hi georgina, many thanks for the comments - all appreciated.
"You talk about Maharishi Mahesh Yogi identifying the difference between the DNA of an acorn and the DNA of an oak tree being time."
yes, in order to keep it simple-sounding. you are correct inasmuch as the *correct* way to put it would be, "the set of all possible permutations of DNA that may be positively identified as belonging to the family tree of an oak tree, the set of all possible seeds which may be positively identified as acorns, and the set of all possible trees that may be positively idenfied as belonging to the family of oak trees" however much of the point and attention of most readers would, i feel, be lost in the process.
"It doesn't follow, it's as if some chunk of argument is missing."
yes. i already had to cut the essay drastically down. you do however pick up on a very important point:
"You have used the argument that a human's DNA is intelligent because the human being is intelligent but then you extend intelligence to all DNA just because it is DNA."
ah. right. ok. i saw just i think it was today or yesterday where someone had encoded some ridiculous amounts of information (12 petabytes potentially in a single gram) into DNA. it included a short video, a book, and other things, along with some CRC checksums. they then waited 2 weeks for a company to make it for them, then used polymerase reading (or whatever) and were surprised to find that the *full* data set was correctly encoded.
could it be said that such a data set is "intelligent"? no it could not. it's just a data store.
so logically we may conclude that *ONLY* those sets of DNA which have utilised evolution to refine themselves into self-replicating, self-replicated organisms, may be said to *be* intelligent, being as they are only indistinguishable from the actual organisms themselves through the application, process and progression of the phenomenon known as "Time".
which hadn't occurred to me until you pointed it out, so i am most grateful.
"The "non- coding" DNA regions aren't random but highly conserved, indicating that they have some importance, preventing the evolution of organisms that have lost or had changes to those regions."
oo! oo, that's even *more* interesting than the supposition that had occurred to me. that function which you describe is *directly* equivalent to a CRC (checksum) algorithm. in other words it's a safety check. if the DNA is sufficiently badly damaged such that certain sequences have not survived, it is automatically rejected. i wonder if there's an algorithmic encoding that recognises the individual contributions from each parent? that *would* be fascinating.
"I think there is introduction of false equivalence when inanimate mindless creation is called 'creative intelligence', then presumed as the source of human intelligence"
.... you've lost me a little, here. bear in mind also that i had to cut out a hell of a lot. perhaps it would help if i re-introduced the augmentation to the maxwell's demon which i had to cut out.
let's change the circumstances under which the demon operates, by making its very survival critically dependent on its continued intake of "gas". let's also make it possible for the demon to move the entire box, and for the box size to grow as the demon sees fit, but also that, correspondingly, the amount of energy required to move the box increases proportionately with size of the box. also let us make the "maintenance" of the fabric of the box result in increased consumption of "gas".
now, beginning from a uniform distribution of gas throughout the universe, in full-on "entropic chaos" mode, our demon (or evolved variants of the same) quickly have to develop hunter-gatherer "survival" techniques and potentially even collaboration techniques in order to secure sources of "gas". over-farming of gas would result in starvation.
*even at this simple level*, the demon (or demons) are *required* to exhibit what we would term "intelligent" - or self-organised - behaviour, taking into account their environment and awareness of each other.
it *really is* that simple. once you have *anything* that starts to alter the balance away from "chaos", it is *required* that intelligent behaviour emerges in order to cope. it's a bit like (or exactly like, depending on scale/scope) the way that raindrops coalesce together to form larger ones under surface tension.
so no i *fundamentally disagree* that the word "intelligence" is an "appendage" even when applied to what could otherwise rather unfairly be termed "mindless" behaviour. wherever there is nature, if we use the term "mindless" then, far from there *being* no intelligence at whatever level we are observing, it may instead be said that we have entirely *missed the scale/scope* on which intelligence is operating.
"I have now watched a video interview with Dr.Hankey talking about his physics education and yoga and Ayurveda, as I had never heard of him before"
ah! fascinating to note that such things can be found. i did note that his wikipedia page is an "orphan" (no other pages link to it). he is certainly aware of david chalmers (director for centre of consciousness) and also fqxi's scientific director, max tegmark. certainly it is an extremely small but growing community that is beginning to understand and feel comfortable discussing consciousness. dr hankey was... extremely lucky to have had direct access to maharishi mahesh yogi back in the 1970s.
anyway. thank you so much for the encouragement to think, georgina :)