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<DIV>Eshel--Before I get sidetracked by the thoughts you're inspiring, a question. Can you or a grad student describe to us the "new direct experimental evidences that support the picture", the ones that have emerged in the last two years. These sound important.<BR></DIV>
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<DIV>Now down to thought-wandering. A wonderful statement: "in short, yes the genome does think. But only if in the genome you include not only the sequence but the entire gestalt (enzymes proteins etc)." The gestalt also includes structures like the cellular skeleton, the membrane, and the external communities within which the genome lives. </DIV>
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<DIV>I've just been rereading portions of "Meaning-Based Natural Intelligence<BR>Vs.<BR>Information-Based Artificial Intelligence". I've also been thinking of the diagrams with which you showed graphically that using math, you can derive higher orders of self from a collective. </DIV>
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<DIV>Meaning depends on a self of sense. But there are multiple selves for any creature. As "Meaning-Based Natural Selection" says, there is individual self, the self that says "gimme", the selfish cell. Then there's self as a part of a subgroup...or of many subgroups. There's also self as a sense of membership in the ubergroup--the colony. And there may be senses of self that extend to the entire ecosystem that keeps a bacterial colony alive. </DIV>
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<DIV>There may even be a sense of self that applies to an entire species--or that's the implication of the work of David Smillie, a wonderful theorist who has, alas,retired and is no longer part of this group. But if there is a sense of self that's chauvinistic about the survival of the species, there's also likely to be a sense of the species membership in a vastly extended ecosystem for whose survival individual creatures would fight. This is true among humans. Is it true for our bacterial ancestors?</DIV>
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<DIV>Meaning comes from which order of organism or superorganism you want to survive and to expand. It comes from answering questions like "how do I take advantage of, avoid, or eliminate what's come across my path?" Is the advantage you're looking for your own, that of your subculture, that of your ubergroup, that of your species, or that of the environment that makes it possible for your species to survive?</DIV>
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<DIV>These are questions we humans have been dealing with since at least the first Earth Day in 1969. Is it anthropomorphism or truth to say that concerns of this sort occasionally determine the choices made by our bacterial ancestors? Howard</DIV>
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<DIV>ps One more question, a question I've probably asked a zillion times in the past. The work of James Shapiro points out that individual spiral arms of a bacterial colony separate from the motherlode of population at the colony's center, then become genetic lineages that are distinct and may even go through separate evolutionary histories. In other words, the first generation of bacteria moving out of the motherlode at the colony's core divide and give birth to offspring that have never been in touch with the motherlode and that are not in direct reproductive contact with other bacterial groups branching out in other directions. A hundred and a thousand generations later, the bacteria in one spiral arm have gone off in one genetic direction while bacteria in another spiral arm have drifted (or self-reengineered) in another direction.</DIV>
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<DIV>Is there a sense of subcultural self among these spiral arms? Do they compete? Do they go up against each other as explorer bees do, attempting to gain influence and resources for their particular approach to life? Do they go through what Global Brain, my second book, calls "creative bickering"--testing out new hypotheses on behalf of the group, then contributing to the collective thought process by battling peacefullyt over differences?</DIV>
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<DIV>In a message dated 11/23/2004 9:03:59 AM Eastern Standard Time, shovland@mindspring.com writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid"><FONT face=Arial>Based on my observations on bacterial colonies I published a new picture of the creative genome in which I explained that based on rational arguments it has to be able to perform information processing, learn from experiments and even change itself accordingly.<BR>During last two years there are new direct experimental evidences that support the picture. <BR>The community is willing to accept these ideas to the extend that I was invited to give a lecture at<BR>a Nobel symposium meeting.<BR></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10">----------<BR>Howard Bloom<BR>Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century<BR>Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute<BR>www.howardbloom.net<BR>www.bigbangtango.net<BR>Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series.<BR>For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org<BR>for two chapters from <BR>The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer<BR>For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net<BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>