Advantages of a single cell organism over a multi cell organism
What are the advantages of being a multi cell organism? What are the advantages of a single cell organism?
Single cell organisms far outweigh multi cell organisms on the earth. I'm not sure its rational for a single cell organism to partner with other single cell organisms. I think undirected evolution is an irrational concept.
https://phys.org/news/2016-04-cell-evolved-multicellular-life.html
Questions and Comments
Single cell organisms far outweigh multi cell organisms on the earth. I'm not sure its rational for a single cell organism to partner with other single cell organisms. I think undirected evolution is an irrational concept.
https://phys.org/news/2016-04-cell-evolved-multicellular-life.html
Questions and Comments
Comments (49)
What I mean is could it be due to the existence of multi-cell organisms that single cell organisms still thrive. The same thing with societies and individuals. An individual mind came up with the theory of relativity but it needed something to nurture it to that point.
its certainly possible i guess.
What is irrational is this argument from ignorance. No rational conclusion can follow from "I haven't a fucking clue."
lol. You'll find out you are wrong someday. Next time leave the emotion out of your argument you fool.
If you didn't think my argument had some validity you wouldn't have gotten so upset. Don't worry about me, i'll be just fine. :)
Well, if multicellular life didn't have advantages then it wouldn't have evolved. If unicellular life didn't have advantages it wouldn't continue to exist would it? That's according to the theory of evolution.
As per the theory of evolution (toe) creature adapting to the environment depends on how fast they reproduce because adaptations occur in the offspring and not the parent.
So, an organism that reproduces faster clearly has an advantage over its slower cousins. They adapt faster to the environment. Given this is so unicellular creatures will fare better than multicellular organisms because the former have a higher reproductive rate.
That said consciousness, logical ability is a feature possessed by multicellular life (humans) and this ability confers a survival advantage by allowing us to manipulate the environment rather than us adapting to it.
Which of the two is superior will depend on circumstances. If an asteroid hits the Earth then unicellular organisms will survive but not plants and animals. If environmental change is gradual then our brains may be up to the challenges thus imposed.
There’s little doubt that natural selection has a significant impact on what kind of traits survive in life-threatening environments. But evolution and diversification occurs in abundantly resourced and non-threatening environments as well, and some traits or behaviours developed in these environments have little to no survival value, but instead suggest an underlying motivation to evolution that can be masked by extinction rates.
If chance and survival were the only determining factors of evolution, then humanity certainly would not have evolved into an organism equipped to maximise awareness, interconnectedness and overall achievement over individual or even genetic survival. We can think of ourselves as a ‘fluke’ of evolution, the pinnacle of its achievement OR as its greatest potential still to be realised.
Multicellular life persisted where it didn’t harm survivability, but I don’t think we should therefore assume ‘survival value’ as the motivating factor simply because it seems most obvious. It’s also too much of a leap to then claim ‘logical ability’ as a survival advantage of multicellular forms over unicellular. I find it interesting, too, that animals seem to discard under-utilised survival traits in abundant environments, but often retain traits with no survival value despite the threat of resource scarcity. Personally, I think we need to dispense with Darwinian apologetics and consider the possibility that there’s more to evolution than chance and survival value.
But before anyone jumps immediately to divine intervention (because I’m pretty sure that’s where the OP may be headed), I would argue that all matter started out with the potential to maximise awareness, interconnectedness and overall achievement. I think most of it is dependent on humanity now, though. An intervening God can be a way to ‘pass the buck’, in my opinion.
The theory of evolution does not assume that. That would be a subset called natural selection. Other selection mechanisms, like sexual selection, are actively discussed within the theory of evolution.
According to the theory of evolution, all that is required to pass on a trait is for the individual having the trait to reproduce. No "survival advantage" is strictly speaking necessary.
Yes, evolution may not be simply a matter of chance & survival but these are the major players. Yes, there are claims that some traits have no survival value but one may ask ''how do you know?'' Given that no better explanation is available it's only reasonable that we assume such ''useless'' traits are yet to be fully understood, a better position than misunderstanding them as contradicting evolutionary principles.
thats fair. But i should add, there are 100s of possibilities of how life could end in 10 years or 1 million years. Life on this planet could be argued to be by sheer chance. What is the probability of all this happening. According to the book "a brief history of time", if you roll a trillion sided die trying to roll the number 15, if you roll it 1 trillion times you will probably roll a 15.
Given these facts, the fact that life exists is matter of sheer chance with many chances. Are you with me so far?
Belief in God or gods is absolutely necessary to human survival whether or not you believe that or not.
More lives are created due to faith in a God or gods than that are destroyed by faith. You can accuse me of evangelizing all you want. I'll be just fine.
Don't be so simple.
I believe Jesus Christ is the way the truth and the life and no one comes to God except through him.
This is just my philosophical belief. :)
But a trait that helps an organism survive also provides opportunity for mating and thereof to pass on the concerned traits.
Grass is green and turns brown in winter. Imagine two species of grasshopper; one bright red and the other green. One color camouflages well and the other doesn't. More green grasshoppers survive and so more green grasshoppers mate resulting in an increase in the green grasshopper population. The red ones die out. So reproduction is correlated with traits that have a benefit to survival.
This is possible, but it's not a necessary process. If, for example, red grasshoppers had a significantly higher chance of mating (perhaps grasshoppers find red attractive) it might also lead to red grasshoppers surviving despite the selection disadvantage.
A survival advantage can lead to a better chance of reproduction, but the reverse is not true.
Correct in my opinion. It's all about numbers isn't it? More the merrier?
EDIT: Sorry didn't read your post carefully. I think reproductive capacity does lead to a survival advantage because variety in the gene pool is greater and thus adaptation can occur with greater ease.
Imagine this: There's a global event occuring over a period of 10 years. Consider two organisms, A reproduces every 2 years and B reproduces every 10 years. A clearly has an advantage because adapatation can occur over 5 generations with the proviso that within 10 years some offspring will have traits that allow A to face the global event. B, on the other hand, has no such opportunity and will be the last generation of its kind.
Maybe because they're so small they need very little resources, and are built to be incredibly adaptive to many different environments (organic or otherwise). Just look at bacteria. Basically half your body is bacteria.
yeah, i agree with that. Certain aspects of humans and some other animals seem to be aspects that are devolution not evolution. Snakes are better off with legs and have been shown to actually have evolved into not having legs after lizards came about. Humans are worse as giving birth than Apes. The vagina is not condusive to giving birth and women have it built into their dna to have all sorts of problems after giving birth (post partum depression)
It has nothing to do with what you think is rational for single cell organisms to do. It has to do with what has successfully survived and reproduced in a given environment. It may not seem rational if one holds to a top down model of organized systems, but bottom up or self-organizing systems do not operate according to a predetermined rational plan.
i disagree. Unless you want to elaborate on that, i don't believe you thought this through.
There is an extensive literature on self-organizing systems. The fact that you disagree does not mean that researchers who have spent their lives on this have not thought it through. And for what it is worth, despite what you believe, I have thought it through.
thats fair. Since were on a forum where we all pretend to try to educate each other: do you have an article or am i going to have search for it my self. My current take on predestination is that its valid, so self organizing systems isn't a stretch.
That may be what you pretend to do on this forum. You are going to have to search for yourself. Self-organizing systems would not be self-organizing if there was anything like predestination at work. You are going to have to stretch.
i guess i'll cry myself to sleep tonight. Don't go getting your feelings hurt. I will look up some articles on that subject. Actually predestination unfortunately allows for just about anything. Read the book "a brief history of time by stephen hawkings or look up scientific determinism.
Self-organization occurs in many physical, chemical, biological, robotic, and cognitive systems. Examples of self-organization include crystallization, thermal convection of fluids, chemical oscillation, animal swarming, neural circuits, and artificial neural networks.
taken from wikipedia
Why would it be a surprise for self organizing systems to appear in artificial neural networks? I don't believe you've read more than 10 pages on this subject from anyone source and the reason thats important is that to find self organizing systems in biology you would have to move towards the threshold of becoming a doctor or some form of a biologist. If your trying to tell me i can study this subject for 30 days 8 hours a day and some how gain the right to tell people i'm right or that your wrong about this given subject, i believe you are severely mistaken. There are plenty of doctors that believe in gods or a God.
You make a lot of assumptions about what I have and have not read. There is plenty of information available on self-organizing biological systems, and much of it is written for people who do not have advanced training in the biological sciences. It is a standard part of the philosophy of biology.
Quoting christian2017
The right to tell people you are right? If you are interested do a bit of research, if not then don't. You certainly do not need to study this subject for 30 days 8 hours a day to discover that there is solid evidence of self-organizing biological systems. There are plenty of doctors who believe in gods or a God who do not believe that their god plays a role in evolution. The Catholic Church accepts evolution with the exception of the origin of the human soul.
i accept evolution too. These doctors who believe in gods or a God also believe these gods directed evolution. As too you assuming this is a simple subject that can be studied by reading a single 10 page article is dumb on this particular matter. Good luck understanding evolution completely without studying the subject for years on end. I'm not saying you have to go to a university but you will have to go the library and do alot of reading.
They may accept some features of evolution such as common morphology or common ancestors but guided evolution is not Darwinian evolution.
Quoting christian2017
I assume no such thing. You seem to be making excuses for not looking into a matter that may undermine some of your beliefs.
Quoting christian2017
No one understands evolution completely, and anyone who has studied it for years on end knows this.
Quoting christian2017
More assumptions. I have in fact done quite a bit of reading on the subject over a period of many years. I have read Darwin and more contemporary works based on biological advances that was not available when he wrote.
If you have something substantive to say I will respond otherwise I am done.
i say the same to you. Some of the things you said in your previous post i would agree with its just i didn't say them just like you. However i can promise you that Darwin didn't understand evolution the way the modern evolutionist understands it. Darwin essentially made conjecture and he just happened to be correct for the most part. I won't be going to you for medical advice and i won't be going to you for information on evolution. Like i said before, i do believe in evolution or at the very least am fairly certain it is a reality.
Rationality has nothing to do with it.
Single cell organisms have been, and remain, tremendously successful. No doubt about that. Multi-celled organisms formed--not by design, not for rational reasons. They just did -- just as single-celled organisms developed all the various features that various species display.
As for advantages and disadvantages, you have to ask, "In what circumstance?"
the core of depression and suffering is really the ability to feel the need to think deeply. The worm doesn't question "God" as to why it has no legs. It just eats and poops and treats food like a drug. I'm not saying we should think deeply or not think deeply but a single celled organism is fully capable of reproducing quickly without growing into a deep thinking depressed human. Humans are said to have developed religion as a way to produce large populations but i feel from a emotional and practical stand point the smaller and less complicated we are the better we are. (single celled organism). i believe Humans are a reflection of a deep thinking and depressed extra-natural (my term) creator.
That's the opposite of what I believe: I believe our gods are actually a reflection of deep thinking and depressed (neurotic) humans. The gods didn't exist and it was necessary that we create them. It was one of our greatest cultural achievements.
Quoting christian2017
Baloney.
I was reading a book about alienation, and to praise the author (it was a good book) I commented that he must have been really alienated to write so meaningfully about it. A political scientist shot that idea down with "Really alienated people don't write books." Later on in life I discovered that this was true: Really alienated and/or depressed people don't write books. Productivity doesn't come out of misery. More like immobilisation flows out of misery.
Thinking and feeling deeply does not lead to suffering. Actually, I don't know for sure how to get out of the sloughs of despondency, alienation, abandonment, and wretchedness that we get into. I've been in there, and got out, but I can't really say "this is how you get better". I got better. But then, how did I get into that mess? I could tell you about that, but it takes too long.
We are stuck being deep thinking depressed (depressing) creatures. Get used to it.
What has not changed is the realization that evolution is not directed by some external intelligence. That is why it was a revolution in human understanding.
Quoting Fooloso4
That would be hard to prove. You are essentially saying you've found proof that gods or a God doesn't exist. Not likely that you've found proof of that.
I have absolutely nothing against people believing in God, or not, as long as both sides retain some modesty about what can be demonstrated.
I believe that there are no divine beings. I used to believe that such beings did exist. In neither case can I show a shred of evidence to support either case. We can legitimately speak at great length about our belief or disbelief in the gods. About the objects of our belief (or disbelief) we must remain silent.
It is not a matter of disproving the existence of or role of an external intelligence, it is a matter of whether such is necessary to explain what happens. Your original claim was that "undirected evolution is an irrational concept". It is not necessary to prove that gods or a God doesn't exist, it is simply necessary to provide a natural explanation without the need to introduce supernatural entities. Evolution has been remarkably capable of doing just that. At one time it was believed that God must play a role in chemistry, but our understanding of chemistry does not include an active role for God. Newton set out to demonstrate the hand of God in the motion of the planets, but it turned out that he was able to explain their motion without introducing God.
It is not that I am "essentially saying [I've] found proof that gods or a God doesn't exist". I have not and do not think it is possible to. What I am saying is that science does not introduce entities into explanations that work without them. This is Occam's razor. In no way does it determine the existence or non-existence of God.
It is questionable that directed evolution necessarily implies a role of an external intelligence, as a director. I don't think however that existence of intelligence external to living beings on our planet, is entirely irrational idea. It is a matter of belief, or speculation, depending on someone's point of view, but nothing I can exclude for sure.
I thought everyone wrote books, stories, poetry. That's why it's no longer possible to get published.
Quoting Hrvoje
There are other advantages of single-celled organisms over multi-ones.
1. They never get a cold.
2. They don't have to go to work; in the least they are exempt of punching a time-card.
3. Their debt-to-equity ratio remains stable.
4. They can get into the pants of really beautiful people much easier than you and I put together.
5. Addiction is a strange concept to them. Thus, they can bet on the horses till they are blue in the face, they won't get hooked and cause them to put their families through incredible financial and social hardships.
Frantisek Kaffka and Gerhardt Oberhauptfuhrer Nietzsche* were two truly alienated people who wrote excellent, long, and many books. And you can't get more alienated than those two blokes. If you do, you must be cheating.
I admit I don't know Nietzsche's fist name and middle name. I bet they are even scarier to spell than his last. What I wrote as his first names is the result of unresearched speculative facts which are most likely false facts.
Well, you're actually correct. Darwin created the basis of the theory of evolution, but it doesn't do science any good to hold on to Darwin's ideas and to Darwinism, because evolutionism has greatly evolved (sorry for the pun) since Darwin's age. For example, Darwin and neodarwinists usually represent evolution by using the Tree of life, completely ignoring that evolution cannot be only divergent but convergent as well. The tree analogy can be useful to describe eukaryotes, but fails to describe how bacteria evolve, since they can exchange genetic material also by using the horizontal gene transfer, which is the movement of genetic material between organisms other than by the vertical transmission of DNA from parents to their offspring. The fact that a characteristic that has been acquired during an organism's lifetime could be transmitted to the offspring goes against what darwinists think (and might sound a bit "Lamarckian") , but it's happening so we have to accept it.
Also, about not being rational that the unicellulars partner with other unicellulars, Darwin himself stated that those organisms who actively cooperate with one another have a higher chance to survive, because cooperation is as valuable as competition.
Quoting Fooloso4
Darwin was a believer and, after reading his books and notes, one could come to the conclusion that Darwin actually believed there was a God behind the whole evolution process. At the end of the Origin of species he said that "life [...] originally breathed into a few forms or into one". However, before dying, Darwin wrote a letter to the botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker saying he regretted having used the biblic word "creation" in many of his writings, and that he would have rather called it "apparition", since he wasn't sure of what or who was behind a mechanism such complex as evolution.
The Origin of Species says nothing about the origin of life. This is an important point that is often overlooked. Whatever his beliefs in God may have been, it is quite clear that he did not describe God as playing any role in speciation. And, as you say, the science of evolution has evolved since Darwin.
I personally don't believe that a God played any role in the apparition of life on earth or in evolution (I am saying this because maybe my post suggested otherwise). However, I respect those who believe that everything happened according to God's plan (or Gods' plan, for that matter) and I don't think they are less logic or rational or that they can't fully understand/appreciate the theory of evolution.
I took your statements to be about Darwin and evolution, not your own beliefs on the matter.
Quoting Patulia
I have always found this claim to be problematic. It may be for some a source of comfort, but since things happen as they do there is no way to know whether they happen according to plan since whatever happens can be said to happen according to plan but just as well can be said to happen without a plan or at least in the case of human actions contrary to God's will.
The essence of the difference is that multicellular ones are more complex. The relative simplicity of single celled ones is at the same time their limitation, since they cannot differentiate cells and develop some complex functions, such as for example neural networks, so, this is a disadvantage, and on the other hand they are not vulnerable to cancers which seems to be an inherent limitation of multicellular ones, so in that sense this simplicity is an advantage.
I have a clear conscience, as I was merely answering the question the best way I could, without trying to be clever or wit, or to ridicule someone, because such things backfire at you.
Specialization? Division of labour? The possibility for individual cells to specialize, so that they can carry out specific functions more efficiently ...
In "The wealth of nations", Adam Smith argued this thesis extensively for the economy of human societies. Well, Xenophon seems to be the first one to have pointed out these advantages:
Just as the various trades are most highly developed in large cities, in the same way, food at the palace is prepared in a far superior manner. In small towns, the same man makes couches, doors, ploughs and tables, and often he even builds houses, and still, he is thankful if only he can find enough work to support himself. And it is impossible for a man of many trades to do all of them well. In large cities, however, because many make demands on each trade, one alone is enough to support a man, and often less than one: for instance one man makes shoes for men, another for women, there are places even where one man earns a living just by mending shoes, another by cutting them out, another just by sewing the uppers together, while there is another who performs none of these operations but assembles the parts. Of necessity, he who pursues a very specialized task will do it best.
Maybe it spares each cell from digesting individually by themselves the coffee I have just had? While they also would have to take care of breathing, responding to differences in light and colour, checking the smell of things it should not try to eat, as well as tasting, and so on.
Quoting christian2017
Less fragile. More robust. Less overhead. No need for an entire bureaucracy to protect with a thick skull; a bureaucracy undoubtedly worse than the European Union's commission in Brussels, which incessantly sends memos and other emails to lots of unwilling other cells about what the new rules for food labelling are all about. That narcissistic thing may even end up consuming most of the available resources and starve the other cells for its own benefit. That is easy to do for that cerebral bureaucrat, because it is in charge of everything anyway.
Dear Hrvoje, I have a clear conscience, too. I like to make jokes; humour is like music appreciation, which enriches life without any biological benefit. Those who don't enjoy humour are a bit impoverished in their enjoyment of life.
I have met many people on social sites who have no sense of humour, and they harshly criticized me for cracking jokes. I don't agree with them, but I also appreciate that they don't agree with me. It's a given, a sense of humour is; either you have it, and you enjoy then jokes, or else you don't have it, and then jokes seem incredibly repulsive to you. I am sure I'm in the first pile; you must be in the second pile.
There is nothing we can do to bridge this difference. You will think of me as a fool, who makes light of serious stuff unnecessarily; you will think of me as a person who is irresponsible, and does stupid things, whereas you likely think of yourself as serious, smart, and not frivolous. I, on the other hand, think of my jokes as the salt of life, as the icing on the cake; and think of those who don't have a sense of humour as borons.
This is just how things are. I'm resigned to share the universe with borons. They bug me, but hey, I am not the ruler of the universe, they have just as much right to their boring existence as I have to mine, and I only hope that the borons gain enough insight to realize that there is something out in this world which they don't understand, which irritates them at best, and which enriches the life of those who understand it.
You assume that all humanity share YOUR sense of humour, and insist that my sense of humour is worthless. Hence I assert that you're employing the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.
Also, you know of only one person who thinks my sense of humour is not funny. You can't extrapolate from there that people (more than one person) don't like my sense of humour.
And even if you can get a consensus of X number of people, where x is a positive integer greater than 1, who positively assert they don't like my sense of humour, you can't from that alone prove that there are no more than the author person of the joke himself who enjoy the joke.
Therefore I say unto you, that your reasoning to prove that my sense of humour is crap, is false.
Therefore I have the right to call you a boron, since it was YOU who first insulted ME, by calling me a humourless person. If you assume that you have the knack to decide what is humorous and what is not, then you automatically assign ME the right to judge over your sense of humour.