[...] After three cold snaps the scientists stopped changing the temperature and humidity and watched to see whether the amoebas had learned the pattern. Sure enough, many of the cells throttled back right on the hour in anticipation of another bout of cold weather
Exactly. For every "it's not human but does something similar to what humans do" there's some "oh but it's not human so what it does is not what humans do". The first one is interesting, the second one is self gratifying. Duhh if it was doing exactly what humans do it would be human which it logically can't be, tell me something I don't know:)
well, no. i would say it can performs some simple algorithms.
> It knows itself
this is useful, performing those algorithms, and so will be selected for.
> It is able to learn and anticipate.
anticipate? don't know about that.
> It can learn, for example, to avoid something potentially harmful.
bacteria do this, via very rapid natural selection.
> It makes decisions
not in the sense we do.