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Memory, chemistry, brain, DNA

Today this Google alert has reached me. The basic idea of this article is about memory. Memory is one of absolutely crucial phenomena not only of brain but also of evolution. If there were no memory system that enables to pass gained information to the next generation, evolution would not function at all, as no organism would be able to make any gains from its ancestors, and it had to discover everything anew. This would be to costly, time and energy consuming, and it would lead to no evolution at all or only evolution in extremely slow pace.

If brain or DNA can remember some information gained by organism, then it can also pass this information onto the next generation and save energy of the next generation as it does not have to analyze all the new signals, far more it can build up, by adding additional information to already save information from its parents and pass double amount of information to the next generation, and thus speeding up evolution through faster adaptation.

In few of my previous articles to this topic I wrote that one can reduce evolution to only two subjects: physics and statistics. Physics constitutes all bases for material preservation of information and statistics must be understood in the sense of repetition. If something is repeated many times it will be remembered. I have already suggested in my works that brain memory as well as memory of DNA must be multi-level memory (MLM). Organism must have the opportunity to decide whether some information, some signal from its informational environment is important, or not, and how much important it is. Therefore such memory system must be a multi-level memory system.

Our brain functions accordingly, if something is repeated many times it will be better remembered, if something is repeated only few times and then comes a long time with no repetition s of this signal whatsoever, then, brain or organism decide that this particular information is not important anymore and is sent to lower memory levels and at the end it can be completely deleted from memory.

If some signal is repeated many times and the number of repetition reaches certain number, then such information will never be deleted, it can only decrease in its importance and will be stored at the lowest memory level, but never erased.

Now, the today Google alert leads to scientific laboratory experiments that seem to bring extremely strong evidence that my understanding of evolution, and the role of the ability to store information, that means some memory system.

CO2 myth

There are several indicators showing that either people who create documents on CO2 influence on climatic changes are incredibly stupid or all this CO2 story is just deliberately formed nonsense for misleading other people.

One of the signs demonstrating this factor is that in any visual reports on CO2 influence on climate there are big clouds coming from big towers, exactly at that time the speaker says CO2, but it is not CO2, it is water vapor coming out from cooling towers that are a basic part of any electric power plant. It is NOT CO2.

The fact that there is obviously this deliberate misleading of the public one can conclude there is ABSOLUTELY no danger based on CO2.

The problem is that majority of people have absolutely no idea about how electric power plan functions, what are its parts, what these parts do in particular. Therefore, it is so easy to mislead people by showing them pictures of water vapor and say it is CO2. Of course, majority of people will believe this nonsense.

The funny thing is that I have seen exactly this feature – showing water vapor clouds and speaking about CO2 – several times, which I believe is evidence enough for me to maintain that the CO2-story is an artificial make up having no reasonable scientific basis. It only serves to the purpose of frightening people and making them to easy target for exploitations, manipulations and easy-to-handle crowd.

Daniel Dennett and Consciousness

It is extremely difficult to explain consciousness; anyway you may want to have a look at YOUTUBE and watch all six parts of his lecture on consciousness. I do not want to quote his ideas here, it is better you see his lecture for yourselves.

I just only believe that Dan Dennett is making here the same mistake as thinking of a HARD PROBLEM where there is none. In order to get a kind of feel for what consciousness may be we really need to understand how our own brain may mislead us by its innate “biologic coding mechanics” but also that this system has been evolving during last about 4.5 billion years, and that this system can remember many information about something we cannot remember as it happened million years ago, but anyway we behave accordingly to this information because this information has been stored in DNA and DNA is the navigation for constructing some individual organism including human individual including his/her brain. I write here “his/her” brain deliberately because female and male brains differ.

On the other side some parts of our brain are not only in human brains but in brains of animals. Some emotions that we have are common to many animals. So consciousness does not have to be necessarily only something humans experience, most probably some animals experience that too. Quite recently there was a report about bird reacting in the same way as chimpanzees do when they are marked with a colored point on their forehead. The bird was marked on its chest and wanted to get rid of the colored point and was happy when it succeeded.

So what is really consciousness? The way how our brain informs us about our state based upon all information brain has gathered by itself and also by all the information it got inherited through DNA from previous generations.

Brain delivers perfect job, even when you do not know it. Have you noticed that you never fall off your bed? It happens only sometimes and only when the person is usually heavily drunk. Brain is working even when you sleep, in the moment when you have no consciousness at all. So consciousness is only a part of the brain job.

Some people believe that consciousness is only something humans have. The reason for this is that if this were true then humans could maintain that humans are better than the rest of all animals. It is only a way of thinking that marks hierarchy between different groups, one group are humans, and all the other groups are all the animals, either in different groups or put together into a non-human group.

Consciousness can be only explained on principles of brain functions, seen as today’s level of brain abilities that have evolved over billions of years, starting with first chemical that stored some information and passed that information over to the next generation. The storing and processing of information might bring us to understanding what consciousness really is.

Genetics

Short remark to contemporary genetics

Genetics as it has been understood until recently and as some “scientists” still do understand it today is a total nonsense. Let’s consider a gene for reading. If the ability do read is stored in some gene and genes are not subject to any other change than absolutely blind and random mutation then, it must be possible to find a gene for reading in any bacteria. If there is a gene for creation of heart, lungs and other body parts, then these genes must also be found in one cell organisms. What a silly idea of those who really do think so.

This is as silly idea as the idea that some traits are innate. Well, if they really are, fine, but how had they succeeded to become innate. Where did they come from? If for example the ability to pretend being dead, a useful trick applied by some snakes to escape sure death by being eaten by their predator that does happen not to like to eat dead bodies should be innate trait, firmly stored in unchangeable genes, then we people would have to exhibit the same trick, well we do not usually. We use different tricks, and also the gene for this behavior would have to be located in human genome as well. I really doubt that this will ever be the case.

Some traits only appear as innate, because of the time they are used. If some traits are used for a long time, then we cannot differentiate between innate and acquired, and they appear all as innate. There are no innate traits whatsoever. All of them are acquired, only some of them were acquired some 4 billion years ago, and some only 550 million years ago.

We have ears and many other animals do have ears too. That would mean that there must be gene or set of genes responsible for ears. The second condition that genes are unchangeable makes this a funny think as some one cell organism would also have to have this gene or this set of genes for ears., Have you ever seen a one cell organism with ears?

Mother Nature feels the pains of divorce

Economics and ecology of divorce


Today on yahoo one can read article about divorce destroying environment, Mother Nature feels the pains of divorce by RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer Posted Tue Dec 4, 2007 3:48pm PST.

The author reminds us that after divorce two new single households are created. In that case there is higher need for land, higher need for energy, etc. This can be traced back to having double number of TV sets or two or more laptops or two or more cars. This is then, according to the author connected with higher use of material and energy needed for the production of these items.

This sort of economic thought was normal under any society like communistic one, with lack of consumer goods, or society where consumer goods are too expensive for absolute majority of population. The problem was that people living in such a society and belonging to that part of it that could or cannot afford these products for each single individual must create a sort of symbiosis, usually called marriage. In this two- or more people household one TV set was usual, one car as only a family car etc.

In any other sort of society where any normal individual can afford these items, by divorce absolutely nothing happens. It would be a really seldom case when divorced individuals would be in bad need of two or more TV sets per person.

In USA and many other highly developed societies it is normal that there are several TV sets in one household, one for mother, one for father and two more for each child. If this family gets divorced, there is absolutely no need for further TV sets, as every individual has its own TV set already.

This may not be the case in some underprivileged layers of USA society, or the same layers of other highly developed societies, like Germany, UK, France and few others.

In all other societies this problem additional demand for consumer goods after successful divorce can be true. But this additional demand for consumer goods gets us jobs and salaries.

If for the next 30 years there would be additional demand for consumer goods, because we all have them all, there would be a BIG BANG on the economic side of each society that would be in this position. Millions of people out of job, state unable to pay the jobless support, crime, panic, well, the scenario might be a way more horrible.

Funny how some people cannot think and still receive audience for their silly ideas.

Example of comparative linguistics

When the content is that John left in a car belonging to some other person, the pronoun is used deictically. When the content is that John left in his own car, it is used anaphorically. Which type of use the pronoun will have depends on the particular circumstances of this sentence's utterance.


ANAPHORA AND
QUANTIFICATION IN
SITUATION SEMANTICS

By

Jean Mark Gawron and Stanley Peters


The above quotation is taken from the book published on internet under this link. I feel some necessity do discuss the problem from my linguistic point of view. In order to be able to understand the problem really, it is necessary to compare many languages. I speak only three, so I will deliver examples only in these three languages.

The problem of a sentence in English that goes like this:

/1/ He left in his car.

This sentence can have in English two different meanings; first, He left in HIS OWN car, and second, He left in SOME OTHER MALE’S car.

The problem here is typical for English, as those pronouns do not differentiate these possibilities.

In Czech language this confusion can happen only in colloquial language when the speaker makes the “Anglo-Saxon” mistake. In Czech this sentence has two different pronouns depending on the exact meaning.

A/ On odjel svym autem.

B/ On odjel jeho autem.

The pronoun svuj, sva, sve, is a reflexive pronoun saying that the subject of the sentence is the owner. Therefore in A/ He left in HIS OWN car.

The other pronoun jeho, jeji, jeho, expresses that the owner is somebody else than the subject of the sentence.

Now the whole linguistic stuff starts to be really interesting when we use something similar in German.

Consider the following two sentences in German language.

A/ Was ist ihr Alter?
What is her age?

B/ Was ist Ihr Alter?
What is your age?

In written language it is possible to differentiate because YOU and YOUR should be written with upper case first letter when addressing somebody politely, and using his or her family name when addressing, and it should be written in lower case when the same word is used for referring to HER AGE. In spoken language this difference cannot be made at the level of grammar, it can be guessed from the context or sometimes based on the emotion expressed in voice of the speaker.

In the German language the same also happens as in English

A/ Er furh mit seinem Auto.
This can mean in his own as well as in some other male’s car.

Czech language differentiates and German and English languages do not differentiate.

There are languages in the world where people do not use words for left and right or they do not use exact numbers, like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc. Their system of expressing position goes by north, south, west and east. Like in the sentence: “the cow is north of that sheep”. When they try to express some numbers they just say few or many.

The conclusion made by Prof. Daniel L. Everett, is that these people called Piraha, do not want to use these words. They also do not write, and when they are shown written form of some of their words they say it cannot be our word because we do not write.

Out of this one might conclude that English speaking people do not want to make the differences that can be made in the Czech language. Well, I do not believe that, this parallel most probably is not correct.

Some other explanation might be more probable. Some time back at a specific evolutionary step or level of language development of the three mentioned languages there just was no need for this differentiating and there was such need in the third language. One would have to go and study the development of these three languages and maybe the point in time might be found, where maybe even in English and German this differentiation was used or that in some point in the past the Czech language also did not differentiated between these two possibilities that means it had no reflexive pronouns.

It might be really interesting to find these points, if they exist, or if there is enough material for finding such points in time. It might help to understand the cultural development expressed in languages, as Steven Pinker says, that the language is the window in the evolutionary psychology, of person or nation, group of people speaking the same language, having the same cultural background of communicating information.
I have found this book in the internet and immediately the first problem struck me, because I believe that it is necessary to compare many languages. Seen from this point of view, this small paper of mine might constitute easy demonstration what comparative linguistics should and could be about. There are many more interesting problems in languages and they show how people think, behave and what really drives them.

The basic idea is that the informational environment and organism, in this case humans equipped with the ability to speak, interact. Language influences the environment, and the environment influences the language. But, based upon previous experiences and level of language, the same influences can lead to different outcomes in different languages and different cultures.

Dawkins criticizes the adaptationist theory

Here I try to quote Dawkins in his book “The extended phenotype“, about the nonsense of asking a question about the significance of behavior in an artificial world, because adoption and contraception, reading and mathematics are products of an animal living in completely different environment from the one in which its genes were selected. This is not exact quotation, but I hope to have interpreted Dawkin’s idea correctly.

Let’s start with adoption. Adoption is not purely human trait; many animals do adopt offspring of somebody else of the same kin. Some animals are even capable of adopting and rearing totally foreign offspring. But some other animals behave completely the opposite way. A lion kills usually all the offspring of the lion who was the lead of harem of lionesses before. Here the explanation goes by selfish genes. He does not want to have competitors for his own future offspring. So we can see that there are three basic approaches in nature how to behave, one way is to take care of the any living creature, the second is to take care only of the offspring of one’s own kin and the third is to kill all the offspring except one’s own. Most probably the reason for different behavior will be given by different positions in the environment hierarchy. Sometimes it seems to pay off to take care of any living creature, sometimes only of one’s own kin and sometimes it can be advantageous to kill all offspring with the exception of one’s own.

Why do humans adopt other people’s children or just take care of them? Most probably the same reasoning can be used. People just belong to that sort of animals that prefer to take care of the offspring of one’s own kin and sometimes even of all living creatures. Humans do it because of selfish genes. It can be of advantage to take care of somebody’s child, because his genes are closely related to mine compared to the genes of a lion, or a mouse, or a fruit fly, and thus I can help to preserve the wide kin, the human race as such, compared to all other living creatures.

Now it is necessary to discuss the adaptationist theory. What is adaptation? Adaptation is often explained as a way of getting adapted to something. Well, nice explanation but it says nothing. Sometimes people like Dawkins try to explain adaptations as the result of random gene mutations, where the mutation remained that proved advantageous. I think that adaptation can be explained in a much better way than only by try and error of genes. I do not want to count how many mutations could be possible by such a complex organism as humans are. I do not believe that the time the Earth exists is long enough to go through all the possible mutations.

Anything that “approves” as adaptation is mostly only reaction to the specific environmental signals, condition in which the given organism lives. But how can some organism know that some specific reaction is a good one. Well, this happens by try and error. That reaction that yields the best outcome will be repeated many times as all the organism of the same kin will adopt it via, say, imitation and copying. If such reaction is repeated many times then if becomes stored as useful information in DNA. The storing of such information in DNA is the question of energy. If some incentive, some environmental signal is repeated many times and there is already a reasonable response to it, then, it makes sense to pass this information to the offspring so that it does not have to go the whole try and error way again. It just saves energy, because it is too costly to let every new offspring to test the same signal anew from scratch. It saves energy to equip the offspring with the necessary information.

What Dawkins means by artificial world is the world created by humans, the way how fast humans are changing their environment and adjusting it to there present needs, and by doing so they also change the environment of many animals. But this cannot be considered artificial. If we would consider changing environment to one’s own needs as artificial then many other animals would be also “guilty” of creating artificial world. It is not only humans who change their environment. The only truth about humans and their changing their environment is the speed with which this happens, and how fast we change what we have change quite recently. Now the problem is not the speed of change as such but the problem of adapting to these changes. That means the system that has been developed over sever hundred million years now shows malfunctions because the system of adapting is slower than the changes.

Why is it so? Every organism must be able somehow decide whether some signal from the outside world is important or not. But how can a simple organism do this? The answer is extremely easy. Every signal that repeats many times is important. The level of importance is given by the number of repetitions of that particular signal. One can see that all over the world, in all animals and in humans as well.

Let’s mention few examples of how repetition postulates the level of importance. One such activity can be car driving. If you compare a car driver with a lot of experience, many hundred thousand kilometers driven, at different conditions, fast and slow speed on one side and on the other side you take a driver who drives only on Sundays to the church and only in summer, you will find that the first driver is much better driver. It is so because he was more often exposed to the activity of driving, it repeated many more times and so he is more skilled, better adapted to this environmental signal. By environmental signals here I mean all the signals that are necessary to be processed when driving a car, that means reading all the traffic signs, being able to make fast decisions on crossroads, also being able analyze different situations and high speed, because normally humans move only on feet, and the speed of information approaching us is about six kilometers an hour, while driving a car on German autobahns, the speed with which information flies towards you can be as fast as 200 kilometers an hour. The difference is remarkable, and need some time to get used to it.

Examples of the same value are all activities that we learn and by learning we get better. Learning actually means nothing else but repetition. Take languages for example, we have two sorts of languages, mother tongue and foreign languages. The difference is the time when it is trained and how often it is trained, that means when and how many repetitions have been made. If you are born as a one-language child, then, you spend a lot of time only with this single language. Then when you go to school you may have some foreign language classes there, but the amount of time you are exposed to these foreign language is extremely short compared to the time you use your mother tongue. From the evolutionary point of view also the time when you are exposed to the second language are of real importance as discovered by scientists. Human brain is open to language training only in specific times when the owner of this brain is young and growing. Usually the best time is the time after the birth, then there are several “time windows” when the brain is open again to learning foreign language. Whatever you try to learn after your 18th year of life is a hard job as the brain has already got hardwired and it is really energy consuming to readjust this hardwiring, but it is possible. But again the basic principle of adapting to new conditions, say, caused by migration from one language group to the other, is only the number of repetition. It is much easier to learn a foreign language if you are living in the other country than it is when you try to study a language at your home country.

As next I would like to show that the same principle is valid also in sports and games, and in all other activities. Just imagine you try to play basketball, soccer, golf, ice-hockey, volleyball, or high jump, swimming weight-lifting, box, shooting and really all activities, even typing on a typewriter or a pc is such an activity, as well as cooking, wood hacking and dancing. Whatever other activity you can only think of is subject to this principle of repetition.

There is still one extremely important problem to which I try to give some kind of explanation. First, how can organism differentiate between different signals and different responses, and second, where and how is this information stored.

I would like to suggest here that every organism depending on its own level of evolutionary development has several levels where it can store the needed information. A simple organism might have only one, two or three such levels, more complex organisms, like humans, for example, might have many more levels in which they store all the needed information. The levels of storing information correspond with the level of importance of such information. How can organism recognize whether some particular information is of high or low importance according to which it can store it in corresponding level of storage system? The answer appears to me to be obvious. It is the number of repetitions. If there is some information perceived for the first time, organism stores such information at the very lowest level, and only for relatively short time. It costs energy to have useless information stored. So if this information does not repeat in some reasonable time, it gets deleted, and some new information is stored for the first time. If such information keeps repeating, organism knows that it is getting important and shifts the already stored information into the higher level of storing. This has two impacts, first it might be already passed over to the next generation, and it is not so easy to delete this information, first it would have to degrade back to the first level again. If such information keeps still repeated it might be shifted into much higher levels of storing system, and most probably genes are at the last and highest level of storing information. Information stored in genes is information of highest importance, therefore there are hardly changes permitted. Humans do not have usually four legs, but two legs and two arms.

Now the next problem how is the information stored? It is stored by a chemical coding in DNA. And because DNA is a chemical system it can be disturbed by other chemicals, just recall the problems in Germany many years ago with the medicament called Contagarn. This chemical caused in the 1960’s many deformations in newly born when their mothers took this medicament. The substances in the medicament, for some reason, were capable of destroying the information in DNA, and thus cause the phenotypic effect of bodily malformations.

The problem here is the way of coding of information in DNA. It happens in a chemical way, and maybe even one level below, at the subatomic level, where then nanotechnology and quantum mechanics should be used to solve the problem of how the information is really coded and stored. It can be that only chemical links represent one certain level of coding and storing information and subatomic forces, nano-scale formations and quantum mechanics might be responsible for some other level of storing information in DNA.

So the whole problem of adaptation can be driven down to the level of perceiving, storing and passing this information to the next generations. This in turn can be driven down to the number of repetitions of certain signal or information broadcasted by the environment of some organism. Adaptation is therefore only a way of getting used to information or signals that appear very often and getting rid of information that occurs only rarely.