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The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

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Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#101

Post by jjk166 »

lebek wrote: post #96
jjk166 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flagella only exist as components of something, they do not need to and shouldn't exist by themselves. If flagella spontaneously popped into existence and cells picked them up, that would be quite difficult to explain without design, but cells producing flagella because they are useful components makes perfect sense on its own.

I think he's saying, random mutation wouldn't produce all required components at once. One mutation gives you a bit of a flagella, another gives you bit of a nose, but how does the flagella mutation survive to coexist with the nose mutation that makes it useful. I suspect the answer is that having flagella without a nose is still better than having no flagella. If so it suggests evolution isn't good at accessing grou…

Evolution doesn't produce 1st part of the flagellum, second part of the flagellum, third part of the flagellum.

It produces shitty flagellum, better flagellum, good flagellum.

But the problem is we don't see the intermediate forms. So right now you might see a complicated flagellum that has a lot of highly specialized parts that all need eachother, but that is merely a refinement that took place after all the pieces were already there. Like once an arch is complete, all the scaffolding that was holding it up is now vestigial and if it is removed the arch will remain standing.

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#102

Post by fnord77 »

talkingtab wrote: post #45

The way I think about this comes from reading John Holland's "Hidden Order". If you read that book not as a book but as a way to build a Complex Adaptive System, then it comes down to a few essentials. An environment, a bunch of entities, a read/write messaging bus so the entities can interact. The entities need a set of rules and sensors. Put it together and what have you got? Thinking. Or intelligence. Try building…

Sapir-Whorf is bunk

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#104

Post by medstrom »

falcor84 wrote: post #85
tshaddox wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am a person. I am not a complex adaptive system. And yet I am. Your adaptive system has a very complex model of the environment. You can model yourself as an agent in the environment, and you identify as parts of that agent. I say “parts,” because there is a ton of thinking and actions that your adaptive system performs which you do not identify as you .

It reminds me of this paper from MIRI a few years ago discussing models which treat themselves as an explicit part of the environment. I think it's a very productive approach - https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.09469

Wow, wish more papers were so well written and pleasing to read!

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#105

Post by crudcodersare »

jjk166 wrote: post #101
lebek wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he's saying, random mutation wouldn't produce all required components at once. One mutation gives you a bit of a flagella, another gives you bit of a nose, but how does the flagella mutation survive to coexist with the nose mutation that makes it useful. I suspect the answer is that having flagella without a nose is still better than having no flagella. If so it suggests evolution isn't good at accessing grou…

Evolution doesn't produce 1st part of the flagellum, second part of the flagellum, third part of the flagellum. It produces shitty flagellum, better flagellum, good flagellum. But the problem is we don't see the intermediate forms. So right now you might see a complicated flagellum that has a lot of highly specialized parts that all need eachother, but that is merely a refinement that took place after all the pieces…

It seems you may have misunderstood the original argument. The iterative approach suggests increments so minute at each step that they wouldn't significantly impact an organism's survival at any given time. Also given the extremely slow process of evolution and the relatively short number of iterations it is infeasible to suggest such a solution. If a person would like to create an iPhone it's easy to tell them to start with a shitty scrap of metal and work from there. You can make that sort of argument as a solution for creating anything but it is clearly not feasible.

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#106

Post by mrkstu »

talkingtab wrote: post #45

The way I think about this comes from reading John Holland's "Hidden Order". If you read that book not as a book but as a way to build a Complex Adaptive System, then it comes down to a few essentials. An environment, a bunch of entities, a read/write messaging bus so the entities can interact. The entities need a set of rules and sensors. Put it together and what have you got? Thinking. Or intelligence. Try building…

As can be seen by the specializations between human brain hemispheres. There is a bus between them, but when that communication is cut, and you can see that a lot of what we perceive as a single thought process, is a bunch of independent computing entities with an OS layer on top creating the unity that doesn't really exist.

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#107

Post by crudcodersare »

basil-rash wrote: post #95
martythemaniak wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this to be an incredibly bizarre thing to say. Nobody is stopping you from thinking anything, of course you're allowed and surely you know this very well. I suspect what you're really saying is "Will you still respect me for being a creationist". And the answer is, LOL of course not. Nobody is entitled to have their wacky ideas be respected. A lot of the "free speech" complaints are really demands that other p…

It’s funny, because the creationists generally feel the exact same about evolutionists. Both are faith based responses to questions we cannot answer any other way. Getting caught up in absolutes thinking your interpretation is the gold standard is a sign of an unrefined critical thinking process.

God designing us in an emergent manner or through a static blueprint are the same thing. Someone had to create the laws, the genetic algorithm idea itself and all of these components and the environment for it to operate within never mind things like colors, matter etc. Evolutionists cant see the forest for the trees.

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#108

Post by crudcodersare »

God designing us in an emergent manner or through a static blueprint are the same thing. Someone had to create the laws, the genetic algorithm idea itself and all of these components and the environment for it to operate within never mind things like colors, matter etc. Evolutionists cant see the forest for the trees.

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#109

Post by burnished »

basil-rash wrote: post #95
martythemaniak wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this to be an incredibly bizarre thing to say. Nobody is stopping you from thinking anything, of course you're allowed and surely you know this very well. I suspect what you're really saying is "Will you still respect me for being a creationist". And the answer is, LOL of course not. Nobody is entitled to have their wacky ideas be respected. A lot of the "free speech" complaints are really demands that other p…

It’s funny, because the creationists generally feel the exact same about evolutionists. Both are faith based responses to questions we cannot answer any other way. Getting caught up in absolutes thinking your interpretation is the gold standard is a sign of an unrefined critical thinking process.

Oh they really aren't. Its sort of a tired rhetorical ploy pitting them as faith based beliefs on equal intellectual footing though.

Both are theories about the world. 'Creationism' as a theory really only became pure faith very recently as most specific claims attributable to it have been disproven or better explanations have been found. For a long time it was a perfectly cogent theory.

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#110

Post by lebek »

jjk166 wrote: post #101
lebek wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he's saying, random mutation wouldn't produce all required components at once. One mutation gives you a bit of a flagella, another gives you bit of a nose, but how does the flagella mutation survive to coexist with the nose mutation that makes it useful. I suspect the answer is that having flagella without a nose is still better than having no flagella. If so it suggests evolution isn't good at accessing grou…

Evolution doesn't produce 1st part of the flagellum, second part of the flagellum, third part of the flagellum. It produces shitty flagellum, better flagellum, good flagellum. But the problem is we don't see the intermediate forms. So right now you might see a complicated flagellum that has a lot of highly specialized parts that all need eachother, but that is merely a refinement that took place after all the pieces…

I understand that, but it seems like even the MVP "shitty" flagellum would require many mutations that individually have no benefit. But I suppose with enough generations/parallelism you get enough stacking of useless mutations to reach the useful ones.
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