<HTML><HEAD><META charset=US-ASCII http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII"></HEAD>
<BODY style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial; BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff">
<DIV>Paul--Your slow-learning alternative interpretation--slow-learning is reserved for potential big breakthroughs tested over aeons instead of minutes, hours, or days, is extremely interesting.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I've inserted another twisty comment and some pictures to illustrate it down below. Howard</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 11/28/2004 7:19:15 PM Eastern Standard Time, paul.werbos@verizon.net writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid"><FONT face=Arial><FONT size=2>If the "junk" DNA is more highly conserved than the usual DNA...<BR>that's important. It may suggest an interpretation a bit different from what<BR>we have been drifting into.<BR><BR>Two alternative views of what that datum implies --<BR><BR>A conservative view might be that "what you see is what you get after all,"<BR>and that the "junk DNA"... is like the glia cells in the brain, which people<BR>think supply metabolic support to ALLOW neurons to play the decisive role everyone assumes...</FONT></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV>hb: add in Eshel Ben-Jacob's work on glia and on the foundation of gel exuded by some bacterial colonies. In Eshel's view, both are distributors of information that help in the parallel-processing, the emergent meta-mind, formed by trillions of processors working in parallel. I've compared what Eshel describes to the zeitgeist of human culture--a summation of the current state of mind, but one pregnant with implications, pregnant with new creative solutions whose parts are aching to be sutured together, sutured together by a mind attuned to the music of their inanimate desire.</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid"><FONT face=Arial><FONT size=2>But could sequences in a linear string really take on this role? Or should we stop thinking of genomes as linear strings? Remember, genomes are twisted, knotted, and tangled--but not randomly--tangled in meaningful ways. Their topology and topography is as important as their linear constituents. The big question with both genes and with "junk dna" may be one Eshel's been raising with his papers on linguistic and contextual meaning. A big part of a genome-sector's meaning may come from which others its rubbing cheeks with. And there's a lot of cheek-rubbing in a knot.</FONT></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Here are a few genomic knots--probably vastly oversimplified:</DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV><IMG SRC="cid:X.MA1.1101712358@aol.com" height=360 width=480 ID="MA1.1101712358" DATASIZE="117011"></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV><IMG SRC="cid:X.MA2.1101712358@aol.com" height=628 width=480 ID="MA2.1101712358" DATASIZE="65396"></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid"><FONT face=Arial><FONT size=2><BR>pw: could it be that the nonjunk DNA is as dominant as people have always thought, and that<BR>the "junk DNA" is a kind of constant support system... evolved long,long ago and then frozen?<BR>The paper you cited says the junk DNA is "highly conserved," but doesn't say<BR>whether it is constant across all types of earth life, or just major groups.<BR><BR>A totally different view... "high conserved" could just mean slowly changing.<BR>In multilayer time-lagged recurrent neural networks... we know we need to have slower<BR>learning rates for stuff which is further away from direct empirical testing.<BR>New categories of perception evolve more slowly than ... the formation<BR>of memories using EXISTING categories, which can be "one-trial memories."<BR><BR><BR><BR></FONT><BR><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>paleopsych mailing list<BR>paleopsych@paleopsych.org<BR>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych</FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<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>