GaryGaulin
Posts: 5385 Joined: Oct. 2012
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Quote (N.Wells @ April 29 2018,06:39) | Quote (GaryGaulin @ April 28 2018,21:58) | Quote (N.Wells @ April 27 2018,17:57) | Please elaborate on how you see that relating to salmon behavior of the sorts discussed earlier. |
A computer related analogy is (read only memory) ROM for "instinctual" motor routines all animals are born with, along with possible design change. A "tweaking the circuit" to favor certain actions over others, and not necessarily a coded memory area with "information" in it as in a computer ROM chip.
Behaviors are this way passed to offspring. What smells and tastes good or bad eventually depends on whether the substance is what the critter such as a dung-beetle eats, or personally poops out as waste and/or may likely be hazardous to consume. |
Thanks for the response. |
You're welcome.
Quote (N.Wells @ April 29 2018,06:39) | Quote | A computer related analogy is (read only memory) ROM for "instinctual" motor routines all animals are born with, along with possible design change. |
This raises numerous issues. Instincts are behaviors that are built-in, not learned or reasoned out, |
To be specific: both are (by trial and error learning) "learned". At all levels basic systematics are identical. Difference is learning occurred at the molecular/genetic level, not multicellular level.
Quote (N.Wells @ April 29 2018,06:39) | so dedicated neuronal and biochemical "circuits" make sense for that, and it also makes evolutionary sense that similar or associated behaviors could be duplications and modifications of previously successful versions, thereby leading to complex "families" of circuits. | That is correct, although simplification of a circuit or routing connection(s) elsewhere can also modify behavior.
Quote (N.Wells @ April 29 2018,06:39) | However: 1) We know that instincts are subject to mutation and subsequent natural selection. |
You are only saying: all that gets tried is subject to failure or success of one kind or another, or can be as you would say "neutral". It's no wonder Charles Darwin was not the first to figure that one out. I find it childish to dwell on ancient rudimentary insight, and throw "natural selection" around like a buzz phrase. I'm already annoyed enough by the latest "deep learning" crusade.
Quote (N.Wells @ April 29 2018,06:39) | (Bastock, changes in reproductive behavior in "yellow" mutant fruit flies; Benzer, effects of mutations on phototaxis and circadian rhythms in fruit flies; swimming style in "ennui" mutant zebrafish; multiple mutations that increase or decrease aggression in fruit flies; another fruit fly mutation that causes males to spend longer in courtship, which increases their success rate at reproduction!). 2) Sadly for your proposal, ROM does not have the option for design change from within the system, |
Regardless of how the design change happened including metaphors like "lucky accident" to describe how like (in Louis Pasteur's mouldy sink) discoveries are often via trial and error learning discovered: there was in fact "change from within the system".
Quote (N.Wells @ April 29 2018,06:39) | whereas in life there is no evidence for change by design from outside the system. |
In this case "change by design from outside the system" does not change the fact that there was "change from within the system".
I am not obligated to entertain your (anti)religious thoughts of an omnipotent gift giving Santa Claus (God) intelligent designer who tinkers with molecules in some hidden workshop. Please grow up.
Quote (N.Wells @ April 29 2018,06:39) | 3) Assuming that instinctive behaviors work as the new research suggests, this is actually not in accord with your proposal, as two of your key requirements have to do with making guesses and being able to assess results. Instinctive behaviors lack both capabilities, and therefore fail to rise to the level of intelligence according to your usage. 4) There is no evidence that this is molecules or neurons or genes being intelligent at a sub-organismal level: it is biochemistry - genetics setting up hierarchical neuronal pathways that respond to biochemical signals (e.g. Willows and Hoyle, 1969). 5) Also, note that not all animals have parenting instincts (think sponges and cnidarians). However, even sponges have a mechanism to synchronize release of eggs and sperm, and complexity should be able to increase from there by standard evolutionary processes.
So since salmon have very little in the way of parenting behavior, does that mean you are predicting that they will have very little in the way of gallanin-based neuronal "circuitry" in the medial preoptic area, compared to, say, a seahorse or a stickleback? |
What?! Salmon are so instinct driven they normally do not even survive their first few weeks of parenting duties. In either case: objective experiments require objective comparisons, not subjective ones.
It's best that I do not attempt to make a prediction, especially with something that soon gets into philosophy and religion of what it means to be a "parent" and proper "parenting behavior" expected of motherly and fatherly fish. There is even room for Discovery Institute conspiracy theory or two about female seahorses being evil for abandoning her offspring to the care of their father who needed a whole anatomy change just to cope with her wicked ways.
Quote (N.Wells @ April 29 2018,06:39) | Quote | A "tweaking the circuit" to favor certain actions over others, and not necessarily a coded memory area with "information" in it as in a computer ROM chip. | That's not a sentence, so your meaning is obscure. This sort of tweaking is easily envisaged as the result of standard and documented evolutionary processes, but there's no evidence in biology for a process analogous to a chip redesigning itself or for a chip designer leaning over the chip and making subtle adjustments.
Quote | Behaviors are this way passed to offspring. What smells and tastes good or bad eventually depends on whether the substance is what the critter such as a dung-beetle eats, or personally poops out as waste and/or may likely be hazardous to consume. | You are describing a system that works by descent with modification, with feedback through natural selection, which you deny.
Incidentally, I'm not seeing how any of the stuff you are proposing to do with your model (back up on 14 April) rises to the level of a valid test. |
Scientific theories never require pulling Jesus from a hat or other supernatural "religious miracle". Stooping down to that tactic makes you no better than the Discovery Institute, who also does the same in order to get out of having to perform any of the required scientific work.
-------------- The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.
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