"Intelligent" Design in Nature

[Peter Deadpan]

Interpret as you will.

 

[Peter Deadpan]

Lungs and Trees. Is this the most efficient design for respiration?
I haven't felt like researching yet, because I am a lazy sack.
BUT... I did think about this today as I drove. And then I envisioned the external world as an internal lung, with the actual outside of Earth being what we presently know as the outside, the inside (that is wordy and grammatically incorrect and doesn't make sense and I don't care). And then I compared that to the inside of a human body, and envisioned humans as the equivalent of gut bacteria. And then I wondered if we can use this design to our advantage for combating air pollution.
I'm not high... you are (I'm not, but I wish I was).

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Yes and no. I mean there is a certain “ intelligence” to the universe and I think it’s all a giant, singular entity of sorts, but I don’t buy the idea of some magical, invisible hand molding jellyfish or whatever either. The complexity and multiple types of specialization we see in life are the product of an insanely long period of constant failure and adaptation. Life forms and the “nonliving” matter of the universe are just facets of the same thing

 

[Peter Deadpan]

Yes and no. I mean there is a certain “ intelligence” to the universe and I think it’s all a giant, singular entity of sorts, but I don’t buy the idea of some magical, invisible hand molding jellyfish or whatever either. The complexity and multiple types of specialization we see in life are the product of an insanely long period of constant failure and adaptation. Life forms and the “nonliving” matter of the universe are just facets of the same thing

Whisper more sweet nothings into my digital earhole.

 

[á´…eparted]

I do not ascribe to the notion of "intelligent design" in any form. Not until we have affirmative evidence, or even reasonable leads that some sort of consciousness put the universe together in some intended or haphazard way. At current, there is no reason to see it that way from an evidence standpoint. We should continue to follow our intuition and seek answers for why our universe is the way it is, but always let the evidence guide us.

The way I see it, many things simply are. This is a notion few are comfortable with, and I fully admit I am not entirely comfortable with it either. We all like to feel protected or safe in some way, and the idea that there is no protection or meaning in anything can easily lead to a person becoming afraid of many things. So much of the world is left to chance, and yet equally if not far more things are emergent. It seems to be like one of the fundemental rules of the universe is that chaos reigns supreme, but it all ultimately exists under constraints. Specifically, patterns. There are so many patterns in everything that all ultimately funnel back to the standard model (although it's becoming increasingly suggestive that even this is not the fundemental bedrock of everything). As the basic building blocks of everything seem to operate under constraints and rules with some baked-in rule breaking, it seems quite reasonable to expect that everything emergent beyond that point will mirror this idea. In fact this is what we see.

I was watching a Veritasium video earlier today that touches on this idea of order and chaos being emergent in many fundemental things that seem interconnected. This is deeply fascinating and for me brings a richness to the world and in a way gives it meaning, because it shows that there is a fundemental interconnectedness with basic operations in the universe. Why? We can't seem to really say yet, but we should continue to search. Perhaps the answer really is "it simply is" (I think that is most likely), but we won't know unless we keep searching.

 

[Norexan]

 

[rav3n]

Consider human eating and breathing. Any 'intelligence' that created a joined apparatus, controlled by a flap of skin, must have been insane. As you can see by the diagram, they didn't need to be joined.

Either it's insanity or that random evolutionary forces, allowed for something as poorly designed as this to exist.

 

[Virtual ghost]

As far as I understand this is the term invented by American right wing.
However many things in the universe are pretty far from anything ideal or carefully designed. Defects in many organisms and species are numerous as well as mutating viruses. Incorporating nuclear energy into the fundamentals of how world works and creates chemical elements is either questionable or shows lack of power. Also the fact that Sun is the main source of energy for the biosphere but also a nuclear reactor is kinda both absurd and cynical. 99.99999% of this reality is vacuum that can't support life and has temperatures very very deeply below freezing point. Most planets are full of various rifts, volcanoes and impact craters made be asteroids and comets. Neutron stars seem to be able to kill all life from many light years away. In short this reality really doesn't look as if it was made by someone that really loves us.



Plus you are still left with the question of who designed the creator and if creator doesn't need a creator then why we can't say the same for universe.

 

[Polaris]

For reasons that I'm not going to get into with this post, I believe that nature must possess a form consistent with the existence of personal consciousness. That means I think there is a certain sense in which the universe is compelled to give rise to life. It is only compelled to give rise to life in the most minimal fashion, which is why the universe is just barely compatible with life. I also believe that everything that exists has some degree, however small it may happen to be, of intelligence, and that this intelligence serves as a guiding force for evolution. What I do not believe is that someone wrote out an explicit plan for things like flagella or the human circulatory system and then implemented it. Such things arose very gradually as a result of a largely improvisational process that is still ongoing.

 

[Peter Deadpan]

Just to be clear, I'm an atheist. The quotes in the thread title were intentional. I prefer to entertain theories that mostly involve energy as an influential force of development, or even the possibility of being in a simulation. I do not think that patterns repeat by coincidence (such as with the lung and tree), and it is of great significance that such repetition can be seen at micro and macro levels. I think energy or algorithms make the most sense as influencers, and the latter would imply a creator.

I don't even believe in a solid state of reality. In fact, it's a scientific impossibility... humankind just likes to assume that things exist as they are within our (very narrow) scope of perception. Things don't "exist" until they are perceived, and the dog sure as shit doesn't see the grass as green as we do, yet he can hear what we cannot.

I realize I'm not saying anything novel, but I also don't think that many people actually sit around and dissect their sense of reality.

 

[Siúil a Rúin]

I took a "Brain and Behavior" class at a community college where we studied the structure and function of the brain. I was overwhelmed with just how much it seemed like a messy closet. This part does this, but this older part also does it sometimes it seems. Yeah, it looks like the Cerebellum does a lot more than just control movement and reflexes, maybe it was the entire old brain, and then we have this new big juicy one stuck on top of it that does all the same stuff, but also more stuff.

I left that class understanding what's wrong with humanity.

 

[Siúil a Rúin]

Regarding your OP, it is mesmerizing the pervasiveness of fractal geometry in every aspect of reality. I sometimes wish I could have studied math - my brother was gifted at it, I did okay but not well enough for a life focus. Fractals in particular are fascinating to me, especially the way that the whole is contained in the fragment. The relationship of small and large scale, the way it unifies everything. Fractals can be both linear and infinite. Philosophically there is an Indra's Web aspect to them.