The Argument Clinic

Conversation Side Conversation
571

Yes, I do know how self-collapse or Objective reduction could have created new or identical sequences , as described by Stuart Hammeroff:

Pi cloud arrays in host cell proteins coupled their EG with that of flagellar microtubules, the mutual superpositions avoiding random distractions from the polar environment and allowing orchestration. OR threshold was approached more gradually, harmonically, with orchestrated pi stack coherent contributions. When threshold was finally reached by EG ¼ h/t, climactic and pleasurable Orch OR moments occurred.

This is how additional Hox genes were created.

If the model I just presented is true, fossils will show animal orders and families, had sufficient microtubule capacity for OR by �≈ℏ/�� of less than a minute, resulting in rudimentary Orch OR, consciousness.

Your claim has just been falsified.

No, it does not predict anything and everything. For instance…

According to the model, only key events in life’s evolution were significantly helped by this particular self-collapse because they were crucial to early events in evolution. This means that the proximal design objectives to create animal body plans were reached.

So we would not expect this type of design bias to happen after created kinds appeared on the scene. This is no different than what we see with human designers. They have certain goals in mind when making a particular design.

Once these goals are achieved, they just focus on maintaining it afterwards. This is exactly what we observe in the regions of the DNA that code for proteins as pointed out before.

What is your point here? Are you saying that the studies on incongruency do not meet the criteria for falsification of his claim.

What do I not understand about the article that you do instead?

Unlike you, I know and research enough about the subject to make my case while you choose to stay willfully ignorant about it.

You actually never explained why HRT or HGT could not have been the mechanism of distribution. You previously said…

You refer to HRT, but Hox clusters are not regulatory sequences (e.g. enhancers and repressors); they’re linear sets of protein-coding genes. None of the irrelevant events or processes you describe has anything to do with duplicating or adding linears sets of protein-coding genes to a genome.

But, why is it not possible for linear sets of protein-coding genes, such as hox clusters, to be transmitted between and within species through by HGT or HRT as well?

This study has certainly suggested that it can:

The ultimate prokaryotic origin of some algal genes and their simultaneous presence in both primary and secondary photosynthetic eukaryotes either suggest recurrent gene transfer events under specific environments or support a more ancient origin of primary plastids. Algal Genes in the Closest Relatives of Animals | Molecular Biology and Evolution | Oxford Academic (oup.com)

And how do you know it is irrelevant if you are not an expert in the field or willfully ignorant about their model?

No, it happened alright. For instance, Lawrence M. Krauss argued that measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation and the large-scale structure of the universe have greatly reduced the uncertainties in the cosmological parameters, including the cosmological constant. He concluded that the observed value of the cosmological constant is consistent with a universe that will expand forever, and that there is no longer an “age problem” that would require the universe to be much older than its observed age.

However, Krauss noted that the cosmological constant problem remains one of the most puzzling and challenging problems in physics, as the predicted value of the cosmological constant based on quantum field theory is many orders of magnitude larger than the observed value.

Krauss, L.M., 1998. The end of the age problem, and the case for a cosmological constant revisited. The Astrophysical Journal, 501(2), pp. 461-466.

No, it can be achieved, as this article has pointed out:

So far all astrophysical evidence supports the cosmological constant idea, but there is some wiggle room in the measurements. Upcoming experiments such as Europe’s Euclid space telescope, NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) and Chile’s Simons Observatory being built in the desert will look for signs that dark energy was stronger or weaker in the past than the present. “The interesting thing is that we’re already at a sensitivity level to begin to put pressure on [the cosmological constant theory].” Steinhardt says. “We don’t have to wait for new technology to be in the game. We’re in the game now.” String Theory May Create Far Fewer Universes Than Thought - Scientific American

Let me clarify what I said before. When I suggested my theory is unsuited to be a scientific model for physics, I meant this for only epistemological reasons.

In contrast, my theory is very much a scientific model for testing whether God ontologically exists. But again, it can’t be used to test whether the God hypothesis is a useful theory to help us learn more about the universe outside of biology.

Nonetheless, the predictions I provided do help in confirming the truthfulness of the theory rather than usefulness from a strictly physics standpoint.

572

Your quote says nothing whatsoever about new or altered DNA sequences. It has nothing to do with the topic.

There is no chance that fossils will show any such thing. Microtubules and consciousness are not preserved in fossils. And that has nothing to do with my claim or even with anything you claimed before.

That’s just gibberish, as is everything else you’ve said in that post. It’s even worse that most of your previous posts.

You pointed out nothing resembling that before. Nor is it at all clear what you mean by that, if indeed you mean anything.

I’m saying that the very sentence you quote explains how you misunderstood the sentence you quote. Your claim was about exact identity of trees, while the quote is about significant similarity of trees. You don’t know the difference, apparently. As usual, the stuff you cite in support of your claims doesn’t say what you think it does.

Again, I don’t believe you actually read it.

All your respondents disagree. You misunderstand everything you cite.

It’s of course possible, though not through HRT, just HGT (and you still don’t know what a Hox cluster is). But it isn’t a probable explanation. HGT as explanation would require a ridiculous number of identical events for no discernible reason. Common descent is a much simpler explanation, requiring just two events, for which there is in fact evidence elsewhere in the genome. Further, massively repeated HGT (from where?) isn’t really an explanation, as it could, as I said, “explain” anything.

No, you once again misunderstand a study. This isn’t about repeated HGT of the same sequence into multiple species; it’s about repeated HGT (maybe) of different sequences into one species. Nothing to do with what you’re claiming. You understand nothing of what you read.

If it were relevant you would have been able to make an explicit connection, which you never do. Nobody connects consciousness with the evolution of DNA sequences. Not you, and not anyone you have every cited.

573

It did not. The cosmological constant is known to within about one part in a hundred (at best), not one part in 10¹²⁰. No amount of lying about this, nor pasting off-topic article excerpts will change it.

I didn’t say it can’t be achieved, and neither did you. I said it was not achieved, and so did you. This is the quote from your message that I am replying to, where you say that the level of precision you claim would require significant advances in observational and theoretical techniques and would likely require the use of next-generation telescopes and other advanced instrumentation:

But it’s not. Your have already admitted that the “predictions[1]” rendered from your theory are rendered only after the data is already in. Once one collects experimental data, one can choose to either claim that your theory “predicted” exactly those outcomes, or conflicting ones. So whether your theory is correct is not tested. It is decided. It is up to our whims, not to nature’s.

That’s not what scientific theories entail predictions for. “Truthfulness” is irrelevant. Science is about utility. A model isn’t good because one can pretend after the fact that any and all experimental outcomes “confirm” it or that it “predicted” them all along. A model is good if it makes predictions that subsequently end up matching the data. A model is worse if its predictions fare poorer than competing models’. We can still learn from bad models. Your model isn’t just a bad one, though. Your model is among the least of them all, by just an admission you made, evidently ignorant of just how profound its implications.

We are mortal, vulnerable beings. Knowing what the future holds allows us to prepare for it, to minimize losses, and to maximize well-being. This is, fundamentally, why we do science. It’s not about some nebulous “ontological truths”. That’s philosophy’s business. Science’s is to blast away the mists that shroud the future, and to light the path ahead into it. This is what it means, to understand a natural system. Being able to tell what its future state will be, by means of a model that was shown to accurately predict them given descriptions of initial states. Among all, one that makes no predictions of the future, is the single least scientific model it is possible to build. It is, to put it in Wolfgang Pauli’s words, “not even wrong”.

  1. “If this is false, we should see signs that the ratio of masses for protons and electron and the cosmological constant was stronger or weaker in the past.
    If this is true, we should find out that they are dependent on each other or directly related.” ↩︎

1 Like
574

xkcd: Constructive

2 Likes
575

If you mean 10 raised 12 raised zero, then yeah, OK.

But as far as 10 raised 120 goes, when pigs fly.

Somebody call Hollywood. We have a use for that overused “You have no idea what you are getting into!” line.

1 Like
576

Not true. Here is a better quote to illustrate how consciousness played an important role in developing body plans:

Within cell cytoplasm, centrioles and microtubules fostered mitosis, gene mixing, mutations (influenced by Penrose OR-mediated Platonic influences in DNA pi stacks) and evolution, all in pursuit of more and more pleasurable qualia. Cells began to communicate, compete and/or cooperate, guided by feedback toward feeling good. Cells joined through adhesion molecules and gap junctions, resulting in multicellular organisms.

Specialization occurred through differentiation via gene expression through cytoskeletal proteins. In some types of cells, the cytoskeleton became asymmetric and elongated, taking on signaling and management roles as axonemes and neurons. Neurons and other cells fused by gap junctions, and chemical signaling ensued at synapses between axons, and dendrites and soma within which microtubules became uniquely arranged in mixed polarity networks, optimal for integration, recurrent information processing, interference beats, and orchestration of OR-mediated feelings. Neurons formed networks, EG grew larger, t grew shorter and conscious experiences became more and more intense. At EG of roughly 1011 tubulins in w300 neurons or axonemes in simple worms and urchins, t became brief enough to avoid random interactions, prompting, perhaps, the Cambrian evolutionary explosion.

Although this article was referring to the creation of cell differentiation, this model could also be used to explain the creation and distribution of Hox clusters for the common design model since they are related subjects.

It would be difficult but not impossible according to Hammeroff:

It is clearly hard to know an answer to this one, particularly because the level of consciousness in extinct creatures would be almost impossible to determine. However present day organisms looking remarkably like early Cambrian creatures (actinosphaerum, nematodes ) are known to have over 109 tubulins [56].
Consciousness in the universe: A review of the ‘Orch OR’ theory - ScienceDirect

I am talking about the paper by Iñigo Martincorena, Aswin S. N. Seshasayee, and Nicholas M. Luscombe titled “Evidence of Non-random Mutation Rates Suggests an Evolutionary Risk Management Strategy” was published in the journal Nature in 2012. The paper proposed a new hypothesis that challenges the long-held assumption that mutations occur randomly in the genome.

The authors argued that certain regions of the genome are more prone to mutations than others, and that this pattern is not random but rather reflects an evolutionary strategy to balance the benefits of genetic diversity against the risks of harmful mutations.

This is what I mean by maintaining created kinds after the design objectives to make them have been achieved.

I was talking about the Orch-OR model in particular when I said this. You guys clearly show you are willfully ignorant on the subject.

I don’t think you read it either anymore.

I know that. I referenced the study to show how HGT could be a possible explanation for the distribution of Hox clusters, as you even acknowledged. But, I was not suggesting that HGT was the actual explantion from the study. With that said, I should have been more clear before.

Not if consciousness is involve though. You are assuming that this was mindless forces at play, which is why it is considered unlikely to you. But, The Orch-OR makes it more likely:

Hameroff, S., 1998. Did consciousness cause the Cambrian evolutionary
explosion? In: Hameroff, S.R., Kaszniak, A.W., Scott, A.C. (Eds.),
Toward a Science of Consciousness II: The Second Tucson Discussion and Debates. MIT Press, Cambridge.

No where in that quote did I actually say they did not achieve it.

No because we don’t know yet whether the cosmological constant stayed constant in the past.

I am also assuming that Inflation is part of the Lambda-CDM model of cosmology because it is not directly related to the cosmological constant responsible for the acceleration of the universe’s expansion. The energy of the quantum vacuum is only one hypothesis for the source of the cosmological constant.

So my model is more testable than you want to acknowledge.

Yes, I know. I have already mentioned this before. As I told you before, my model is mainly useful for potentially predicting biological phenomna and this is not including other models that have been proposed regarding the same theory.

Also, just because most of my predictions are only in a biological context does not make my model a bad model or unscientific.

This is not accurate. It is very important for science to confirm ontological claims in order to use the claim to potentially predict natural phenomna. We are attempting to do this now with SETI. If we discovered E.T., we would be able to use it to potentially explain nature.

This is basically what I did with my model as well.

Yes, this is apparently what physicists have calculated according to Sean Carroll:

An example of fine-tuning well beyond anthropic constraints is the initial state of the universe, often characterized in terms of its extremely low entropy.[22] Roughly speaking, the large number of particles in the universe were arranged in an extraordinarily smooth configuration, which is highly unstable and unlikely given the enormous gravitational forces acting on such densely-packed matter. While vacuum energy is tuned to one part in 10 120, the entropy of the early universe is tuned to one part in ten to the power of 10 120, a preposterous number. The entropy didn’t need to be nearly that low in order for life to come into existence. One way of thinking about this is to note that we certainly don’t need a hundred billion other galaxies in the universe in order for life to arise here on Earth; our single galaxy would have been fine, or for that matter a single solar system. Does the Universe Need God? – Sean Carroll

Again, this is what I am getting from prominent physicists.

577

Please stop quoting without citation. And it isn’t clear what connection is being made there. Sounds like woo to me.

That article, or at least the piece you quoted, makes no connection, just an empty assertion, and even that empty assertion can’t be extended to where you want it to go.

That doesn’t in fact say any such thing. I will point out that nematodes are in fact unknown from the Cambrian, so Hammeroff is on shaky ground even in his basic contentions.

As usual, what you mean isn’t what your sources mean.

You know that you understand nothing of what you read? Perhaps on some level you do. But a possible explanation is of no use. What you need is a probable explanation.

It doesn’t. You have no clue. But at least you manage to cite a source this time. Unfortunately, your source doesn’t agree with your claim of separate kinds, nor does it support the idea of massive convergence. You consistently cite references that don’t support your claims.

578

Although I read an article about Indian cooking, the model presented in it also could be used to explain eating at McDonald’s, since cooking and eating are related subjects.

Does that make any sense to you, @Meerkat_SK5?

3 Likes
579

It’s from a chapter titled ‘The Quantum Origin of Life: How the Brain Evolved to Feel Good’ by Hameroff in a book On Human Nature: Biology, Psychology, Ethics, Politics, and Religion, edited by Michel Tibayrenc, Francisco J. Ayala.

580

Have you seen this book? Does Hameroff present any justification for his bizarre claims?

581

I tracked it down on Google Books here.

I didn’t look too closely at it – Hameroff seems to be claiming that life only evolves to get a better dopamine high. This struck me as prima facie absurd, but I’ll leave it to the experts to determine exactly which fallacies he indulged in to reach this absurdity.

582

Oh, I see. So when ever you were referencing studies that indicate so, that was all just for fun and you didn’t mean to imply that it actually is so or that we have experimental confirmation for the constancy of the cosmological constant.

Oh, I see. So when ever you were throwing the 10¹²⁰ number around, saying that it was either a degree of precision or the actual value of something, all you meant to say was that the theory that actually yielded it was incomplete in that regard, not that the factor itself had much physical significance.

I do not see how that follows from either preceding statement, nor how it is compatible with your prior admissions about your model. Please, explain.

Oh, I see. So let me get this straight:

  1. Biological processes are, like any natural processes, ultimately rooted in physics.
  2. To date, quantum theory is, despite its limitations, the single most comprehensive and accurate model of physics.
  3. Penrose & Hameroff have attained some measure of media prominence by developing a generally not accepted fringe theory of quantum processes within the brain, and publishing it mostly in pop-sci books.
  4. You derived by unspecified means an unspecified model from Penrose & Hameroff’s quantum theory.
  5. The process of developing your model did not equip you with any understanding nor appreciation of the distinction between units, nor of terminological consistency.
  6. Consequently, with respect to physics your model renders - not by logical entailment so much as by baseless assertion alone, one should add - only retrodictions you liberally call predictions anyway.
  7. Despite point 1., your “predictions” about the cosmological constant and the mass ratio of protons and electrons are “only in a biological context”.

Failure to accept your embarassing misunderstandings of biology, then, is ultimately rooted in your biologist interlocutors’ inadequacy in matters of quantum physics. However, debating the physical underpinnings you chose to assert provide merit to your theory ultimately also misses the point, for said theory is about biology in the end.

It is immaterial where your claim comes from. A source is not evidence. It can contain or report on evidence of the claim. This one does not. It does not even so much as make the claim you read into it.

Correct. It’s not what you get out of reviewing publications of “prominent” (what ever that has to do with anything) physicists, or, for that matter, of the broader published literature on the subject. No, it is instead what you get out of their blogs and interviews. And it is not what they say in said blogs, either. It is only what you get out of them.

2 Likes
583

Read page 350 to understand the connection better:

How do you know it can’t be extended to Hox genes if you are not an expert or willfully ignorant of their work?

What do you mean he specifically said:

It is clearly hard to know an answer to this one, particularly because the level of consciousness in extinct creatures would be almost impossible to determine.

“almost” means it is still possible.

Let me be more clear then about the study…

The vast majority of mutations in regions that do encode proteins are deleterious and prevent beneficial mutations from being fixed within the population. Nonetheless, in the study on 34 E. coli strains, Martincorena, Seshasayee, & Luscombe [4] discovered that the mutation frequency varies across bacterial genomes. Some regional “hot spots” have a reasonably high mutation rate, whereas “cold spots” display a reasonably low rate of genetic change. The researchers discovered that the hot- and cold-spot locations are not random. [4] Thus, it appears that the mutation rates have been fine-tuned to lower the risk of harmful genetic changes.

Overall, these findings suggest that the mutation rate is not simply a fixed property of the genome, but rather is subject to selection and can evolve over time to optimize the balance between genetic stability and adaptability.

First off, it does not have to be a probable explanation, but a possible explanation that is potentially testable like my model.

Secondly, you just asked for my model to be compatible:

No, I want you to explain why your theory, whatever it is, is compatible with the observed distribution of Hox clusters among taxa that you think are indpendently created kinds. On the other hand, I think it’s clear evidence that all vertebrates are related by common descent, and that their Hox clusters are inherited from a common ancestor.

Again, you still never explained why HRT could not have been the mechanism of distribution. All you said was that hox genes are not regulatory elements, but why does this mean it can’t be a possible mechanism regardless?

While the concept of HRT is typically associated with the transfer of regulatory elements, it is possible that it could also apply to the transfer of protein-coding genes, such as those in the Hox cluster.

One possible scenario for the evolution of Hox cluster regulation is that a regulatory module or mechanism was transferred horizontally from a different organism, and subsequently co-opted to regulate the expression of the Hox genes. This could have occurred if the regulatory module happened to be similar enough to the existing regulatory mechanisms in the host organism to be able to bind to the same transcription factors and other regulatory proteins.

For example, a regulatory module that controls the expression of a gene involved in limb development in one organism could be horizontally transferred to a distantly related organism, where it could be co-opted to regulate the expression of a homologous Hox gene involved in the development of a different appendage. The regulatory module could act either directly on the Hox gene, or it could act indirectly by regulating the expression of other genes that in turn regulate the Hox gene.

Another possibility is that the regulatory mechanisms that control Hox gene expression evolved independently in different lineages, but through convergent evolution. This would mean that similar regulatory elements evolved separately in different organisms due to similar selective pressures and functional constraints.

Similarly, a regulatory module from a symbiotic or parasitic organism, or from environmental bacteria, could be co-opted to regulate the expression of Hox genes involved in the interaction with the symbiont or parasite, or in responding to environmental cues.

In each case, the co-opted regulatory module would need to be able to bind to the same regulatory proteins and transcription factors as the existing regulatory elements in the recipient organism’s genome in order to regulate gene expression. Over time, the co-opted module could evolve to become an integral part of the host organism’s regulatory network, leading to the evolution of novel developmental pathways and phenotypes.

Overall, while HRT is typically associated with the transfer of regulatory elements, it is still possible that it could explain the origin and distribution of Hox clusters if there was a transfer of protein-coding genes or other relevant genomic components. However, more research is needed to fully understand the mechanisms underlying the evolution of Hox clusters and their regulation.

Again, that was not the point of me referencing the study. I was just showing you how it could be a way of how created kinds emerged.

There are theories that suggest that if the fine-structure constant varied over time, this variation could be related to changes in the cosmological constant. For example, some cosmological models predict that the value of the fine-structure constant may have varied over cosmic time, and that this variation could be related to the expansion of the universe.

So I was assuming these theories are correct, which means confirmation that the fine-structure constant did not vary throughout space and time is evidence the cosmological constant did not vary at all as well. But, this still would not be proof because the Planck satellite results do not yet rule out all these models of dark energy that show change over time.

I am not following you here. Maybe you can be more clear on your point.

Both inflation and the cosmological constant are testable assumptions in cosmology, and there have been a variety of observations and experiments conducted to test these hypotheses.

Inflation predicts several observable consequences, such as a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of primordial density fluctuations, the production of a background of gravitational waves, and the suppression of the abundance of cosmic defects like cosmic strings. These predictions have been confirmed by observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation, which is thought to be a remnant of the Big Bang, as well as measurements of the large-scale structure of the universe.

The cosmological constant also makes several testable predictions, such as the rate of expansion of the universe and the large-scale distribution of matter. These predictions have been confirmed by observations of distant supernovae, which have shown that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, as well as measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation and the large-scale distribution of galaxies.

While there is still some uncertainty and debate about the precise values of the inflationary parameters and the cosmological constant, the overall consistency between theory and observation provides strong support for the Lambda-CDM model of cosmology, which includes both inflation and a cosmological constant. But again, this is not proof.

Not true. What makes you say that?

Also, not true. Again, what makes you say that?

No, these predictions are strictly from physics.

Which predictions are considered retrodictions according to you and why?

584

With AI Content Detector | AI Detector | ChatGPT Detector - Copyleaks, it would appear this passage is entirely[1] AI generated.

You are being that one student who is confused about what class they’ve been attending all semester, because they’ve been too busy matching gem triplets on their phone that entire time.

No, I cannot be more clear on my point. Maybe you can consult some actual educational material instead of creationist propaganda and chat bots the next time you throw numbers into the air the meaning of which you have not the beginning of a grasp of. And it’s not like I didn’t explicitly mention exactly what you meant and how you got it wrong in the course of this discussion either. It’s just that you’ve been too busy ignoring it in favour of not even looking it up anyplace else. You made a choice of saying things you do not understand about topics you did not study. I’ve made every attempt at being charitable, directly suggesting corrections to you, asking to clarify where needed, even said outright the things you most likely meant but were failing to articulate. You made a choice of ignoring all of this and now you ask me to deliver the clarity you missed by scrolling by it earlier. I don’t think so.

All of this is[1:1] AI generated text.

Sure, let me waste some more of my time pointing you to the discussion we’ve been having, because you were too busy copy&pasting it to ChatGPT to be able to pay any whiff of attention to your own words:

[ lengthy back and forth where I try to get you to produce a logical link between your “theory” and these “predictions”, to no avail, of course ]

  1. "99.9% probability, they claim ↩︎ ↩︎

2 Likes
585

Why are we even still discussing this? He admitted that his ‘theory’ isn’t scientific when he made the above statement. So there’s no point in arguing the science of it, since it’s not science, by his own admission.

5 Likes
586

It’s like Newton’s First Law of Motion, but for BB discussion boards.

3 Likes
587

Because we understand basic biology and you clearly don’t. There’s no actual work there, btw.

Yes, he did, very clearly.

Because you were referring to regulatory elements.

@John_Harshman was referring to their existence and their arrangement, not their regulation.

588

Page 350 is devoted mostly to a nonsensical theory about the origin of sex. It explains nothing. Hameroff appears to be a crackpot.

Because I can read and think rationally. If this nonsense can be extended to Hox genes you need to explain how that would work. Your complete failure to do so suggests that my claim that it can’t be done is correct.

It’s also possible that molecules in the air will spontaneously assemble into a car in my driveway. Should I expect that to happen? “Almost impossible” means that Hameroff expects that it won’t happen. I agree with him on that.

None of which means what you previously claimed.

It’s not potentially testable. There are no data that would falsify your claim, because your supposed mechanism allows for anything to be observed. What your mechanism doesn’t do is make what we observe probable, while my proposed mechanism does. That is, what we see is what we expect to see given two rounds of genome duplication, while there is nothing we expect to see given unspecified amounts of HGT.

It’s pretty simple. HRT doesn’t cause new genes to appear. It moves regulatory sequences around. But Hox clusters are assemblies of genes, not regulatory sequences. How is this not clear to you? Your proposed mechanism is nonsensical, because it doesn’t result in the appearance of genes that weren’t there before. You appear not to know the difference between a transcription factor, the gene that codes for a transcription factor, and a transcription factor binding site. Only the last one is a regulatory sequence.

You failed to show such a thing. You failed to show any connection between your source and such a thing. Your near-total ignorance of biology, as well as of elementary logic and reason, prevent you.

2 Likes
589

While some of Hameroff’s ideas may be considered controversial, it is not fair or accurate to dismiss him outright as a “crackpot.” Instead, his ideas should be evaluated based on their scientific merits and the evidence supporting them.

Sure, I can do that for you:

In the course of evolution, Orch OR conscious moments (in accordance with τ ≈ ℏ/EG) began in simple organisms involving smaller EG, but requiring longer times τ during which environmental decoherence is avoided. The scale of EG would appear also to be related to intensity of experience, so we may anticipate that low EG, with large τ moments, might be rather dull compared to more intense moments of large EG and small τ. If this is the case, then such low frequency conscious moments would also be slow and out of step with real world activities.

As systems developed to allow EG to became larger, the frequency of conscious moments, according to τ ≈ ℏ/EG, could approach present-day biological timescales. Central nervous systems consisting of approximately 300 neurons, such as those present in tiny worms and urchins at the early Cambrian evolutionary explosion 540 million years ago, theoretically had sufficient microtubules to reach τ under one minute, and it might thus be just feasible for them to make use of Orch OR (Hameroff, 1998d). Accordingly, one might speculate that the onset of Orch OR and primitive consciousness, albeit exceedingly slow and simple but still with useful conscious moments, precipitated the accelerated evolution of the Cambrian explosion. Consciousness in the universe: A review of the ‘Orch OR’ theory - ScienceDirect

This next part is where he explains how the origin of higher-level groups such as families, orders, and so on, requires a higher level of consciousness that can’t be explained solely by unguided forces:

Only at a much later evolutionary stage would the selective advantages of a capability for genuine understanding come about, requiring the non-computability of Orch OR that goes beyond mere quantum computation, and depends upon larger scale infrastructure of efficiently functioning MTs, capable of operating quantum-computational processes. Further evolution providing larger sets of MTs (hence larger EG) able to be isolated from decoherence would enable, by τ ≈ ℏ/EG, more frequent and more intense moments of conscious experience, e.g., eventually in human brains every 25 ms in 40 Hz gamma synchrony EEG, or faster.

Although he uses human brains as an example, the origin and distribution of hox genes can also be another example of what resulted from higher levels of consciousness.

In fact, Michael Behe essentially made the same argument by suggesting that the origin of Hox genes and their ability to control the development of body plans is an example of irreducible complexity. He contended that the mutations required to produce these genes and the regulatory networks that control their expression are too complex and too improbable to have arisen by chance alone.

Behe suggests that the complexity of the Hox gene regulatory networks requires a designer, and he has used this as evidence for the theory of intelligent design.

No, he was not referring to the predicition itself, but the testing of the prediction. He is saying it is almost impossible to test, but it is still in principle possible. It would just require significant technological advances in both neuroscience and paleontology.

For instance, scientists would need to identify preserved microtubules in fossilized specimens and compare their structural and functional properties to those found in modern organisms. Additionally, researchers would need to develop methods to detect and measure the duration of consciousness or other mental states in extinct organisms.

Given the current state of technology and scientific knowledge, it is difficult to say whether such experiments are feasible. However, it is always possible that future advances in technology and methods could make it possible to test this and other hypotheses related to the evolution of consciousness.This is basically what he was getting at when he said “almost” impossible to determine.

As the studies indicate, there was a limit on the amount of errors the cell makes in maintaining existing function and fitness rather than genetically engineering new function to improve fitness. This is what we expect if the designer’s objectives to genetically engineer body plans were already achieved. Right now, we observe maintenance of the designs.

I beg to differ.

In “Darwin’s Doubt,” Stephen Meyer raised several concerns about the role of Hox genes in generating new body plans through gene duplication. Specifically, he argued that:

  1. Mutations in Hox genes can be harmful: Hox genes regulate the expression of many other genes, and experiments have shown that mutations in these genes can often have harmful effects on the development of organisms.

  2. Hox genes are expressed after the basic body plan is established: While Hox genes are involved in patterning the early embryonic axes, they are primarily expressed after the basic body plan of an organism is established. Therefore, they may not be able to provide the novel genetic information necessary to generate new body plans.

  3. Hox genes only switch other genes on and off: Hox genes primarily function in regulating the expression of other genes and do not have the capacity to create new genetic information themselves.

No, you and @Mercer just mistakenly thought that I was using the HRT mechanism to explain how NEW hox genes appeared, which I was not. Instead, it is higher levels of non-computable consciousness that creates the Hox genes, as I explained already.

No, we do have evidence that the cosmological constant is constant throughout space and time IF the fine-structure constant is related or dependent on the cosmological constant. If they are not dependent or related, then we don’t have evidence or proof.

No, what I am suggesting is that I am assuming that the cosmological constant is related to the fine-tuning of quantum tunneling in biological processes.

Both these fine-tuning parameters support the idea that the conscious agent is necessary and personal, which is what supports God’s existence.

No, we don’t know yet whether the ratio of masses for protons and electron and the cosmological constant stayed constant throughout space and time.

We also don’t know whether they are related or dependent on each other as well.

Confirming these predictions are important and establishing that God is the cause and is personal and necessary.

Here is a different one:

590

That was your claim. But then, when I asked you how confirmation or disconfirmation would impact your God model, you gave no response. When I asked repeatedly how your God model actually produced those predictions, you had no answer to that either. It wasn’t until I asked whether those were even predictions to begin with, or perhaps retrodictions after all, that you had a response. You said it would be the latter.

Just to be clear, you say confirming these predictions would support your God model. Would disconfirming them challenge it, then? Or will you just say your model wasn’t about physics in the first place, but about biology, and as such disconfirming its predictions about physics that it did but also did not make doesn’t change the robustness of the underlying thesis on biological matters? Will you continue insisting to your biologist interlocutors, that your model’s predictive failures in their field are also immaterial in light of the fact that your model is ultimately rooted in quantum physics, and any conflict with biological fact is an artifact of higher order effects, rather than a fundamental problem for your theory?

Testability, you see, isn’t just about there being experiments possible that may be related. Predictions aren’t prophesies about their results, either. They are falsification means. A model that renders predictions which do not stand to challenge it might as well not render any. This is why I asked you again and again, how your “predictions” actually logically follow from your model’s postulates. Because if this logical link does not exist, then the success and failure of those predictions has no impact on the perceived strength of the theory, and they contribute nothing to the model’s falsifiability. Your refusal to explain any part of how “confirming these predictions are important and establishing that God is the cause and is personal and necessary” is an indication that they are, in fact, not, and that the only reason you ever rendered said predictions was to pacify those who would criticize your model for not making any.

2 Likes