[Fis] Fwd: Contingency signals: AI Information, Decision and Learning-Sex and Being

[JOHN TORDAY]

Dear Eric, I am afraid you have misunderstood my allusion to the role
gravity plays in evolution, in my opinion, based totally on experimental
evidence. It becomes most apparent and relevant in the vertebrate
transition from water to land, when fish adapted to land (a known fact).
During that transition there were three hormone receptors that duplicated-
the Parathyroid Hormone Receptor (PTHrP), the Glucocorticoid Receptor (GR)
and the beta-adrenergic receptor (beta-AR). Which came first is the
question I have pondered for many years, only recently coming to the
realization that it must have been the PTHrP receptor that duplicated
first, given that it determines bone 'stiffness', and the skeleton would
have been under stress due to the effective force of gravity on land versus
in water. Those members of the species that were able to 'up-regulate'
their PTHrP receptor most readily for bone would have done so successively
in the swim bladder to drive its evolution in becoming the lung, as
evidenced by the fact that in the absence of PTHrP the lung does not
alveolarize (Rubin et al, 2004), followed by the role of PTHrP in forming
kidney glomeruli from the fish kidney glomus, and the augmentation of the
stress signal from pituitary to adrenal cortex to produce adrenaline and
cortisol. We know that there must have been such a scenario since fish
attempted to breech land on at least 5 separate occasions (see Clack, J.A.,
Gaining Ground, 2012). The relevance of these physiologic adaptations can
be seen in astronauts who experience osteoporosis due to PTHrP deficiency
(see Torday, 2003 for evidence of such) as well as kidney complications due
to down-regulation of PTHrP control of salt and water balance. So in the
aggregate, in reply to your comment that "gravity would not directly
control the growth of a bilateral gynandromorph that is half female and
half male down the middle", I would beg to differ based on the hormonal
adaptations for land life, which are fundamental to land vertebrate
physiologic adaptations for skeletal integrity, breathing, salt and water
balance, if you get my point. And all of these physiologic traits are
essential for the bipedalism that freed our forelimbs for tool-making,
including speaking, and locomotion, all of which are under the control of
the FoxP2 gene and are 'housed' within the Area of Broca (see Torday JS. A
central theory of biology. Med Hypotheses. 2015 Jul;85(1):49-57). It is
this transition from crawling on all fours to standing on two legs due to
the advent of endothermy that marks the evolution of our over-seized
central nervous system....and as a consequence, at some point in human
evolution our heads became too large to fit in the birth canal so we are
born prematurely, with only 25% of brain capacity, requiring decades of
nurturing by family and society in order to effectively mature as a
species, if ever (I note my current President).

As for your glib comment about "The issue is more understanding the
information that makes a difference (Oh dear I have slipped into Spencer
Brown"......In this regard, I think you misunderstand Spencer-Brown too in
that what he was telling us is that we are fractals of a 'holism' as the
unmarked space.

And as for your flippant comment about "gravity does not make the
difference between a whale and a dog" I again beg your pardon, but gravity
is exactly what makes the difference between a whale and a dog, referring
again to gravity's effects on the physiologic traits of each on land (dog)
and in water (whale) given that seals are thought to have evolved back to
water from dogs......

But you may take exception to what I am saying, so have at it. I am of the
opinion that the way I have traced evolution from cell to our 'selves'
accounts for the evolution of consciousness from the former to the latter
as I have expressed in numerous peer-reviewed articles, and 14 monographs.

Best, John



On Sun, Nov 23, 2025 at 11:11 AM OARF <eric.werner at oarf.org> wrote:

> Dear john,
> There is a difference between necessary conditions that are just that and
> offer no information that controls the growth of detailed structure in
> multicellular organisms that differentiates one from another and conditions
> like gravity that apply to all such developmental processes. Thus, for
> example, gravity would not directly control the growth of a bilateral
> gynandromorph that is half female and half male down the middle. See:
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://arxiv.org/abs/1212.5439__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!SqqytOi9HSAwtpz1HUW7U8AqTefa_Iq6JAxPGJfLVwQROWWpu1w2S34Gr7BOfsgWzjYJzo_2m9ttM5IVb-A$  for more details.
>
> But I  agree that gravity and oxygen certainly have their effects on
> development.
>
> The issue is more understanding the information that makes a difference
> (Oh dear I have slipped into Spencer Brown ;-) ).
> and gravity does not make the difference between a whale and a dog.
>
> Best,
> Eric
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Nov 23, 2025, at 3:05 PM, JOHN TORDAY <jtorday at ucla.edu> wrote:
>
> 
> To Eric, Gordana, Howard, regarding the role of sex in evolution, I would
> like to point out that the role of gravity in evolution also entails sex in
> the following way. In the study of the effect of microgravity on yeast, the
> simplest eukaryote, they cannot 'bud' as form of asexual reproduction in
> microgravitational conditions (Purevdorj-Gage B, Sheehan KB, Hyman LE.
> Effects of low-shear modeled microgravity on cell function, gene
> expression, and phenotype in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Appl Environ
> Microbiol. 2006 Jul;72(7):4569-75). I am of the opinion that it is only in
> addressing the evolutionary ontology as it corresponds with the
> epistemology that an adaptive trait can be understood, as in the case of
> sex as a means of adapting to an ever-changing environment. In the case of
> yeast, budding is a means of epigenetic inheritance of environmental
> factors relevant to its adaptation, and the force of gravity affects that
> process. These authors also observed that the yeast could not conduct a
> calcium flux under microgravity, rendering them unconscious 'zombies'. I
> share this information with you in an attempt to find a final common
> pathway for the process of evolution, ultimately referring to the elements
> in the Cosmos as the latter's 'logic', as I expressed it in an accompanying
> email earlier today....Best, John
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 23, 2025 at 8:13 AM OARF <eric.werner at oarf.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi Gordana,
>>
>> I was just responding to Howard’s more general point beyond bacteria.
>> Eukaryotes have sex an inherently social process.  Sexuality is
>> fundamentally a cooperative process, at many levels of organization. Even
>> social at the level of the genome:  See my theory of meta-genome
>> interactions between the sexes.  It is particularly clear in the case
>> physically mixed sex organisms (this can be neurological as well).  See the
>> theory applied to mixed sex organisms or gynandropmorphs:
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://arxiv.org/abs/1212.5439__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!SqqytOi9HSAwtpz1HUW7U8AqTefa_Iq6JAxPGJfLVwQROWWpu1w2S34Gr7BOfsgWzjYJzo_2m9ttM5IVb-A$ 
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://arxiv.org/abs/1212.5439__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!XLF-Q-SqJ-AuvQ-dic9ptw82Ooe57dI4UX6ePa7CTWADakJMPTruAnfSd0yTCHhsfb-S3Rv04mCA4h3ClsatzQ4$>
>>
>> So the sexuality of being is inherently social.
>>
>> -Eric
>>
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ericwerner.com/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!SqqytOi9HSAwtpz1HUW7U8AqTefa_Iq6JAxPGJfLVwQROWWpu1w2S34Gr7BOfsgWzjYJzo_2m9tttiPtPGI$ 
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ericwerner.com/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!XLF-Q-SqJ-AuvQ-dic9ptw82Ooe57dI4UX6ePa7CTWADakJMPTruAnfSd0yTCHhsfb-S3Rv04mCA4h3CaUt82MM$>
>>
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>>
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