On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 2:45 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List < [email protected]> wrote:
> > > >> Amazing isn’t it. The elegance of self-assembling processes that can > do so much with so little input. > Yes, very amazing! > > I doubt 1000 lines of computer code is a large enough initial > instruction set even for a highly self-generating system. > My intuition would say that you're right but my intuition would also say that 750 Meg is not enough information to make a human baby, and yet we know for a fact that it is. So I must conclude that our intuition is not very good in matters of this sort. >>> The same strand of DNA, depending on the dynamic action of the large >>> number of transcription factors >>> >> > >> A transcription factors is just a protein that binds to specific DNA >> sequences. And where did the information come from to know what sequence of >> amino acids will build that very important protein? From the original 750 >> Meg of course. >> > > > From that original bundle of genetic code + environmental influences. > I don't know what you're talking about. What a protein can do is a function of it's shape, and the shape of a transcription factor, just like any other protein, is entirely determined by its amino acid sequence, and that is entirely determined by the Messenger RNA sequence, and that is entirely determined by the DNA sequence in the genome. Proteins with the same amino acid sequence always fold up in exactly the same way, at least under all environmental conditions found inside living cells. Yes if environmental conditions are very extreme, if things are very hot or the pH is super high or super low the protein can become denatured and fold up into weird useless shapes, but such conditions are always fatal to life so it's irrelevant. Under all lifelike conditions proteins always fold up in the exact same way. > > 90% of the living things in a human body DO NOT have human DNA not by > weight of course but by census > Our primary interest around here is the brain and what the brain does, mind; and I don't see the relevance bacteria have to that. But if you want to include the genome of E coli that's fine, there's plenty of unused space on that CD for it. > > The kind of flora and fauna we have in our guts in many ways determines > who we are, what we think and what we desire. So the key to consciousness and the factor that determines our personal identity lies in our poo? > It affects out well-being > So would an inflamed toenail, but I don't think a investigation of that affliction will bring much enlightenment on the nature of intelligence or consciousness. > > I do not see a single human (or other eukaryote) only in terms of its > own DNA + epigenetic meta-programming over the DNA base, but also in terms > of the ecosystem that exists within. > That is where we differ and I think that is your fundamental error, you believe you must understand everything before you can understand anything, in other words you do what is becoming increasingly fashionable these days, you reject reductionism in spite of it having worked so spectacularly well during the last 400 years. I don't. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
