But it seemed to me  the school marm, Mark Houlsby (which may be a pseudonym), has one,   because of  the way he constantly gets after people for rude remarks, going off-topic, and disregard of what he thinks is grammatical correctness, as well as any view he disagrees with, which are mostly non-conformist views.   Yet Houlsby is not an anti-Stratfordian nor does he  seem any more irrational than every normal person is, just set in his narrow ways.  So, I decided there are two basic kinds of rigidniplexes, “hyperrigidniplexes” and “hyporigidniplexes,” the first being highly irrational, the second not particularly irrational.

Actually, I’ve always believed in more than one kind of rigidniplex, but I hadn’t come up with names for them I liked, and my definitions of them were vague.    Now I think I’ll call the most rigidnikal of rigidniplexes, the ones suffered by genuine psychotics, “ultrarigidniplexes.”  Such rigidniplexes are either not “sensibly” irrational, the way hyperrigidniplexes are, or are based on unreality rather than the irrational, although they are no doubt irrational as well.  For instance, an ultrarigidnik may believe unreal aliens from another dimension are after him whereas a mere hyperrigidnik will only believe, say, that no one whose parents are illiterate can become a great writer, which is idiotic but but is merely a misinterpretation of reality, wholly irrational, but not drawing on pure fantasy.

There are probably two levels of hyporigidniks–no, make that three.  Managerial hyporigidniks are the most successful rigidniks, common in the officer corps of the military, and on corporation boards, and, of course, running federal bureaucracies, or universities.  Rigidnikal enough to dominate third-raters, and hold unimaginatively to a course that has proved effective in the past, and rally others at their level, along with the masses, against non-conformity, which will include a country’s culturateurs.  Such hyporigidniks are the great defenders of mediocrity.  And here’s where this entry becomes on-topic for a blog called “Poeticks,” for among the great defenders of mediocrity are the people selecting prize- and grants-winners in poetry, and which contemporaries’ poetry should be taught, published and made the subject of widely-circulated critical essays or books.

A level below the managerial hyporigidniks are the marmly hyporiginiks.  Only slightly above-average in charactration, or basal mental energy, below average in accommodance, the engine of flexibility, imagination, creativity, but with possiblely slightly above average accelerance, or the ability to raise their mental energy when appropriate.  So, not in managerial hyporigidniks’ league, but able to construct rigidniplexeses about trivialities like table manners, spelling, etc., and lord it over milyoops.  And, in poetry, repeat the opinions of the Establishment.

Managerial hyporigidniks, I should have said, are higher in charactration than lesser hyporigidniks.  Indeed, each level of rigidniks has more charactration, and less accommodance–and smaller but more life-consuming rigidniplexes.  The lowest-level hyporigidniks have average charactration and accommodance, and variable but never inordinately high accelerance.   Peasant hyporigidniks, I call them: they form rigidniplexes that are little more than habits sensible for their position in life, and aren’t so much locked into them as too unimaginative to try anything else.

In the past, I’ve often hypothesized a kind of “pararigidniplex”–a rigidniplex formed by freewenders, who are the sanest, most intelligent people.   I now have a new name for it: “wendrijniplex.”  It’s like any other rigidniplex except for its origin, which is not caused by a person’s chronically having too much charactration and too little accommodance, but by a freewender’s having in a single instance, too much charactration and too little accommodance, his enthusiasm for a discovery of his over-riding his critical sense, and his continued pleasure in the rigidniplex it brings into being, being too great for him to break ties with it.  So it blights his intellectual existence every bit as unfortunately as a rigidnik’s rigidniplex blights his.

To be thorough, I will remind my readers (including myself) that everyone forms knowleplexes, which are mental constructs each of which provides an inter-related understanding of some fairly large subject like biology, for a layman, or the biology of mammals, or of one species of mammals, for a biologist.  A rational (although not necessarily valid) knowleplex is a “verosoplex.”  Offhand, I would say there are two kinds of irrational knowleplexes: rigidniplexes and–another new term coming up–”ignosoplex,” or a knowleplex which is basically too inchoerent to be classified as either rational or irrational.  It’s the result of ignorance.  We all have many of them, each concerning a field we are “ignosophers” about–not completely ignorant of, but not sufficiently knowledgeable about to be able to form a verosoplex–or any kind of working rigidniplex.

I’m well aware that most readers will find the above the product of an ignosopher.  It isn’t.  It’s just a pop-psychology–level very rough draft of one small knowleplex the among many making up my knowleplex of temperament, which in turn is a small knowleplex among the many making up my theory of intelligence, which is just a small portion of my theory of epistemology, which is a not-small portion of my theory of the human psychology.  Or so I keep telling myself.

]]> http://poeticks.com/2010/09/25/entry-232/feed/ 0 http://poeticks.com/2010/09/11/entry-218-evolution-of-intelligence-part-4/ http://poeticks.com/2010/09/11/entry-218-evolution-of-intelligence-part-4/#comments Sat, 11 Sep 2010 00:00:39 +0000 Bob Grumman http://poeticks.com/?p=2554 Sensors are  at first sensitive to only one stimulus.  If the sensitivity helped its cell, it would be retained by the species; if not it would be not be retained.  Eventually, sensors would become potentially sensitive to more and more stimuli, to hurry the process of finding effective sensitivities.  Sensors always sensitive to a wide vairety of stimuli would not be effective until they were able to limit their sensitivity to the first stimulus they are exposed to.  This would also keep the cell up-to-date–no longer would they automatically have sensitivities to other species that had become extinct or to matter in an enivronment no longer present.

Okay, now comes the detachment of such sensors before being sensitized to given stimuli.  They might not be able to admit neuro-signals then, in which case they would be innocuous accidental superfluous intruders that could well persist–until they became sensitive to neuro-signals.  At that point, they would become “sensor-sensors.”

Once able to become active, they would emit neuro-signals that would turn on effectors, sometimes, beneficially, sometimes not, sometimes neither.  Once an inhibitor joined one of them to make a proto-retroceptual reflex, their cell could inhibit them from activating effectors they should not.

To go back to my earlier remarks: “Another step in the evolution of superior intelligence will be the advent of inhibitors and stimulators–and we know inhibition and stimulation have major roles in the nervous system.  An inhibitor is device which prevents any effector it is connected to from acting in the same manner that a sensor causes the activation of any effector it is connected to.  Like everything else, it would pop up by chance but persist when it happened to be connected to a prey-odor sensor, say, and inhibited an away-from effector.  Ergo, the alphazoa blessed with such an inhibitor would not flee a cell whose predator color it had an avoidance reflex for if the cell had a prey odor, but appropriately flee a cell that had the color of a predator but no prey odor.

Eventually, effectors would evolve capable of causing two actions, or a sensor similarly capable.  Hence, an effector connected to a sensor sensitive to prey odor might both inhibit withdrawel from a cell with a predator’s color and cause advance toward a cell with the odor of prey.  Or a sensor sensitive to prey odor connect to two effectors, one inhibiting withddrawel, one causing advance.

“So, life will now have achieved the ability to choose between advancing or withdrawing in the direction of a gray cell, and be on its way toward more complex actions.  It will still be a very primitive computer, but with something like intelligence, anyway.”  The alphazoan could now, in effect, remember encountering a certain stimulus, what resulted, and whether or not the outcome was beneficial.

Something else is likely to have happened: various effectors sensitive to all neuro-signals from endo-sensors becoming constantly manufactured while inhibited ones are destroyed.   This would allow the cell constantly to find effective new ways to deal with existence.  Only effective reflexes consisting of endo-sensors and effectors would keep alive, and the latter would become more sophisticated in what signals they accepted, for they’d be able to accept lots of difference signals so long as what action they contributed to was pleasurable.  Stimulators would increase this.

The number of sensor-sensors would increase, as well.  The truest form of memory would occur once one sensor-sensor conected to another.   You would then have a memory of, say, stimulus A followed by a memory of stimulus B.  If cellular activity (call it activity C) as sensor-sensor B becomes active is positive, then when stimulus A again leads to sensor A’s activation, Sensor A would activate sensor B–even it no stimulus B was then present.  AB would then, through memory, try to cause activity C and possibly succeed.

More complex arrangements would then have to evolve.  Memory-holders, as I will now call sensor-sensors, would become sensitive to much, then all, “information” transmitted during an “instacon,” or unit of consciousness  They would retain the “information” until having some threshold amount needed for activation–which might come to be variable, dependent of what’s going on in the cell as a whole.  Longer strands of connected memory-holders would come into being.  Effectors would gain variable amounts of neuro-signals, often from more than one memory-cell (and no long directly from a sensor), and need a certain minimal amount to become active.  At some point, too, multi-cellular organisms would evolve or have evolved, relatively soon devoting whole cells to carry out the functions I’ve been giving to organelles.

Consequently, my next step in modeling the evolution of intelligence is going to concern the development of the mnemoducts my theory hypothesizes, as the central organs of memory, and intelligence.  I am taking a break from the project now, however, because of other projects higher on my present list of priorities.

Here’s a revision of what I’ve been fumbling with concerning the evolution of intelligence with some additions:

An explanation of intelligence, starting with its evolution, if by intelligence we mean “choice of behavior” as opposed to random activity.

Let’s begin with the first living cell, a protozoan.  It moves randomly through water.  Eventually it accidentally acquires a sensitivity to light, let’s say, although it could be salt density or temperature, it doesn’t matter.  So, it has the prototype of a nervous system, a single sensor sensitive to light.  The next consequential accident will be its evolving a component–an organelle–that makes it move in some direction as opposed to being moved by environmental forces.  Call it an “effector.”  It may evolve this before it evolves a sensor, it doesn’t matter, What matters is that eventually many protoazoa will have non-functioning but not seriously biologically disadvantageous nervous-systems. They’ll have the potential to be superior (that is, they will have taken a step toward us), so I will call them “alphzoa.”

The first key accident leading to intelligence will be an alphazoan’s forming a linkage from its light-sensor to its effector, allowing the former to activate the latter.  As I see it, the linkage will not be the equivalent of a wire, but will result from two hypothesized attributes of organelles, at least the sensors and effectors I’m speaking of.  First claim: that when a sensor is exposed to whatever it is in the exo-environment that activates it, it carries out some kind of chemical reaction that creates molecules that leave it to flow haphazardly through the cell’s cytoplasm.  This will likely have no particular effect on the cell, so will be ignored by natural selection.

Second claim, an effector will react to the presence of the molecule the sensor transmits by absorbing it.  Eventually. it will absorb a molecule that partakes in a chemical reaction that leads to the effect for which the effector is responsible.  Ergo, a micro-relex is born.  If the action the reflex leads to is a biologically advantageous reaction to the presence of the stimulus activating the sensor involved, natural selection will keep it.  If, as probably the case, the reaction is neither good or bad, it may or may not be kept long enough for nature to find some use for it.  If the reaction is disadvantageous, cells possessing the reflex will die out.

Let me further propose that the organelles I’m speaking of have the equivalent of cell membranes, and call the molecules transmitted neuro-transmitters, which is what they in effect are.  So, if an effector causes movement toward light, and light is beneficial–as perhaps a source of energy–alpazoa with this capacity will soon become dominant.  Alphazoa which light causes to move away from light will die out.  Or perhaps evolve differently, finding something in darkness that makes up for lack of light–concealment from prey, maybe.  In any case, a functional, useful nervous system will have come into being, or what I’d call simple reflexive intelligence.

Eventually some sensor will evolve that is sensitive to the color, say, of one of the alphazoan’s prey and links with an effector causing the alphzoa to move toward the prey, a “toward-effector.”  Ditto, a reflex with an “away-from effector” attached to a sensor sensitive to the color or some other characteristic of some kind of predator on the alphazoan.  Not a technical advance, but certainly a big jump in improving the alphazoa’s biological fitness.

By this time, something of central importance had to have happened, or become ready to happen: the evolution of sensors sensitive to pain and pleasure.  For that to happen, “endo-sensors” (sensors sensitive to external stimuli) would have to have broken free of the cell membrane to become potential “intra-sensors.”  And somehow become sensitive to something of vital importance, a chemical due to damage to the cell membrane, say–probably excessive water (a biochemist would know).  Or maybe the organelle might have become sensitive to pieces of the membrane with which it would never have come into contact unless the membrane were damaged.  If the intra-sensor were attached to an away-from effector, natural selection would select it because of its value in helping its cell get away from whatever had damaged is membrane.

Before or after the evolution of pain-organelles, similar organelles connected to toward-effectors would become sensitive to some by-product, say, of a successful hunt–something eaten but not digested, that would cause  the cell to pursue whatever it had gotten a good taste of, with a feeling of pleasure.

Metaphysical question: why would such a sensation of pleasure be pleasurable?  That puzzles me.  The answer is not because it would motivate the cell to do something to keep the pleasure occurring.  Nothing can motivate a cell.  If it evolves a way to move toward a certain beneficial stimulus, it will do so, whether it feels pleasure or not.  My only guess to account for this is that in the eogotmic universe (or ultimate universe behind all existence), construction (such as the combining of materials to make a membrane) pleasurable, destruction (i.e., fragmentation) is painful, and that construction/destruction here reflects construction/destruction there.   Hence, any living organism will feel pleasure when it is reasonably well-organized, pain when going to pieces (and nothing one way or the other when in between the two states), and its state of organization will reflect its egotomic state of organization.

Another step in the evolution of superior intelligence will be the advent of inhibitors and stimulators–and we know inhibition and stimulation have major roles in the nervous system.  An inhibitor is device which prevents any effector it is connected to from acting in the same manner that a sensor causes the activation of any effector it is connected to.  Like everything else, it would pop up by chance but persist when it happened to be connected to a prey-odor sensor, say, and inhibited an away-from effector.  Ergo, the alphazoa blessed with such an inhibitor would not flee a cell whose predator color it had an avoidance reflex for if the cell had a prey odor, but appropriately flee a cell that had the color of a predator but no prey odor.  Eventually, effectors would evolve capable of causing two actions, or a sensor similarly capable.  Hence, an effector connected to a sesnor sensitive to prey odor might both inhibit withdrawel from a cell with a predator’s color and cause advance toward a cell with the odor of prey.  Or a sensor sensitive to prey odor connect to two effects, one inhibiting withddrawel, one causing advance.

So, life will now have achieved the ability to choose between advancing or withdrawing in the direction of a gray cell, and be on its way toward more complex actions.  It will still be a very primitive computer, but with something like intelligence, anyway.

]]> http://poeticks.com/2010/09/07/entry-214/feed/ 0 http://poeticks.com/2010/09/02/entry-208-more-on-maximuteurs/ http://poeticks.com/2010/09/02/entry-208-more-on-maximuteurs/#comments Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:00:09 +0000 Bob Grumman http://poeticks.com/?p=2459 I continue continuingly to feel like I need a nap: when I lie down, I close my eyes and at once feel near to sleep–but rarely sleep.  Although, I seem now always to get six hours or more at night.  Can’t figure it out.  But It makes it hard for me to concentrate, or want to do anything like write a daily entry here, which I’m forcing myself to do to keep myself from falling entirely to sloth.

I’m not sleepy when on the tennis court.  This morning, I played three sets of doubles (2 wins).  I was reasonably energetic, and running better, albeit nowhere near as well as I feel I ought to.  When I got home, I didn’t start limping, as I generally do after tennis.  So my leg may be getting better.  I quickly got sleepy, though.

Okay, to provide slightly less trivial content to this, back to the maximuteur, specifically to the what makes a failed maximuteur.

1. Not knowing enough, including the fact that one doesn’t know enough.  The result for the failed verosopher is a faulty premise, for the failed artist, lack of originality.

2. Illogic that will doom even a maximuteur with a valid premise or full understanding of an art.

3. Lack of talent for self-criticism.

4. Lack of marketing skills.

I think 1. may well apply to me as a theoretical psychologist, but none of the others–at least to any significant degree.  I’ve done almost nothing to market my theory, but I’ve published enough to make it available, and had a weird enough life, enough of it documented, to eventually get someone to pay attention to it.  I consider it very likely invalid, but almost certainly of value.

I don’t think any of the reasons for failure apply to me as a poet.  Again, my marketing attempts have not been very good, but my poetry has been published and a few times discussed by others.  I can’t believe that I won’t get so much as a footnote in literary histories of my time.

First, two new Grummanisms: “utilinguist” and “alphasemanticry.”  The first is my antonym for a previous coinage of mine, “nullinguist,” for linguist out to make language useless; ergo, a utilinguist is a linguist out to make language useful.  By trying to prevent “poetry” from meaning no more than “anything somebody thinks suggests language concerns” instead meaning, to begin with,  “something constructed of words,” before getting much more detailed, for example.

“Alphasemanticry” is my word for what”poetry” should mean if the nullinguists win: “highest use of language.”  From whence, “Visual Alphasemanticry” for a combination of graphics and words yielding significant aesthetic pleasure that is simultaneously verbal and visual.”

I popped off today against one of Frost’s “dark” poems, or maybe it is a passage from one of them:  “. . . A man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead”–the kind academics bring up to show Frost was Important, after all.   “Wow,” I said, “Wow, he confronts death!  He must be major! “  I then added, “Frost is in my top ten all-time best poets in English that I’ve read but not for his Learic Poems.”

James Finnegan then corrected me, stating (I believe) that the poem didn’t confront death but showed its effects.   I replied, “Okay, a poem about the effect of death on two people.   What I would call a wisdom poem.  I’m biased against them.  I like poems that enlarge my world, not ones that repeat sentiment about what’s wrong with it, or difficult about it.  Frost knew a lot about reg’lar folks, but I never learned anything from him about them that I didn’t already know.  In other words, I’m also somewhat biased against people-centered poems.  But mostly, I don’t go to poems to learn, I go to them for pleasure.”

I would add that I’m an elitist, believing with Aristotle that the hero of a tragedy needs to be of great consequence, although I disagree with him that political leaders are that, and I would add that narrative literature of any kind requires either a hero or an anti-hero (like Falstaff) of great consequence.

I’m not big on poems of consolation, either.

I find that when I have to make too trips on my bike in a day, it zaps me.  I don’t get physically tired, I just even less feel like doing anything productive than usual.  Today was such a day.  A little while ago i got home from a trip to my very nice dentist, who cemented a crown of mine that had come out (after 24 years) back in for no charge, and a stop-off at a CVS drugstore to buy $15 worth of stuff and get $4 off.  I actually bought $18 worth of stuff, a gallon of milk and goodies, including a can of cashews, cookies, candy, crackers . . .  Living it up.  Oh, I did buy cereal with dried berries in it, too.

My other trip was to the tennis courts where I played two sets, my side winning both–because of my partners.  I’m not terrific at my best, and have been hobbled by my hip problem for over a year.  It may be getting slightly better, though–today I ran after balls a few times instead of hopped-along after them.  I’m still hoping I’ll get enough better to put in at least one season playing my best.  Eventually, I’m sure I’ll need a hip replacement but there’s a chance I won’t have to immediately.

I’ve continued my piece on the evolution of intelligence, but not done anything on it today.  now fairly confidentI have a plausible model of the most primitive form of memory, and its advance from a cell’s remembering that event x followed action a and proved worth making happen again to a cell’s remember a chain of actions and the result.  That’s all that our memory does, but it’s a good deal more sophi- sticated.  I think I can show how primitive memory evolved to become what my theory says it now, but won’t know until I write it all down.  (It’s amazing how trying to write down a theory for the first time exposes its shortcomings.)  If I can present a plausible description of my theory’s memory, it will be a good endorsement of it.  No, what is much more true is that if I am not able to come up with a plausible description, it will indicate that my theory is probably invalid.

]]> http://poeticks.com/2010/08/31/entry-207/feed/ 0 http://poeticks.com/2010/08/29/entry-207a/ http://poeticks.com/2010/08/29/entry-207a/#comments Sun, 29 Aug 2010 00:00:09 +0000 Bob Grumman http://poeticks.com/?p=2362 At this stage of the evolution of intelligence a lot of minor advances would be made: multiplication of reflexes, the addition of sensors sensitive to the absence of a stimulus, the combining of more sensors and effectors so, perhaps, a purple cell with white dots and smell B and a long flagellum will be pursued if the temperature of the water is over eighty degrees but not if it is under.

By this time, something of central importance had to have happened, or be ready to happen: the evolution of sensors sensitive to pain and pleasure. For that to happen, “endo-sensors” (sensors sensitive to external stimuli) would have to have broken free of the cell membrane to become potential “intra-sensors.” And somehow become sensitive to a chemical due to damage to the cell mem- brane–probably excessive water (a biochemist would know). Or maybe the infra-cell might become sensitive to pieces of the membrane which it would never have contact with unless the membrane were damaged. If the intra-sensor were attached to an away-from effector, natural selection would select it because of its value in helping its cell get away from whatever had damaged is membrane.

Eventually similar intra-sensors connected to toward effectors would become sensitive to some by-product, say, of a successful hunt–something eaten but not digested, that would cause the cell to pursue whatever it had gotten a good taste of. I’m now going to name all such components of a cell that carry out functions like those of the sensors and effector “infra-cells” to make discussion easier. Let me add the clarification that the connections between sensors and effectors may begin as physical channels but will soon almost surely come to be made by precursors of neuro-transmitters: i.e., a sensor with “connect” to its effector by a distinctive chemical that only the effector recognizes and is activated by.  The cell’s cytoplasm will act as a primitive synapse.

Various other “neurophysiological” improvements should soon also occur. One would be an intra-sensor’s gaining the ability to activate a toward effector when it senses pleasure but activate an away-from effector when it senses pain. The accident resulting in such an infra-cell would not be too unlikely, it seems to me: simply the fusion of two cells, one sensitive to pain and connected to an away-from effector, the other sensitive to pleasure and connected to a toward effector. Obviously an evolutionary improvement.

It also seems likely to me that intra-sensors would evolve sensitive to the activation of effectors. They would connect to other infra- cells carrying out reactions to, say, a successful capture of prey: a toward effector becomes active due to signals from a sensor sensitive to a certain kind of prey, in which case the outcome should be dinner, so a sensor sensitive to the effector’s activation which is connected to some infra-cell responsible for emitting digestive juices or the like, would be an advantage.

Certain other infra-cells should evolve to allow the step up to memory, but right now I can’t figure out what they might be, so will stop here, for now.

I claim that any reasonably intelligent non-genius actor of the time could have used the historians of the time, as Shakespeare did, to have written them.  Add, perhaps, a cleverness with language that some 14-year-olds have.  The only way his histories improved after the trilogy was in the author’s becoming better with words, through practice, of course, but only what he would have gotten from contin- uing to write plays (and doctor plays and–most important–THINK about plays), and getting interested enough in a few of his stereotypical characters to archetize them as he did Falstaff.

It seems to me that the requirements for being a playwright are (1) a simple exposure to plays to teach one what they are; (2) the general knowledge of the world that everyone automatically gets simply by living; (3) the facility with the language that everyone gets automa- tically from simply using them all one’s life.  The rank one as a playwight will depend entirely on his inborn ability to use language, and his inborn ability to empathize with others, and himself.  Of course, the more plays he writes, the better playwright he’ll be, but I’m speaking of people who have chosen to make playwriting their vocation (because they were designed to do something of the sort).

I speak out of a life devoted to writing and having read biographies of dozens of writers.  I would never be able to agree that I’m wrong on this.

This it did, for a day, for I wrote 1150 words the day I wrote the above. After that, I wrote a few hundred words about it daily for a few days, then missed a day.  That was okay with me because the reason I slowed down, then wrote nothing was that I thought I needed to back way up and explain intelligence, starting with its evolution.  A tough job even if I could remember as much of my theory as I needed to.

After a day or two of inactivity, I managed a few words a day four a couple of days.  They were of much value but they did start awakening my understanding of my theory. Eventually, I got the beginnings of my take on the beginnings of intelligence, if by intelligence we mean “choice of behavior” as opposed to random activity.

Let’s begin with the first living cell, a protozoan.”  It moves randomly through water.  Eventually it accidently acquires a sensitivity to light, let’s say, although it could be salt denisity or temperature, it doesn’t matter.  So, it has the prototype of a nervous system, a single sensor sensitive to light.  The next consequential accident will be its evolving a component that makes it move in some direction as opposed to being moved by environmental forces.  Call it an “effector.”  It may evolve this before it evolves a sensor, it doesn’t matter, What matters is that eventually many protoazoa will have non-functioning but not seriously biologically disadvantageous nervous-systems.  They’ll be superior (no quotation marks: they will have the potential for intelligence other protozoa lack, so will be superior to them, if not to invincibly egalitarians halfwits, whom I’m insulting here in the hopes they go away and I won’t have to hear the nonsense I eventually would if they didn’t).  Ergo, I will call them “alphzoa.”

The first key accident leading to intelligence will be an alphazoan’s forming a linkage forming its light-sensor and effector, allowing the former to activate the latter.

If the effector causes movement toward light, and light is beneficial–as perhaps a source of energy–alpazoa with this capacity will soon become dominant.  Alphazoa which light causes to move away from light will die out.  Or perhaps evolve differently, finding something in darkness that makes up for lack of light–concealment from prey, maybe.  In any case, a functional, useful nervous system will have come into being, or what I’d call simple reflexive intelligence.  The march to Us hath commenced. Eventually some sensor will evolve that is sensitive to the color, say, of one of the alphazoan’s prey and links with an effector causing the alphzoa to move toward the prey, a “toward-effector.”  Ditto, a reflex with an “away-from effector” attached to a sensor sensitive to the color or some other characteristic of some kind of predator on the alphazoan.  Not a technical advance, but certainly a big jump in improving the alphazoa’s biological fitness.

At the same tiime, alphazoas will naturally be increasing their numbers of such reflex pairs.  Eventually, there’d have to be a sizable group of alphazoa with several effective reflex pairs, to significantly improve their chances of those pairs lucking into new combinations of high importance. A good example would come about when an organism preying on the alphazoa evolved the same coloring as the alphazoa’s prey.  Misfits without the toward-gray reflex would suddenly have an advantage on those with it.  Some such misfits would develop withdraw-from-gray reflex pairs.  Eventually some of them would also develop a sensor sensitive to something the prey had that the predator did not have but the gray prey did, smell A, say, and connect it to the move-toward effector.

Conditions would then be right for the next essential evolutionary step toward full intelligence.  Alphazoa would exist, each of which has an away-from-grey reflex and a toward-smell A reflex.  So they would flee from gray cells without smell A–but both flee from and go after gray cells with smell A.  Safety, but no meal unless the prey swam into them.  This problem (or one like it) would be crucial in making conditions right for the advent of a rudimentary form of “choice,” however.

I’m sure messy partial solutions would come about and probably clever mechanisms different from the one I think may have carried the day.  But something along the lines of the solution I’m about to propose had to have occurred.  It would depend on the evolution of inhibitors–and we know inhibition has a major role in the nervous system.

An inhibitor is device which prevents any effector it is connected to from acting just the way a sensor causes the activation of any effector it is connected to,  Like everything else, it would pop up by chance but persist when it happened, say, to be connected to a smell-A sensor and inhibited an away-from effector.  Ergo, the alphazoa blessed with such an inhibitor would flee a gray cell which lacked smell A, but go after such a cell if it had smell A, because it sinhibitor would prevent the away-from effector from preventing it from doing that.

So, life will now have achieved the ability to choose between advancing or withdrawing in the direction of a gray cell.  It will still be a very primitive computer, but with something like intelligence, anyway.

***  That’s as far as my coherent writing got.  Extremely difficult to write although what I said  could probably not be more simple and unoriginal.

Yeah, more delusional day-dreaming on my part.  But just to write an essay on the shrinkage seemed to me a good idea.  Another achievement, if I finished it, and a chance to clarify my thinking about my knowlecular psychology, too.  Also perhaps enough fun to break me out of the dry spell I’ve been going through as a writer.

This it did, for a day, for I wrote 1150 words about it Friday.  Four or five hundred Saturday and another six hundred yesterday.yesterday.   In the process, though, I veered into the evolution of intelligence and suddenly have too many problems to solve. What I thought I’d do a short essay about needs a short book to do right.

Oddly enough, one of my larger problems is defining intelligence.  All I’m sure of is that it came long before brains evolved.  I think it may just be “the ability of an organism to choose reactions to a situation based on more than one piece of knowledge.  Presence of predator equals flee would be pre-intelligence, or a reflex action.  Presence of predator when one has a spear equals destroy equals intelligence.  Even though in the final analysis all our behavior is reflexive.  It’s just that some behavior’s stimulus is both temporally and spatially larger than another’s.