is DNA stupid?

It is negated. His assumption has several basic errors. The errors are that all the data for a personality must either come from the DNA or from perception.

First, form follows function and vice-versa. The vary process of building of the brian includes a curtian level of programming. The ROM and basic processors for an analagy. There in lies a curtain level of data transmition to the brain so some data is by the default nature of the structure provided to the brain. That default data and basic organisation is in effect "compressed", or perhaps pre-organised would be a better term , to perform curtain functions such as in the case of the parts of the brain that deal with vission and hearing.

There is a third place that the mind recieves data, itself. The mind creates it's own data by deriving data from the logical enferences of data already recieved and this is very likely the source for most if not all the 'missing' data that is required for personality. The brain does a tremendious amount of self organisation in the first years of life. Again, form follows function. Intellect, personallity, and all the other characteristic of a mind are very likely the senergetic effect of the DNA based starting point of the brain plus all the changes cause by both external data and internal derivations.

If Chomsky's assurtions were all there was to it then identical twin raised together or in identical inviroments would always make the same choices to the same stimuli. They do not so some other factor is at work.

That said there is also the likely hood that there is a "random number generator" built into the developement of the human mind/personality as a survial mechanism. In effect a mental anti-Darwanism system. It would NOT be in an animals best interest to always react to a given situation in the same way as this predicability would be an exploitable weakness. So for the greater good of the species some members will run and some will fight. The ones that act correctly survive and as humans can learn and comminicate that learning they will tell their offspring what worked and what did not. This was the original form of education (storytelling). This adds an additional level of adaptability to thinking creatures above and beyond DNA encoded instict. And a furture advantage to creatures that can communicate their experience by some other means than DNA to their offspring.

Well, there in lies the riddle. The brain can contain far more information than DNA can. DNA can supply the basic structure which can infuence HOW perceptions effect the brain. In effect the DNA and the 'code key' to deciphering the data obtained from the perceptions or perhaps it the the other way arround. It does not really matter to anyone except a few theoretical scientists which is the key and which is the code. In either case over time each will influence the other and the synergy of the two plus many other things blend to make a personality.

And there in lies another complexity. Some of the part of DNA are only use to create the original structure of the animal and then stop doing anything. Perhaps the encoding is conditionally based? A DNA fragment in a fetus may work differently because it knows what life stage it is in that the same DNA in a teenager, an adult, or a post menapausal person. In effect DNA may have many workable "decode keys" that produce useable information at the pro per point in an animals life cycle. Then if that is true who's to say the there is not a life-cycle point (decode key) where a large part of the DNA data is decoded in a slightly different way to provide some extra boot strap infomation to the brian. Perhaps in some of the part of the DNA that we don't understand there is a key sequence the says in effect 'read every seventh pair in rotating recirculating sequience to program this kids personality'. Biology tends to get more than one use out of most things. Why not DNA.

Simple facts and what can be devised from them,

human being exist they have personalities so those personalities have to be created/built/made whatever it happens so it must be posible that said just because we can not explain it RIGHT NOW does not mean that we will not be able to explain it someday.

As no one here is an expert reseraching this (at least no one has assert such expertese), then all we are doing here is trying futilely to explain to ourselves what we each think about the process to better understand our own views, to convince others of our own point of view, to convey to others our own view in hope of approval or validation, or for the enjoyment of the mental exercise. Which is of course determined by each of our respecive personallities regardless of how they came into being.

Charles L.

Reply to
Charles Prevatte
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The point that you are still missing blatantly is that those 20,000 genes are a blueprint for a computer called the brain. And, just as a blueprint for a PC cannot possibly presuppose what data might be stored in the PC one day, the blueprint for our brains does not presuppose what sort of things we might imagine in any realistic way. There are blueprints for image processing, linguistic processing, symbolics, reflexes, etc., but NONE of that does more than generally points us in a direction. This is identical with the conditions of having the drawings for making a graphics card, a sound card, a hard drive, etc.

Cheers!

Sir Charles W. Shults III, K. B. B. Xenotech Research

321-206-1840
Reply to
Sir Charles W. Shults III

If you read the other threads, this is a repeating the arguments, if true then great, but according to Chomsky, the brain is pre-programmed with 95% of the software - but there is no information in the blueprint as to how this should be done.

You have to demolish Chomsky before you can claim it is *just* a blueprint.

J
Reply to
e7

------------------ Unless those few differences were entirely crucial to what we know as higher intelligence. Are you sure you are intelligent enough to even speak english if you don't already realize that?? The genome is just a state machine that generates the body and brain, not the mind, it doesn't preprogram us anymore than it feeds us food.

That you are whining on about this stuff is merely a symptom of a psychological disturbance on your part that involves some delusion.

------------------------- You really don't get it. Go read up on emergent properties of CAS's, complex adaptive systems, they generate their own intelligence because of their structure and evolved nature acting within in the environment of their evolution. The human is a learning machine that is only built by its genome, but it is only in a VERY minimal sense "programmed" by it in the manner of its own inherent design properties, in that it is evolved by evolution to solve problems for the organism, and it is because this means it must do this for countless examples of the experiences of different organisms, that it has had to progressively evolve more and moreso to be a learning machine. Once upon a time it could be a pure state machine, when we were worms or insects, but the more complex its environment, the more adaptability it needed, however adaptibility not being programming, but instead being the programmability and ability to learn, then also do we see that, comparatively, very little more DNA is needed to add these features, it would have taken MUCH longer to have evolved a human that met its needs as we do in an entirely proprogrammed manner. So you see, it is NOT programmed with what it must learn initially, but only with the capacity to learn those things, and that is VERY VERY much simpler to code into a learning machine, rather than a static logic array or state machine!!

Reply to
R. Steve Walz

--------------- No, you only need begin with a near vegetable which can learn, in other words, a baby!!

----------------------------------

1) You don't understand Chomsky. 2) Chomsky doesn't understand Genetics or Complex Adaptive Systems, he's a semanticist and linguist.

------------------ You can ask, but 2-y/os don't do this at all well.

--------------------- Now if only one guy had to code all that, sure, he would take a very long time. How nice it is instead for billions of neurons to regrow and reshape their synapses and weight functions totally spontaneously in response to experience as their only biological function, and to burn as much as 30 Watts continuously doing so, and to do this well because they evolved to do only and exactly that, and nothing else. You weren't really so delusional or superstitious that you were willing to relegate all this to something supernatural, do you, when you don't yet have cause to??

All that would be is giving up!! Our brains DO do this, and they ARE formed from DNA instructions, and we Do start out stupid and we DO INDEED LEARN all that we finally come to know!!

------------------ Nature does, and the process is called our lives.

------------------ No wonder it's not always reasonable, yours for instance, J. Michael!!

-------------------- According to him, the CAPACITY for it is programmed in. He's NOT a biologist or geneticist, nor is he an AI programmer.

------------------------------- That's because it doesn't have to, you idiot!

-Steve

Reply to
R. Steve Walz

---------------- You ARE teasing, aren't you? This guy is the Crank: J. Michael, the guy who prated around here about "Fractal Robots" a year or so ago!

-Steve

Reply to
R. Steve Walz

-------------- Chomsky is NOT a geneticist, NOT a programmer, NOT a roboticist, NOT a systems analyst, etc. Chomsky is wrong if he said that, but actually I think he NEVER said that, and that you merely misquoted and misunderstood him!

And this is QUITE LIKELY, because YOU'RE THE CRANK!: J. Michael of "Fractal Robot" crank-insanity fame! All you do is repeat yourself when questioned, it's a form of mental illness called schizophrenia.

SEEK HELP!!

-Steve

Reply to
R. Steve Walz

"True, there are lots of other things I don't understand: the articles in the current issues of math and physics journals, for example."

Now go shut the f*ck up someplace!!

-Steve

Reply to
R. Steve Walz

message

---------------------- A base pair is either GC CG AT or TA, that's four states, so each base pair is like two bits. Then a codon of three is 4*4*4 or 64, which is 2^6. Now 3.2 billion base pairs in the human genome makes

12.8 billion bits, or 1.6 Gigabytes. Think of that as one number, and all its possible values!! Whooooooeeeee!!

-------------------------------- Like 'e7' who is actually J. Michael, the crank responsible for the "Fractal Robot" debacle of a few years back, he's a schizophrenic.

------------- And to think, I said that even before I went to his website and discovered it was him!

-Steve

Reply to
R. Steve Walz

-------------- No, Charles, a codon is three base-pairs, and a base pair has four possible values, GC CG AT and TA. Thus it equates to two bits. Thus a codon is 6 bits with 2^6=64 possible values.

-Steve

Reply to
R. Steve Walz

Don't fall into the trap of repeating his bogus numbers. There are roughly 100,000 genes, containing billions of bit of information.

The rest of what you wrote is completely correct, but alas, the person who you are addressing is ineducable. :(

Reply to
Guy Macon

They are being repeated because you math is wrong and you refuse to address your blatent errors.

Reply to
Guy Macon

I am not following you. If there are 3.2 billion base pairs and each base pair contains two bits of information, then the total cannot be larger than 6.4 billion bits of information.

Reply to
Guy Macon

--------------- Ooops! Right. Error. So that's ~~ 800 MBytes.

-Steve

Reply to
R. Steve Walz

In your opinion what way has he been misquoted?

Reply to
e7

There are 50,000 genes and 20,000 active in brain

Reply to
e7

You have to debunk Chomsky's result before saying that.

Generate own intelligence? Show one example of where an emergent system has learned more than the sum of its programming. This is the same heap that AI lands in every time.

So where is the program for countless examples of the experiences different organisms stored on the DNA?

I have no idea what you are talking about here.

Reply to
e7

You haven't addressed Chomsky's result yet.

Reply to
e7

I am still waiting for you to acknowledge that your original "20,000 bits" claim was off by a factor of 150,000. Do that and you will have proved yourself to be eduacable. Prove yourself to be eduacable and I will supply documentation for my 100,000 genes figure.

Reply to
Guy Macon

Nor will I until you own up to your math errors. I am convinced that you are a person who never admits that he is wrong, and that your claim that the human genome has 20,000 bits of information in it when it actually has 3 billion bits of information in it is proof that you are a person who never admits that he is wrong. If you refuse to admit such an obvious and stupid error, what's the use in addressing Chomsky's argument? (It's an argument, not a result, BTW. Chomsky couldn't do a proper scientific experiment to save his life.)

Your math is wrong. You aren't fooling anyone. Admit your error and make your arguments with the real numbers instead of the ones you made up.

Reply to
Guy Macon

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