Can Darwinian Mechanics account for the Complexity of Conscious LIfe?

Examine a virus . . . it’s fairly obvious how a virus grows and reproduces. Yes it mutates, but it’s a survival of the fittest situation, and thus viruses and bacteria (less so in my opinion) are perfect subjects for applying the principles of Darwinian evolution. Whole populations come into being do their simple one way ‘script’ of infecting or whatever and then die. But it’s a kind of xerox machine where the copy has a coat.

But a more complex machine than that will evolve many programs with steps, just as our cells and organs have many well learned programs that they run continuously that keep us alive.

How the hell science ever thought that the simplest bit of science applied to a virus could account for all the rest of life .  . . no way.

That is why the defense of Darwin in itself is sounding like a religion.

Complex organisms have achieved some amazing and breathtaking evolutions, that I don’t believe Darwinian mechanics, ie theory of natural selection, fully describes the evolutionary process.

The red flag to Darwin, is the exceptional evolutionary speeds of consciousness/costume/charisma . . . . and by that I mean consciousness is a paradigm that simply CANNOT be produced computationally by a one way kluge like the virus, that simply reproduces dies reproduces according to a one-way script without feedback loops.

I’m suggesting that according to POTTER MECHANICS our DNA represents the code for a truly complex biological computer that is calculating, yes calculating outcomes by changing our metabolisms, our conscious and cognitive abilities, as well as the composition of our gametes.

Another example: The incredible SPEED with which birds evolved feathers and very unique feather and behavioural displays that are intrinsically linked, suggesting in some way that behavior has some mechanism by which it effects our offspring’s genome.

We just assume that our gametes reflect in a Medelian sort of fashion, our DNA. But who has counted the genes in our sperm, not just one, but millions to see if the percentages are the same as they would be with a virus. I don’t believe they are, and I think the only way our bodies could computationally ‘favor’ a mutation on one area rather than another is by some trick of protein folding, and that that process, viewed from the perspective of the entire organism, is a computer.

There have to be other computational functions performed by our DNA other than the protein production and reproduction mechanisms of classical genetics. Our DNA is funtioning as a computer, and all that junk . . . . is code.

See the virus represents a one way machine. It is a bot making more bots. But even in the virus there has to be some bio-feedback mechanisms at play. They just have to be discovered.

I’m saying that if we admitt our DNA to be a computer of sorts, if we accpt a data model of biological life, then that model has to admitt that complexities of a very high order are at least going to be many magnitudes more complicated than the most advanced computers.

Yet to be more complicated, to respond to the environment, to environmental change particularly quickly enough to sustain the high cost of a brain and a conscious mind, that to do that our organisms need an ability to change themselves far more quickly than Darwinian Mechanics would predict.

In short I’m saying that evolution is too simplistic, and too mechanistic to be able to evolve a species at the rates we see. Billions of years to get photosynthesis and then all this in just microseconds, off a mechanism that relies entirely  on such simplistic mechanisms as those proposed by Darwin.

Yes they are there but our bodies have to have a way of recieving data from the environment and making changes to the genenome, or essentially speeding up the process in the same way that a breeder speeds up the acquisition of certain traits.

Yet more complex organisms have the opportunity that only complex organisms have, and that is to run a kind fo full feedback loop between the environment and mechanisms of reproduction.

 . . .  but there have to be some ‘tricks’ of protein folding that essentially use the ‘data’ in our genome run a script. This is logical, because that’s what happens when proteins are made. The script I’m talking about is something much more fundemental and is exploiting the computational protential of all our DNA to essentially ‘stack the odds’ when it comes to gamete creation. I’m not sure how this is happenening, but something like it has to be happening. In other words our DNA is a form of computer, more advanced than we’ve credited it to date, that using the body as a host machine. I don’t need to be proven wrong, because if this is not in the news in the next few years I am wrong, because definititionally for my idea to work there’d have to be bio-feedback from the environment to the computational potential in our DNA. I’m not saying genes because we haven’t mapped genes everywhare on our DNA. And nor have we taken into account what happens when proteins and DNA folds, unexpectedly.

IIf a simple automobile can have a status report printed out at the dealer, then from an organism as complicated as a human being you would expect something more than just assembly line evolutionary methods.

f you had a car, that was as complex and incredible as say a human being . . . it would certainly be able to run a status report on itself at any time. This is logical. No organism of such complexity can emerge without information flow back from the enviornment. Yes we have it in ‘Mommy I feel sick’ and those sort of system notices. But what happens to our gamete production when we actually get sick. And what happens when we exhert ourselves in long distance running. Wouldn’t it be absolutely logical for the gamete production logic to get a message that ‘whatever you’ve got in the metabolism improvement category time to run that one now!” and this doesn’t just speed sugar uptake, but rather it changes, albeit slightly the gamete composition. It is not random and Medelian.

That’s my theory. . . . . and all I have to suggest it is the incredibly rapid evolutionary progress of complex organisms. How is it that humans evolved much more quickly than the reptiles . . . . in an extinction event it’s the survivors of those that can change the characteristics of their offspring that have the best chance of passing on yes I’ll say it . . . . genes and much more than genes.

Glossy Black

The mad engineer steps aside,
He baits a hook with one of her pearls.
Take note, a photonic illusion
as perfect as a lake in fog.

Missives from dark water
fishes, serpents, eels,
dance across the floor of our house,
They pivot and twist when they are cut.
Each deserves the right, somewhat, to decide its own death.

At some point much will be divulged.
All will be shown.
Only what has been shared
may be saved.

Miriam Dactyls met Sondre Destre,
I read her a rich psalm, thrice to remove
every troll and trill.

If Logos has gone, then Madness shall write its own record.

"The Liberty of Fools."

I doubt we'll see it,
September came and passed and then made time
for the beginning of a new reign. So be it.
Tigers are in the bush,
So are cobras, glossy black.

Coming Soon - Song of Raven

“Warble daw Raven"

Wat daw Scribblers Scrabe:

Striped Babbler: “Bee-eating a Veery Nody-tail, Scrabe ‘n Averic wid English, Breton, Gaelic, Cornish, Irish, Latin and American Bird names.”

Popinjay: “Purre Goldfinch. A Yoldring Tail ‘n Birdic Grammaw, fly ao Blakeling Scribbler, daw Tail of doo Lovebirds.”

Nanny Wash-tail: “Knot doo Shabby . . Knot Pheasant . .  May-be Fowl . .  Tithys goldie Tell-tale Triller . . “

Bohemian Chatterer: “As Great Reeds go, a ‘Monarch Moualc'h’ ‘n Bird!”

Gossip Bird: “ Bass Guiss? A Pretty Quick Coot Reed! Great Divers! Knot Fody Bleeding-hearts. A Tail doo Ptarmigan 'n Ptarmigan!"

Daw Haggister: “Fody Gull Chasers . . . and Squeezy Gulls Doo . . . Moor Tits ‘n Assity ‘n Fody Plover Padges!”

Warble Daw Raven:"Io Tam Gled Io Rood '!"

"Yoit Knot Coot Wheary! "

"Alae, daw fannag of Cromadh Bend-daw Ear bird!"

"Cob Rook a Rant!"

Bufo marinus

One Bufo marinus who got to know Jesus,
Amplexed before sex, on females he seized.
Bufo this Cane Toad, took a fast-track to Australia,
And aspired to sainthood, on the backs of femalia.

Notes:

Bufo marinus, or the Marine Toad, is also known as the Cane Toad. It was imported to Australia from the Americas, where it has since taken over.
Amplexus, "is a form of pseudocopulation in which a male amphibian  . . . grasps a female with his front legs as part of the mating process." [Wikipedia]

The Mantis Shrimp

   

I knew a pimp, a Mantis Shrimp, 1.
Colorful, but decidedly fierce.
He met a sea-horse, a metaphor of course,
For his lover, who liked to get pierced.

Note:

1. Mantis shrimp or stomatopods are marine crustaceans,  ... also known as "prawn killers" in Australia and now sometimes referred to as "thumb splitters" – because of the animal's ability to inflict painful gashes if handled incautiously. Mantis Shrimp sport powerful claws that they use to attack and kill prey by spearing, stunning, or dismemberment. Although it happens rarely, some larger species of mantis shrimp are capable of breaking through aquarium glass with a single strike from this weapon." [Wikipedia]

The Redwood

Beneath a natural Titan, 

I thought I understood,
How light descends from sky,
   and grew that giant redwood.
The desire of that tree, is not to be so tall,
Rather, reach her lover before he sees her fall.

Galerina

Galerina autumnalis with the vaginate cap,
Seals one's doom via flavorful trap.
Delicious brown mushrooms do not tell,
If they're psychedelic, or a Funeral Bell.

Bat Mania

Two summers ago I visited a cave in the Ozarks. At the stucco-ed mine-door entrance to the underworld, a single albino bat clung to the concrete, waiting for the sun to set. Perhaps it had missed the cave door being shut for the night, and was cut off from its friends inside the cave.

A white bat, divorced from his daytime darkness.

Light from the imagination builds reality.

Bat evolution has occurred in the world's darkest and dampest places. Most live in caves, or rotten trees, but also have adapted well to the hollow walls of buildings.

During the summers, as kids in the Adirondacks, we swatted them with racquets as they swarmed from the eaves of our barns and woodsheds.

Today I'd seriously counsel against such a method of extermination. The incidence of rabies in bats is perhaps as high as it has ever been and bat populations everywhere are in serious decline. White Nose Syndrome, a serious fungal infection, has begun to decimate bat populations here in the US.

Authorities estimate that the die-off from White Nose Syndrome will result in 2.4 million pounds of insects not being consumed by the tiny predators. Mankind will have to face a much larger problem, mosquito borne plagues.

Religion

August 1983, Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA

Religion usually locates Hell, underground.

So our fear of bats hold a clue, to the image of Hell, and of the Devil, our Patermeister of flapped wing:

     Webbed beast of Fire and slime.
     Boiled ire and cheated Time.

The year round temperature of most caves is constant.  - some creatures live both inside and out - some never leave.  Various commuters' bring the food in.

The Cave Salamander flees from light, to the caves during the day, leaves nourishment in the form of droppings, rich in nitrates,

For the the 'Cave Mouth Cricket'', life is short. He sings with a rasp, yet dies, just as fast.

Water has eroded Limestone Caves since the Ice Age - constant erosion, new caves forming, cave architecture's testament to this process.

The sparseness of life exposes a greater simplicity of living relationships.

Another commuter, the crayfish. Some stay, and lose all pigmentation.

The White Crayfish, white and blind, like Lear. Sent to wander watery steams below the earth. Never to see the sun.

No need to see, no need for protective coloration, no need for eyes, smaller, moves slower, needs less, asks less. Opposite of nature's plenty, the cave dweller makes do with less. Here there may be clues to man's problem of overconsumption. Man, like the cricket, lives too fast, moves too fast.

The Blinde Whitefish - inhabits inner depths of these blackest rivers. Food is extremely scarce - lives 10-20 years, reproduces only every 2-3. Uses energy with extreme efficiency.

A great order and discipline, in this "Hell".

Creatures here isolated from complexities of the ordinary world. Nature's own isolated laboratory.

Dead leaves drift in on an autumn breeze, are carried downwater. . . a slow energy return.

The dung of animals - gold rich petroleum to these, nature's hungriest beings.

Slowfood vs. Fastfood.

Lake Erie's algal life, a repast of polluted death, human phosphates and heavy metal . . all 'dung' of a sort, provides for a diminishing life-scale. Perhaps the life forms that clean up our industrial nightmare will take eons to evolve, and will flourish, long after we're gone.

For what is life but a hierarchy of those that process energy? We are all light beings, even the darkest most forgotten blind fish amongst us.

The live fast and die fast types put most of their energy into reproduction. [Fat Daddy's wives lined up at his recording studio for their weekly checks. The bleating of his kids, mommies with carriages and other rolling stock.]

The animal world reacts to attack in ways that are sometimes surprising and inconvenient.

Less entropy in the cave, means colder, simpler, slower, more disciplined relationships between individuals and species. There's a snake that has learned to dine upon the carcasses of dead bats, fallen from the canopy. Whereas other snakes dine on live prey, this one . . . has learned of an untapped bounty.

Soon it too will be blind.

-:-

Notes from de Touqueville, Democracy in America:

Moving on, leaving, splitting: Mobility is an American quality. Americans are "a nomadic people before whom forests fall." - "The American in the wilderness is the same man you thought you'd left behind in the city. To become rich he'd endure loneliness and endless misery."

Will Nature follow man into the world he is creating, or will man fall back into Nature's bosom and become compost. Have we a destiny of other worlds awaiting our destruction? As swallows that build their nests on ledges inside sewage treatment plants, like the Brown Bambit that feeds on the plastic wiring insulation inside the household television, or the cockroach that has found it possible to survive alongside man virtually wherever he builds a city. Will the rest of nature prove as adaptable as man himself, or, is man's adaptability mere illusion?

What resilient species will accompany us on our journeys into the future?

-:- Mutagens and carcinogens, antigens and anti-carcinogens,. We have only begun to to count the compounds and substances fabricated by the plant kingdom, or understood the purposes for which she makes them. (comments of a scientist describing a certain anti-inflammatory present in vegetables.)

-:- The best fertilizer for gardens: hay left to rot. Cellulose, makes nice loose soil.

Bliss

You know the creatures living there,
They go diving in emerald pools,
 . . . jumping rocks, scaling trees.

A rocky brow overlooks mists,
 . . . a waterfall, where swimming's coolest.

Dirt is what places a man's birth.

The mud on his boots.
You know that sand?
 . . . The mud?

The thought comes . . . a question
 . . . from the audience . . .
 . . . bits of sand become part of us.
We are this Earth . . .

Help me shoulder this thing . . 

 . . . it's heavy
That lizard I carry
 . . . wriggles free . . .
 . . . experiences bliss,

 . . . then falls back,
a bird.

Pablo Picasso, Vollard Suite

Why Hurricanes, Tornados, Floods, will get Worse

                                'Il faut cultiver notre jardin.' Voltaire

Man's hubris never ceases to amaze:

a) The very notion that the Mississippi basin can be 'tamed' by dikes, levees and our Army Corps of Engineers.

b) The idea that we can strip our planet of trees, and even our prairies of grasses, and not expect changes to our environment.

c) The vanity that we can take examples of fierce storms like Hurricane Katrina, and Hurricane Sandy, and justify the cost of rebuilding our vulnerable society without modification, because we statistically accept these events as "100 year storms".

The crisis is us, humanity, and how we think.. Our actions come from thoughts. For every action, there exists in nature, and in humanity, an equal and opposite reaction. It's all physics.

We as a people, and I include myself as one of the culpable, show little respect for the continent that we bought for fifteen million dollars and a basket of beads.

We're at war with peoples around the globe, and nature herself. Perhaps everything came just too easily for Homo sapiens to show humility to the earth, and to the planet that gave him life.

It is time to ask, 'Why is all this happening? Killer floods, killer tornados.

Consider for a moment the amount of rainfall on the continental United States. The Mississippi is the world's third largest river basin, second only to the Amazon and the Congo Rivers; it receives and drains more than 60% of all that rainfall hitting the continental US.

Did it ever occur to our feeble brains that we could mess with that? Yet we've wasted billions trying to 'contain' natural flooding events, with dykes and dams along the Mississippi.

Floods and storms are all much much worse in recent years! Why?

I offer a thought experiment:

Take a cookie sheet. Do this in your mind. Really do it if you doubt my results.

Tip it on a slight angle so that it can drain into the sink or bathtub. Now spray some water onto it. Notice how the water immediately moves off the sheet and down the drain. You'll notice that the water 'surges' first and then moves off the sheet at the rate it is sprayed on.

Now drape the cookie sheet with a towel. Spray on the same amount of water. Keep spraying. You will notice that the towel buffers or absorbs the surge of floodwater. Eventually if you spray enough the amount of water exiting the system will equal the amount that is sprayed on. But there will be no 'storm-surge'.

Now stop spraying. You will notice that water still drips from the edge of the towel. This is exactly what thick-soiled natural grasslands and forests do. They absorb water, and release it slowly and evenly to the rivers and seas during drought.

In the Adirondack mountains of Northern New York State, over-lumbering brings river surges that have eliminated much of the native fish populations. The Adirondacks, like the Amazon basin, does not have thick soils. Areas of the land are becoming bald, gravel and rock, where once trees stood. The forests that remain are stunted, shorter, less diverse. And floods have become a problem.

Everywhere it is the same story, whether in forested mountain regions or flat prairies of the West.

A healthy ecosystem of deep tree roots and topsoil moderates the heat of summer, the cold of winter, and the wet of storms. Water levels in America's rivers when the colonists first came to this country were quite moderate.

The worst floods are yet to come. Indeed as Dylan has warned us, 'A hard rain's gonna fall.'

Throughout America, as in the South American Amazon basin, and Africa as well, all over the world, soil levels are declining through wasteful agricultural practices. Nearly all of the rivers of the American west, particularly in the Great Plains, were once lined with deep rooted cottonwood trees, that acted as natural dikes to the rivers. These have almost all been cut down. The natural soil levels in Kansas for instance which historically measured over 30 feet thick, are less than 15 feet thick on average; there's less then ten feet of soil now in many areas.

The towel is getting thin.

All of this means less absorption of rain water. The rain that falls flows more quickly to the edge of the cookie sheet.

A thin layer of soil means the land dries out fast, and then heats up. A hotter landmass creates stronger storms. This isn't advanced math.

We're turning the continent into a sheet of rock, and long before that happens the storm surges along rivers like the Mississippi will be powerful enough to wipe out entire cities.

Why?

Storms of all kinds, tornadoes, thunderstorms, and hurricanes particularly, are gaining strength from global warming. Tornados and hurricanes function as a 'land-cooling systems', they simply become more powerful as the land beneath becomes hotter. Temperature extremes have become worse due to misuse of prairie and forested lands, and the tarmacking of vast areas of the country.

As the heat rises, so does nature's attempts to deal with the excess heat.

Expect more beasts such as the mile-wide tornados that virtually destroyed Tuscaloosa Alabama in April 2011 and one month another eirie reminder of the same power of nature wiped out a third of Joplin, Missouri.

Expect more hurricanes like Katrina which waterlogged all of New Orleans, and left thousands homeless. Expect monster storms like Hurricane Sandy, with barely hurricane force winds, but a large enough system to lift storm surges to historic levels over a vast area, flooding homes, public transportation and businesses.

Just as tornados and thunderstorms are a land-cooling system, hurricanes are an ocean-cooling system. As the world's oceans rise heat up so do the strengths and wind velocities of hurricanes. These storms are symptomatic of global warming, a side-effect that even terrestrial scientists were unable to predict.

Fallow land? Have you ever walked out onto a 'fallow' field in Kansas in the summer?

It's as hot as a supermarket parking lot. Oh sure we were all taught in school that letting land go fallow is good.

What might we expect in just a few years?

We will see hurricanes blow skyscrapers over and turn them into piles of rubble. I fully expect to see storms with 200 mile per hour winds within twenty years. [Wrong - I was not aggressive enough in this prediction. Hurricane Dorian produced gusts of over 200 mph]

Who's been Nibbling?

"Who's been nibbling at my fruit?
I have no siblings, nor have I brood."
So the mushroom spoke out loud,
"It wasn't me!", I scraped and bowed.

One Night in the Forest

One night in the forest, 'midst dark and gloom,
High on psilocybin, I found this mushroom . . .

Careful

Careful where you put your shoes
Topple these I promise . . . you lose!
There's a mind below the earth
That surpasses what we know, in kind and worth.

A frightful experiment I'll not suggest,
Just a white remnant that you might deem to digest.
Why defend with such terrible fury?
Unless sent by an angel, . . . of great purity.

Trail of Life

The trail of life is one foot wide,
Perils to the left, perils to the right.
We love the path that's straight ahead,
Beneath wreaths of danger, over our head.

Panic Grass

You might hide in Panic grass,
And mistake its name in error. . . .
Thinking you'll knead bread with it,
Or flee from it in terror.

Note: This grass is deer-tongued, of genus 'Panicum',
          Mysteriously not secretive, species 'clandestinum'.

What Waits?

For every tree that's straight,
   for every trunk with breadth,
Whether grown in light or shade,
   some thing awaits its death.

Twisted Trunk

\

Twisted trunks of roots that search,
This drunken one, is Yellow Birch.

Pale Angel

My only child is a lone mushroom,
So never poach these blooms.
If you eat this Angel as your bread,
You'll rise, and know you're dead.

The Door

Upon me lies the forest floor,
 . . . a mouse atop a bull,
All of life goes through this door,
 . . . to Hades if you pull!'