N.Wells
Posts: 1836
Joined: Oct. 2005
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| Quote (GaryGaulin @ Aug. 17 2014,21:27) | | Quote (N.Wells @ Aug. 17 2014,20:54) | | Quote (GaryGaulin @ Aug. 17 2014,20:35) | Keep the goalposts at what John said.
Explain where the "selection" is coming from that makes the following statement true for a developing brain:
"Brains are expensive, and if 90% of it weren't doing anything, there would be strong selection to eliminate that expensive 90%." |
Hah, you're careening all over the place, and you tell me to stick with what John said??? I went very specifically over what John said and where you are wrong about it - how about you responding to that or acknowledging your many mistakes?
Also, if you understood this even a little bit you wouldn't need to ask such a question.
Our brains take a lot of calories to produce and to maintain: despite their small size, human brains consume about 20% of our oxygen use and thus about 20% of the calories that we consume each day. Things that don't justify their expense get lost/pruned pretty quickly in evolutionary terms: famines take out the bigger guys first, the individuals who need more calories (look who died first on Scott's Antarctic expedition). Harsh environments have commonly resulted in dwarfed populations. Look at how quickly famine wiped out the bigger birds among Grant's Galapagos finches in bad years. If that 20% consumption wasn't paying its way in terms of aiding reproductive success, big brains that consume 20% of our energy budget wouldn't have survived the first famine. That's where the selection is coming from. |
After explaining how it's accomplished I have the right to expect you to account for this and all else you're talking about pertaining to "selection" in a computer model that can model every detail of biology:
http://www.kurzweilai.net/forums.....edicine
http://www.nanowerk.com/news2......944.php
Telling me what I already know or would happen anyway in the model after many generations of running time does not explain how to most easily code this complex of a cell behavior that has sensors including bug-like antennae to smell, taste and sense motion with. I'm raising the bar by expecting you to present a model that wires up what exists in the real thing, which has ways to sense what needs to be connected to by synapse occasionally sending out electrochemical ping signals and other methods of communication that inherently keep brain development an orderly, not wasteful process. |
Bullshit, Gary. You are talking up your fantasy, for which you have no solid evidence, and you are telling me that I have to program it? You are not raising any bars: people who are actually doing science and proving that they have discovered stuff are doing that - you are just wasting oxygen. Prove you've got something worth paying attention to, and then you can start talking.
Again, selection and evolution are not intended or claimed to "account for every detail of biology", but excellent models already exist for a great many areas of evolutionary biology. Your nonsense, on the other hand, doesn't account for anything, despite your assertions, because you haven't supported your assumptions and your fundamental assertions.
Brain development is not a "non-wasteful process", but apparently the results are worth the costs - just google "apoptosis and brain development"
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