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

jsomers.net

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

#151

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

whelp_24 wrote: post #80
bell-cot wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Useful languages can succinctly distinguish things which are qualitatively quite different. Describing everything in the world as "intelligent" sounds kinda cool and Zen, and may reflect some peoples' worldviews - but it also make "intelligent" pretty useless as an adjective.

Why is intelligence a bad descriptor?

Because:

1) It's a poorly defined word that means different things to different people

2) The word "mechanism" perfectly describes what it is

At the end of the day it's just using the detection of food, to switch from "tumble" (try a random direction to find food) to "run" (assume we're near, or in, a patch of food, and move forward to consume more).

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

#152

Post by dekhn »

basil-rash wrote: post #144
IncreasePosts wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, evolution is not faith based. If you want something faith based, which creationism purports to resolve, it would be if someone has a strong belief on how abiogenesis actually happened, since that is something that is still not well understood. But, we see evolution happening all around us, all the time.

It most certainly is. Evolutionists believe in the time invariance of the laws of physics with no proof, creationists believe the processes by why things have changed in the universe (“physics”, broadly) have changed over time, also with no proof. That there is some external influence that we cannot directly observe that has some massive impact on the development of the universe in ways we cannot explain. (Funnily, p…

The reason we believe in time invariance of the laws of physics is based on observation of old structures in the universe (at least we only have to look back about 4 billion years to the beginning of evolution on earth). So far we have not found any convincing evidence that the laws have changed (either new or different interactions, or the strength of the interactions).

I will say all of science is based on faith- the faith that the human mind can perceive the universe as it truly is, using rational thought and experimental data collection. For some reason this really bothers some scientists and they like to treat science as an unquestionable objective truth, but realistically, we can't exclude any number of hypotheses, but merely state them as improbable based on our understanding.

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

#153

Post by dekhn »

basil-rash wrote: post #143
burnished wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is objectively false. Evolution explains absolutely nothing creationism doesn’t, and creationism explains a whole lot that evolution cannot. For instance, universal origins and the formation of cells.

Could you show us an experiment that would demonstrate creationism is a better explanation than evolution (and random chance) for the formation of cells? If you can't come up with an actual experiment, there's really no way to say that creationism "explains" something.

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

#154

Post by cmrx64 »

treprinum wrote: post #148
mrkstu wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When Covid hit me, it felt like having a stroke and the effect was that I suddenly perceived that I don't have enough energy to sustain vision, instead I could perceive the delineation between object localization, object recognition, character-to-text conversion etc. It was like the brain was an engine that suddenly lacked fuel (I could force individual parts to "work" at the cost of immense pain) and dissolved into…

had a relatable but almost opposite experience (no obvious infection, but it was winter 20/21), where I noticed that objects in my visual field seemed to be differentiating themselves away from the background and “competing” for my attention when previously I had to go hunt for them.

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

#155

Post by anal_reactor »

treprinum wrote: post #148
mrkstu wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When Covid hit me, it felt like having a stroke and the effect was that I suddenly perceived that I don't have enough energy to sustain vision, instead I could perceive the delineation between object localization, object recognition, character-to-text conversion etc. It was like the brain was an engine that suddenly lacked fuel (I could force individual parts to "work" at the cost of immense pain) and dissolved into…

> The experience was both frightening and awesome.

Basically LSD.

It feels so weird to just... I don't know, have a different personality for a while. And when your normal self clicks back it's so relieving.

This made me appreciate what a miracle it is that my brain is fully working most of the time, and realize what a horrible disease dementia is.

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

#156

Post by pdm55 »

Balgair wrote: post #137
ta8645 wrote: post #50

> I never liked the way biology was taught in high school. It was too much about the names of things. A subject so vast is spoiled by a textbook, which can only point at the endless parade of stuff-there-is-to-know. Amen. You could easily teach quite intricate biology in grade school, if you focused on a fascinating example or two. How many more people would be inspired, rather than bored?

I cannot disagree more here. Biology is just astoundingly complicated, especially micro-bio. Lets look at the 'Central Dogma' of biology as a point to focus on a bit. It's the idea of 'information' transfer. DNA gets decoded into RNA which then gets decoded into Protiens, right? Easy peasy little discussion. You go into how DNA works a bit, it's structure, it's functions. Then you go a bit more into RNA and the vario…

Of course, the study of how living cells function is "hard". But that doesn't mean it has to be learnt without joy. We tend to explore things we enjoy. A lot of the writer's essays [1] are about finding some aspect of a topic intriguing and following that rabbit hole.

My own research centered on one subset of functions within E. coli. I was lucky that I found a carefully engineered subset of plasmids and adaptions of E.coli, that could be mathematically modelled [2] [3]. I didn't have to know the whole functioning of E. coli. I didn't have to use mathematics beyond algebra. That is, no calculus was needed. The key task was to put together the quantitative research of about half a dozen labs. Okay, I had a "mountain" of articles to read. And it took 5 years of effort. But it was only doable, because I was modelling a carefully constrained subset of cellular functions.

[1] https://jsomers.net/

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8078069/

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5425810/

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

#157

Post by svnt »

genman wrote: post #125
procgen wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems obvious to me, as there'd be ten times more computational resources.

No, it is because the probability of arriving to a correct answer increases when there are more members in the group, but only when the individual probability to arrive to a correct conclusion is higher than 50%. Group of smart people is smarter than an individual. The opposite is true too. If the individual probability is less than 50% then the group of people is dumber than the individual.

The answer must also be within all of their domains of expertise for the 50% to have any meaning. You can’t have a “room full of smart people” as you’ll just arrive at suboptimal outcomes because your consensus relies on the lowest common denominator of understanding, which between experts in differing fields can be pretty low.

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

#159

Post by carapace »

basil-rash wrote: post #143
burnished wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is objectively false. Evolution explains absolutely nothing creationism doesn’t, and creationism explains a whole lot that evolution cannot. For instance, universal origins and the formation of cells.

Creationism doesn't explain anything.

You don't have to take evolution on faith. You can write a computer program that demonstrates that selection among almost-but-not-quite identical entities with heritable properties generates adaptive forms. Many people have.

DNA is real. Reproducing lifeforms are real. We know how they work in some detail. There's no faith required.

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

#160

Post by resource0x »

beders wrote: post #8
swader999 wrote: post #4

Incredible to think how something this intricate with so many interdependent parts and integrated systems could have evolved.

I know. But this is very well understood and researched. All it requires is mutations, time and selection pressure. The Blind Watchmaker is still a good read.

I'm curious: if tomorrow someone discovers that some parts of the genome are encoded with RSA cryptography, will the argument of "mutations, time and selection pressure" still hold? The same handwaving applies :-)
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