If single-cell organism is conscious, and each cell of our body is a "single cell", it immediately follows from here that "our" consciousness is in fact consciousness of a certain, very specialized, cell which resides somewhere in our body. Maybe it lives in the brain, maybe elsewhere, but it's a single cell nonetheless.
It doesn't follow - the type of consciousness we experience could be different. Though if you were saying that it's absurd to call single cell 'conscious' in the sense that human brains are, then I agree.
I really think every cell is conscious, and whatever we believe to be "our" consciousness comes from a single cell.
I am not alone in this opinion:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~regfjxe/awnew.htm
(though I came up with this trivial idea independently, and later found the article by googling)
This ME-cell gets inputs from other cells obvioously.
Do you know that MANY cells in our body are not replaceable? E.g. those that control muscles. If this cell dies, the man dies, it's that simple.
BTW, bacteria (=~cell) intelligence is an active area of research (google it, you will be surprised). That's the only form of intelligence we know. Apparently, we are not familiar with the most intelligent ones yet - they (certain species) may have very developed knowledge of things, including the art of DNA manipulation, which goes far beyond everything
ME-cell (=human) knows. Why assume we are the brightest ones? It's laughable.
As someone with a modicum of biological knowledge, I am not aware of any single cell that is critical to human survival in the way you describe.
As for your analogy, it is true that microorganisms can perform wonderful feats, but it is a bit misleading to equate that to general intelligence. It is like saying a compiler is smarter than a programmer, because its design incorporates tricks the human may not know. (The bacteria being "designed" by the trial-and-error process of natural selection, rather than an intelligent entity, of course.)
> Author here. As far as I understand, the Jewish quotas were not proportional to the population
I was through similar experiences to your dad's roughly at the same time.
Quotas, where they were in place, WERE proportional to the population (2%). There was a number of very good schools where we Jews were more than welcome (e.g. MIIT) - your dad was supposed to be aware of this.
You have to thank God that he was not accepted to Military Academy - you probably won't be here if he was.
I don't blame them for not accepting me to Moscow University. I blame them for not letting us go, locking us in their country and using as hostages in "peace" negotiations with US. (Every concession from US was accompanied by opening the gates for a small number of people).
People of Russia were (and still are, to large extent) victims of brainwashing. Beware of brainwashing, it's effective regardless of country.
"if you're good, you can perhaps show an Order" ???
Is it your wild guess? Who told you this nonsense?
Gamification was executed so badly - it was complete absurd. It was anti-motivation rather than a motivation. Everything was fake, everybody ridiculed it, no one ever taken it seriously within my memory (since mid-60s).
