The mystery of where is the total information to build living organisms

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(2020-06-29, 11:58 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: This is interesting but this reference of course doesn't address the mystery covered in the Op.
The term "form" is a word that is used in Philosophy.  In science the term is morphology.

So in terms of science - the form of something is not studied.  Its physical structure is quantified by morphological tools.  Its mental structure or logical output is measured as to behavioral outcomes.  There is no big mystery - outside of Philosophy, which you don't embrace.  I have sympathy for your complaints about its presentations being to complex.

I cited an abstract by Lynn Caporale and her co-author John Doyle.  She is an outspoken and long-time detractor of neoDarwinian evolution.  If you read the "professional prose" - they are slam dunking evolution ala Dennett and Dawkins - as inconsistent with evolutionary theory, in its current state.  Caporale and Doyle are saying the theory has changed to exclude blind evolution!

In other words - random mutations being casual in bio-evolution is plain wrong - in how we now understand its workings.  It's like Michael Jordan getting in an opponent's face and saying you are not even in in my game!

The debate about random mutations has been over for more than a decade.  Its been proven wrong.  An avalanche of verified ways and means for communications and information processing causing adaptation has crashed down on it.
(This post was last modified: 2020-06-30, 12:57 PM by stephenw.)
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The first name on the people pages of the Third Way website (link above) is James Shapiro.  Here is an abstract of a recent paper.

Quote: How Life Changes Itself: The Read-Write (RW) Genome

Physics of Life Reviews 10 (2013) 287–323
Abstract:
The genome has traditionally been treated as a Read-Only Memory (ROM) subject to change by copying errors and accidents. In this review, I propose that we need to change that perspective and understand the genome as an intricately formatted Read–Write (RW) data storage system constantly subject to cellular modifications and inscriptions. Cells operate under changing conditions and are continually modifying themselves by genome inscriptions. These inscriptions occur over three distinct time-scales (cell reproduction, multicellular development and evolutionary change) and involve a variety of different processes at each time scale (forming nucleoprotein complexes, epigenetic formatting and changes in DNA sequence structure). Research dating back to the 1930s has shown that genetic change is the result of cell-mediated processes, not simply accidents or damage to the DNA. This cell-active view of genome change applies to all scales of DNA sequence variation, from point mutations to large-scale genome rearrangements and whole genome duplications (WGDs). This conceptual change to active cell inscriptions controlling RW genome functions has profound implications for all areas of the life sciences.
(2020-06-30, 12:35 PM)stephenw Wrote: DNA is not a thumb drive of static symbols.  Its part of an active and aggressive process.  DNA exists in this process with RNA (a number of kinds), ribosomes and proteins. The "mental" part of the process is the fact that the electrochemical processes have informational results.

The active communication systems are fed streams of data rich input from the environment. It is this constant feedback from the environment that provides the bulk of the information.

This just seems to deepen the mystery. We know the DNA doesn't have the capacity to store all the data for an organism. This says essentially that the rest of (actually the great majority of) the data is in a system consisting of the RNA, ribosomes (cellular organelles), proteins, electrochemical processes, and most importantly "feedback from the environment".

Now the mysteries are how these things containing the rest of the data to build the organism can possibly:
 
(1) get duplicated with every cell division and passed on to each next generation to act as a permanent structure for the long term morphological data store of the organism. It is especially difficult to see how electrochemical processes and environmental feedback processes can have capabilities such as long term stability as the major storage medium from generation to generation. Processes are not structural entities that can self-duplicate and pass on to the next generation. 
(2) be progressively read and decoded by the developing organism to obtain huge amounts of detailed positional and other data,
(3) in order for evolution to take place, be periodically altered by random or other environmental forces with the altered version accurately passed on to be acted upon by forms of natural selection.
(This post was last modified: 2020-06-30, 03:33 PM by nbtruthman.)
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(2020-06-30, 01:04 PM)stephenw Wrote: The first name on the people pages of the Third Way website (link above) is James Shapiro.  Here is an abstract of a recent paper.

This still assumes all the data is in the genome, per the orthodox gene-centric ideology. It just, in very sophisticated ways, greatly expands the complexity of the ways DNA acts as a data storage medium, to the point that the underlying processes are actually part of the encoded data. But, unless it can be shown specifically and exactly how such processes can act as a data storage medium with longevity generation to generation, all this is still limited to the basic or ultimate data capacity of the DNA comprising the genome. This is the informational coding capacity of its chemical constituents, the bases comprising the DNA. That has been shown to be drastically less than the required data storage to build organisms like human beings.
(This post was last modified: 2020-06-30, 03:53 PM by nbtruthman.)
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(2020-06-29, 11:31 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: The link doesn't work. Anyway, thanks for the research but based on the quotes I don't think this reference deals with or recognizes the problem at all, or at best barely hints at the problem. It apparently visualizes the beyond huge array of all possible different amino acid configurations as existing as a "library" in some sort of abstract platonic realm (maybe like the supposed platonic realm of mathematics that most mathematicians visualize). It imagines the Darwinian evolutionary process as somehow exploring this platonic realm via random mutations. No specifics of a hypothesized mechanism. The ideas seem rather vague and nebulous, substituting lyrical prose for specifics. Rather incoherent thinking it seems to me.

Fixed the link.

It's the patterns of guidance that exist in a Platonic sense, lowering the chance for disastrous mutations.

I don't think it is a complete explanation but is it more incoherent than the IDers who think the Creator of all that exists decided to nudge life through a variety of suffering forms just to arrive at...what exactly?
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'

- Bertrand Russell


(2020-06-30, 09:39 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: Fixed the link.

It's the patterns of guidance that exist in a Platonic sense, lowering the chance for disastrous mutations.

I don't think it is a complete explanation but is it more incoherent than the IDers who think the Creator of all that exists decided to nudge life through a variety of suffering forms just to arrive at...what exactly?

The science of ID is limited to determining that intelligent design must have operated as the active source of new information in evolutionary innovation. It doesn't try to determine the nature of the designer or designers. Just that teleology certainly operated in the process. I agree that it is hard to accept a direct Divine hand in all the creative acts that have occurred in evolution. My personal view is that there have been multiple designers, non-Divine but still advanced beings.
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(2020-06-30, 03:50 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: This still assumes all the data is in the genome, per the orthodox gene-centric ideology. It just, in very sophisticated ways, greatly expands the complexity of the ways DNA acts as a data storage medium, to the point that the underlying processes are actually part of the encoded data. But, unless it can be shown specifically and exactly how such processes can act as a data storage medium with longevity generation to generation, all this is still limited to the basic or ultimate data capacity of the DNA comprising the genome. This is the informational coding capacity of its chemical constituents, the bases comprising the DNA. That has been shown to be drastically less than the required data storage to build organisms like human beings.
Data are static.  Data are processed by mind (mentation).  The processing steps are not part of the data.  Data - vast data points - stream within the perceptual power of the influence of a person's mind.  In information processing the data to be processed and the processing programs are separate.

Babies' DNA/RNA/Ribosome system of communication currently is becoming understood, with surprises all the time.  It encodes an organized goal-driven set of processes.  These process lead to physical goals AND they lead to informational goals.  Like a transmission to a tv - the signal from the outside gets purposefully processed into other signals related to the goals of the tv's design.  For a wonderful analysis of mental abilities learned in preset stages see Jean Piaget.

Any "showing" of the how the code works that still refers to "non-coding" in the syntax of the language should be classed as old and wrong.  If you want to explore this issue - let me point again to Ms Caporale.

Quote: Most analyses assume that genomes are to be read as linear text, much as a sequence of nucleotides can be translated into a sequence of amino acids by looking in a table. However, information can evolve in genomes with distinct forms of representation, such as in the structure of DNA or RNA and/or the relationship between nucleotide sequences. Such information has importance to biology yet is largely unexpected and unexplored. As described in this volume, much of this information, through mechanisms ranging from alternative splicing of RNA to the generation of bacterial coat protein diversity, affects the probability of distinct types of alterations in the nucleic acid sequence. Some genomic DNA sequences affect genome stability, handling and organization, with implications for the robustness of lineages over evolutionary time. The examples reviewed in this volume, taken from a broad range of biological organisms, both extend our view of the nature of information encoded within genomes, and can deepen our appreciation of the power of natural selection, through which this information, in its various forms, has emerged.


I know better and understand that fundamaterialism is still held by a majority, but as the battles are fought and won - I tend to move to the next.  This one is won and blind evolution is intellectually dead.  And science has won it trying to prove the opposite.  Mind is a driving activity in evolution and mental skills are as real as physical ones.

The fight for Psi is now!
(This post was last modified: 2020-07-02, 01:21 PM by stephenw.)
One of my often made observations on the development of embryos into animals/humans is the mystery (to me at least) of the emergence of behaviours. It seems to be assumed that instinctive knowledge and behaviour is also coded in DNA. I just don’t see how a protein factory such as exists in the cell can code for psychological traits or equip the developed brain with knowledge of how to walk (some animals can walk within hours, if not minutes, of birth).
I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension.
Freeman Dyson
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(2020-07-02, 07:45 PM)Kamarling Wrote: One of my often made observations on the development of embryos into animals/humans is the mystery (to me at least) of the emergence of behaviours. It seems to be assumed that instinctive knowledge and behaviour is also coded in DNA. I just don’t see how a protein factory such as exists in the cell can code for psychological traits or equip the developed brain with knowledge of how to walk (some animals can walk within hours, if not minutes, of birth).

Or the instinctive ability to travel to some very distant home or other location on the Earth, maybe thousands of miles away. Like some sea turtles, birds, and salmon. This isn't knowledge per se, but some form of instinctual urge to take some specific route at some specific time in life, with instinctive "recall" of all the different expected sensory cues and probably multiple waypoints that must be required along the way. A lot of information, with no known mechanism in the brain, in particular for the DNA to somehow encode this information. The problems of imagining that this information is somehow in the genome are insuperable.

Even if this were somehow in the genome encoded in the DNA (which as has been seen is not possible because of the information storage problem), there would still be the further problem of there having to be some sort of elaborate decoding mechanism to translate DNA base pair data into its meaning in the form of behavior, instinctual urges for action, etc.

Also in the case of humans there are certainly a lot of innate behavior/emotional patterns (although not anywhere near the number imagined by evolutionary psychologists). At the least for the reasons gone into, these also can't possibly be explained by having evolved by minute changes to the genome. Another line of evidence clinches that case - the existence of verified past life memories and personality characteristics found to have been carried somehow from an unrelated past life person to the present person, with no genetic link. It seems to me it is obvious that the information must be carried by some immaterial structure from the former brain to the current brain.
(This post was last modified: 2020-07-02, 09:04 PM by nbtruthman.)
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