Intelligent Design

Intelligent Design
by Shale
March 16, 2016

I do not follow any gods of human mythology. It is entertaining to watch fictional gods like Thor, Zeus, Ra or even Yahweh but I abhor the fact that for all my life some ppl in the mainstream culture not only believe this nonsense but try to force it on me with medieval fervor.

However, I have recently enjoyed a surprising sci-fi moment while thinking of telomeres and came up with a concept of "Intelligent Design." Yes, the very religious concept with which the Creationists try to obfuscate our secular science knowledge by insisting some divine being (invisible and with no beginning) created all the universe and all life on our planet. So, before they come to drag me into their church as one of the anointed ones who saw the light, let me again say this is a science fiction musing - and my religion if I have one encompasses all the sci-fi elements of The Force, artificial intelligence, time travelers from the future, extraterrestrial aliens with Warp Drive, the manipulation of DNA and creating androids indistinguishable from natural born humans. All the stuff of GATTACA, AI, The Matrix, Terminator, Prometheus, Blade Runner, Moon and Ex-Machina.



In the fiction Blade Runner, the androids were indistinguishable from humans and were superior in many ways but they had a built in, limited lifespan. Sort of like our own telomeres, those caps on the ends of our chromosomes that keep them separated. During each cell division these telomeres lose some their mass and eventually after so many divisions that cell dies, adding to our ageing process. It just sounds like a mechanism that was poorly designed and now scientists are exploring if there is a way to get telomerase, which regulates telomeres to fix that. (problem is, what you gain in cell life you also gain in cancer aggression).

But, why would that be so poorly designed? And, I am writing of an evolutionary process by which all our seemingly random life functions had a reason for evolving to help us survive and reproduce. Why are all animals designed to age and very few of us live beyond or even near a century? Was it to thin the herd and prevent overpopulation? That could have been accomplished by designing females with a 5-year supply of eggs instead of 30. And, why assume that a perpetual 25-year-old would actually live 80 years with their propensity to get themselves killed. So, I don't think evolution played a part in our design to age and die within a century.

Often a paradox in fiction is when an android is not aware that it is an android designed by a superior intelligence. I am not averse to the fictional concept that we could be designed by another extra-terrestrial intelligent being, or even our evolved selves from the future. But, knowing there is no god at work here, it still puzzles me why we appear to have been designed to age.

 

http://www.rd.com/culture/animals-that-live-forever/

Not sure how this relates to your ideas, but the Immortal Jellyfish does live forever.

 

unless eaten by a sea turtle...

 

If people lived forever like the 5 that seem to...we would still have Shakespeare, Beethoven, Mozart, Poe, etc....walking in our midsts.....

 

For an organic complexity to somehow manage to arrange itself out of what is essentially cosmic shrapnel, I think we can cut ourselves some slack.

Evolution is a messy process, it can be likened to falling down a flight of stairs and hoping your neck doesn't break so you can let the next guy to come down know there's some old boxes from Grandma that just might be worth rummaging through.

After a while of doing that I can imagine you get a little bit tired, so it's much more pleasant to just sit around a campfire whilst the next generation of crazy bastards go fuck off looking for fresh meat and boxes from Grandma. A natural rhythm develops, in much the same way as the movement of dunes. Why is equal to why not.

Couldn't find the video, Attenborough's team did an incredible 2 year timelapse in the Sarah. Here's a .gif though.



Personal interp. anyway..

 

And Edgar Allan Poe would still be married to his 13 year old cousin who he first met when he was 20 and she was 7 years old – nothing dysfunctional here folks, nothing to see

Hotwater

 

Old enuf to bleed, old enuf to breed, as the old saying goes. We have made artificial, cultural constructs on sexual maturity in OUR society.

Age of sexual consent in much of the U.S. is unrealistically high at 18 years. Many states have 17 and some have 16 and one for a while had 14, which is the norm in many countries. (Hawaii still has an age of sexual consent for 14 year olds if the partner is less than 5 years older)

So, ppl fault "child brides" in previous generations, but biologically that has always been the breeding age in our species, especially in eons past when the life expectancy averaged under 40. (Our species warranty still runs out at 45 years)

BTW, my mom was 14 when she was fucked by my 23-year-old dad. Good or bad might depend on what you think of me, the product of that union in 1944.

 

Hey!
Well, at least he created something that lasts forever, but when this planet falls back into our collapsing sun , nothing will have lasted forever here, unless man has sailed out into space by then.
I hope he did not have sex with a 7, 8,9, 10,11, 12 , etc. year old.
I am not sure about anyone's real biographies.
Of course, that is not what I advocate.
Shale, interesting. You always tell it like it really is in your life. I respect that.

And since we are all living forever, I have a breakfast date soon with Van Gogh. We will be painting together today....or maybe, he is me reincarnated.... Lonely soul....cutting off pieces of myself if only figuratively this time around....female body form this time...

Ok, enough silliness out of me for right now.

Idk why we are born to live and die.... Back to the original question.

 

The "God of the Gaps" argument, or those seemingly unanswerable problems in natural evolution is often what ID proponents and more recently Ancient Astronaut Theorists seem to rely on to bolster their positions. The degree of complexity of life is what these positions point to in saying that it cannot be all by "random" chance, a famous metaphor comparing the process to a tornado going through a junkyard and assembling a Boeing 747.

Some see this argument as fallacious, due to the gradual process of evolution which has been noted since Darwin, and Neo-Darwinists put a lot of emphasis on the retention of genes perhaps just as, if not more important than the organism in the process of evolution.

 

There is no evolutionary pressure to adapt to life past the age of reproduction; once genes are passed on to the next generation, there is no way for genetic adaptation to move forward in the prior generation. That's why there are so many old age diseases. Here's an example: Imagine there was an ancient human whos immune system was able to ward off Parkinson's disease at the age of 85. How would the genes which allowed for this medical success flourish in the population? The only way is for that human to reproduce and spread those genes; but that human is far past the age of mating, and so when he/she dies of any other cause, his/her genes are simply gone forever.

It's not that we have been designed to age; there is no design. It's that there has never been a genetic push to favor humans living far past the age of reproduction.

Richard Dawkins does an amazing job of explaining this counterintuitive notion in his groundbreaking book The Selfish Gene. When thinking of evolution, we need to remember that we as humans are "merely vehicles" for the transmission of our ancient controllers; genes. Humans reproduce so that genes survive; not humans. Humans are a secondary process in all this; we are a complication of the technology which genes have built up to ensure their survival. Even my language here is deceptive; there was no plan by genes to do anything; it is only that the genes which were able to continue reproducing are the genes which constitute the gene pool today. Those which were not successful at reproducing are simply not here to be part of the conversation. There is no benefit added by having the human vehicles live to 200 years past the age of reproduction; there would in fact be pressure against this stemming from limited resources. The most successful gene transmissions are done by vehicles which quickly transmit the genes and then get out of the way so that more gene transmission can occur by the offspring.

 

However, as a social creature who lives in family/tribal groups, there is value in having that prior generation around. We see this now with still capable grandparents contributing to the family unit. It would be even better if we were not designed to age so that we would be more useful as an extended family.

And yes it appears to be designed with the loss of telomeres specifically causing us to age - it is a genetic mechanism and whether it is useful or detrimental past reproduction age should not matter in evolution. So why does it happen?

Maybe a design flaw and our brilliant scientists are working in that direction with telomerase to slow or end ageing.

 

The universe does not have our existence in mind. The social aspects that you're talking about rely heavily on anthropic reasoning (which is closer to religion than anything to do with the scientific method). I highly doubt that the law of gravity cares about the age of ones grandparents (and would crush them to dust on a large enough planet, regardless of how worthwhile it is to keep them around). The entire argument presented in this thread ironically sounds more as if you believe that life in the universe (as we know it) has been finely tuned for Earth (whether that was intentional or not)...

EDIT: Great thread. I enjoy reading your posts, Shale.

 

I fundamentally disagree, if what makes us humans is our personal identity. The personal identity/the conscious experience is no less of a reality than one's genetic makeup. You can try to equate the two, but then it makes no sense to say that we only want to transmit genes and not what it is that makes us human. We reproduce so that the personal identity will survive just as much as we reproduce so that our features will continue to exist. We wouldn't reproduce at all if we were giving birth to creatures that had only the capacity to reproduce, but not to experience anything. In fact we would be appalled by such monstrosities.

Really we don't even need to reproduce in order to influence the genetic structure of later generations. We impact and shape the personalities of the people we are close to, and they do the same, and so on and on. Our personalities/our genes are determining who others will find sexually appealing. Our personalities now will influence what mutations will be appealing in the future. We are all influencing the natural order of things in some way or another, regardless of if we sexually reproduce.

What's really at question is what is mind, is it local or nonlocal, is it temporal or metaphysical? There's no really telling how gravity relates to mind, or how mind relates to gravity. I personally believe that we've never really escaped the singularity. All things are still singular and, for instance, the laws of gravity must take into account the age of one's grandparents, because they're not fundamentally two separate things. Where there was once unity there is always some underlying unity. Everything that has ever occurred also existed in the form of a possibility at the beginning of time, and actually everything still is only a possibility that seems real. Just my two cents.

 

No, my "religion" Science Fiction has clued me to the fact that life springs forth because of the right conditions under right circumstances for a specific place. Star Trek has explored life not based on carbon, hydrogen, oxygen but maybe silicon. Maybe copper instead of iron to carry O2 in blood as in Spock with green blood instead of red.

I understand that seems random is actually a slow process of life adapting to its specific environment. We see this diversity on this planet alone with specific diverse life in places (under extreme heat, cold or pressure) where most life on this planet cannot exist.

But this telomere process seems specifically designed to make us get old and die for no other reason than design flaw.

 

the problem with intelligent design can be summed up by the one phrase: "it really isn't very intelligent"
numerous examples can be cited, and have been in previous threads on this topic.

 

Why are stars, planets and moons spherical? It is due to the forces of gravity pulling in all directions. Why do spatial objects orbit other spatial objects? It is because of a balance of mass (gravity) with centrifugal force.

Things happen because they fall into place and fit into their surroundings due to the laws of nature.

 

Nothing in my post should have given you that impression.

You've stated that there is already "science out there to prove it", yet failed to post your evidence. I have no interest in playing the philosophy game with you, however, to insist that the universe does indeed have a mind (and to not even take the liberty of explaining the reasoning behind such a thought) is comical.

If you'd like an answer, your "why" questions should be "how" questions.

 

The universe does not have a mind, hence, it does not have us in mind. Thank you for investigating my post in a semantic sense rather than posting your evidence (which you were right, I would have scoffed at prior to reading). Do you have any ideas of your own or is your best attempt at research reading popularized science books/articles by famous 20th century scientists? (It's as if you think you're introducing me to John von Neumann... You forgot the "h" by the way)

 

The universe just goes on about its business.....doing what it does best...being a universe.....

 

Averages of mutation. Remember, all the stuff that didn't work is either dead or didn't happen.

The fibonacci sequence suggest the most efficient movement through an ever unfolding space, which can entail a plant "intuiting" the optimum angles and distances to grow new leaves in order to maximise photosynthesis at the expense of as little energy as possible, or how to grow a protective structure as strong, efficient, and fast as possible using as little energy as possible etc..

From the outside in it looks like a perfectly divined matrix of impossible elegance... inside out it's more like "well fuck, I'm in the middle of a jungle and I have a torch and a bruised pickle..."