Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 8
February 26, 2023
Claim: Fire is why humans are different from other animals
Smarter from fire
“How has it been possible for us humans to develop such a densely packed brain?”
“Researchers believe it comes from our ancestors beginning to cook food,” Sætre says.
With fire, we could boil, fry, and grill our food. Animals do not have that opportunity.
“Cooked food is easier for the body to digest. So we humans could afford to develop a large and densely packed brain,” he says.
Our organs need food and energy for us to survive. Not just the brain.
“There are therefore limits to how much evolution can afford to use on intelligence,” he says. – Ingrid Schou (February 24, 2023)
Hey, they, they are getting somewhere when they admit that animals are not as smart as humans.
All the rest … Some of us are getting tired of the schtick that chimps are just like humans except that we are not helping them behave that way…
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Bob Marks Knocks it Out of the Park on AI
This is a great discussion about whether AI (1) is currently sentient and (2) can, in principle, be sentient. All three panelists agree that it not currently sentient. It is 2 to 1 on whether it can, in principle, be sentient. As you might expect, how the materialists reach their conclusion follows more from metaphysical commitments than evidence. Max and Melanie (the materialists) see no reason why, in principle, computers cannot in the future be conscious. Why not? they ask, we are all just material stuff. And if you agree with their metaphysical premises, that is an unanswerable question. Max, especially is committed to this view and thinks we should be more humble. He is so blinkered by his commitment to materialism that it does not seem to occur to him that there can be any possible reason to think machines cannot be conscious other than arrogance.
Bob is a dualist and reaches the opposite conclusion, and he gives some excellent reasons to question materialist premises. I commend this excellent discussion to you.
BTW, Bob Marks really knows his stuff, and he presents his arguments in a very winsome fashion. We should all follow his example.
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February 24, 2023
Massive early galaxies defy “prior understanding of the universe”
Six massive galaxies discovered in the early universe are upending what scientists previously understood about the origins of galaxies in the universe.
“These objects are way more massive? than anyone expected,” said Joel Leja, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, who modeled light from these galaxies. “We expected only to find tiny, young, baby galaxies at this point in time, but we’ve discovered galaxies as mature as our own in what was previously understood to be the dawn of the universe.” – Penn State (February 23, 2023)
Tip: If all you want is to have your prior beliefs about the universe confirmed, don’t whack a huge telescope into space and code it to send back real-life actual data. Pound lecterns on behalf of manipulated interpretations of prior data instead.
The paper is open access.
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Infants beat AI at commonsense psychology
Infants outperform artificial intelligence in detecting what motivates other people’s actions, finds a new study by a team of psychology and data science researchers. Its results, which highlight fundamental differences between cognition and computation, point to shortcomings in today’s technologies and where improvements are needed for AI to more fully replicate human behavior. – New York University (February 21, 2023)
The human mind is hard/impossible to replicate even in its infancy.
The paper is open access.
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Our brains “control” how sick we get?
Well, no. Our minds often do, however. At Nature:
In a well-known condition known as ‘broken-heart syndrome’, an extremely stressful event can generate the symptoms of a heart attack — and can, in rare cases, be fatal. Conversely, studies have suggested that a positive mindset can lead to better outcomes in those with cardiovascular disease. But the mechanisms behind these links remain elusive.
[Asya] Rolls is used to being surprised by the results in her laboratory, where the main focus is on how the brain directs the immune response, and how this connection influences health and disease. Although Rolls can barely contain her excitement as she discusses her group’s eclectic mix of ongoing studies, she’s also cautious. Because of the often-unexpected nature of her team’s discoveries, she never lets herself believe an experiment’s results until they have been repeated multiple times — a policy that [Hedka] Haykin and others in her group have adopted. “You need to convince yourself all the time with this stuff,” Rolls says. – Diana Kwon (February 22, 2023)
The study subjects in Rolls’ experiment were neglected mice. Mice have feelings, just like humans. What they don’t have is intellect and free will.
But even in a mouse the mind apparently matters.
You may also wish to read: Yes, the placebo effect is real, not a trick. But the fact that the mind acts on the body troubles materialists. Such facts, they say, require revision.
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February 23, 2023
“Junk DNA” to blame for humans’ big brains?
At LiveScience:
The research, published Monday (Jan. 2) in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution(opens in new tab), suggests that the genes that enabled human brains to grow large lobes and complex information networks may have originally emerged from junk DNA. In other words, at some point, the “junk” picked up the ability to code for proteins, and those new proteins may have been critical to human brain evolution.
The findings suggest that such genes “may have a role in brain development and may have been a driver of cognition during the evolution of humans,” Erich Bornberg-Bauer, an evolutionary biophysicist at the University of Münster in Germany who was not involved in the research, told Science magazine(opens in new tab). – Nicolette Lanese (January 6, 2022)
The way it’s described sounds like a plan, doesn’t it? Not an accident.
The paper is open access.
You may also wish to read: Genes that appear from nowhere — a tutorial
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Why “junk DNA” sequences are not deleted: Because Evolution, we are told, “rejects them”
A new model developed at Tel Aviv University offers a possible solution to the scientific question of why neutral sequences, sometimes referred to as “junk DNA,” are not eliminated from the genome of living creatures in nature and continue to exist within it even millions of years later.
According to the researchers, the explanation is that junk DNA is often located in the vicinity of functional DNA. Deletion events around the borders between junk and functional DNA are likely to damage the functional regions and so evolution rejects them. The model contributes to the understanding of the huge variety of genome sizes observed in nature. – Tel-Aviv University, February 22, 2023
“and so evolution rejects them”? … So evolution has foresight? This could be an allegorical statue, featuring Evolution rejecting Junk DNA…
In any event, seriously, there are tons of science news stories out there about “junk DNA” that turned out to be functional. There are 252 stories on the topic here at Uncommon Descent alone.
Maybe we don’t need a new theory about how evolution acts like an intelligent person so much as a new approach to the whole topic.
The paper is open access.
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Arrows found in 54,000 year-old cave
At Nature:
Last year, researchers excavating Grotte Mandrin claimed that the site held the earliest known evidence of Homo sapiens in Europe. In one of the cave’s archaeological levels, known as layer E, researchers co-led by cultural anthropologist Ludovic Slimak at the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès in France identified a child’s tooth and thousands of stone tools. They concluded that the child had been a Homo sapiens.
Among the tools were hundreds of tiny points, many of which were as small as 1 centimetre wide, weighed only a few grams and were nearly identical in shape and size. The smallest points were similar to other arrowheads made by ancient and modern humans, and some contained similar fractures and other damage at their tips, which could have been created by high-velocity impact. – Ewen Callaway (February 22, 2023)
Where is the Stupid Brute when we need him? Now that the Neanderthals have checked out of the program altogether … Can we find an out-of-work actor and teach him to be a Stupid Brute?
Translation from French isn’t offered but this is what the cave excavation looks like.You may also wish to read: At Smithsonian Magazine: Neanderthals hunted and butchered massive elephants. “…yet another piece of evidence to suggest that humans’ closest ancient relatives were more sophisticated and skilled than the brutish oafs popular culture has made them out to be.”
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Animals’ “sixth sense” is not just human imagination, as often claimed
At Phys.org:
The team show for the first time that a molecule present in all living cells called flavin adenine dinucleotide (or FAD for short), can, at high enough amounts, impart magnetic sensitivity on a biological system.
Scientists already know that species such as the monarch butterfly, pigeon, turtle and other animals use the earth’s magnetic field to navigate over long distances. But the discovery could mean the biological molecules required to sense magnetic fields are present—to a greater or lesser extent—in all living things.
Co-lead researcher and neuroscientist Professor Richard Baines from The University of Manchester said, “How we sense the external world, from vision, hearing, through to touch, taste and smell, are well understood. But by contrast, which animals can sense and how they respond to a magnetic field remains unknown. This study has made significant advances in understanding how animals sense and respond to external magnetic fields—a very active and disputed field.”
To do so, the research team exploited the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) to manipulate gene expression to test out their ideas. The fruit fly, although very different on the outside, contains a nervous system that works exactly the same way as ours and has been used in countless studies as a model to understand human biology.
– University of Manchester, February 22, 2023
The paper is open access.
Note: For all we know, humans have that sixth sense too. But we don’t pay much attention to fine points about anything beyond sight, sound, and touch.
You may also wish to read: Has the human sense of smell declined in recent millennia?
and
Do near-death experiences defy science? Therre are colors that the ordinary human spectrum can’t see.
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February 22, 2023
Persistence of epigenetic changes “fascinating and confusing”
Epigenetic changes alter the way genes are expressed throughout an organism’s life. These tweaks are then wiped from the genomes of reproductive cells, giving offspring a clean start—or so it seemed. Now, new evidence has emerged that epigenetic changes can be transmitted across multiple generations, despite the wipe. In a study published February 7 in Cell, a group of scientists tracked an engineered epigenetic mutation across four generations of lab-bred mice, finding evidence of the alteration in each of the subsequent generations. These alterations seemingly resurfaced even after the epigenetic wipe. The authors claim it is the first experimental evidence for transgenerational epigenetic inheritance using methylation-edited mice.
“It’s kind of a dream experiment,” says Patrick Allard, an environmental epigeneticist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the research. “And the results are both fascinating and confusing.” – Katherine Irving, Feb 17, 2023
We thought this was an old story, actually. But epigenetics keeps being rediscovered, probably because it raises a problem for evolution theory: How do we know changes are due to Darwinian natural selection, as opposed to epigenetics.
The paper requires a fee or subscription.
You may also wish to read: Epigenetic change: Lamarck, wake up, you’re wanted in the conference room!
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