aphids to gather food, much like humans herd cattle. Ants have extremely sophisticated social structures that include a division of labor. I have NO trouble believing that ants are intelligent.

See, I wouldn't consider these behaviors intelligent in the slightest. Complex and complicated, sure, incredibly well adapted, ok, but they don't vary by species. At some level they're just programmed in. What I find more interesting about ant colonies is the way that they use simple parts to come up with intelligent solutions, such as pathway optimization. One example is ant colony optimization: Ant colony optimization algorithms - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kind of a cool thing that produces complex, 'intelligent' behaviors, but each ant is following a simple set of rules.

I would call any type of "goal oriented software" an example of an 'intelligent design'.

I would not- in our example with ants, the ants are following a simple set of rules that leads to an emergent intelligence. But this does not mean the ants themselves are intelligent, nor does it mean that there was a leader of some sort telling them what to do.

If you're arguing that single cells are not actually 'intelligent' because DNA is actually 'intelligently designed', doesn't that ultimately prove my original point, it's one or the other or both?

The paper was not about single cells, it was about networks of cells. I'm arguing that single cells are not intelligent, that DNA doesn't code for intelligence, but that networks of relatively simple interacting parts can give rise to more complex behaviors without outside interference or direction.

 

[Greg1234]

I would not- in our example with ants, the ants are following a simple set of rules that leads to an emergent intelligence. But this does not mean the ants themselves are intelligent, nor does it mean that there was a leader of some sort telling them what to do.

Hm, ants are also conscious.

Ants: Swarm Intelligence - Answers in Genesis

Memory in Ants « Wild About Ants


Ok. It's like walking into a factory and saying that the aggregate of all workers, working together on an assembly line, explains the origin of complexity and intelligence. Yet when we break that up into specific departments, we find complex behavior already existing in departments. When we break that up even further, we find independent humans already exhibiting intelligence.

So that is what's being addressed. The claim is that the brain is the origin of consciousness and the origin of intelligence. Yet when we break up the brain into single cells we find intelligence and awareness already existing. And if you break that up even further you will find awareness (some have already gone that far).

The computational situation in which instructions are termed "algorithms" is not unique. You could do it with anything, using any conscious agent.

A typical set of instructions would look like the following-

But you could also do it with a company-

Or transportation system-

So... is the company or transportation system conscious?

Did intelligence arise after the company and transportation system were built?

 

[Jro]

So, you're arguing that at each level of biology, there are complex things going on, therefore it must have been designed? This seems like a reiteration of the watchmaker's argument.

I'd also add that the instructions you've provided are not like an ant colony in that they are instructions for one unit, not a network of units.

 

[Lion Hearted Man]

Not really. It's hard to act "intelligently" unless you're "aware" of the environment around you. It's certainly "aware" of the cold cycles and it's proactively responsive to them.

Do you think the slime molds self-aware? Maybe that's the better question to ask of you.

When you define intelligence as "the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills", yes the slime molds can do that. But this is not equivalent to conscious decision making and higher-order functions that brains are responsible for. Slime molds don't "think" when making complex decisions. It's akin to a biochemical algorithm.

Without any peer reviewed or published support for that claim, it's nothing more than a claim you pulled out of your back pocket. It's definitely a "dad" move.

PLoS ONE: Collective Irrationality and Positive Feedback
Slime Mold Solves Maze in One Pass... [IEEE Trans Nanobioscience. 2012] - PubMed - NCBI
[The role of phosphoinositide-3-kinase in ... [Biofizika. 2008 Nov-Dec] - PubMed - NCBI
Microtubules are required in amoeba chemotaxis fo... [J Cell Sci. 1994] - PubMed - NCBI

Don't play this game with me, pal. You cannot shift the goal-posts. You didn't ask me for peer-reviewed papers, so no wonder I didn't post them.

Now YOU post the peer-reviewed papers that argue that this "intelligence" requires something other than just biochemistry. I await the crickets.

You're sort of missing the point of the study IMO.

You posted a study? Did I miss it? All I saw you post was a news article.

The study does suggest that even at the single cellular level, there is a primitive "intelligence" present. You may may not personally be "aware" of the local conditions throughout your body, but that doesn't mean that none of the cells of your body are not "aware" of that inflammation, and proactively doing something about it. Lots of life forms live inside and outside of our bodies that we are not typically "aware" of.

I know how neutrophils are "aware" of inflammation -- because of biochemical signaling pathways. Do you argue that it is anything else?

 

[Michael]

Do you think the slime molds self-aware? Maybe that's the better question to ask of you.

I don't see any evidence of self awareness in the paper I cited. I see evidence of "awareness" of the cold cycles, but 'self awareness' has a unique 'test" of it's own, and only a 'few' species have actually passed that particular test.

When you define intelligence as "the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills", yes the slime molds can do that. But this is not equivalent to conscious decision making and higher-order functions that brains are responsible for. Slime molds don't "think" when making complex decisions. It's akin to a biochemical algorithm.

Well, define "think". It has to "recall" and CHANGE behavior. I don't know how to define the term "think" as it applies to this topic. There are no neural pathways involved in this process AFAIK.

PLoS ONE: Collective Irrationality and Positive Feedback
Slime Mold Solves Maze in One Pass... [IEEE Trans Nanobioscience. 2012] - PubMed - NCBI
[The role of phosphoinositide-3-kinase in ... [Biofizika. 2008 Nov-Dec] - PubMed - NCBI
Microtubules are required in amoeba chemotaxis fo... [J Cell Sci. 1994] - PubMed - NCBI

It's not clear to me which (if any) of those studies actually supports a 'non-intelligent' explanation.

Don't play this game with me, pal. You cannot shift the goal-posts. You didn't ask me for peer-reviewed papers, so no wonder I didn't post them.

I'm not trying to play any games, I'm simply noting how the 'scientific debate' process is SUPPOSED to work.

Now YOU post the peer-reviewed papers that argue that this "intelligence" requires something other than just biochemistry. I await the crickets.

Why would I? I don't have to nor need to.

You posted a study? Did I miss it? All I saw you post was a news article.

You missed it. It's back in the original thread and it's accessible from the link I provided.

I know how neutrophils are "aware" of inflammation -- because of biochemical signaling pathways. Do you argue that it is anything else?

Assuming it gets a "signal", why do anything about it?

 

[Lion Hearted Man]

Assuming it gets a "signal", why do anything about it?

The signal (sent from injured cells) interacts with receptors on the neutrophil, which results in cellular changes that result in movement towards the signal. It's programming. The neutrophil doesn't "decide" to do anything. If neutrophils could consciously override this process if needed, autoimmune diseases wouldn't work.

Michael, are you familiar with much biochemistry or molecular & cellular biology? Because what I'm arguing is that slime molds are capable of extraordinary chemotaxis, but the process is completely driven by biochemical processes and the molds themselves aren't capable of the thought and insight that a brain is responsible for in animals such as us.

 

[Michael]

The signal (sent from injured cells) interacts with receptors on the neutrophil, which results in cellular changes that result in movement towards the signal. It's programming.

But that's just it. DNA has all the earmarks of "intelligent programming".

The neutrophil doesn't "decide" to do anything. If neutrophils could consciously override this process if needed, autoimmune diseases wouldn't work.

That's a valid point.

Michael, are you familiar with much biochemistry or molecular & cellular biology?

It's not my primary (or secondary) field of expertize, but I'm familiar with it.

Because what I'm arguing is that slime molds are capable of extraordinary chemotaxis, but the process is completely driven by biochemical processes...

Agreed.

and the molds themselves aren't capable of the thought and insight that a brain is responsible for in animals such as us.

Agreed.

I'm not sure we're really in disagreement on these two points, but even the mold shows signs of rudimentary "intelligence". For all I know, DNA was DESIGNED with the specific intent to give rise to sentient forms through the cosmos.

 

[Michael]

I think you're applying a different definition than one I'm used to- I certainly don't think that the scientists from the study would be comfortable with the leaps you're making. :]

I don't really see where I'm making an large leaps of faith frankly.

That's like saying "I found a robot with legs, therefore legs must have been intelligently designed." Neural networks and learning programs were explicitly modeled after biology.

Emphasis mine. From my perspective (intelligent design) that's perfectly natural and logical and "predictable'.

See, I wouldn't consider these behaviors intelligent in the slightest. Complex and complicated, sure, incredibly well adapted, ok, but they don't vary by species. At some level they're just programmed in. What I find more interesting about ant colonies is the way that they use simple parts to come up with intelligent solutions, such as pathway optimization. One example is ant colony optimization: Ant colony optimization algorithms - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kind of a cool thing that produces complex, 'intelligent' behaviors, but each ant is following a simple set of rules.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree over the herding of Aphids as an act of "intelligence". It seems like rather sophisticated behavior from something so tiny.

The paper was not about single cells, it was about networks of cells.

That's true of the mold study. I cited a third reference related to balance diets however that really only require and relate to 1 cell.

I'm arguing that single cells are not intelligent, that DNA doesn't code for intelligence, but that networks of relatively simple interacting parts can give rise to more complex behaviors without outside interference or direction.

I'm arguing that awareness and intelligence are intrinsic to the universe itself and DNA is simply an "intelligently designed" system that is designed to house and give rise to awareness and intelligence locally and temporarily.