No. Some of the slime molds in particular demonstrate an ability to live as individual unicellulars for arbitrarily long times.
Slime molds. My point is that there's practically every degree of multicellularity out there now. So where am I supposed to imagine the hurdle?
I really don't like arguments of the "Nobody can make me understand how this happens" form. You just don't prove anything this way.
No. Some of the slime molds in particular demonstrate an ability to live as individual unicellulars for arbitrarily long times. Slime molds. My point is that there's practically every degree of multicellularity out there now. So where am I supposed to imagine the hurdle?
I really don't like arguments of the "Nobody can make me understand how this happens" form. You just don't prove anything this way.
1. Some slimes have the ability to live as either a single cell, or as a colony of cells.
2. In their natural condition they live as colonies.
3. When one cell is separated from the colony, it can live an abitrarily long time.
4. The slimes already have the DNA encodng that allows this to happen.
This is a valid argument that there are now organisms that can NOW live as either single entities, or as groups. It does not serve to explain how this ability may have come about, or why this ability to colonize might be an advantage to the previously single-celled organism.
I do not think my earlier post was of the "'Nobody can make me understand how this happens' form."
You have a theory. I am examining the theory to decide whether I think it is valid. I cannot pretend to be doing a very rigorous testing of the theory at this point, but I am making an honest attempt to examine the premises and test hypotheses in a logical manner. Should the premises appear to hold, and the hypothesis not reduce to absurdities, then the theory would appear to be worth spending additional time upon. Should the theory be built upon faulty premises, and faulty logic, then it is basically junk, and not worth spending any more time upon.
I believe
Post 182 provided an excellent framework for examining the plausibility of the mechanism theorized.