The information smokescreen
Marko Grönroos
moderation settings weren't correct in our news server. News relay
software definitely should notice these problems and inform the
poster.]
Some creationist mathematicians and computer scientists seem to have
formulated their own "theory of information", which is supposed to
extend Shannon's theory of communication. This "Gitt theory of
information" is then used as an argument to "prove" that evolution is
impossible, because "information can not be created through a random
process", but that it always requires a mental source - God in the
case of genetic information.
Arguments based on information theories have recently become
increasingly common in both 'net debates and creationist literature.
After reading some articles on biosemiotics, I realized that Gitt's
theory is really just one semiotic theory of biological
information. Strangely, he or other creationists do not seem to make
any references to semiotic literature at least in their web articles
(I don't have their books though).
The main creationist sources seem to be:
1. The main features of Prof. Werner Gitt's theory are presented in
the article:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/tj/tj_v10n2p181.asp
The primary source seems to be his book "In the Beginning was
Information", see book advertisement at:
http://shop.gospelcomdirect.com/answersbookstoreintl/detail.asp?UID=10-3-086)
2. Another creationist scientist who has written about information is
Prof. William Dembski. His primary claims are presented in three books
"The Design Inference", "Mere Creation", and "Intelligent Design". His article
on genetic information is available on Web, at address:
http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_idtheory.htm
Then there is a discussion started by Richard Dawkins, who presented his
views on genetic information, in his article "The 'Information Challenge'":
http://www.onthenet.com.au/~stear/dawkinschallenge.htm
3. Creationist scientist Dr. Royal Truman wrote a commentary to
Dawkins' article, using Gitt's theory as the "scientific" basis of his
arguments. Truman's article is available at:
http://trueorigins.org/dawkinfo.htm
Some short comments to Truman's claims were written by an evolutionist:
http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/box/rebuttal_to_royal_truman.htm
4. A book "Evolution - Ein kritisches Lehrbuch" was published in 1998
by Prof. Siegfried Scherer and Dr. Reinhard Junker, with help from
about 15 other doctor-level scientists (mostly biochemists and
biologists). The book was recently translated to Finnish by a
creationist biochemist, Prof. Matti Leisola.
The book contains a section where Gitt's and Dembski's theories are
presented in brief and used as proofs for intelligent design.
(To my understanding, the academic credits of these particular
creationist scientists are valid. Their professional research is
apparently not about creationist views of evolution.)
Nevertheless, I think I have found many obvious flaws in Gitt's
theory, but as I'm not an expert with the topic, I can't be certain
about the actuality of the flaws. Biosemiotics and information theory
are, after all, heavy philosophical topics not meant for the
weak-minded (such as myself).
It seems to me that the most obvious and critical weakness in Gitt's
theory of information is the absolute requirement of a mental source
for all information. This seems ludicrous to me - most information
(encoded for example as light signals) received by human sense organs
(such as eyes) do not originate from a mental source, but from
inorganic nature.
Let me present a simple counterexample to Gitt's theory, which should,
in my opinion, crush it immediately. Bob wants to communicate the
weather to Alice. He uses a flashlight to send the signals. The
signals are coded with colored films so that a blue light means clear
sky, and gray light means cloudy. Alice knows and understands this
code, and can interpret the meaning of Bob's signals. Fine, they can
communicate. Now, Alice goes by the window and looks up at the
sky. The code is the same, and same amount of uncertainty about the
weather is removed from Alice as would have been if Bob had
communicated to her with the flashlight.
To my understanding, clouds are not usually considered a mental or
intelligent. That information - or "information-like thing" doesn't
fit in Gitt's definition of information, but it is still as useful as
information and actually looks like information. So I'd like to think
that "if it looks like information, it is information".
Will I hear the sound of Gitt's theory crumbling down?
So the general problem would be that if the definition of information
is made too strict in an invalid way, biological organisms will simply
not contain any information by that definition. In such a case, it
would be meaningless to talk about "increase or creation of
information", as information wouldn't even exist. Claus Emmeche's (see
reference below) view seems to be that the informational metaphor
should not be followed blindly in biology, as its usefulness as a
metaphor is not totally clear.
To me, this creationist appeal to the "scientific information theory"
seems like just one more creationist red herring or smokescreen
rhetoric; very similar to the false appeal for 2nd law of
thermodynamics in relation to biology/evolution.
Some sources on biosemiotics:
Claus Emmeche: http://www.nbi.dk/~emmeche/
Biosemiotics Homepage: http://www.ento.vt.edu/~sharov/biosem/
--
-- Marko Grönroos, ma...@iki.fi (http://www.iki.fi/magi/)
-- Paradoxes are the source of truth and the end of wisdom
John M Collins
> Some creationist mathematicians and computer scientists seem to have
> formulated their own "theory of information", which is supposed to
> extend Shannon's theory of communication. This "Gitt theory of
> information" is then used as an argument to "prove" that evolution is
> impossible, because "information can not be created through a random
> process", but that it always requires a mental source - God in the
> case of genetic information.
Isn't a big part of the problem that it is "unfortunate" that the same word -
entropy - is used in both information theory and thermodynamics with different
meanings?
This enables creationists to lurch back and forth from one to the other and for
example use the half-baked understanding they have of the 2LoT to argue that
entropy in the information theoretic sense can't decrease.
--
John M Collins, aa1639 Xi Software Ltd, Unix and Linux Software since 1986
Email: j...@xisl.com (home and work) Phone: +44 (0) 1707 886110
URLs: http://www.xisl.com (work) http://www.johncollins.org (Personal)
Snail: 6 West Burrowfield, Welwyn Garden City, Herts AL7 4TW, UK
R.D. Heilman
John M Collins <j...@xisl.com> wrote in message
news:39D890AD...@xisl.com...
> "Marko Grönroos" wrote:
>
> > Some creationist mathematicians and computer scientists seem to have
> > formulated their own "theory of information", which is supposed to
> > extend Shannon's theory of communication. This "Gitt theory of
> > information" is then used as an argument to "prove" that evolution is
> > impossible, because "information can not be created through a random
> > process", but that it always requires a mental source - God in the
> > case of genetic information.
>
word -
> entropy - is used in both information theory and thermodynamics with
different
> meanings?
>
Marko Grönroos
> Isn't a big part of the problem that it is "unfortunate" that the
> same word - entropy - is used in both information theory and
> thermodynamics with different meanings?
>
> other and for example use the half-baked understanding they have of
> the 2LoT to argue that entropy in the information theoretic sense
> can't decrease.
Yes, but I'm not sure it's only the creationists... I've done that
lurching too in the past, many times, and I'm supposed to be some sort
of computer scientist. Those are really difficult concepts for me.
One reason for my misunderstanding(?) comes from the reversible
computing. You see, there is supposed to be a problem with computing
that if you destroy information (bits), you generate heat. They even
say that there is a minimum energy equivalence for a bit of
information. The solution for this is supposed to come from
"reversible logic" hardware that doesn't destroy information. But, I
guess that this is totally different concept of information. But how
many different kinds of information are there, and how can I
distinguish between them?
A book "Information for Dummies" would be nice...
Tracy P. Hamilton
"Marko Grönroos" <ma...@iki.fi> wrote in message
news:m38zs7b...@magi.yok.utu.fi...
> John M Collins <j...@xisl.com> writes:
> > Isn't a big part of the problem that it is "unfortunate" that the
> > same word - entropy - is used in both information theory and
> > thermodynamics with different meanings?
> >
> > This enables creationists to lurch back and forth from one to the
> > other and for example use the half-baked understanding they have of
> > the 2LoT to argue that entropy in the information theoretic sense
> > can't decrease.
>
> Yes, but I'm not sure it's only the creationists... I've done that
> lurching too in the past, many times, and I'm supposed to be some sort
> of computer scientist. Those are really difficult concepts for me.
> One reason for my misunderstanding(?) comes from the reversible
> computing. You see, there is supposed to be a problem with computing
> that if you destroy information (bits), you generate heat.
OK. It should take a fair amount of energy to change a
physical representation of a 1 to a 0 or vice versa.
>They even
> say that there is a minimum energy equivalence for a bit of
> information.
That should be very small. You may want to search under
Maxwell's Demon.
> The solution for this is supposed to come from
> "reversible logic" hardware that doesn't destroy information.
This might be mainly because fewer hardware states are
being changed. How do these devices work?
> But, I
> guess that this is totally different concept of information. But how
> many different kinds of information are there, and how can I
> distinguish between them?
>
> A book "Information for Dummies" would be nice...
--
Tracy P. Hamilton
sc...@home.com
>
<snip>
>
>OK. It should take a fair amount of energy to change a
>physical representation of a 1 to a 0 or vice versa.
>
"0" and "1" states.
The amount of energy required is probably a function
of how stable you desire your 0 and 1 states to be.
>> A book "Information for Dummies" would be nice...
>
I could write it, but then it really would
be for dummies.
Scott
John M Collins
> A book "Information for Dummies" would be nice...
>
It isn't really "for dummies" but quite a good beginners book is "Basic
Concepts in Information Theory and Coding" by Golomb, Peile and Scholtz.
--
John Collins (j...@xisl.com)
5 The Reeds, Welwyn Garden City, Herts, AL7 3BN, UK
Tel/fax: 01707 883174 Work: 01707 886110
Personal Web Site: http://www.johncollins.org
John M Collins
> Please explain the difference between the two forms of entropy.
Thermodynamic entropy refers to the degree to which heat energy in particular
(although there are mathematical relationships with other forms of energy) is
"spread out" and evenly distributed. A hot object next to a cold object is said
to have lower entropy than two intermediate temperature objects. Entropy is
said to tend to increase in that heat tends to flow from hotter to colder
objects, and the difference in entropy is the amount of heat which flowed
divided by the difference in temperature (well sort of integrated and all that
fun stuff).
But it is said to increase "in a closed system". When creationists refer to the
second law of thermodynamics (which broadly speaking defines entropy) they omit
the bit about the closed system when they talk about the biosphere being
entropy reduction. They "forget" about the sun, a very hot object chucking
gargantuan amounts of energy at us, a rather colder set of objects - a much
larger increase in entropy than anything that the biosphere can come up with by
way of a reduction. It's a bit like getting worried about splashes at the
bottom of a huge waterfall disproving the idea that water only flows downwards.
On the other hand information theoretic entropy refers to the degree of
unreliability of a piece of information, how likely it is to be incorrect. The
information doesn't necessarily have any thermodynamic significance at all, and
the thing about heat flipping bits is a red herring. To take a topical example
or two, when there is an oil crisis there is higher thermodynamic entropy - you
can't find local sources of heat energy but there isn't much doubt about the
fact so the information theoretic entropy is much the same.
On the other hand the complaint about the published election results in
Yugoslavia is that they have high information theoretic entropy but probably
have the same thermodynamic entropy as the accurate figures would have,
probably rather less as Milosevic raised a few thousand former Kosovo residents
from the dead to boost his vote.
--
John Collins aa 1639 (j...@xisl.com)
Marko Grönroos
> > "reversible logic" hardware that doesn't destroy information.
>
> This might be mainly because fewer hardware states are
> being changed. How do these devices work?
All I remember from the quantum computing lecture is that the
reversible logic circuits work both ways, from input to output, and
output to input. They have an extra output and input that is a "junk
bit", which can be "recycled" in a special manner. I understood very
little of the lecture. Quite interesting subject though.
Search under "Toffoli gates", for example:
http://www.qtc.ecs.soton.ac.uk/lecture1/lecture1b.html
http://ovpit.indiana.edu/B679/B679.html
Tracy P. Hamilton
<sc...@home.com> wrote in message news:39d8f...@news1.prserv.net...
> In <8raetp$gq2$1...@SonOfMaze.dpo.uab.edu>, "Tracy P. Hamilton"
<che...@uabdpo.dpo.uab.edu> writes:
> >
> <snip>
> >
> >OK. It should take a fair amount of energy to change a
> >physical representation of a 1 to a 0 or vice versa.
> >
> Biological physical systems avoid this by not have
> "0" and "1" states.
They can't avoid it this way. If you have information,
you do have a physical effect. Usually teeny-weeny,
but there.
> The amount of energy required is probably a function
> of how stable you desire your 0 and 1 states to be.
True.
[snip]
Tracy P. Hamilton
Tracy P. Hamilton
unpredictability
> of a piece of information, how likely it is to be incorrect.
Snip the last 3 words.
> The
> information doesn't necessarily have any thermodynamic significance at
all,
It does have a little. However, the converse - relating thermodynamic
entropy
to information - not doable. Information is computed independent of energy
considerations, which must be taken into account for physical entropy.
Information, once determined though, can have the *contribution* to the
physical entropy computed.
[snip]
Tracy P. Hamilton
sc...@home.com
Scott
Matt Silberstein
Heilman" <rd...@news2.lig.bellsouth.net>:
[snip]
>Please explain the difference between the two forms of entropy.
There is no law of conservation or direction for informational
entropy. It can increase, decrease, or remain constant.
--
Matt Silberstein
Let me ride on the wall of death one more time
You can waste your chances on the other rides
This is the nearest to being alive
Let me take my chances on the wall of death
R.T.
Ken Cox
> "R.D. Heilman" <rd...@news2.lig.bellsouth.net>:
> >Please explain the difference between the two forms of entropy.
> There is no law of conservation or direction for informational
> entropy. It can increase, decrease, or remain constant.
Also, thermodynamic entropy has units of energy/temperature,
while information entropy has units of bits. There isn't any
relationship between bits and physics -- which is one reason
that there are no physical laws about how information entropy
can change.
By the way, http://www.deja.com/viewthread.xp?AN=579515285
and http://www.deja.com/viewthread.xp?AN=562194244 might be
of some interest. They're a couple of threads from back in
December and January, in which one R.D. Heilman was an active
participant, and in which these issues of thermodynamic and
information entropy were discussed in some detail.
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
Mark & Roslyn Elkington
I'm a creationist with an interest in this area.
> 2. Another creationist scientist who has written about information is
> Prof. William Dembski. His primary claims are presented in three books
> "The Design Inference", "Mere Creation", and "Intelligent Design". His
article
> on genetic information is available on Web, at address:
> http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_idtheory.htm
I read a paper from Demski where he distinguished between information
creation and transmission. He introduced the concept of Complex Specified
Information (CSI), though said its formal definition was a matter for future
work. I don't where he's up to with it, but it's central to his ID argument
I think. One of the better IDers around all the same.
> Then there is a discussion started by Richard Dawkins, who presented his
> views on genetic information, in his article "The 'Information
Challenge'":
> http://www.onthenet.com.au/~stear/dawkinschallenge.htm
I read that today by coincidence. Nice, easy intro to info concepts, but I
thought light-on in terms of substantial, developed arguments. Reinforces
my view of him as more a master rhetoritician.
[...]
> To my understanding, clouds are not usually considered a mental or
> intelligent. That information - or "information-like thing" doesn't
> fit in Gitt's definition of information, but it is still as useful as
> information and actually looks like information. So I'd like to think
> that "if it looks like information, it is information".
>
> Will I hear the sound of Gitt's theory crumbling down?
Creative attempt, seems ok. From the reference you gave, the requirement of
mental source for information seems to be related to defining information as
"A code is an absolutely necessary condition for the representation of
information", and therefore "The assignment of the symbol set is based on
convention and constitutes a mental process." My guesss would be that if
your rebuttal isn't effective, it would be due to a definitional problem,
not a logical one.
With info discussions you have to do a lot of work defining terms, and I
think introduce some mathematical definitions. That's not a criticism of
your counter-exmaple, just my observation of the difficulty of this topic,
important as it is.
Some thoughts...
Organism are information-rich. In the process of evolving, information
flowed from the environment into the genes through natural selection. That
information was "how to survive" (Dawkins). The implication is that
information must come from somewhere, analogous to energy, it does not
spontaneously generate (how accepted is that concept?)
The question then is how did the "environment" aquire that information?
The 2nd law is of course another minefield. Some reading I've done on
"configurational entropy" has come close to making the elusive formal link
between info and entropy. For example, it can be shown that the to erase a
bit of information in even an ideal computer, a minimum associated thermal
entropy flow must occur.
Regards,
Mark Elkington
Vincent Maycock
"Mark & Roslyn Elkington" <mar...@zeta.org.au> wrote in message
news:8ri0lc$mr0$1...@nina.pacific.net.au...
> Marko Grönroos <ma...@iki.fi> wrote in message
> news:m3hf6vb...@magi.yok.utu.fi...
>
> I'm a creationist with an interest in this area.
Paleontological and molecular evidence refutes creationism (for example,
creationists are unable to explain nested hierarchies in the genome, or
fossil evolutionary sequences; this is a vast amount of data to just toss
aside).
> > 2. Another creationist scientist who has written about information is
> > Prof. William Dembski. His primary claims are presented in three books
> > "The Design Inference", "Mere Creation", and "Intelligent Design". His
> article
> > on genetic information is available on Web, at address:
> > http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_idtheory.htm
>
> I read a paper from Demski where he distinguished between information
> creation and transmission. He introduced the concept of Complex Specified
> Information (CSI), though said its formal definition was a matter for
future
> work. I don't where he's up to with it, but it's central to his ID
argument
> I think. One of the better IDers around all the same.
We know that CSI can be produced by natural selection.
snip
> Organism are information-rich. In the process of evolving, information
> flowed from the environment into the genes through natural selection.
That
> information was "how to survive" (Dawkins). The implication is that
> information must come from somewhere, analogous to energy, it does not
> spontaneously generate (how accepted is that concept?)
>
> The question then is how did the "environment" aquire that information?
Natural selection is known to be capable of generating information.
> The 2nd law is of course another minefield. Some reading I've done on
> "configurational entropy" has come close to making the elusive formal link
> between info and entropy. For example, it can be shown that the to erase
a
> bit of information in even an ideal computer, a minimum associated thermal
> entropy flow must occur.
Thermal input into living systems comes from the sun; therefore, increases
in information content of living things do not violate the 2LoT, regardless
of how the law is formulated.
--
Vince
Tracy P. Hamilton
"Mark & Roslyn Elkington" <mar...@zeta.org.au> wrote in message
news:8ri0lc$mr0$1...@nina.pacific.net.au...
> Marko Grönroos <ma...@iki.fi> wrote in message
> news:m3hf6vb...@magi.yok.utu.fi...
>
> I'm a creationist with an interest in this area.
>
> > Prof. William Dembski. His primary claims are presented in three books
> > "The Design Inference", "Mere Creation", and "Intelligent Design". His
> article
> > on genetic information is available on Web, at address:
> > http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_idtheory.htm
>
> creation and transmission. He introduced the concept of Complex Specified
> Information (CSI), though said its formal definition was a matter for
future
> work. I don't where he's up to with it, but it's central to his ID
argument
> I think. One of the better IDers around all the same.
This is kind of like saying Curly is the best Stooge.
> > Then there is a discussion started by Richard Dawkins, who presented his
> > views on genetic information, in his article "The 'Information
> Challenge'":
> > http://www.onthenet.com.au/~stear/dawkinschallenge.htm
IIRC this was not started by Richard Dawkins.
The story is rather more amusing. It starts with some
stealth creationist documentary making...
> I read that today by coincidence. Nice, easy intro to info concepts, but
I
> thought light-on in terms of substantial, developed arguments. Reinforces
> my view of him as more a master rhetoritician.
Can't be that good a rhetorician if the argument is easily seen as light
on substance. :)
> > To my understanding, clouds are not usually considered a mental or
> > intelligent. That information - or "information-like thing" doesn't
> > fit in Gitt's definition of information, but it is still as useful as
> > information and actually looks like information. So I'd like to think
> > that "if it looks like information, it is information".
> >
> > Will I hear the sound of Gitt's theory crumbling down?
>
> Creative attempt, seems ok. From the reference you gave, the requirement
of
> mental source for information seems to be related to defining information
as
> "A code is an absolutely necessary condition for the representation of
> information",
The *representation* of information. That begs the question if a code
is necessary for the information to be there before it is represented.
For example, the genetic code. It was there way before we represented
it.
> and therefore "The assignment of the symbol set is based on
> convention and constitutes a mental process."
Same thing here.
> My guesss would be that if
> your rebuttal isn't effective, it would be due to a definitional problem,
> not a logical one.
>
> With info discussions you have to do a lot of work defining terms, and I
> think introduce some mathematical definitions. That's not a criticism of
> your counter-exmaple, just my observation of the difficulty of this topic,
> important as it is.
> Some thoughts...
>
> Organism are information-rich. In the process of evolving, information
> flowed from the environment into the genes through natural selection.
That
> information was "how to survive" (Dawkins). The implication is that
> information must come from somewhere, analogous to energy, it does not
> spontaneously generate (how accepted is that concept?)
Not at all by me. Energy has a conservation law. We know that because
energy can be measured. Information - more nebulous.
> The question then is how did the "environment" aquire that information?
>
> The 2nd law is of course another minefield. Some reading I've done on
> "configurational entropy" has come close to making the elusive formal link
> between info and entropy. For example, it can be shown that the to erase
a
> bit of information in even an ideal computer, a minimum associated thermal
> entropy flow must occur.
Configurational entropy is not a terribly useful concept . The
configurational
entropy is the entropy at absolute zero. However, very few process in
life occur at this temperature. At higher temperatures, the thermodynamic
entropy may favor something that would not be favored at lower
temperatures (the lower "configurational entropy" state).
Then there is the whole issue that most natural processes in life are
not under just thermodynamic control, but kinetic as well.
Tracy P. Hamilton
Mark T. VandeWettering
Mark & Roslyn Elkington <mar...@zeta.org.au> wrote:
>Marko Grönroos <ma...@iki.fi> wrote in message
>news:m3hf6vb...@magi.yok.utu.fi...
>
>I'm a creationist with an interest in this area.
>
>> Prof. William Dembski. His primary claims are presented in three books
>> "The Design Inference", "Mere Creation", and "Intelligent Design". His
>article
>> on genetic information is available on Web, at address:
>> http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_idtheory.htm
>
>creation and transmission. He introduced the concept of Complex Specified
>Information (CSI), though said its formal definition was a matter for future
>work. I don't where he's up to with it, but it's central to his ID argument
>I think. One of the better IDers around all the same.
Yes, but unfortunately being one of the better IDers isn't very
difficult, nor much an endorsement. Tell me, how can someone
introduce a concept for something like Complex Specified Information
without actually defining it? You are correct in saying it is central
to his argument. Indeed, it is his complete argument. Unfortunately,
his argument begs the question. Dembski merely asserts that CSI cannot
arise from natural processes. He "defines" CSI as 'any specified
information that exceeds 500 bits'. Of course, he doesn't develop what
he means by specified, which brings up the possibility that either all
information is CSI, or none of it is. It's impossible to tell.
>> Then there is a discussion started by Richard Dawkins, who presented his
>> views on genetic information, in his article "The 'Information
>Challenge'":
>> http://www.onthenet.com.au/~stear/dawkinschallenge.htm
>
>I read that today by coincidence. Nice, easy intro to info concepts, but I
>thought light-on in terms of substantial, developed arguments. Reinforces
>my view of him as more a master rhetoritician.
On the contrary, Dawkins pretty fully develops the idea of information,
and uses it in a way that is consistent with current usage in information
theory. Far from being rhetorical, this is concise and specific.
>[...]
>> To my understanding, clouds are not usually considered a mental or
>> intelligent. That information - or "information-like thing" doesn't
>> fit in Gitt's definition of information, but it is still as useful as
>> information and actually looks like information. So I'd like to think
>> that "if it looks like information, it is information".
>>
>> Will I hear the sound of Gitt's theory crumbling down?
>
>Creative attempt, seems ok. From the reference you gave, the requirement of
>mental source for information seems to be related to defining information as
>"A code is an absolutely necessary condition for the representation of
>information", and therefore "The assignment of the symbol set is based on
>convention and constitutes a mental process." My guesss would be that if
>your rebuttal isn't effective, it would be due to a definitional problem,
>not a logical one.
Gitt's information theory is a sham. It, like Dembski, attempts to beg the
question of information by defining it in a way which supports the
conclusions. It mainly works by playing off preconceptions about what is
meant by "information", "representation", and "coding". In Claude
Shannon's work, no such quibbling about mental processes is mentioned. Why?
Because mental processes aren't required for information.
>With info discussions you have to do a lot of work defining terms, and I
>think introduce some mathematical definitions. That's not a criticism of
>your counter-exmaple, just my observation of the difficulty of this topic,
>important as it is.
One has to be careful about how one uses the terms "information" and
"entropy".
>Some thoughts...
>
>Organism are information-rich.
What does this mean exactly? I am not sure it is right or wrong, it is
just unclear what it means.
Are only organisms information rich or can other things be information rich?
If I have two organisms, how can I tell which one has more information?
>In the process of evolving, information
>flowed from the environment into the genes through natural selection. That
>information was "how to survive" (Dawkins). The implication is that
>information must come from somewhere, analogous to energy, it does not
>spontaneously generate (how accepted is that concept?)
I'd say not at all.
>The question then is how did the "environment" aquire that information?
It didn't. Information is reduction in uncertainty. If selection didn't
occur, all genomes would be equally likely, and the entropy of the genome
pool would be maximized. Natural selection sculpts the distribution of
those genomes, and therefore reduces the entropy of the genome pool.
Reductions in entropy are information. You can call that 'spontaneous'
if you like, but a better word might be 'emergent'.
>The 2nd law is of course another minefield. Some reading I've done on
>"configurational entropy" has come close to making the elusive formal link
>between info and entropy. For example, it can be shown that the to erase a
>bit of information in even an ideal computer, a minimum associated thermal
>entropy flow must occur.
Yes. If you choose to make this argument, you are going to have to
develop it further. Dembski and Gitt might think they have done so.
I don't believe they have.
Mark
>Regards,
>Mark Elkington
--
Mark VandeWettering's .signature contains six As, two Cs, three
Ds, twenty four Es, eight Fs, seven Gs, six Hs, fifteen Is, two
Ks, two Ms, sixteen Ns, nine Os, eight Rs, twenty eight Ss, twenty
one Ts, five Us, five Vs, eight Ws, four Xs, and four Ys.
R.D. Heilman
John M Collins <j...@xisl.com> wrote in message
news:39D8FF29...@xisl.com...
> "R.D. Heilman" wrote:
>
>
>
> > Please explain the difference between the two forms of entropy.
>
particular
> (although there are mathematical relationships with other forms of energy)
is
> "spread out" and evenly distributed. A hot object next to a cold object is
said
> to have lower entropy than two intermediate temperature objects. Entropy
is
> said to tend to increase in that heat tends to flow from hotter to colder
> objects, and the difference in entropy is the amount of heat which flowed
> divided by the difference in temperature (well sort of integrated and all
that
> fun stuff).
>
> But it is said to increase "in a closed system".
>
*closed*
system: but not in an *open* system?
> When creationists refer to the
> second law of thermodynamics (which broadly speaking defines entropy) they
omit
> the bit about the closed system when they talk about the biosphere being
> entropy reduction. They "forget" about the sun, a very hot object chucking
> gargantuan amounts of energy at us, a rather colder set of objects - a
much
> larger increase in entropy than anything that the biosphere can come up
with by
> way of a reduction.
>
Sorry, I do not agree with you here. It doesn't matter. Certainly the earth
is
an *open* system, however, even in this open system _entropy_ occurs.
For example: A house abandoned begins to disintegrate, fall apart, collapse
on itself and eventually revert back to the elements. An car left in an open
enviroment will rust, rot & over tine will compeletely disintegrate. So
obviously the 2/nd law applies to open systems as well as to closed
systems.
>
It's a bit like getting worried about splashes at the
> bottom of a huge waterfall disproving the idea that water only flows
downwards.
>
The second law of thermodynamics says that entropy tends to increase
over time towards compelete equalibrum. There can be temporary pockets
of increasing order, but ultimately everything in the universe will
experience
heat death.
>
> On the other hand information theoretic entropy refers to the degree of
> unreliability of a piece of information, how likely it is to be incorrect.
The
> information doesn't necessarily have any thermodynamic significance at
all, and
> the thing about heat flipping bits is a red herring. To take a topical
example
> or two, when there is an oil crisis there is higher thermodynamic
entropy - you
> can't find local sources of heat energy but there isn't much doubt about
the
> fact so the information theoretic entropy is much the same.
>
I do not quite understand you here. Are you in reference to *negative*
entropy
as it applies to Shannon's information theory? A message starts out as
*negative*
entropy as information is lost due to noise, static, equipment failure etc.
informational entropy is said to _increase_. The result can be a totally
garbled
message.
>
> On the other hand the complaint about the published election results in
> Yugoslavia is that they have high information theoretic entropy but
probably
> have the same thermodynamic entropy as the accurate figures would have,
> probably rather less as Milosevic raised a few thousand former Kosovo
residents
> from the dead to boost his vote.
>
They have done the same in some US cities, Chicago comes to mind.
>
Thank you, I appreciate your views.
Best Regards,
RD
R.D. Heilman
Matt Silberstein <mat...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:a61ntskqr759ftkp4...@4ax.com...
> In talk.origins I read <EB1C5.3315$Jf1....@news4.atl> from "R.D.
> Heilman" <rd...@news2.lig.bellsouth.net>:
>
> [snip]
>
>
> entropy. It can increase, decrease, or remain constant.
>
while, but information can increase? I don't see how an existing
set of instructions or a computer program, for example, can
increase meaningful information on it's own, as it were.
Best Regards,
RD
Mark T. VandeWettering
R.D. Heilman <rd...@news.atl.bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>Matt Silberstein <mat...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
>news:a61ntskqr759ftkp4...@4ax.com...
>> In talk.origins I read <EB1C5.3315$Jf1....@news4.atl> from "R.D.
>> Heilman" <rd...@news2.lig.bellsouth.net>:
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> >Please explain the difference between the two forms of entropy.
>>
>> There is no law of conservation or direction for informational
>> entropy. It can increase, decrease, or remain constant.
>>
>I can understand that it can decrease or remain constant for a
>while, but information can increase? I don't see how an existing
>set of instructions or a computer program, for example, can
>increase meaningful information on it's own, as it were.
Try exploring the topic of genetic programming.
Mark
>Best Regards,
>RD
Gavin Tabor
I'm glad I'm not the only one who has come to this conclusion about
Gitt's information theory. I'm not sure its in itself "a sham", but
it certainly presupposes what the c'ists use it to demonstrate.
Moreover, linking information to entropy doesn't help the c'ists one bit
(pun intended). Physical entropy is governed by the 2nd law, which
states
that it only has to increase *in an isolated system*. Since the
biosphere
isn't isolated, its irrelevant. Also configurational
entropy difference between species is entirely trivial compared with
other factors in the physical entropy. So if there is a link between
information and physical entropy all it demonstrates is that there is
no reason for information content not to increase.
What the c'ists need to show is a separate analog of the 2nd law for
informational systems. Very few of them seem to realise this. There
was one character posting here a few months ago who did actually
postulate
his own informational analog, but I don't think he realised the import
of what he was saying (or the difference between postulating a law
and demonstrating it).
Gavin
>
> Mark
>
> >Regards,
> >Mark Elkington
>
> --
> Mark VandeWettering's .signature contains six As, two Cs, three
> Ds, twenty four Es, eight Fs, seven Gs, six Hs, fifteen Is, two
> Ks, two Ms, sixteen Ns, nine Os, eight Rs, twenty eight Ss, twenty
> one Ts, five Us, five Vs, eight Ws, four Xs, and four Ys.
--
Dr. Gavin Tabor
School of Engineering and Computer Science
Department of Engineering
University of Exeter
David Ewan Kahana
> John M Collins <j...@xisl.com> wrote in message
> news:39D8FF29...@xisl.com...
> > "R.D. Heilman" wrote:
[snip]
> >
> > But it is said to increase "in a closed system".
> >
> By *it* I assume you mean entropy. *Entropy* is said to increase in a
> *closed*
> system: but not in an *open* system?
Your correspondent is correct. The second law of
thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated
(closed) system always increases. It says nothing at all
about what will happen to the entropy of an open system (one
which may exchange heat and matter with other systems). The
entropy of an open system may increase, decrease, or stay
the same.
> > When creationists refer to the
> > second law of thermodynamics (which broadly speaking defines entropy) they
> omit
> > the bit about the closed system when they talk about the biosphere being
> > entropy reduction. They "forget" about the sun, a very hot object chucking
> > gargantuan amounts of energy at us, a rather colder set of objects - a
> much
> > larger increase in entropy than anything that the biosphere can come up
> with by
> > way of a reduction.
> >
> Sorry, I do not agree with you here. It doesn't matter. Certainly the earth
> is
> an *open* system, however, even in this open system _entropy_ occurs.
Do you mean that entropy *increase* occurs in some places on
the earth? The answer is, yes, of course it does.
> For example: A house abandoned begins to disintegrate, fall apart, collapse
> on itself and eventually revert back to the elements.
Yes, that's correct, if the house is left to itself.
> An car left in an open
> enviroment will rust, rot & over tine will compeletely disintegrate.
That's true as well.
> So
> obviously the 2/nd law applies to open systems as well as to closed
> systems.
Your reasoning is false.
You cannot conclude this from two examples. You have
illustrated that in *some* open systems entropy increases in
time. You have not shown that it does so in all open
systems. For example, carpenters may completely repair the
house every year. The second law does not apply to
open systems. It only applies to closed systems.
For an example of an open system in which the entropy is
continuously decreasing with time, consider the sun. The sun
is tending towards a state of higher density and higher
entropy as the hydrogen fuel burns to helium in the
core. The entropy carried away by the sun's radiation of
course outweighs this decrease.
There are many, many examples of inanimate and animate open
systems in which entropy decreases with time or stays the
same. The growth of snowflakes in a snowstorm is one of the
most famous. The flakes have lower entropy than the water
from which they were formed.
>
> It's a bit like getting worried about splashes at the
> > bottom of a huge waterfall disproving the idea that water only flows
> downwards.
> >
> The second law of thermodynamics says that entropy tends to increase
> over time towards compelete equalibrum.
No it doesn't. It says that the entropy tends ever towards a
maximum *in a closed system*. Do you have a text on
thermodynamics?
> There can be temporary pockets
> of increasing order,
This contradicts your statement that the second law of
thermodynamics applies to open systems as well as to closed
ones. I am assuming of course, that you equate entropy
here with order. That is not a correct equation of course,
since `order' is so far an undefined term.
> but ultimately everything in the universe will
> experience
> heat death.
If the universe can be considered a closed system, and there
is no re-collapse of the universe, then this is true. I am
not really competent to say whether these conditions are
satisfied for the universe.
[snipped discussion of informational entropy]
cheers,
- dave k.
Neil W Rickert
>With info discussions you have to do a lot of work defining terms, and I
>think introduce some mathematical definitions. That's not a criticism of
>your counter-exmaple, just my observation of the difficulty of this topic,
>important as it is.
>Some thoughts...
>Organism are information-rich.
Could you follow your own advice, and start by defining terms?
Neil W Rickert
>"Mark & Roslyn Elkington" <mar...@zeta.org.au> wrote in message
>> I'm a creationist with an interest in this area.
>Paleontological and molecular evidence refutes creationism (for example,
>creationists are unable to explain nested hierarchies in the genome, or
>fossil evolutionary sequences; this is a vast amount of data to just toss
>aside).
That's not quite right. The evidence may refute some varieties of
creationism (the YEC variety, in particular). It does not refute the
version that says that evolution is the means that was used for
creating biological diversity.
R.D. Heilman
Ken Cox <k...@lucent.com> wrote in message
news:39DB93BA...@research.bell-labs.com...
>
> > There is no law of conservation or direction for informational
> > entropy. It can increase, decrease, or remain constant.
>
> while information entropy has units of bits. There isn't any
> relationship between bits and physics -- which is one reason
> that there are no physical laws about how information entropy
> can change.
>
expressed mathematically.
>
> By the way, http://www.deja.com/viewthread.xp?AN=579515285
> and http://www.deja.com/viewthread.xp?AN=562194244 might be
> of some interest. They're a couple of threads from back in
> December and January, in which one R.D. Heilman was an active
> participant, and in which these issues of thermodynamic and
> information entropy were discussed in some detail.
>
actively engaged in this, or a similar discussion. But frankly,
I did not believe my concerns were really addressed. Most
respondents assumed defensive posturing, such as falling back
on the oft repeated, time worn arguments invoking ice crystals,
snow-flakes, water spouts, tornadoes, refrigerators etc.
RD
>
> --
> Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
>
Matt Silberstein
Heilman" <rd...@news.atl.bellsouth.net>:
>
>Matt Silberstein <mat...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
>news:a61ntskqr759ftkp4...@4ax.com...
>> In talk.origins I read <EB1C5.3315$Jf1....@news4.atl> from "R.D.
>> Heilman" <rd...@news2.lig.bellsouth.net>:
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> >Please explain the difference between the two forms of entropy.
>>
>> There is no law of conservation or direction for informational
>> entropy. It can increase, decrease, or remain constant.
>>
>I can understand that it can decrease or remain constant for a
>while, but information can increase? I don't see how an existing
>set of instructions or a computer program, for example, can
>increase meaningful information on it's own, as it were.
You can have a piece of code that makes two copies from one. That is
an increase in information. You can have it then change one of the
copies, that is also an increase in information.
Ken Cox
> Ken Cox <k...@lucent.com> wrote:
> Perhaps, but both informational and thermodynamic entropy be
> expressed mathematically.
So can the number of hairs on a dog's tail. That doesn't mean
that any of the three concepts are related.
Except for the name, and certain rather esoteric considerations
of what would happen in a perfect crystal at 0K (an unattainable
state, BTW), information entropy and thermodynamic entropy are
unrelated. In particular, there is no equivalent of the laws of
thermo for information entropy; in particular, spontaneous changes
in the system can increase or decrease the amount of information.
> > By the way, http://www.deja.com/viewthread.xp?AN=579515285
> > and http://www.deja.com/viewthread.xp?AN=562194244 might be
> > of some interest. They're a couple of threads from back in
> > December and January, in which one R.D. Heilman was an active
> > participant, and in which these issues of thermodynamic and
> > information entropy were discussed in some detail.
> This is true, in fact this is not the only instances where I was
> actively engaged in this, or a similar discussion. But frankly,
> I did not believe my concerns were really addressed.
Even from my brief glances at those threads, I don't see how that
can be. Both information theory and thermo were discussed in some
detail, as well as the lack of any relation between the two types
of entropy. Admittedly, the respondents weren't telling you what
you seemed to want to hear, but that's not their problem; they were
just explaining how the universe behaves, and any issues you have
with that are strictly your problem.
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
Matt Silberstein
Heilman" <rd...@news.atl.bellsouth.net>:
>
>Ken Cox <k...@lucent.com> wrote in message
>news:39DB93BA...@research.bell-labs.com...
>> Matt Silberstein wrote:
>> > "R.D. Heilman" <rd...@news2.lig.bellsouth.net>:
>> > >Please explain the difference between the two forms of entropy.
>>
>> > There is no law of conservation or direction for informational
>> > entropy. It can increase, decrease, or remain constant.
>>
>> Also, thermodynamic entropy has units of energy/temperature,
>> while information entropy has units of bits. There isn't any
>> relationship between bits and physics -- which is one reason
>> that there are no physical laws about how information entropy
>> can change.
>>
>Perhaps, but both informational and thermodynamic entropy be
>expressed mathematically.
So can temperature and pressure.
[snip]
Bigdakine
>From: "R.D. Heilman" rd...@news.atl.bellsouth.net
>Date: 10/5/00 7:16 AM Hawaiian Standard Time
>Message-id: <4I2D5.10955$bg6....@news3.atl>
>
>
>Matt Silberstein <mat...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
>news:a61ntskqr759ftkp4...@4ax.com...
>> In talk.origins I read <EB1C5.3315$Jf1....@news4.atl> from "R.D.
>> Heilman" <rd...@news2.lig.bellsouth.net>:
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>>
>> There is no law of conservation or direction for informational
>> entropy. It can increase, decrease, or remain constant.
>>
>while, but information can increase? I don't see how an existing
>set of instructions or a computer program, for example, can
>increase meaningful information on it's own, as it were.
>
Stuart
Dr. Stuart A. Weinstein
Ewa Beach Institute of Tectonics
"To err is human, but to really foul things up
requires a creationist"
Mark Elkington
Mark T. VandeWettering wrote in message ...
>Yes, but unfortunately being one of the better IDers isn't very
>difficult, nor much an endorsement. Tell me, how can someone
>introduce a concept for something like Complex Specified Information
>without actually defining it? You are correct in saying it is central
>to his argument. Indeed, it is his complete argument. Unfortunately,
>his argument begs the question. Dembski merely asserts that CSI cannot
>arise from natural processes. He "defines" CSI as 'any specified
>information that exceeds 500 bits'. Of course, he doesn't develop what
>he means by specified, which brings up the possibility that either all
>information is CSI, or none of it is. It's impossible to tell.
Intuitively I find CSI a convincing concept, though until it is formalised
you have the right to remain skeptical.
[...]
>One has to be careful about how one uses the terms "information" and
>"entropy".
Agreed.
>>Organism are information-rich.
>
>What does this mean exactly? I am not sure it is right or wrong, it is
>just unclear what it means.
>
>Are only organisms information rich or can other things be information
rich?
>
>If I have two organisms, how can I tell which one has more information?
Good question. "Complexity, according to Kolmogorov, can be measured by the
length of the shortest program for a universal Turing machine that correctly
reprodcues the observed data."
By this algorithmic definition of complexity, the sequence 11111111 is less
complex than 11010100. Also, the less "algorithmically compressible" the
data, the more random it is.
Therefore we have randomness = complexity!
Where does information fit into this? Which sequence, 11111111 or 11010100,
contains more infomation? Without a context, we cannot say. This is where
Gitt's coding rules come in, and Demski's CSI.
The sequence of base pairs in a genome only contains information in the
conext of protien manufacture. In that context it becomes complex specified
information. For this reason I find CSI a satidfying concept, pending
formalisation.
Note that I don't make any of these statements dogmatically!
>>In the process of evolving, information
>>flowed from the environment into the genes through natural selection.
That
>>information was "how to survive" (Dawkins). The implication is that
>>information must come from somewhere, analogous to energy, it does not
>>spontaneously generate (how accepted is that concept?)
>
>I'd say not at all.
Paul Davies says otherwise. "Life is ultimately about complex information
processing, so it makes sense to seek a solution in the realm of information
theory and complexity theory. Since biological information is not encoded in
the laws of physics and chemistry (at least as currently known), where does
it come from? There seems to be agreement that information cannot come into
existence spontaneously (except perhaps in the big bang), so the information
content of living systems must somehow originate in their environrnent.
Although there is no knovrn law of physics able to create informafion from
nothing, there might be some sort of principle that could explain how
inforinafion can be garnered from the environment and accumulated in
macromolecules."
http://www.scitec.auckland.ac.nz/~king/Preprints/book/upd/millupd/life/life2
01.htm#anchor412371
>>The 2nd law is of course another minefield. Some reading I've done on
>>"configurational entropy" has come close to making the elusive formal link
>>between info and entropy. For example, it can be shown that the to erase
a
>>bit of information in even an ideal computer, a minimum associated thermal
>>entropy flow must occur.
>
>Yes. If you choose to make this argument, you are going to have to
>develop it further. Dembski and Gitt might think they have done so.
>I don't believe they have.
More an observation than argument at this point. The link quoted says that
an abstract entity, a bit of information, has a minimum associated thermal
entropy flow for erasure of kTlog2 per bit, and this may have to considered
in the thermal design of advanced computers.
http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/mit/sectione/gershenfeld.html
I find this an amazing and fascinating linkage, and one that cautions
against dismissing too quickly a tie-up between thermal entropy and
information (a la Brig Klyce's informative article
http://www.panspermia.com/seconlaw.htm)
Regards,
Mark Elkington
Mark Elkington
Tracy, see my reply to Mark T. V
Mark Elkington
Vincent Maycock wrote in message <39dc9387$0$8450$45be...@newscene.com>...
>> I'm a creationist with an interest in this area.
>
>Paleontological and molecular evidence refutes creationism (for example,
>creationists are unable to explain nested hierarchies in the genome, or
>fossil evolutionary sequences; this is a vast amount of data to just toss
>aside).
Vince
so cinch
to convince
you evince
a wince.
(Apologies to Dr Seuss)
Bobby D. Bryant
> I read a paper from Demski where he distinguished between information
> creation and transmission. He introduced the concept of Complex Specified
> Information (CSI), though said its formal definition was a matter for future
> work. I don't where he's up to with it, but it's central to his ID argument
> I think. One of the better IDers around all the same.
Central to his argument, but to be defined later? Where does that leave his
argument meanwhile?
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
Bigdakine
>Date: 10/5/00 4:19 PM Hawaiian Standard Time
>Message-id: <39dc...@nexus.comcen.com.au>
is that they usually make some sort of implicit statement in that information
has something to do with function. This is implicit in Dembski's CSI concept.
Its not clear to me that the Komologorov measure of the Ameoba genome is much
less or any less than ours. If so, than what use is this information measure?
>
>>>In the process of evolving, information
>>>flowed from the environment into the genes through natural selection.
>That
>>>information was "how to survive" (Dawkins). The implication is that
>>>information must come from somewhere, analogous to energy, it does not
>>>spontaneously generate (how accepted is that concept?)
>>
>>I'd say not at all.
>
>Paul Davies says otherwise. "Life is ultimately about complex information
>processing, so it makes sense to seek a solution in the realm of information
>theory and complexity theory. Since biological information is not encoded in
>the laws of physics and chemistry (at least as currently known), where does
>it come from? There seems to be agreement that information cannot come into
>existence spontaneously (except perhaps in the big bang),
Thats all that was necessary..
so the information
>content of living systems must somehow originate in their environrnent.
Yes and your on the right track.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/9/4463
>Although there is no knovrn law of physics able to create informafion from
>nothing, there might be some sort of principle that could explain how
>inforinafion can be garnered from the environment and accumulated in
>macromolecules."
>http://www.scitec.auckland.ac.nz/~king/Preprints/book/upd/millupd/life/life2
>01.htm#anchor412371
>
>
>>>The 2nd law is of course another minefield. Some reading I've done on
>>>"configurational entropy" has come close to making the elusive formal link
>>>between info and entropy. For example, it can be shown that the to erase
>a
>>>bit of information in even an ideal computer, a minimum associated thermal
>>>entropy flow must occur.
>>
>>Yes. If you choose to make this argument, you are going to have to
>>develop it further. Dembski and Gitt might think they have done so.
>>I don't believe they have.
>
>
>More an observation than argument at this point. The link quoted says that
>an abstract entity, a bit of information, has a minimum associated thermal
>entropy flow for erasure of kTlog2 per bit, and this may have to considered
>in the thermal design of advanced computers.
>http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/mit/sectione/gershenfeld.html
>
>I find this an amazing and fascinating linkage, and one that cautions
>against dismissing too quickly a tie-up between thermal entropy and
>information (a la Brig Klyce's informative article
>http://www.panspermia.com/seconlaw.htm)
Yes but in the way creationists apply this, one is lead to believe that you can
tell the difference, just by looking at the disk's thermal entropy, whether a
disk contains the works of Shakespeare or Nabakoff..
Mark T. VandeWettering
>>difficult, nor much an endorsement. Tell me, how can someone
>>introduce a concept for something like Complex Specified Information
>>without actually defining it? You are correct in saying it is central
>>to his argument. Indeed, it is his complete argument. Unfortunately,
>>his argument begs the question. Dembski merely asserts that CSI cannot
>>arise from natural processes. He "defines" CSI as 'any specified
>>information that exceeds 500 bits'. Of course, he doesn't develop what
>>he means by specified, which brings up the possibility that either all
>>information is CSI, or none of it is. It's impossible to tell.
>
>you have the right to remain skeptical.
If you could tell me what Dembski means for information to be specified,
it might help.
>[...]
>>One has to be careful about how one uses the terms "information" and
>>"entropy".
>
>Agreed.
>>>Organism are information-rich.
>>
>>What does this mean exactly? I am not sure it is right or wrong, it is
>>just unclear what it means.
>>
>>Are only organisms information rich or can other things be information
>rich?
>>
>>If I have two organisms, how can I tell which one has more information?
>
>
>Good question. "Complexity, according to Kolmogorov, can be measured by the
>length of the shortest program for a universal Turing machine that correctly
>reprodcues the observed data."
And this is helpful.... how precisely?
>By this algorithmic definition of complexity, the sequence 11111111 is less
>complex than 11010100. Also, the less "algorithmically compressible" the
>data, the more random it is.
Again, how does this help exactly?
>Therefore we have randomness = complexity!
>Where does information fit into this? Which sequence, 11111111 or 11010100,
>contains more infomation? Without a context, we cannot say. This is where
>Gitt's coding rules come in, and Demski's CSI.
Without a model of the messages, we cannot say. If all messages consisted
of one of the bit strings above, but say 11111111 accounted for only 1% of
all messages, then it contains more information than the alternative
in the sense that Claude Shannon would agree with. Context isn't part of
traditional information theory, and Gitt and Dembski haven't defined an
alternative.
>The sequence of base pairs in a genome only contains information in the
>conext of protien manufacture.
I disagree. Context is meaningless. One can only examine the information
by determining how each nucleotide reduces the prior uncertainty in the
structure of the DNA strand.
>In that context it becomes complex specified
>information. For this reason I find CSI a satidfying concept, pending
>formalisation.
Ah, you claim that the sequence of base pairs on the genome form CSI.
What allows you to make that determination? In other words, given two
sequences, one of which happens to be the sequence that codes for a protein,
the other which happens to have been generated by me tossing a bunch of
CGAT dice, how can you tell which one is specified?
>Note that I don't make any of these statements dogmatically!
>>>In the process of evolving, information
>>>flowed from the environment into the genes through natural selection.
>That
>>>information was "how to survive" (Dawkins). The implication is that
>>>information must come from somewhere, analogous to energy, it does not
>>>spontaneously generate (how accepted is that concept?)
>>
>>I'd say not at all.
>
>Paul Davies says otherwise. "Life is ultimately about complex information
>processing, so it makes sense to seek a solution in the realm of information
>theory and complexity theory. Since biological information is not encoded in
>the laws of physics and chemistry (at least as currently known), where does
>it come from?
Is there anything in the above paragraph that is true? Notably can
you show that
a) Life is ultimately about anything, much less complex information
processing?
b) Biological information is not encoded in the laws of physics
or chemistry?
>There seems to be agreement that information cannot come into
>existence spontaneously (except perhaps in the big bang), so the information
>content of living systems must somehow originate in their environrnent.
Agreement between who? This is what Dembski attempts to show, but he
fails miserably, because all he can do is fall back on lame assertions
like the ones above.
>Although there is no knovrn law of physics able to create informafion from
>nothing, there might be some sort of principle that could explain how
>inforinafion can be garnered from the environment and accumulated in
>macromolecules."
Yes, there is at least one recommended by Dawkins: natural selection.
>http://www.scitec.auckland.ac.nz/~king/Preprints/book/upd/millupd/life/life2
>01.htm#anchor412371
>
>
>>>The 2nd law is of course another minefield. Some reading I've done on
>>>"configurational entropy" has come close to making the elusive formal link
>>>between info and entropy. For example, it can be shown that the to erase
>a
>>>bit of information in even an ideal computer, a minimum associated thermal
>>>entropy flow must occur.
>>
>>Yes. If you choose to make this argument, you are going to have to
>>develop it further. Dembski and Gitt might think they have done so.
>>I don't believe they have.
>
>More an observation than argument at this point. The link quoted says that
>an abstract entity, a bit of information, has a minimum associated thermal
>entropy flow for erasure of kTlog2 per bit, and this may have to considered
>in the thermal design of advanced computers.
>http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/mit/sectione/gershenfeld.html
>
>I find this an amazing and fascinating linkage, and one that cautions
>against dismissing too quickly a tie-up between thermal entropy and
>information (a la Brig Klyce's informative article
>http://www.panspermia.com/seconlaw.htm)
Ah, I've been here before too. The paragraph that gives away the
the game is:
In spite of the important distinction between the two meanings
of entropy, the rule as stated above for thermodynamic entropy
seems to apply nonetheless to the logical kind: entropy in a
closed system can never decrease. And really, there would be
nothing mysterious about this law either. It's similar to saying
things never organize themselves. (The original meaning of
organize is "to furnish with organs.") Only this rule has little
to do with thermodynamics.
This is the faulty leap. The implication is that thermodynamic entropy
SEEMS to apply, and the same tired example of "things never organize
themselves" is trotted out as evidence. But things DO spontaneously
organize themselves, otherwise the universe would be nothing but an
angry soup of hot particles. That isn't what the universe looks like
precisely because organization IS an emergent property of the physical
universe.
mark_el...@my-deja.com
rayt...@yahoo.com wrote:
[...]
> Without a model of the messages, we cannot say. If all messages
consisted
> of one of the bit strings above, but say 11111111 accounted for only
1% of
> all messages, then it contains more information than the alternative
> in the sense that Claude Shannon would agree with. Context isn't
part of
> traditional information theory, and Gitt and Dembski haven't defined
an
> alternative.
I'm still trying to get an integrated, mathematical understanding of
these concepts; that's partly why I'm posting here.
Shannon defines information an the decrease in uncertainty:
R = Hbefore - Hafter
where H is the Shannon uncertainty:
H = - sum (from i = 1 to number of symbols) Pi log2 Pi (bits per symbol)
and Pi is the probability of the ith symbol.
http://www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/paper/primer
I'm not quite sure how you apply Shannon, Kolmogorove complexity, or
configurational entropy Sc (interestingly, Sc = log(state space), like
Shannon), etc, to a system in order to derive a quantitatitive measure
if the information contained in that system.
Your example below of the "CGAT dice" is useful here. You're right, I
can't tell the difference between real DNA and a random CGAT sequence.
But a developing embryo sure can; it's a matter of context.
Similarly, which has the more info?
1) ohtpiewurhrewncuincuipnqwqnuvcp[oireuteutroiretoipeeo
2) This sentence contains Complex Specified Information.
- the strings are equiprobable if generated randomly
- 1) is less compressible, more random, more Kolmogorov "complex"
- 2) contains "complex specified" information, in that it is instantly
recognisable to and English speaker as a meaningful sentence (just like
the real DNA sequence is to the cell)
I think what Dembski is getting at is that we recognise living
organisms to be a very specific arrangement of their constituent atoms.
Since both strings are equally probable, any measure of "specificity"
comes from us--i.e. the "code users", as Gitt says.
If I show you a live mouse, and a conatiner of the basic chemicals that
make up a mouse, which would you say contains more information? As a
code user (in this case one who knows the code of living things),
you'll choose the live mouse.
The point is, I think we have a gut feel for this stuff called
information, we just can't precisely define or measure it at this
stage. At least I can't; can you?
[...]
> >Paul Davies says otherwise. "Life is ultimately about complex
information
> >processing, so it makes sense to seek a solution in the realm of
information
> >theory and complexity theory. Since biological information is not
encoded in
> >the laws of physics and chemistry (at least as currently known),
where does
> >it come from?
>
> Is there anything in the above paragraph that is true? Notably can
> you show that
>
> a) Life is ultimately about anything, much less complex
information
> processing?
> b) Biological information is not encoded in the laws of physics
> or chemistry?
The first is obviously a figure of speech, not a value judgement.
The second statement? You want we to _disprove_ that "Biological
information is not encoded in the laws of physics or chemistry"? I
would suggest that the burden of positive proof rests firmly with you.
Regards,
Mark Elkington
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Daniel Grubb
>> > But it is said to increase "in a closed system".
>> >
>> By *it* I assume you mean entropy. *Entropy* is said to increase in a
>> *closed*
>> system: but not in an *open* system?
>Your correspondent is correct. The second law of
>thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated
>(closed) system always increases. It says nothing at all
>about what will happen to the entropy of an open system (one
>which may exchange heat and matter with other systems). The
>entropy of an open system may increase, decrease, or stay
>the same.
Of course, it *does* say *something* about open systems, since
they are embedded in the universe as a whole. The difference is
that entropy of the open system is no longer the relevant
quantity, it's the Gibb's free energy (under some assumptions).
The Gibb's energy has two components, one is the amount of
energy of the system, and the other (subtracted) is a temperature
weighted entropy. Hence, lower temperatures reduce the effect
of entropy, and an entropy decrease can be outweighed by a total
energy decrease.
A good example is water freezing. The entropy goes down, but the
total energy does also, and the latter outweighs the former at low
temperatures. Thus water can *spontaneously* freeze when the temperature
is low enough.
<snip>
>If the universe can be considered a closed system, and there
>is no re-collapse of the universe, then this is true. I am
>not really competent to say whether these conditions are
>satisfied for the universe.
Almost certainly, it won't recollapse.
--Dan Grubb
hrgr...@my-deja.com
mark_el...@my-deja.com wrote:
> In article <PzcD5.286492$i5.39...@news1.frmt1.sfba.home.com>,
> rayt...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> [...]
> consisted
> > of one of the bit strings above, but say 11111111 accounted for only
> 1% of
> > all messages, then it contains more information than the alternative
> > in the sense that Claude Shannon would agree with. Context isn't
> part of
> > traditional information theory, and Gitt and Dembski haven't defined
> an
> > alternative.
>
> these concepts; that's partly why I'm posting here.
>
> Shannon defines information an the decrease in uncertainty:
> R = Hbefore - Hafter
> where H is the Shannon uncertainty:
> H = - sum (from i = 1 to number of symbols) Pi log2 Pi (bits per
symbol)
> and Pi is the probability of the ith symbol.
> http://www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/paper/primer
>
> I'm not quite sure how you apply Shannon, Kolmogorove complexity, or
> configurational entropy Sc (interestingly, Sc = log(state space), like
> Shannon), etc, to a system in order to derive a quantitatitive measure
> if the information contained in that system.
>
> Your example below of the "CGAT dice" is useful here. You're right, I
> can't tell the difference between real DNA and a random CGAT sequence.
> But a developing embryo sure can; it's a matter of context.
>
> Similarly, which has the more info?
> 1) ohtpiewurhrewncuincuipnqwqnuvcp[oireuteutroiretoipeeo
> 2) This sentence contains Complex Specified Information.
It has more information to *us*. To Xordaxians *), the second sentence
is meaningless, while the first one is a well-known ad slogan ;-)
*) the official t.o. name for aliens who serve as examples or counter-
examples.
> - the strings are equiprobable if generated randomly
> - 1) is less compressible, more random, more Kolmogorov "complex"
> - 2) contains "complex specified" information, in that it is instantly
> recognisable to and English speaker as a meaningful sentence (just
like
> the real DNA sequence is to the cell)
IMHO both strings are too short for Kolmogorov-Chaitin complexity,
which is after all a concept for strings much longer than the typical
computer hardware description + operating system (not program!).
> I think what Dembski is getting at is that we recognise living
> organisms to be a very specific arrangement of their constituent
atoms.
I'd like to insert one important phrase: living organisms *as we know
them*.
> Since both strings are equally probable, any measure of "specificity"
> comes from us--i.e. the "code users", as Gitt says.
Or from the existence of a particular set of t-RNAs (the decoding
algorithm, as it were).
Regards,
HRG.
> If I show you a live mouse, and a conatiner of the basic chemicals
that
> make up a mouse, which would you say contains more information? As a
> code user (in this case one who knows the code of living things),
> you'll choose the live mouse.
>
> The point is, I think we have a gut feel for this stuff called
> information, we just can't precisely define or measure it at this
> stage. At least I can't; can you?
>
> [...]
> > >Paul Davies says otherwise. "Life is ultimately about complex
> information
> > >processing, so it makes sense to seek a solution in the realm of
> information
> > >theory and complexity theory. Since biological information is not
> encoded in
> > >the laws of physics and chemistry (at least as currently known),
> where does
> > >it come from?
> >
> > Is there anything in the above paragraph that is true? Notably can
> > you show that
> >
> > a) Life is ultimately about anything, much less complex
> information
> > processing?
> > b) Biological information is not encoded in the laws of physics
> > or chemistry?
>
> The first is obviously a figure of speech, not a value judgement.
>
> The second statement? You want we to _disprove_ that "Biological
> information is not encoded in the laws of physics or chemistry"? I
> would suggest that the burden of positive proof rests firmly with you.
But IMHO he is asking the wrong question. The correct question would
be: "Is there anything in the laws of physics or chemistry which
*forbids* information increase (however measured) ?"
Regards,
HRG.
Tracy P. Hamilton
"Mark Elkington" <melki...@ness.com.au> wrote in message
news:39dc...@nexus.comcen.com.au...
>
> Mark T. VandeWettering wrote in message ...
> >If I have two organisms, how can I tell which one has more information?
>
>
> Good question. "Complexity, according to Kolmogorov, can be measured by
the
> length of the shortest program for a universal Turing machine that
correctly
> reprodcues the observed data."
>
> By this algorithmic definition of complexity, the sequence 11111111 is
less
> complex than 11010100. Also, the less "algorithmically compressible" the
> data, the more random it is.
>
> Therefore we have randomness = complexity!
>
> Where does information fit into this? Which sequence, 11111111 or
11010100,
> contains more infomation? Without a context, we cannot say. This is
where
> Gitt's coding rules come in, and Demski's CSI.
Gitt's rules are good for nothing. He does a bait and switch
(unintentionally) to assert that information needs intelligent sources.
All that CSI is is just noting that the sequence you get is not
random. How do you know if a sequence is random or not?
One looks at the distribution of sequences. That is the
important context, not whether the "message" is meaningful.
In biology, it turns out that the sequences that get propagated
have a meaning - they allowed to organism to live by having an
nonegative overall effect.
> The sequence of base pairs in a genome only contains information in the
> conext of protien manufacture. In that context it becomes complex
specified
> information. For this reason I find CSI a satidfying concept, pending
> formalisation.
CSI is no mystery. Indeed DNA sequences are complex, and
have information. The *only* question is whether there is
any *useful* consistent application of information theory.
Creationists will not be able to do it, because they have
these preconceptions that blind them to reality.
Take Dembski as an example. When confronted by the
fact that sequences that have CSI arise through genetic
algorithms, nooo, that wasn;t CSI. That was "apparent CSI".
What a joke!
> >>In the process of evolving, information
> >>flowed from the environment into the genes through natural selection.
> That
> >>information was "how to survive" (Dawkins). The implication is that
> >>information must come from somewhere, analogous to energy, it does not
> >>spontaneously generate (how accepted is that concept?)
> >
> >I'd say not at all.
>
> Paul Davies says otherwise.
Are you sure?
> "Life is ultimately about complex information
> processing, so it makes sense to seek a solution in the realm of
information
> theory and complexity theory. Since biological information is not encoded
in
> the laws of physics and chemistry (at least as currently known), where
does
> it come from? There seems to be agreement that information cannot come
into
biological, or all? Perhaps you don't realize that many early physicists
equated negentropy with information, and so that by the second law,
information (not biological information!) must decrease over time.
That is the meaning of this sentence from that article:
"In thermodynamics, information falls as entropy rises. "
Also, note that later he says "But nobody has yet written down the
equivalent of Newton's laws for informational dynamics. Scientists
can't even agree on whether information is invariably conserved in
physical processes. For years, debate has raged over what happens
to the information in a star when it collapses to form a black hole,
which subsequently evaporates."
Certainly nothing like biological information here.
> existence spontaneously (except perhaps in the big bang), so the
information
> content of living systems must somehow originate in their environrnent.
> Although there is no knovrn law of physics able to create informafion from
> nothing, there might be some sort of principle that could explain how
> inforinafion can be garnered from the environment and accumulated in
> macromolecules."
>
http://www.scitec.auckland.ac.nz/~king/Preprints/book/upd/millupd/life/life2
> 01.htm#anchor412371
>
>
> >>The 2nd law is of course another minefield. Some reading I've done on
> >>"configurational entropy" has come close to making the elusive formal
link
> >>between info and entropy. For example, it can be shown that the to
erase
> a
> >>bit of information in even an ideal computer, a minimum associated
thermal
> >>entropy flow must occur.
> >
> >Yes. If you choose to make this argument, you are going to have to
> >develop it further. Dembski and Gitt might think they have done so.
> >I don't believe they have.
> More an observation than argument at this point. The link quoted says
that
> an abstract entity, a bit of information, has a minimum associated thermal
> entropy flow for erasure of kTlog2 per bit, and this may have to
considered
> in the thermal design of advanced computers.
> http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/mit/sectione/gershenfeld.html
>
> I find this an amazing and fascinating linkage, and one that cautions
> against dismissing too quickly a tie-up between thermal entropy and
> information (a la Brig Klyce's informative article
> http://www.panspermia.com/seconlaw.htm)
If you will go back and read my articles carefully, you will note that I
have
always made the point that information will have a physical effect.
(Quantum computing will follow different behavior).
People who have studied physical chemistry know this - a glass
at absolute zero has a non-zero absolute entropy for a very similar
reason. There is nothing new here. This may not be widely
appreciated.
However, what trips up creationists and others is the effect of
thermodynamics and environment on biological information. It is
not nearly so straightforward.
Take a statistical thermodynamics class, then you may realize
that people are blowing smoke up your kilt.
Tracy P. Hamilton
Ken Cox
Mark T. VandeWettering
>Your example below of the "CGAT dice" is useful here. You're right, I
>can't tell the difference between real DNA and a random CGAT sequence.
>But a developing embryo sure can; it's a matter of context.
There is that context word again, just what is that supposed to mean?
Obviously there are only certain DNA sequences that code for the proteins
that a living cell needs in order to survive. One way to measure the
information content of a sequence of DNA is to determine how "unrandom"
the sequence is. This decrease in "unrandomness" is information, and has
the advantage of being completely objective. It depends not one whit on
context, or the use of the eventual coding sequence.
>Similarly, which has the more info?
>1) ohtpiewurhrewncuincuipnqwqnuvcp[oireuteutroiretoipeeo
>2) This sentence contains Complex Specified Information.
>
>- the strings are equiprobable if generated randomly
>- 1) is less compressible, more random, more Kolmogorov "complex"
>- 2) contains "complex specified" information, in that it is instantly
>recognisable to and English speaker as a meaningful sentence (just like
>the real DNA sequence is to the cell)
By some strange coincidence, string #1 happens to be the identifying
code for Darwin's Origin of Species using my patented VandeWettering's
Hash Function. Darwin's OoS contains much more information than #2.
Silly. Yes. But equally subjective as your more "reasonable" statement
above.
>
>I think what Dembski is getting at is that we recognise living
>organisms to be a very specific arrangement of their constituent atoms.
We recognize most things to be a very specific arrangement of their
constituent atoms.
>Since both strings are equally probable, any measure of "specificity"
>comes from us--i.e. the "code users", as Gitt says.
And is therefore useless. Gitt and Dembski both fall into the
"information is in the eye of the beholder" trap. Subjective
quantities are much less useful than objective ones.
>If I show you a live mouse, and a conatiner of the basic chemicals that
>make up a mouse, which would you say contains more information?
It is far from clear that the question as stated has a reasonable answer.
>As a
>code user (in this case one who knows the code of living things),
>you'll choose the live mouse.
That certainly will be the knee jerk intuitive guess. Justifying
that choice is considerably more difficult.
>The point is, I think we have a gut feel for this stuff called
>information, we just can't precisely define or measure it at this
>stage. At least I can't; can you?
People do have some intuitive idea as to what information is, but
many gut feelings aren't particularly useful. It makes people say
things like "things don't organize themselves" and "if it looks designed,
it must be designed."
>[...]
>> >Paul Davies says otherwise. "Life is ultimately about complex
>information
>> >processing, so it makes sense to seek a solution in the realm of
>information
>> >theory and complexity theory. Since biological information is not
>encoded in
>> >the laws of physics and chemistry (at least as currently known),
>where does
>> >it come from?
>>
>> Is there anything in the above paragraph that is true? Notably can
>> you show that
>>
>> a) Life is ultimately about anything, much less complex
>information
>> processing?
>> b) Biological information is not encoded in the laws of physics
>> or chemistry?
>
>The first is obviously a figure of speech, not a value judgement.
I didn't say it was a value judgement. I said it was absurd. There
is no reason to believe that life is ultimately about anything, much
less complex information processing.
>The second statement? You want we to _disprove_ that "Biological
>information is not encoded in the laws of physics or chemistry"? I
>would suggest that the burden of positive proof rests firmly with you.
Chemistry is defined by electromagnetic properties of the atoms in question.
Those are physical laws. Biology is physical. If biological information
exists and has a physical representation, then it is obviously encoded
by the laws of physics/chemistry.
Is there something wrong/unclear about that?
Mark
>Regards,
>Mark Elkington
>
>
>Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
>Before you buy.
>
sc...@home.com
>"R.D. Heilman" wrote:
>
<snip>
>
>> For example: A house abandoned begins to disintegrate, fall apart, collapse
>> on itself and eventually revert back to the elements.
>
>Yes, that's correct, if the house is left to itself.
>
>> An car left in an open
>> enviroment will rust, rot & over tine will compeletely disintegrate.
>
>That's true as well.
>
>> So
>> obviously the 2/nd law applies to open systems as well as to closed
>> systems.
>
>Your reasoning is false.
>
>You cannot conclude this from two examples. You have
>illustrated that in *some* open systems entropy increases in
>time. You have not shown that it does so in all open
>systems. For example, carpenters may completely repair the
>house every year. The second law does not apply to
>open systems. It only applies to closed systems.
>
every year.
Will their energy expenditure also not increase
entropy?
How do carpenters expending energy to repair
the house help the problem at all?
Regards,
Scott
<snip>
sc...@home.com
>> There can be temporary pockets
>> of increasing order,
>
>This contradicts your statement that the second law of
>thermodynamics applies to open systems as well as to closed
>ones. I am assuming of course, that you equate entropy
>here with order. That is not a correct equation of course,
>since `order' is so far an undefined term.
>
There is no contradiction unless the statement
is taken out of context.
His statement implies the folllowing:
>> There can be temporary pockets
>> of increasing order,
But not without a corresponding *increase*
in entropy.
Scott
Tracy P. Hamilton
<sc...@home.com> wrote in message news:39de1...@news1.prserv.net...
> >> For example: A house abandoned begins to disintegrate, fall apart,
collapse
> >> on itself and eventually revert back to the elements.
> >
> >Yes, that's correct, if the house is left to itself.
> >
> >> An car left in an open
> >> enviroment will rust, rot & over tine will compeletely disintegrate.
> >
> >That's true as well.
And have *less* entropy than the steel plus oxygen. Hmmmm.
> >> So
> >> obviously the 2/nd law applies to open systems as well as to closed
> >> systems.
True.
> >Your reasoning is false.
Can also be true.
> >You cannot conclude this from two examples. You have
> >illustrated that in *some* open systems entropy increases in
> >time. You have not shown that it does so in all open
> >systems. For example, carpenters may completely repair the
> >house every year. The second law does not apply to
> >open systems. It only applies to closed systems.
> >
> So let's say that carpenters repair the house
> every year.
"Carpenters repair the house every year"
> Will their energy expenditure also not increase
> entropy?
Yes.
> How do carpenters expending energy to repair
> the house help the problem at all?
They maintain order by the expediture of energy.
The entropy of the *house* is less.
Biochemistry is much the same way. Certainly living
organisms do not violate the second law. Neither do their
descendants. Neither any process that will select which
descendents survive to reproduce.
Tracy P. Hamilton
David Ewan Kahana
What you say is perfectly true. It was too extreme to say
that the second law has no implications at all for open systems.
Certainly the Gibb's free energy is the relevant quantity
to consider when determining the equilibrium situation for an
open system in which both the number and energy are allowed
to fluctuate due to contact with a large external reservoir.
There are of course various assumptions involved. Existence
of the thermodynamic limit, if we approach the
question via statistical mechanics, as well as ergodicity ...
>
> <snip>
>
> >If the universe can be considered a closed system, and there
> >is no re-collapse of the universe, then this is true. I am
> >not really competent to say whether these conditions are
> >satisfied for the universe.
>
> Almost certainly, it won't recollapse.
>
> --Dan Grubb
The data does seem strongly to suggest that no recollapse will
occur. On the other hand, if one believes that the universe
is perfectly flat, was tuned to be flat by inflation, then it
is worth remembering that one extra hydrogen atom is
sufficient to close the universe. Or for that matter, one
extra photon of arbitrarily low energy ...
One less photon, of course, and the universe is open.
For practical purposes, of course, the distinction is not
perhaps a very important one.
cheers,
- dave k.
WickedDyno
> In <39DCC5C7...@bnl.gov>, David Ewan Kahana <d...@bnl.gov> writes:
> >"R.D. Heilman" wrote:
> >
> <snip>
> >
> >> For example: A house abandoned begins to disintegrate, fall apart,
> >> collapse
> >> on itself and eventually revert back to the elements.
> >
> >Yes, that's correct, if the house is left to itself.
> >
> >> An car left in an open
> >> enviroment will rust, rot & over tine will compeletely disintegrate.
> >
> >That's true as well.
> >
> >> So
> >> obviously the 2/nd law applies to open systems as well as to closed
> >> systems.
> >
> >Your reasoning is false.
> >
> >You cannot conclude this from two examples. You have
> >illustrated that in *some* open systems entropy increases in
> >time. You have not shown that it does so in all open
> >systems. For example, carpenters may completely repair the
> >house every year. The second law does not apply to
> >open systems. It only applies to closed systems.
> >
> So let's say that carpenters repair the house
> every year.
>
> Will their energy expenditure also not increase
> entropy?
>
> How do carpenters expending energy to repair
> the house help the problem at all?
The problem is that people are seeing the state of disrepair of the
house as being something more than vaguely analogous to thermodynamic
entropy.
--
| Andrew Glasgow <amg39(at)cornell.edu> |
| SCSI is *NOT* magic. There are *fundamental technical |
| reasons* why it is necessary to sacrifice a young goat |
| to your SCSI chain now and then. -- John Woods |
R.D. Heilman
Tracy P. Hamilton <che...@uabdpo.dpo.uab.edu> wrote in message
news:8rl745$e5q$1...@SonOfMaze.dpo.uab.edu...
> > >"R.D. Heilman" wrote:
>
> > >> For example: A house abandoned begins to disintegrate, fall apart,
> > >> collapse on itself and eventually revert back to the elements.
> > >
> > >Yes, that's correct, if the house is left to itself.
> > >
> > >> An car left in an open
> > >> enviroment will rust, rot & over tine will compeletely disintegrate.
> > >
> > >That's true as well.
>
>
disintegration occurs. Tires will rot, leather interior will disintegrate
the glass
will shatter, electric wires will corrode etc..
>
> > >> So
> > >> obviously the 2/nd law applies to open systems as well as to closed
> > >> systems.
>
>
Thank you! I had decided that since everyone let this fallacy
stand it is pointless to continue. And there are others who
responded, who knows that the 2nd law _also_ applies to open
systems. Yet, they said nothing!
Again thank you. You have partly restored my confidence in T.O.
>
Best Regards,
RD
>
<snip>
<snip>
> Tracy P. Hamilton
>
>
Bobby D. Bryant
> This is the faulty leap. The implication is that thermodynamic entropy
> SEEMS to apply, and the same tired example of "things never organize
> themselves" is trotted out as evidence.
It's always convenient to be able to invoke a freshly minted axiom that says
exactly what you're trying to prove.
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
sc...@home.com
>
>Biochemistry is much the same way. Certainly living
>organisms do not violate the second law. Neither do their
>descendants. Neither any process that will select which
>descendents survive to reproduce.
>
Do a deja search on my id along with
"nothing violates second law" and you
will discover I have said the same thing.
scott
David Ewan Kahana
>
> >> > But it is said to increase "in a closed system".
> >> >
> >> By *it* I assume you mean entropy. *Entropy* is said to increase in a
> >> *closed*
> >> system: but not in an *open* system?
>
> >Your correspondent is correct. The second law of
> >thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated
> >(closed) system always increases. It says nothing at all
> >about what will happen to the entropy of an open system (one
> >which may exchange heat and matter with other systems). The
> >entropy of an open system may increase, decrease, or stay
> >the same.
>
[snip]
> The Gibb's energy has two components, one is the amount of
> energy of the system, and the other (subtracted) is a temperature
> weighted entropy. Hence, lower temperatures reduce the effect
> of entropy, and an entropy decrease can be outweighed by a total
> energy decrease.
>
>
This is just a minor quibble, and doesn't really affect your argument.
You are describing the Helmholtz free energy here, not the Gibbs free
energy. The Gibbs free energy uses the enthalpy in place of the energy,
the difference being the inclusion of the term + pV. For constant pressure
and constant temperature processes we should use the Gibbs free energy,
for constant volume and constant temperature the Helmholtz free energy.
I'm quite often guilty of confusing these two, myself. My apologies
to both Gibbs and Helmholtz.
cheers,
- dave k.
[snip]
Marko Grönroos
> My guesss would be that if your rebuttal isn't effective, it would
> be due to a definitional problem, not a logical one.
Well, yes. I'd think that either my rebuttal has a definitional
problem, or Gitt's information concept has. I feel that my
counterexample illuminates the definitional problem in Gitt's theory
quite clearly. But then again, I don't know all of his arguments for
his theory, only those presented in his web article. It would be
interesting to hear Gitt's views about my counterexample.
> With info discussions you have to do a lot of work defining terms, and I
> think introduce some mathematical definitions.
The problem is that Gitt's concept of information hasn't been defined
mathematically either. It's supposed to be based on Shannon's concept
of information, which is mathematical, but it's not at all clear to me
how Shannon's theory connects to biological objects. And if it can't
be connected mathematically, it is not applicable as anything else but
a metaphor. Perhaps a good metaphor, perhaps not.
Also, Gitt's "levels of information" above the statistical level are
not defined mathematically. Therefore, Gitt's information as a whole
is not defined mathematically.
I haven't read Gitt's book, but I find it very difficult to believe
that Gitt ever could, for example, define "purpose"
mathematically.... What is the unit of "purpose"? Bits? How do you
measure that? How many bits would be Man's purpose in God's creation?
> Organism are information-rich. In the process of evolving, information
> flowed from the environment into the genes through natural selection. That
> information was "how to survive" (Dawkins). The implication is that
> information must come from somewhere, analogous to energy, it does not
> spontaneously generate (how accepted is that concept?)
>
> The question then is how did the "environment" aquire that information?
It is not information FROM the environment, but ABOUT the environment.
> The 2nd law is of course another minefield.
So I've understood. I'm not a physicist so I'll leave that topic
alone...
> Some reading I've done on "configurational entropy" has come close
> to making the elusive formal link between info and entropy. For
> example, it can be shown that the to erase a bit of information in
> even an ideal computer, a minimum associated thermal entropy flow
> must occur.
So I've heard. The problem here may be that the "information" doesn't
really need to be information in any information-theoretical sense; it
doesn't need to represent anything, that is, to be information ABOUT
something. But, I don't understand this at all, so I'll leave
commenting to others.
--
-- Marko Grönroos, ma...@iki.fi (http://www.iki.fi/magi/)
-- Paradoxes are the source of truth and the end of wisdom
mark_el...@my-deja.com
rayt...@yahoo.com wrote:
[...]
> That certainly will be the knee jerk intuitive guess. Justifying
> that choice is considerably more difficult.
That's why Dembski, Gitt, Davies, me :-) and others are taking some
time. That's why there is widespread confusion on both sides of this
debate re info, entropy, etc. But info is real, and as we get a
clearer understanding of the "laws" governing its creation, I think its
impact on the origins debate will be significant (either way).
[...]
> >The point is, I think we have a gut feel for this stuff called
> >information, we just can't precisely define or measure it at this
> >stage. At least I can't; can you?
>
> People do have some intuitive idea as to what information is, but
> many gut feelings aren't particularly useful. It makes people say
> things like "things don't organize themselves" and "if it looks
designed,
> it must be designed."
In all the engineering design work I've ever done I've never seen
anything organise itself; quite the opposite. Now I fully understand
the principle by which natural selection is said to bring order out of
random, otherwise disordering mutations, but on the basis of experience
there are grounds for calling simple-to-complex evolution counter-
intuitive, or at least counter-experience.
Therefore if someone labels your brain as having the "appearance of
design", don't be too hard on them.
Is there enough time for evolution to happen? Is there a law of
information that opposes it in any amount of time? Are there
contrainsts at molecular or population levels which prevent the
process. This is what we are debating.
Note that I'm not denying substantial evolutionary adaptation, I'm
questioning the extrapolation to the evolution of simple-to-complex.
Hence my interest in the information perspective.
[...]
> >The second statement? You want we to _disprove_ that "Biological
> >information is not encoded in the laws of physics or chemistry"? I
> >would suggest that the burden of positive proof rests firmly with
you.
>
> Chemistry is defined by electromagnetic properties of the atoms in
question.
> Those are physical laws. Biology is physical. If biological
information
> exists and has a physical representation, then it is obviously encoded
> by the laws of physics/chemistry.
>
> Is there something wrong/unclear about that?
Your are not making an important distinction here.
The classical claim is that natural selection feeds survival
information from the environment into an evolving genome. This is _in
principle_ independent of the underlying physio-chemical laws of the
molecules. You can _in principle_ emulate evolution on a computer,
where the physio-chemical laws are not practically relevant to the
emulation.
Davies is saying that we have no evidence that the laws of chemistry
themselves supply information for biological evolution.
Chemistry tells anine to bond with thymine, and cytosine with guanine.
But chemistry does not tell the base pairs which sequence to form.
Is there something wrong/unclear about that?
Regards,
mark_el...@my-deja.com
hrgr...@my-deja.com wrote:
[...]
> It has more information to *us*. To Xordaxians *), the second sentence
> is meaningless, while the first one is a well-known ad slogan ;-)
>
> *) the official t.o. name for aliens who serve as examples or counter-
> examples.
Naturally :-) And I agree with your point, as stated elsewhere.
> > I think what Dembski is getting at is that we recognise living
> > organisms to be a very specific arrangement of their constituent
> atoms.
>
> I'd like to insert one important phrase: living organisms *as we know
> them*.
Agreed. My unstated assupmtion is that though there may be many other
viable alternative "living" arrangements for those same atoms, that
full range will still be a tiny subset of the total possible
arrangents. Would you agree?
If so, all such arrangements remain highly specific, according the
external specification: "arrangements that move, metabolise and self-
replicate".
What I am still trying to find is a formalisation of this intuitive
notion to take it beyond the subjective, the apparent need for an
observer or "code user". I think Demski's CSI is aiming to do that.
[...]
> But IMHO he is asking the wrong question. The correct question would
> be: "Is there anything in the laws of physics or chemistry which
> *forbids* information increase (however measured) ?"
See my distinction on this in my response to Mark.
Neil W Rickert
> rayt...@yahoo.com wrote:
>> That certainly will be the knee jerk intuitive guess. Justifying
>> that choice is considerably more difficult.
>That's why Dembski, Gitt, Davies, me :-) and others are taking some
>time. That's why there is widespread confusion on both sides of this
>debate re info, entropy, etc. But info is real, and as we get a
>clearer understanding of the "laws" governing its creation, I think its
>impact on the origins debate will be significant (either way).
What leads you to believe that there are any laws at all governing
information, in the sense in which you are using it?
>[...]
>> >The point is, I think we have a gut feel for this stuff called
>> >information, we just can't precisely define or measure it at this
>> >stage. At least I can't; can you?
>>
>> People do have some intuitive idea as to what information is, but
>> many gut feelings aren't particularly useful. It makes people say
>> things like "things don't organize themselves" and "if it looks
>designed,
>> it must be designed."
>In all the engineering design work I've ever done I've never seen
>anything organise itself; quite the opposite.
When I purchased my automobile, there were instructions about special
care to be taken for the first 1000 miles (the running in period).
During that period the pistons and cylinders were expected to adapt
to one another, a simple sort of self-organization. For that matter,
the auto has self adjusters on the brakes, another form of self
organization.
If you look around, you will find quite a few examples of self
organization in engineered systems. It is, admittely, at a very
primitive stage compared to biological systems.
> Now I fully understand
>the principle by which natural selection is said to bring order out of
>random, otherwise disordering mutations, but on the basis of experience
>there are grounds for calling simple-to-complex evolution counter-
>intuitive, or at least counter-experience.
I personally think that the randomness aspect is often overplayed by
evolutionists. However, a process of aggregation of simple
components can in principle give more complex ones. So I don't see
anything counterintuitive here.
>Therefore if someone labels your brain as having the "appearance of
>design", don't be too hard on them.
To me, it has the appearance of evolution. The types of things that
could evolve are very different from the types of things that would
come from an intelligent designer. Biological organisms are just not
what you would expect from an external intelligent designer.
>Is there enough time for evolution to happen?
Sure, unless you only allow 6000 years.
> Is there a law of
>information that opposes it in any amount of time? Are there
>contrainsts at molecular or population levels which prevent the
>process. This is what we are debating.
I personally think the informational approach is ridiculuous.
Neither Shannon's nor Kolmogorov's notion of information is
suitable. Unless you can come up with a definition of information
that fits the problem, these debates will be little more than hot
air.
>The classical claim is that natural selection feeds survival
>information from the environment into an evolving genome.
I don't know who makes such claims. But I count them as
nonsensical.
> This is _in
>principle_ independent of the underlying physio-chemical laws of the
>molecules.
Sorry, but you must be relying on rather stupid principles.
R.D Heilman
Matt Silberstein <mat...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:tdupts0kiqs5ra2la...@4ax.com...
> In talk.origins I read <BC4D5.1119$5l....@news1.atl> from "R.D.
> Heilman" <rd...@news.atl.bellsouth.net>:
>
> >
> >Ken Cox <k...@lucent.com> wrote in message
> >news:39DB93BA...@research.bell-labs.com...
> >> Matt Silberstein wrote:
> >> > "R.D. Heilman" <rd...@news2.lig.bellsouth.net>:
> >> > >Please explain the difference between the two forms of entropy.
> >>
> >> > There is no law of conservation or direction for informational
> >> > entropy. It can increase, decrease, or remain constant.
> >>
> >> Also, thermodynamic entropy has units of energy/temperature,
> >> while information entropy has units of bits. There isn't any
> >> relationship between bits and physics -- which is one reason
> >> that there are no physical laws about how information entropy
> >> can change.
> >>
> >Perhaps, but both informational and thermodynamic entropy be
> >expressed mathematically.
>
> So can temperature and pressure.
>
Right, but Matt did you not recognize this as a response to someone
who implied that informational entropy was somehow less rigorous than
thermodynamic entropy?
>
> [snip]
>
> --
> Matt Silberstein
>
> Let me ride on the wall of death one more time
> You can waste your chances on the other rides
> This is the nearest to being alive
> Let me take my chances on the wall of death
>
> R.T.
>
Mark T. VandeWettering
>In article <bXmD5.287414$i5.40...@news1.frmt1.sfba.home.com>,
> rayt...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
>[...]
>> That certainly will be the knee jerk intuitive guess. Justifying
>> that choice is considerably more difficult.
>
>That's why Dembski, Gitt, Davies, me :-) and others are taking some
>time. That's why there is widespread confusion on both sides of this
>debate re info, entropy, etc.
Unfortunately Dembski and Gitt don't claim to be confused, or even
speculating. They think they have the answer or at least are pretending
they do. When teased apart, their arguments vanish like smoke because
they don't actually define things like CSI, or employ completely circular
arguments by merely asserting what they are trying to prove.
>> People do have some intuitive idea as to what information is, but
>> many gut feelings aren't particularly useful. It makes people say
>> things like "things don't organize themselves" and "if it looks
>> designed, it must be designed."
>
>In all the engineering design work I've ever done I've never seen
>anything organise itself; quite the opposite.
Have you traipsed along the beach, and noticed how the size of
pebbles varies according to how they are positioned relative to
the water? Ever shake a box of Raisin Bran? Wonder why all those
raisins end up at the bottom of the box? Welcome to organization.
>Now I fully understand
>the principle by which natural selection is said to bring order out of
>random, otherwise disordering mutations, but on the basis of experience
>there are grounds for calling simple-to-complex evolution counter-
>intuitive, or at least counter-experience.
Counter-intuitive I'll grant you. Again, I warn about relying on
intuition, particularly for things which have very long (or very short)
timescales.
>Therefore if someone labels your brain as having the "appearance of
>design", don't be too hard on them.
It does appear to be designed. And I have pretty good evidence as to
who (or should I say what) the designer is.
>Is there enough time for evolution to happen? Is there a law of
>information that opposes it in any amount of time? Are there
>contrainsts at molecular or population levels which prevent the
>process. This is what we are debating.
One cannot answer these questions through debate, or through mathematical
analysis of strawman evolution, or by merely defining the problem away.
Unfortunately, these appear to be the three major approaches that Dembski
circulates between.
>Note that I'm not denying substantial evolutionary adaptation, I'm
>questioning the extrapolation to the evolution of simple-to-complex.
>Hence my interest in the information perspective.
What is the difference exactly between "substantial evolutionary adaptation"
and "evolution of simple-to-complex"?
>
>[...]
>> >The second statement? You want we to _disprove_ that "Biological
>> >information is not encoded in the laws of physics or chemistry"? I
>> >would suggest that the burden of positive proof rests firmly with
>you.
>>
>> Chemistry is defined by electromagnetic properties of the atoms in
>question.
>> Those are physical laws. Biology is physical. If biological
>information
>> exists and has a physical representation, then it is obviously encoded
>> by the laws of physics/chemistry.
>>
>> Is there something wrong/unclear about that?
>
>Your are not making an important distinction here.
>
>The classical claim is that natural selection feeds survival
>information from the environment into an evolving genome. This is _in
>principle_ independent of the underlying physio-chemical laws of the
>molecules.
Principles don't matter. In fact, it is dependent on the underlying physical
and chemical laws of matter.
>You can _in principle_ emulate evolution on a computer,
>where the physio-chemical laws are not practically relevant to the
>emulation.
Yes. I'm uncertain as to what your point is here. If we are talking about
biological evolution (as I thought we were), then certainly it is governed
by chemical physical laws. The "information" that we measure in the genome
isn't a physical property of the matter, information isn't a physical
quantity.
>Davies is saying that we have no evidence that the laws of chemistry
>themselves supply information for biological evolution.
You speak as if information exists as some kind of physical entity.
>Chemistry tells anine to bond with thymine, and cytosine with guanine.
>But chemistry does not tell the base pairs which sequence to form.
>Is there something wrong/unclear about that?
Not wrong. I'm not sure what kind of conclusion you are attempting to
draw, so I guess it is unclear.
>Regards,
>Mark Elkington
Mark
Bigdakine
>Date: 10/6/00 6:26 PM Hawaiian Standard Time
>Message-id: <8rm8kd$g5j$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>
>
>In article <bXmD5.287414$i5.40...@news1.frmt1.sfba.home.com>,
> rayt...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
>[...]
>> That certainly will be the knee jerk intuitive guess. Justifying
>> that choice is considerably more difficult.
>
>That's why Dembski, Gitt, Davies, me :-) and others are taking some
>time. That's why there is widespread confusion on both sides of this
>debate re info, entropy, etc. But info is real, and as we get a
>clearer understanding of the "laws" governing its creation, I think its
>impact on the origins debate will be significant (either way).
>
>[...]
>> >The point is, I think we have a gut feel for this stuff called
>> >information, we just can't precisely define or measure it at this
>> >stage. At least I can't; can you?
>>
>> People do have some intuitive idea as to what information is, but
>> many gut feelings aren't particularly useful. It makes people say
>> things like "things don't organize themselves" and "if it looks
>designed,
>> it must be designed."
>
>In all the engineering design work I've ever done I've never seen
>anything organise itself; quite the opposite.
Argument from personal incredulity is not a scientific argument. Have you ever
had 1-2-3 Jello?
sc...@home.com
>In article <8rm8kd$g5j$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, <mark_el...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
<snip>
>>In all the engineering design work I've ever done I've never seen
>>anything organise itself; quite the opposite.
>
>Have you traipsed along the beach, and noticed how the size of
>pebbles varies according to how they are positioned relative to
>the water? Ever shake a box of Raisin Bran? Wonder why all those
>raisins end up at the bottom of the box? Welcome to organization.
>
I tried the Raisin Bran one.
The raisins spelled out "eat me."
Welcome to information.
<snip>
Scott
sc...@home.com
>>The classical claim is that natural selection feeds survival
>>information from the environment into an evolving genome. This is _in
>>principle_ independent of the underlying physio-chemical laws of the
>>molecules.
>
>Principles don't matter. In fact, it is dependent on the underlying physical
>and chemical laws of matter.
>
>>You can _in principle_ emulate evolution on a computer,
>>where the physio-chemical laws are not practically relevant to the
>>emulation.
>
>Yes. I'm uncertain as to what your point is here. If we are talking about
>biological evolution (as I thought we were), then certainly it is governed
>by chemical physical laws. The "information" that we measure in the genome
>isn't a physical property of the matter, information isn't a physical
>quantity.
>
>>Davies is saying that we have no evidence that the laws of chemistry
>>themselves supply information for biological evolution.
>
>You speak as if information exists as some kind of physical entity.
>
"To explain life fully, it is not enough simply to identify a source of
free energy, or negative entropy, to provide biological information.
We also have to understand how SEMANTIC information comes into
being. It is the quality, not the mere existence, of information that
is the real mystery here."
- Davies, The Fifth Miracle, p. 60
<snip>
Richard Wein
Mark T. VandeWettering wrote in message ...
wrote:
>>In article <bXmD5.287414$i5.40...@news1.frmt1.sfba.home.com>,
>> rayt...@yahoo.com wrote:
>>
>>[...]
>>> That certainly will be the knee jerk intuitive guess. Justifying
>>> that choice is considerably more difficult.
>>
>>That's why Dembski, Gitt, Davies, me :-) and others are taking some
>>time. That's why there is widespread confusion on both sides of this
>>debate re info, entropy, etc.
>
>Unfortunately Dembski and Gitt don't claim to be confused, or even
>speculating. They think they have the answer or at least are pretending
>they do. When teased apart, their arguments vanish like smoke because
>they don't actually define things like CSI, or employ completely circular
>arguments by merely asserting what they are trying to prove.
Quite true. I've been trying to get answers from Dembski and Paul Nelson
(who collaborated with Dembski) to some questions about the Design
Inference. Dembski won't answer and Nelson doesn't know the answers. (I
suspect that Dembski doesn't know them either!)
Richard Wein (Tich)
--------------------------------
Please change "nospam" to "rwein" in my email address.
Matt Silberstein
Heilman" <rd...@news.atl.bellsouth.net>:
>
>Matt Silberstein <mat...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
>news:tdupts0kiqs5ra2la...@4ax.com...
>> In talk.origins I read <BC4D5.1119$5l....@news1.atl> from "R.D.
>> Heilman" <rd...@news.atl.bellsouth.net>:
>>
>> >
>> >Ken Cox <k...@lucent.com> wrote in message
>> >news:39DB93BA...@research.bell-labs.com...
>> >> Matt Silberstein wrote:
>> >> > "R.D. Heilman" <rd...@news2.lig.bellsouth.net>:
>> >> > >Please explain the difference between the two forms of entropy.
>> >>
>> >> > There is no law of conservation or direction for informational
>> >> > entropy. It can increase, decrease, or remain constant.
>> >>
>> >> Also, thermodynamic entropy has units of energy/temperature,
>> >> while information entropy has units of bits. There isn't any
>> >> relationship between bits and physics -- which is one reason
>> >> that there are no physical laws about how information entropy
>> >> can change.
>> >>
>> >Perhaps, but both informational and thermodynamic entropy be
>> >expressed mathematically.
>>
>> So can temperature and pressure.
>>
>Right, but Matt did you not recognize this as a response to someone
>who implied that informational entropy was somehow less rigorous than
>thermodynamic entropy?
No, I did not see that at all and still don't. I saw someone point out
that the units of measurement were different. And how bits were not
physical. I saw and see nothing about rigor. And that they can be
expressed mathematically does not make them rigorous.
Marko Grönroos
> speculating. They think they have the answer or at least are pretending
> they do.
Yes, this seems to be in great contrast to (evolutionary)
scientists. Biosemioticians such as Emmeche seem to approach the
subject very carefully and critically, emphasizing the difficulties
and metaphoric sense of biological information, as do information
theoreticians such as Chaitin. For example,
''The concept of biological information encoded in the genetic
program that controls development forms a major part of the semiotic
metaphor in biology. ... Other versions of the semiotic or
"nature-as-language" metaphor uses other formal or informal aspects
of language to comprehend the specific structural relations in
nature as explored by molecular and evolutionary biology.'' -
Emmeche (From Language to Nature - the semiotic metaphor in biology,
1991)
''To conclude, I must emphasize a number of disclaimers. First of
all, is a metaphor for evolution only in an extremely abstract
mathematical sense. The measures of complexity that I use, while
very pretty mathematically, pay for this prettiness by having
limited contact with the real world.'' - Chaiting (Algorithmic
information & evolution, 1991)
But then again, the creationist books are usually written for the
layman, while scientific, reviewed papers have to be more careful. I
suppose layman evolution books are also often a bit daring in this
respect.
> When teased apart, their arguments vanish like smoke because they
> don't actually define things like CSI, or employ completely circular
> arguments by merely asserting what they are trying to prove.
....
> One cannot answer these questions through debate, or through mathematical
> analysis of strawman evolution, or by merely defining the problem away.
> Unfortunately, these appear to be the three major approaches that Dembski
> circulates between.
It would be nice if you could be more specific about this. For
example, show quotations from Gitt or Dembski that clearly show the
circularity. You should always be cautious about claiming to have
found circular (or other) fallacy, unless you can demonstrate it
clearly. A clear demonstration would make critiques of their claims
much easier.
Richard Wein
>> speculating. They think they have the answer or at least are pretending
>> they do.
>
>scientists. Biosemioticians such as Emmeche seem to approach the
>subject very carefully and critically, emphasizing the difficulties
>and metaphoric sense of biological information, as do information
>theoreticians such as Chaitin. For example,
>
> ''The concept of biological information encoded in the genetic
> program that controls development forms a major part of the semiotic
> metaphor in biology. ... Other versions of the semiotic or
> "nature-as-language" metaphor uses other formal or informal aspects
> of language to comprehend the specific structural relations in
> nature as explored by molecular and evolutionary biology.'' -
> Emmeche (From Language to Nature - the semiotic metaphor in biology,
> 1991)
>
> ''To conclude, I must emphasize a number of disclaimers. First of
> all, is a metaphor for evolution only in an extremely abstract
> mathematical sense. The measures of complexity that I use, while
> very pretty mathematically, pay for this prettiness by having
> limited contact with the real world.'' - Chaiting (Algorithmic
> information & evolution, 1991)
>
>But then again, the creationist books are usually written for the
>layman, while scientific, reviewed papers have to be more careful. I
>suppose layman evolution books are also often a bit daring in this
>respect.
>
>> don't actually define things like CSI, or employ completely circular
>> arguments by merely asserting what they are trying to prove.
>> One cannot answer these questions through debate, or through mathematical
>> analysis of strawman evolution, or by merely defining the problem away.
>> Unfortunately, these appear to be the three major approaches that Dembski
>> circulates between.
>
>example, show quotations from Gitt or Dembski that clearly show the
>circularity. You should always be cautious about claiming to have
>found circular (or other) fallacy, unless you can demonstrate it
>clearly. A clear demonstration would make critiques of their claims
>much easier.
You can find my brief critique of Dembski at Amazon
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ts/book-customer-reviews/0521623871/o/qid
%3D960109100/sr%3D2-2/102-4810017-6311324). I'm afraid I still haven't got
around to writing a longer article on the subject, but I'm aiming to do so.
One problem in critiquing Dembski is the high level of vagueness and
equivocation in his writing. One is forced to consider all the possible
combinations of what he *might* mean. As I mentioned in another post to this
thread, he has failed to clarify his methods in correspondence with me. He
did send me three emails, but avoided answering any of my questions. Most
damning of all, he has never cited any specific data to back up his claim to
have detected ID in biological systems.
One issue that I didn't mention in my Amazon review is the subject of CSI
(because the term isn't used in "The Design Inference"). However, it turns
out that CSI (Complex Specified Information) is simply probability
transformed by the taking the logarithm to base 2 and negating. Why does
Dembski transform probabilities in this way? No good reason. It just adds an
additional layer of obfuscation and an extra opportunity for equivocation.
In TDI, probabilities are defined with respect to particular chance
hypotheses. A given event may have several different probabilities with
respect to different chance hypotheses. However, in the process of
converting probabilities to CSI, the issue of chance hypotheses is quietly
forgotten. Dembski assumes that each event has a unique probability value,
when there should really be one for each chance hypothesis. Oh, and note
that CSI is the same thing as "specified complexity". Why does Dembski
introduce yet another superfluous term? Well, I've never known an ID
proponent to miss an opportunity for a little extra obfuscation! After all,
when your argument is totally bogus, you need to cover it up with a few
layers of spurious mumbo-jumbo to conceal the logical errors.
(I'm not claiming that these are deliberate ploys by Dembski. I just think
he's so emotionally committed to his position that he cannot allow himself
to see the fallacy of it, and he's intelligent enough that he needs the
obfuscations to conceal the logical flaws from himself, as well as from
other people.)
Mark T. VandeWettering
>"To explain life fully, it is not enough simply to identify a source of
>free energy, or negative entropy, to provide biological information.
>We also have to understand how SEMANTIC information comes into
>being. It is the quality, not the mere existence, of information that
>is the real mystery here."
>
> - Davies, The Fifth Miracle, p. 60
"Davies is a fuzzy thinking dope."
Mark VandeWettering, talk.origins
><snip>
Gordon Davisson
<k...@lucent.com> wrote:
> "R.D. Heilman" wrote:
> > Ken Cox <k...@lucent.com> wrote:
>
> > Perhaps, but both informational and thermodynamic entropy be
> > expressed mathematically.
> So can the number of hairs on a dog's tail. That doesn't mean
> that any of the three concepts are related.
>
> Except for the name, and certain rather esoteric considerations
> of what would happen in a perfect crystal at 0K (an unattainable
> state, BTW), information entropy and thermodynamic entropy are
> unrelated. In particular, there is no equivalent of the laws of
> thermo for information entropy; in particular, spontaneous changes
> in the system can increase or decrease the amount of information.
Ok, I'm feeling foolish, so I'll take the plunge and try to defend the
idea that thermodynamics is connected to information theory (though the
connection is probably not what you'd expect). I've been working on
this essay for a while now, but I don't really consider it complete yet
(I haven't finished the reading I should do, and there are several more
things that I need to cover -- especially the question of entropy's
status as a state function, and some side issues raised by RNA
synthesis). I was hoping to have more time to work on it before
posting, but since the topic's come up again, you're getting it as-is.
Consider yourselves warned...
(Also, this may look like a post-and-run, because I write slowly and am
amazingly unreliable about replying. But I've been reading this group
for about 16 years now, and don't plan to vanish anytime soon.)
This is all going to get rather long-winded and technical, and I suspect
most of you won't find it worth wading through, so I'll start with the
important part: my conclusions.
1. CONCLUSIONS
First: the information-theoretic entropy (or Shannon-entropy) of a
physical system contributes to its thermodynamic entropy, at the rate of
1 bit of Shannon-entropy => k (Boltzmann's constant) * ln 2 = 9.57e-24
Joule/Kelvin of thermodynamic entropy.
Second: my first conclusion above doesn't really matter because under
realistic conditions, the information contribution to thermodynamic
entropy is so small that it can be safely ignored. For example, one
terabyte (2^43 bits) of information corresponds to only 8.42e-11 J/K of
thermo-entropy, which is the same as the entropy difference between 1
cc of water (about a thimblefull) at a temperature of 300 Kelvin (about
room temperature) and the same amount of water at a temperature of
300.000000060 Kelvin (also pretty dang close to room temperature). This
is a huge amount of information, but a negligible amount of thermo-
entropy.
Third: it's possible to take my first conclusion even further, and
regard a physical system's entire thermodymanic (well, stat-mech
actually) entropy as the Shannon-entropy of its microstate (i.e. its
precise physical state), multiplied by k ln 2. In fact, if you regard
k ln 2 as simply a units conversion factor (from bits to thermo-style
units) then the system's Boltzmann-entropy is exactly the Shannon-
entropy of its microstate.
Fourth: my third conclusion doesn't matter either.
Fifth: there's a bit of a controversy about whether Shannon-entropy
should be regarded as information, or the opposite of information.
I'll argue that the former view makes more sense, although neither
view gives a definition of "information" much like the commonsense
definition most people use. (For the moment, I'll simply note that
erasing a computer's memory decreases its Shannon-entropy. Does that
sound like an increase in information to you?)
Sixth: the connection between information and thermodynamics is even
more irrelevant to the creation(/intelligent design)/evolution argument
than my second conclusion would suggest, because Shannon-entropy is not
monotonically related to the sort of information that creationists(/ID-
ists) think evolution can't produce. For example, consider 3 strands
of DNA, all of the same length: A) one copied exactly from another DNA
strand; B) one coding for a completely novel, but viable, living
organism; and C) one with a completely random sequence of bases. Of
these strands, C is the least constrained, and therefore has the highest
Shannon- and thermo-entropies; A is the most constrained, and therefore
has the least (new) Shannon-entropy, and the least (new) thermo-entropy.
B is in between the other two, despite the fact that it's the only one
that contains any novel information of the sort creationists(/ID-ists)
are concerned about. Put another way: if thermodymanic entropy were the
relevant constraint, it should be easier for a completely novel organism
to appear, than for an existing organism to be replicated; it's not,
therefore thermodynamic entropy is not the relevant constraint.
So, if this is all as irrelevant as I say it is, what's the point? Why
even bother? Well, some people find this sort of angels-on-the-head-of-
a-pin-counting fascinating, and I am one such person. Therefore, let's
get down to business. I'll start with a historical approach to the
problem.
2. THE HISTORY OF MAXWELL'S DEMON
(Note: most of this is summarized from _Maxwell's Demon: Entropy,
Information, Computing_, by H. S. Leff and A. F. Rex (1990) and the
papers they reprint; if you're interested in the subject, I recommend
tracking down a copy of this book. It's out of print, but don't let
that stop you...)
The connection between entropy and information was first made in
analysing Maxwell's Demon. For those unfamiliar with this, it's a
thought experiment James Clerk Maxwell came up with around 1867, which
seemed to imply that an intelligent being (aka the demon) could decrease
entropy. The demon guarded a very small door between two rooms full of
gas (initially at the same temperature, pressure, etc). The demon could
open and close the door, depending on the gas molecules approaching
it at any given moment (remember, it's a *very* small door). In the
original version, he opened it only when a slower-than-average molecule
was approaching from (e.g.) the right, or when a faster-than-average
molecule was approaching from the left. After he'd been at this a
while, the gas in the room on the right would be hotter than the gas
on the left, and the total entropy of the gas would have decreased.
Unless there was a also a compensating entropy increase involved, this
would violate the second law of thermodymanics.
(There are also many variants, such as one in which the demon only lets
molecules pass in one direction, thus producing a pressure difference;
it comes to much the same thing.)
(Note: some people seem to think that the second law of thermodynamics
applies differently to intelligent beings and/or their creations, than
to unintelligent undesigned things. This is incorrect; the second law
in its standard formulations applies equally to humans, steam engines,
and rocks. Maxwell's demon is interesting in part because it seems to
imply an exception to this equality before the law.)
('Nother note: although this hypothetical being is generally referred to
as a demon, this should not be taken to mean it's either supernatural or
evil. It's just the name the wee beastie's known by, that's all.)
The apparent problem presented by Maxwell's demon has been "resolved" in
various ways over the years. The first resolution of interest here is
due to Leo Szilard (1929), who showed that there was an entropy increase
associated with making and remembering the measurements (e.g. of
approaching gas molecules) necessary for a Mazwell's demon to do its
work. He also derived a lower limit for that entropy increase, which
reduces to k ln 2 in the case of a symmetric binary measurement.
Unfortunately, it's a bit hard to tell from his paper exactly how and
where this entropy increase appears.
Leon Brillouin (1950a, 1950b, 1956) had a go at clarifying matters by
showing that in order to see the incoming gas molecules against the
background of thermal radiation put out by more distant gas molecules
(and the walls, etc), the demon must illuminate the area around the door
with a high-temperature light source, which heated the surrounding gas
and thus produced enough entropy to satisfy the second law (he did not,
as far as I can tell, consider the possibility that there might be more
efficient ways to detect gas molecules). He then went (IMHO) completely
overboard in identifying information with negative entropy, leading
to much of the confusion on the subject we're used to seeing pop up
from time to time in talk.origins (and elsewhere). To be fair, his
conclusions are not unreasonable: given that information can only be
gotten at the cost of an entropy increase elsewhere, and that one can
then spend information (by opening/closing the door) to get a decrease
in entropy elsewhere, it makes sense to think of information as a sort
of anti-entropy. It just turns out to be wrong (or at least highly
misleading).
The first bit of counterevidence came from Rolf Landauer's (1961)
analysis of the limits of the thermodynamic efficiency of computation.
He showed that logically irreversible operations -- essentially, those
that destroyed information -- produced entropy. As Charles H. Bennett
and Landauer (1985) put it:
... information is destroyed whenever two previously distinct
situations become insistinguishable. In physical systems without
friction, information can never be destroyed; whenever information is
destroyed, some amount of energy must be dissipated (converted into
heat). As an example, imagine two easily distinguishable physical
situations, such as a rubber ball held either one meter or two meters
off the ground. If the ball is dropped, it will bounce. If there
is no friction and the ball is perfectly elastic, an observer will
always be able to tell what state the ball started out in (that is,
what its initial height was) because a ball dropped from two meters
will bounce higher than a ball dropped from one meter.
If there is friction, however, the ball will dissipate a small
amount of energy with each bounce, until it eventually stops bouncing
and comes to rest on the ground. It will then be impossible to
determine what the ball's initial state was; a ball dropped from
two meters will be identical with a ball dropped from one meter.
Information will have been lost as a result of energy dissipation.
Landauer also argued that logical irreversibility was a necessary
feature of (useful) computation, since performing an entire computation
reversibly would require preserving not only the input data, but also
an impractical quantity of intermediate results from the entire course
of the computation. Bennett (1973) found a way around this: by running
the entire computation (keeping piles of intermediate results), copying
the desired part of the result, then running the compatation in reverse
to eat up those unwanted intermediate results, it would be possible to
wind up with just the input data and desired output data. This opened
up the theory of reversible computation which is even more thoroughly
irrelevant than most of what I'm talking about, so I'll just refer the
interested reader to Richard Feynman (1996) and Bennett (1982), and get
back to the topic at hand...
Bennett (1982, section 5) also dropped the other shoe on Brillouin, by
showing that there are more efficient ways to make measurements. As he
puts it:
It is often supposed that _measurement_ (e.g. the measurement the
demon must make to determine whether the molecule is approaching from
the left or the right) is an unavoidably irreversible act, requiring
an entropy generation of at least k ln 2 per bit of information
obtained, and that this is what prevents the demon from violating the
second law. In fact, as will be shown below, measurements of the
sort required by Maxwell's demon can be made reversibly, provided the
measuring apparatus (e.g. the demon's internal mechanism) is in a
standard state before the measurement, so that measurement, like the
copying of a bit onto a previously blank tape, does not overwrite the
information previously stored there. Under these conditions, the
essential irreversible act, which prevents the demon from violating
the second law, is not the measurement itself but rather the
subsequent restoration of the measuring apparatus to a standard
state in preparation for the next measurement. This forgetting of a
previous logical state, like the erasure or overwriting of a bit of
intermediate data generated in the course of a computation, entails a
many-to-one mapping of the demon's physical state, which cannot be
accomplished without a corresponding entropy increase elsewhere.
Ironically, while this moots Brillouin's analysis of the demon, it
actually fits well as a refinement of Szilard's. To oversimplify just a
bit, Szilard broke down the demon's phases of operation thus:
1) Make a measurement (of the state of the gas molecules)
2) Use the result of that measurement to decrease entropy (of the
gas)
Szilard showed that phase 1 must produce entropy. Bennett broke it down
further:
1a) Forget the result of the previous measurement
1b) Make a new measurement
2) Use the result of the new measurement
...and showed that the entropy increase comes in phase 1a, not 1b. This
puts rather the opposite spin on things: entropy increase is associated,
not with the production of information, but with its destruction; hence
information is not the opposite of entropy, it's more-or-less the same
thing as entropy. In fact, if the demon has a large memory capacity,
it's possible to omit step 1a for a number of cycles of the demon's
operation, and produce an arbitrarily large decrease in the gas's
entropy at the cost of filling the demon's memory with the results of
old measurements. In this way, it is possible to convert the gas's
entropy into information. It's still entropy, mind you -- the entropy
of the demon's memory banks increases with the amount of information
stored there, so all we've really accomplished is to move entropy from
the gas to the demon's memory, and change its form somewhat.
3. AN INFORMATION-DRIVEN HEAT ENGINE
Actually, Bennett (still 1982, section 5; see also Feynman 1996, pp.
137-148) has an even more elegant way to accomplish this conversion.
He imagines a heat engine that takes in blank data tape and heat, and
produces work and tape full of random data. The principle is fairly
general, but let's use a version in which each bit along the tape
consists of a container with a single gas molecule in it, and a divider
down the middle of the container. If the molecule is on the left side
of the divider, it represents a zero; if it's on the right, it
represents a one. The engine is fed a tape full of zeros, and what
it does with each one is to put it in contact with a heat bath at
temperature T, replace the divider with a piston, allow the piston to
move slowly to the right, and then withdraw the piston and replace the
divider in the middle (trapping the gas molecule on a random side).
While the piston moves to the right, the gas does (on average) kT ln 2
of work on it, and absorbs (on average) kT ln 2 of heat from the bath
(via the walls of the container). Essentially, it's a single-molecule
ideal gas undergoing reversible isothermal expansion. And while the
results on a single bit will vary wildly (as usual, you get thermal
fluctuations on the order of kT, which is as big as the effect we're
looking at), if you do this a large number of times, the average will
tend to dominate, and things start acting more deterministic.
Now, the operation of this engine is thermodynamically reversible. That
means that just as it can convert heat+blank tape into work+random tape,
it can equally well be run in reverse to convert work+random tape into
heat+blank tape. It also means we can apply the formula for entropy
change in a reversible process, dS = dQ/T, to show that the random tape
has k ln 2 per bit higher entropy than the blank tape.
4. SHANNON-ENTROPY AS INFORMATION
At this point, I should probably digress a bit on the question of just
what sort of information it is we're talking about here. By the
commonsense definition most of us generally use, information is closely
associated with meaning (one version I rather like, is that information
is defined as data together with its interpretation). But while one can
regard the "information" in the demon's memory banks as meaningful (i.e.
it records the former state of the gas particles), it's rather hard to
think of any way to claim that the random output tape of that heat
engine means anything at all. The first thing you have to realize is
that the relevant definitions of information are those from statistical
information theory, which are quite different from the commonsense
definition. For one thing, they take no notice at all of meaning. As
Claude Shannon (1948) puts it,
The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing
at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at
another point. Frequently the messages have *meaning*; that is they
refer to or are correlated according to some system with certain
physical or conceptual entities. These semantic aspects of
communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem. The
significant aspect is that the actual message is one *selected from
a set* of possible messages.
... and Shannon's measure of information, which he dubbed entropy, is
essentially a measure of the size of that set of messages (or, if you
prefer, a measure of how unconstrained the message is). The random tape
has more possible sequences (is more unconstrained) than the blank tape,
and therefore has higher Shannon-entropy, and in this interpretation,
more information.
This is not the only interpretation of Shannon-entropy, and the lack of
constraint it measures. The other view, which I think originated with
Norbert Weiner (1948) (and was adopted by Brillouin and many others),
identifies information with decreases in Shannon-entropy, increases in
constraint, the elimination of possibilities, and (as it is usually put)
the resolution of uncertainty. The two views aren't as contradictory
as they might appear; they both (mostly) use the same math, they just
interpret the various quantities differently. I think the difference
can best be illustrated by an example: suppose Alice has some
information (I don't particularly care what it is -- the result of a
measurement, a coin flip, or something she wrote -- whatever), which
she keeps secret from everyone else. Weiner would say that to Alice,
her secret is information, and to everyone else it's the opposite of
information. I dislike this approach for several reasons, one of which
is its subjectivity; I don't like having the amount of information
associated with something depend on who you ask. I'd rather say that
Alice's secret _is_ information; from Alice's point of view it's
information she does have (i.e. knowledge), and from everyone else's
point of view it's information they don't have (i.e. ignorance, or
uncertainty). Weiner views knowledge as the opposite of ignorance; I
regard them as the same thing, viewed from opposite directions (much
like, say, forward and backward).
Another objection to Weiner's interpretation is that, while Shannon-
entropy is certainly useful as a measure of uncertainty, it's also
often useful as a measure of other things, some of which even Weiner
would agree are information. Quoting Shannon (1948) again:
Quantities of the form H = -K * sum from i = 1 to n of P_i log P_i
[i.e. Shannon-entropies -GD] (the constant K merely amounts to a
choice of a unit of measure) play a central role in information
theory as measures of information, choice and uncertainty.
Information theory was originally developed for analysing communication,
so let's look at an example of communication: Suppose Alice sends Bob
an email message consisting of two enclosed documents, which I'll call
X and Y. Suppose some mail server along the route looses the second
attachment, so Bob only receives X. To simplify things, assume X and
Y are statistically independent, that the mail server's behavior is
deterministic, and that the message carries no information other than
the two attachments. Let's look at some of the relevant measures of
information/uncertainty/whatever involved:
* The the entropy of the transmitted message -- which Weiner and I
would both agree measures Bob's initial uncertainty about the
message Alice sent, and I would also claim also measures the total
information in the transmitted message -- is the entropy of X plus
the entropy of Y.
* The conditional entropy of the transmitted message given the
received message, also known as the equivocation -- which Weiner
and I both agree measures Bob's final uncertainty about the message
Alice sent, and I would claim also measures the information lost in
transit -- is just the entropy of Y.
* The joint information of the received and transmitted messages,
which can be defined as the difference between the last two
entropies (or in a number of other mathematically equivalent ways)
-- which Weiner and I would both agree measures the decrease in
Bob's uncertainty about Alice's message, and also the amount of
information successfully transmitted -- is just the entropy of X.
So, since X is the portion of the message that was successfully
communicated, and the entropy of X is the amount of information
successfully communicated, how am I to escape the conclusion that the
amount of information carried by X is precisely the entropy of X?
I should perhaps emphasize how little either view of Shannon-entropy
has to do with what we usually call "information". Consider three
possibly information-containing symbol sequences:
A) this essay
B) a sequence of random letters and symbols the same length
C) a sequence of "K"'s the same length
D) a random sequence of "K"'s and "L"'s the same length
B is the least constrained, and thus has the highest Shannon-entropy,
so by my interpretation it has the most information. C is the most
constrained, so it has the lowest Shannon-entropy, and by Weiner's
interpretation the highest information (or maybe he would say we have
the most apriori information about its sequence). But A is the only one
that means anything (oh, come now, some of this must mean _something_),
and thus the only one carrying any commonsense-information. But it's
Shannon-entropy is in between B and C, and about the same as D.
5. PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES (or the lack therof)
I should also point out how little all of this matters. If there were
no connection between Shannon-entropy and thermo-entropy:
1) Shannon-entropy could increase or decrease freely (note: some
people think the second law has some counterpart in information
theory, that says Shannon-entropy can only increase. They are
mistaken), and
2) Thermo-entropy in non-information forms (i.e. degrees of freedom)
could only increase.
The connection creates exceptions to both of these principles, but the
exceptions are so small that they can usually be safely ignored:
1) The Shannon-entropy of a physical system can increase freely,
but can only decrease if there's a compensating thermo-entropy
increase involved. But the required thermo-entropy increase --
9.57e-24 J/K per bit, or 8.42e-11 J/K per terabyte -- is so
miniscule that it'd be difficult to even detect it.
2) Thermo-entropy in non-information forms can decrease, at the cost
of an increase of Shannon-entropy. But by the time you've filled
up your terabyte store, you only have a 8.42e-11 J/K thermo-
entropy decrease to show for it. It hardly seems worth the
bother.
Now, these effects can get significant when dealing with atomic-scale
memory devices, such as DNA and RNA. Bennett (1982, section 5) points
out that the way RNA strands are synthesized in a sequence-specific
way (by RNA polymerase) and degraded in a sequence-nonspecific way (by
enzymes such as polynucleotide phosphorylase) wastes about kT ln 4 (~=
1.4 kT) of free energy per base. This is a small, but not completely
insignificant, part of the free energy consumed by the process (about
20kT for synthesis; he doesn't give the figure for degradation).
(Actually, the RNA example is worth looking at in more detail than I'm
going to bother with here. kT ln 4 per base is enough to throw the
equilibrium reactant concentrations off by a factor of 4 between
the sequence-specific and -nonspecific reactions, which should be
experimentally measureable (but I haven't seen a measurement of it
yet). This difference makes sense from the point of view of kinetics:
a sequence-specific synthesis reaction can, at any given moment, only
react with one-quarter of the available bases that a nonspecific
reaction could. Also, it interesting to examine exactly where the
entropy decrease due to sequence-specific synthesis is: in the DNA,
the RNA, or only in the entropy of both taken together? I'd argue for
the last, meaning that this is one of those cases where entropies don't
sum nicely.)
Before ending this section, I'd like to note that these consequences
-- such as they are -- are all in the realm of thermodynamics, not
information theory. There's _still_ no information-theoretic analog
of the second law of thermodynamics. Abstract information-processing
systems can still produce and destroy Shannon-entropy without limit.
The only time there's any limit on the increase or decrease of Shannon-
entropy is when it's encoded in the state of a system that's subject to
thermodynamics, and then the limits are due to thermodynamics, not any
information-theoretic consideration.
6. THERMODYNAMIC ENTROPY AS INFORMATION
Back in my conclusions, I promised to go overboard with this connection
(but over the other side of the boat from Brillouin), and have a go at
identifying all thermo-entropy (Boltzmann-entropy, actually) with the
Shannon-entropy of a system's microstate. This is really just a simple
bit of math, given the similarity between Boltzmann's formula for
the entropy of a system in terms of the probabilities of all of the
microscopically distinct states it might be in:
S = -k * Sum over all microstates i of P(i) * ln(P(i))
and Shannon's formula for the entropy of a set of possible messages (or
states, or whatever) in terms of their probabilities:
H = - Sum over all messages i of P(i) * log(P(i))
The choice of a base for the logarithm in Shannon's formula is
essentially arbitrary, except that it determines the units of the
result. Base 2 is traditional, because it gives the result in bits,
which are the most popular units for measuring information. But they're
not the only legitimate unit. If you happen to want the entropy in
trits, just use base 3; for decimal digits, use base 10; for nats, use
base e (natural log, just like the Boltzmann formula). And if you want
the result in Joules per Kelvin you can use base e^7.243e22, or take
the result in nats and multiply by k. Either way, you'll get the same
result you would've from Boltzmann's formula.
(Actually, if you want me to do this units stuff properly, let me claim
that information, temperature, and energy are dimensionally related:
temperature = energy / information; 1 Kelvin = 9.57e-24 Joule/bit;
and Boltzmann's constant is properly written k = 1.38 e-23 J/K*nat =
9.57e-24 Joule/Kelvin*bit = 1. If you allow that, I can use the same
units for information and thermo-entropy without blinking.)
What sense can we make of this? I'd say that it means the entropy of
a system is the total amount of information represented by the system's
state. Weiner's followers would prefer to say it means the entropy of a
system is a measure of our uncertainty of (or lack of information about)
the precise state of that system. Either way, it doesn't affect the
physics at all -- they're just different ways of looking at the same old
familiar entropy.
--------------- References and recommended reading
Bennett, Charles H. (1973), "Logical reversibility of computation", _IBM
Journal of Research and Development_, v. 17, pp. 525-532. Reprinted
in Leff and Rex (1990), pp. 197-204.
Bennett, Charles H. (1982), "The thermodynamics of computation -- a
review", _International Journal of Theoretical Physics_, v. 21, pp.
905-940. Reprinted in Leff and Rex (1990), pp. 213-248.
Bennett, Charles H. and Rolf Landauer (1985), "The fundamental physical
limits of computation", _Scientific American_, v. 253, pp. 48-56.
Brillouin, Leon (1950a), "Maxwell's demon cannot operate: Information
and entropy. I", _Journal of Applied Physics_, v. 22, pp. 334-337.
Reprinted in Leff and Rex (1990), pp. 134-137.
Brillouin, Leon (1950b), "Physical entropy and information. II",
_Journal of Applied Physics_, v. 22, pp. 338-343.
Brillouin, Leon (1956), _Science and Information Theory_, Academic Press
Inc, New York)
Feynman, Richard P. (1996) edited by Anthony J. G. Hey and Robin W.
Allen, _Feynman Lectures on Computation_, Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-
48991-0
Leff, Harvey S. and Andrew F. Rex (1990) Eds. _Maxwell's Demon:
Entropy, Information, Computing_, Princeton University Press, New
Jersey, ISBN 0-691-08727-X and 0-691-08726-1
Landauer, Rolf (1961), "Irreversibility and heat generation in the
computing process", _IBM Journal of Research and Development_, v. 5,
pp. 183-191. Reprinted in Leff and Rex (1990), pp. 188-196.
Shannon, Claude E. (1948), "A mathematical theory of communication",
_Bell System Technical Journal_, v. 27, pp. 379-423 and 623-656.
Reprinted in Claude E. Shannon and Warren Weaver, _The Mathematical
Theory of Communication_ (University of Illinois Press, Urbana,
1949); and http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms//what/shannonday/paper.html
Szilard, Leo (1929), "On the decrease of entropy in a thermodynamic
system by the intervention of intelligent beings", _Zeitschrift
fur Physik_, v. 53, pp. 840-856. English translations: _Behavioral
Science_, v. 9, pp. 301-310 (1964); B. T. Feld and G. Weiss Szilard,
_The Collected Works of Leo Szilard: Scientific Papers_, (MIT Press,
Cambridge, 1972), pp. 103-129; J. A. Wheeler and W. H. Zurek,
_Quantum Theory and Mearurement_ (Princeton University Press), pp.
539-548; and Leff and Rex (1990), pp. 124-133.
Weiner, Norbert (1948), _Cybernetics_, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New
York
sc...@home.com
>ma...@peewee.telescopemaking.org (Mark T. VandeWettering) writes:
>
>
>> When teased apart, their arguments vanish like smoke because they
>> don't actually define things like CSI, or employ completely circular
>> arguments by merely asserting what they are trying to prove.
>.....
>> One cannot answer these questions through debate, or through mathematical
>> analysis of strawman evolution, or by merely defining the problem away.
>> Unfortunately, these appear to be the three major approaches that Dembski
>> circulates between.
>
>It would be nice if you could be more specific about this. For
>example, show quotations from Gitt or Dembski that clearly show the
>circularity. You should always be cautious about claiming to have
>found circular (or other) fallacy, unless you can demonstrate it
>clearly. A clear demonstration would make critiques of their claims
>much easier.
>
Dembski is a Ph.D. in Philosophy.
I am sure he knows how to hide the
circularity of his argument. ;-)
scott
sc...@home.com
>ma...@peewee.telescopemaking.org (Mark T. VandeWettering) writes:
>> speculating. They think they have the answer or at least are pretending
>> they do.
>
>scientists. Biosemioticians such as Emmeche seem to approach the
>subject very carefully and critically, emphasizing the difficulties
>and metaphoric sense of biological information, as do information
>theoreticians such as Chaitin. For example,
>
> ''The concept of biological information encoded in the genetic
> program that controls development forms a major part of the semiotic
> metaphor in biology. ... Other versions of the semiotic or
> "nature-as-language" metaphor uses other formal or informal aspects
> of language to comprehend the specific structural relations in
> nature as explored by molecular and evolutionary biology.'' -
> Emmeche (From Language to Nature - the semiotic metaphor in biology,
> 1991)
>
> ''To conclude, I must emphasize a number of disclaimers. First of
> all, is a metaphor for evolution only in an extremely abstract
> mathematical sense. The measures of complexity that I use, while
> very pretty mathematically, pay for this prettiness by having
> limited contact with the real world.'' - Chaiting (Algorithmic
> information & evolution, 1991)
>
"Look at DNA, it's biological information..."
- Gregory J. Chaitin, The Unknowable, p. 105
"Consciousness does not seem to be material, and information is
certainly immaterial, so perhaps consciousness, and perhaps even
the soul, is sculpted in information, not matter.
The conventional view is that matter is primary, and that infor-
mation, if it exists, emerges from matter. But what if information
is primary, and matter is the secondary phenomenon!
INFORMATION is a really revolutionary new kind of concept, and
recognition of this fact is one of the milestones of this age."
- Gregory J. Chaitin, The Unknowable, p. 106
<snip>
Regards,
Scott
sc...@home.com
>In article <39df7...@news1.prserv.net>, <sc...@home.com> wrote:
>
>>"To explain life fully, it is not enough simply to identify a source of
>>free energy, or negative entropy, to provide biological information.
>>We also have to understand how SEMANTIC information comes into
>>being. It is the quality, not the mere existence, of information that
>>is the real mystery here."
>>
>> - Davies, The Fifth Miracle, p. 60
>
>"Davies is a fuzzy thinking dope."
>
> Mark VandeWettering, talk.origins
>
scott
wf...@ptd.net
>In <m3em1sd...@magi.yok.utu.fi>, ma...@iki.fi (Marko Grönroos) writes:
>>ma...@peewee.telescopemaking.org (Mark T. VandeWettering) writes:
>>
><snip>
>
>>
>>> When teased apart, their arguments vanish like smoke because they
>>> don't actually define things like CSI, or employ completely circular
>>> arguments by merely asserting what they are trying to prove.
>>.....
>>> One cannot answer these questions through debate, or through mathematical
>>> analysis of strawman evolution, or by merely defining the problem away.
>>> Unfortunately, these appear to be the three major approaches that Dembski
>>> circulates between.
>>
>>It would be nice if you could be more specific about this. For
>>example, show quotations from Gitt or Dembski that clearly show the
>>circularity. You should always be cautious about claiming to have
>>found circular (or other) fallacy, unless you can demonstrate it
>>clearly. A clear demonstration would make critiques of their claims
>>much easier.
>>
>Dembski is a Ph.D. in Philosophy.
>
does he also have a PhD in math?
thewilkins
<gor...@tardigrade.org> wrote:
....
This is, as it stands, an FAQ...
thewilkins
> In <m3em1sd...@magi.yok.utu.fi>, ma...@iki.fi (Marko Grönroos) writes:
> >ma...@peewee.telescopemaking.org (Mark T. VandeWettering) writes:
> >
> <snip>
>
> >
> >> When teased apart, their arguments vanish like smoke because they
> >> don't actually define things like CSI, or employ completely circular
> >> arguments by merely asserting what they are trying to prove.
> >.....
> >> One cannot answer these questions through debate, or through
> >> mathematical
> >> analysis of strawman evolution, or by merely defining the problem
> >> away.
> >> Unfortunately, these appear to be the three major approaches that
> >> Dembski
> >> circulates between.
> >
> >It would be nice if you could be more specific about this. For
> >example, show quotations from Gitt or Dembski that clearly show the
> >circularity. You should always be cautious about claiming to have
> >found circular (or other) fallacy, unless you can demonstrate it
> >clearly. A clear demonstration would make critiques of their claims
> >much easier.
> >
> Dembski is a Ph.D. in Philosophy.
>
> I am sure he knows how to hide the
> circularity of his argument. ;-)
>
>
> scott
>
Not all that successfully. Wesley Elsberry has been pretty successful in
exposing it, but it was apparent even to me when I read the book.
Marko Grönroos
> "Consciousness does not seem to be material, and information is
> certainly immaterial, so perhaps consciousness, and perhaps even
> the soul, is sculpted in information, not matter.
> The conventional view is that matter is primary, and that infor-
> mation, if it exists, emerges from matter. But what if information
> is primary, and matter is the secondary phenomenon!
> INFORMATION is a really revolutionary new kind of concept, and
> recognition of this fact is one of the milestones of this age."
> - Gregory J. Chaitin, The Unknowable, p. 106
Interesting contrast to his earlier statement, indeed. So, either he
has done some great progress in 8 years, or has gotten frustrated and
stepped over the line here.
Not that I don't like the concept of information. I do like it, and
although I don't understand it very well, I feel that it is a very
valuable viewpoint. If someone says that it's more than just a
metaphor, they really should prove their claim.
I guess I'll have to add more of Chaitin's texts to my reading list...
--
-- Marko Grönroos, ma...@iki.fi (http://www.iki.fi/magi/)
-- Paradoxes are the source of truth and the end of wisdom
Richard Wein
>> speculating. They think they have the answer or at least are pretending
>> they do.
>
>scientists. Biosemioticians such as Emmeche seem to approach the
>subject very carefully and critically, emphasizing the difficulties
>and metaphoric sense of biological information, as do information
>theoreticians such as Chaitin. For example,
>
> ''The concept of biological information encoded in the genetic
> program that controls development forms a major part of the semiotic
> metaphor in biology. ... Other versions of the semiotic or
> "nature-as-language" metaphor uses other formal or informal aspects
> of language to comprehend the specific structural relations in
> nature as explored by molecular and evolutionary biology.'' -
> Emmeche (From Language to Nature - the semiotic metaphor in biology,
> 1991)
>
> ''To conclude, I must emphasize a number of disclaimers. First of
> all, is a metaphor for evolution only in an extremely abstract
> mathematical sense. The measures of complexity that I use, while
> very pretty mathematically, pay for this prettiness by having
> limited contact with the real world.'' - Chaiting (Algorithmic
> information & evolution, 1991)
>
>layman, while scientific, reviewed papers have to be more careful. I
>suppose layman evolution books are also often a bit daring in this
>respect.
>
>> don't actually define things like CSI, or employ completely circular
>> arguments by merely asserting what they are trying to prove.
>> One cannot answer these questions through debate, or through mathematical
>> analysis of strawman evolution, or by merely defining the problem away.
>> Unfortunately, these appear to be the three major approaches that Dembski
>> circulates between.
>
>example, show quotations from Gitt or Dembski that clearly show the
>circularity. You should always be cautious about claiming to have
>found circular (or other) fallacy, unless you can demonstrate it
>clearly. A clear demonstration would make critiques of their claims
>much easier.
You can find my brief critique of Dembski at Amazon
wf...@ptd.net
wrote:
>
>One problem in critiquing Dembski is the high level of vagueness and
>equivocation in his writing.
i think this is a characteristic all design theorists share. they have
no science behind their fulminations, so they resort to fuzzy
thinking. in lieu of a hard mechanism for design they leave enough
wiggle room for them to say they did/didnt mean a certain idea
was/wasnt science....depends on the phase of the moon, color of sox,
etc.
>
>(I'm not claiming that these are deliberate ploys by Dembski. I just think
>he's so emotionally committed to his position that he cannot allow himself
>to see the fallacy of it, and he's intelligent enough that he needs the
>obfuscations to conceal the logical flaws from himself, as well as from
>other people.)
>
and thats one primary reason these folks attack science rather than
defending their own position.
Richard Wein
>Good question. "Complexity, according to Kolmogorov, can be measured by
the
>length of the shortest program for a universal Turing machine that
correctly
>reprodcues the observed data."
>
>By this algorithmic definition of complexity, the sequence 11111111 is less
>complex than 11010100. Also, the less "algorithmically compressible" the
>data, the more random it is.
>
>Therefore we have randomness = complexity!
>
>Where does information fit into this? Which sequence, 11111111 or 11010100,
>contains more infomation? Without a context, we cannot say. This is where
>Gitt's coding rules come in, and Demski's CSI.
>
>The sequence of base pairs in a genome only contains information in the
>conext of protien manufacture. In that context it becomes complex
specified
>information. For this reason I find CSI a satidfying concept, pending
>formalisation.
You should bear in mind that there's no connection between Dembski's CSI and
Kolmogorov's algorithmic notion of information (despite Dembski's claims
that there is):
"It is CSI that within the Kolmogorov-Chaitin theory of algorithmic
information takes the form of highly compressible, non-random strings of
digits (cf. Kolmogorov, 1965; Chaitin, 1966)." Dembski, "Intelligent Design
as a Theory of Information",
(http://www.leaderu.com/offices/dembski/docs/bd-idesign2.html)
For example, take a random number sequence having no discernible pattern. In
K-C terms, this has high information content, because it is not
compressible. But, in Dembski's terms, it has zero CSI, because it's
unspecified.
Unfortunately, Dembski often refers simply to "information", without making
it clear whether he means CSI, or information in a more commonly accepted
sense.
>Note that I don't make any of these statements dogmatically!
>
>
>>>In the process of evolving, information
>>>flowed from the environment into the genes through natural selection.
>That
>>>information was "how to survive" (Dawkins). The implication is that
>>>information must come from somewhere, analogous to energy, it does not
>>>spontaneously generate (how accepted is that concept?)
>>
>>I'd say not at all.
>
>Paul Davies says otherwise. "Life is ultimately about complex information
>processing, so it makes sense to seek a solution in the realm of
information
>theory and complexity theory. Since biological information is not encoded
in
>the laws of physics and chemistry (at least as currently known), where does
>it come from? There seems to be agreement that information cannot come into
>existence spontaneously (except perhaps in the big bang), so the
information
>content of living systems must somehow originate in their environrnent.
>Although there is no knovrn law of physics able to create informafion from
>nothing, there might be some sort of principle that could explain how
>inforinafion can be garnered from the environment and accumulated in
>macromolecules."
>http://www.scitec.auckland.ac.nz/~king/Preprints/book/upd/millupd/life/life
2
>01.htm#anchor412371
It's impossible to interpret this passage without knowing what Davies means
by information. We can safely assume he doesn't mean CSI, since that is
Dembski's own idiosyncratic concept of information. If he means information
in the K-C sense, then he's wrong, because any random process produces
information in that sense. (I assume that Davies is not taking a
deterministic view of nature, denying the existence of truly random
processes.)
Note that Dembski has never demonstrated the existence of CSI in living
systems, and I doubt that he ever will.
>>>The 2nd law is of course another minefield. Some reading I've done on
>>>"configurational entropy" has come close to making the elusive formal
link
>>>between info and entropy. For example, it can be shown that the to erase
>a
>>>bit of information in even an ideal computer, a minimum associated
thermal
>>>entropy flow must occur.
>>
>>Yes. If you choose to make this argument, you are going to have to
>>develop it further. Dembski and Gitt might think they have done so.
>>I don't believe they have.
>
>
>More an observation than argument at this point. The link quoted says that
>an abstract entity, a bit of information, has a minimum associated thermal
>entropy flow for erasure of kTlog2 per bit, and this may have to considered
>in the thermal design of advanced computers.
>http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/mit/sectione/gershenfeld.html
>
>I find this an amazing and fascinating linkage, and one that cautions
>against dismissing too quickly a tie-up between thermal entropy and
>information (a la Brig Klyce's informative article
>http://www.panspermia.com/seconlaw.htm)
I know nothing about thermal entropy, so I'll leave that discussion to
others.
Richard Wein (Tich)
--------------------------------
"Do the calculation. Take the numbers seriously. See if the underlying
probabilities really are small enough to yield design."
-- W. A. Dembski, who has never presented any calculation to back up his
claim to have detected Intelligent Design in life.
Richard Wein
>>>difficult, nor much an endorsement. Tell me, how can someone
>>>introduce a concept for something like Complex Specified Information
>>>without actually defining it? You are correct in saying it is central
>>>to his argument. Indeed, it is his complete argument. Unfortunately,
>>>his argument begs the question. Dembski merely asserts that CSI cannot
>>>arise from natural processes. He "defines" CSI as 'any specified
>>>information that exceeds 500 bits'. Of course, he doesn't develop what
>>>he means by specified, which brings up the possibility that either all
>>>information is CSI, or none of it is. It's impossible to tell.
>>
>>Intuitively I find CSI a convincing concept, though until it is formalised
>>you have the right to remain skeptical.
>
>If you could tell me what Dembski means for information to be specified,
>it might help.
Dembski explains what he means by "specified" in The Design Inference and at
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/dembski/docs/bd-idesign2.html . In TDI he
attempts to give a rigorous method for distinguishing between a valid
specification and a "fabrication" (an ad hoc construction of a pattern after
the event). However, this method is pure baloney. Far better statisticians
than Dembski have tried to solve the specification problem and failed. If
Dembski had really solved it, this would probably be acclaimed as the
greatest breakthrough in statistics of the last century.
Isn't it strange that Dembski prefers to present his ground-breaking
statistical ideas to the general public than to academic statisticians, who
are qualified to judge them? (Not that one has to be highly qualified to see
that Dembski's ideas are nonsense. I have only a humble bachelor's degree in
statistics.)
Richard Wein
>In article <bXmD5.287414$i5.40...@news1.frmt1.sfba.home.com>,
> rayt...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
>[...]
>> That certainly will be the knee jerk intuitive guess. Justifying
>> that choice is considerably more difficult.
>
>That's why Dembski, Gitt, Davies, me :-) and others are taking some
>time. That's why there is widespread confusion on both sides of this
>debate re info, entropy, etc. But info is real, and as we get a
>clearer understanding of the "laws" governing its creation, I think its
>impact on the origins debate will be significant (either way).
The trouble is that Dembski is not "taking some time." He has *already*
publicly claimed, with great confidence, to have detected ID in life, and
the claim is being widely used as ammunition in the ID propaganda campaign.
If Dembski had merely offered his ideas as a speculative theory, then the
fact that they are wrong wouldn't matter so much.
Mark Isaak
In the meantime, I nominate it for POTM.
In article <gordon-11739F.19062607102000@[127.0.0.1]>,
Gordon Davisson <gor...@tardigrade.org> wrote:
--
Mark Isaak atta @ best.com http://www.best.com/~atta
"The commonest fallacy is to suppose that since the state of doubt
is accompanied by a feeling of uncertainty, knowledge arises when
this feeling gives way to one of assurance." - John Dewey
Mark Isaak
> "Consciousness does not seem to be material, and information is
> certainly immaterial, so perhaps consciousness, and perhaps even
> - Gregory J. Chaitin, The Unknowable, p. 106
Where is this immaterial information? I have never encountered it before,
either personally or referred to by others. The evidence is also
extremely strong that consciousness is material. In short, Chaitin is
simply making up fictions.
Bobby D. Bryant
> (Note: some people seem to think that the second law of thermodynamics
> applies differently to intelligent beings and/or their creations, than
> to unintelligent undesigned things. This is incorrect; the second law
> in its standard formulations applies equally to humans, steam engines,
> and rocks. Maxwell's demon is interesting in part because it seems to
> imply an exception to this equality before the law.)
I'm still digesting what you said about observations and demonic
information. Meanwhile, can I suppose that the demon is considered to be
part of the system? Does the (presumed) fact that it must do work to open
and close the door have any effect on the analysis?
> I should perhaps emphasize how little either view of Shannon-entropy
> has to do with what we usually call "information". Consider three
> possibly information-containing symbol sequences:
>
> A) this essay
> B) a sequence of random letters and symbols the same length
> C) a sequence of "K"'s the same length
> D) a random sequence of "K"'s and "L"'s the same length
>
> B is the least constrained, and thus has the highest Shannon-entropy,
> so by my interpretation it has the most information. C is the most
> constrained, so it has the lowest Shannon-entropy, and by Weiner's
> interpretation the highest information (or maybe he would say we have
> the most apriori information about its sequence). But A is the only one
> that means anything (oh, come now, some of this must mean _something_),
> and thus the only one carrying any commonsense-information. But it's
> Shannon-entropy is in between B and C, and about the same as D.
I balk at the claim that C is more constrained than A. Clearly, there is
only one message that satisfies C, but alas, there is only one message that
satisfies A as well. What am I missing?
On a different note, I saw a presentation recently where the speaker
presented an argument that "complexity" must lie somewhere between the
extremes of "completely random" and "completely predictable". Perhaps
\intuitive{information} should work the same way?
> 1) Shannon-entropy could increase or decrease freely (note: some
> people think the second law has some counterpart in information
> theory, that says Shannon-entropy can only increase. They are
> mistaken),
Would it be desirable to work backwards and define \general{information} in
a way that a law similar to 2LoT *did* apply to it, other than by reference
to the thermodynamics of the system holding the information? (And if
desirable, would it even be possible?)
Also, very tangentially: Is the encoding of information in matter
essential, or merely convenient? I've been wondering this since recent
discussions about the possibility of sending information at speeds faster
than light. I can't imagine how you would encode or transmit information
without encoding or transmitting matter/energy, but I wonder whether the
binding is compelled by theoretical considerations, or whether it just
reflects the limits of my imagination.
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
Bobby D. Bryant
> But info is real, and as we get a
> clearer understanding of the "laws" governing its creation, I think its
> impact on the origins debate will be significant (either way).
Meanwhile, it has no significance at all. I find it odd that you would
argue on the basis of laws which may or may not exist.
> In all the engineering design work I've ever done I've never seen
> anything organise itself; quite the opposite. Now I fully understand
> the principle by which natural selection is said to bring order out of
> random, otherwise disordering mutations, but on the basis of experience
> there are grounds for calling simple-to-complex evolution counter-
> intuitive, or at least counter-experience.
You should invest some time with genetic algorithms and self-organizing
feature maps (a type of simulated neural network).
> Is there enough time for evolution to happen? Is there a law of
> information that opposes it in any amount of time? Are there
> contrainsts at molecular or population levels which prevent the
> process. This is what we are debating.
Per my first comment, there's no debate at all unless such constraints are
actually shown to exist. I'm all in favor of speculation, but it doesn't
make a very firm foundation for building arguments on.
> Your are not making an important distinction here.
>
> The classical claim is that natural selection feeds survival
> information from the environment into an evolving genome. This is _in
> principle_ independent of the underlying physio-chemical laws of the
> molecules. You can _in principle_ emulate evolution on a computer,
> where the physio-chemical laws are not practically relevant to the
> emulation.
>
> Davies is saying that we have no evidence that the laws of chemistry
> themselves supply information for biological evolution.
>
> Chemistry tells anine to bond with thymine, and cytosine with guanine.
> But chemistry does not tell the base pairs which sequence to form.
And computers tell bits to flip between 0 and 1. "Simple" systems can do
extraordinarily "complex" things.
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
Bobby D. Bryant
> One issue that I didn't mention in my Amazon review is the subject of CSI
> (because the term isn't used in "The Design Inference"). However, it turns
> out that CSI (Complex Specified Information) is simply probability
> transformed by the taking the logarithm to base 2 and negating. Why does
> Dembski transform probabilities in this way? No good reason. It just adds an
> additional layer of obfuscation and an extra opportunity for equivocation.
IOW, low probability = high CSI. With the added benefit of CSI growing
exponentially for a linear change in probability.
Thus anything deemed highly unlikely is, by coup of definition, also deemed to
be "highly specified", which immediately raises the naive question of "who
specified it?".
Which is exactly the argument we often see here without the extra layer of
mathematical obfuscation: "that's extremely unlikely, and thus must be the
result of intelligent design".
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
Richard Harter
>sc...@home.com writes:
>> "Consciousness does not seem to be material, and information is
>> certainly immaterial, so perhaps consciousness, and perhaps even
>> the soul, is sculpted in information, not matter. . . ."
>> - Gregory J. Chaitin, The Unknowable, p. 106
>
>Where is this immaterial information? I have never encountered it before,
>either personally or referred to by others. The evidence is also
>extremely strong that consciousness is material. In short, Chaitin is
>simply making up fictions.
You seem to be confusing information with the instantiations bearing
the information.
Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net
http://www.tiac.net/users/cri
"It was half way to Rivendell when the drugs began to take hold"
Hunter S Tolkien "Fear and Loathing in Barad Dur" - Iain Bowen
Marko Grönroos
> sc...@home.com writes:
> > "Consciousness does not seem to be material, and information is
> > certainly immaterial, so perhaps consciousness, and perhaps even
> > the soul, is sculpted in information, not matter. . . ."
> > - Gregory J. Chaitin, The Unknowable, p. 106
>
> Where is this immaterial information? I have never encountered it before,
> either personally or referred to by others. The evidence is also
> extremely strong that consciousness is material. In short, Chaitin is
> simply making up fictions.
Those Chaitin's ideas really do look strange.
Webster's (immaterialism): "a philosophical theory that material
things have no reality except as mental perceptions."
Seems to me like classical idealism (Plato, etc). "Ideas" are just
replaced by "information". Whee.
On the other hand, he might be saying something else. His book
continues:
"The conventional view is that matter is primary, and that
information, if it exists, emerges from matter. But what if
information is primary, and matter is the secondary phenomenon!
After all, the same information can have many different material
representations in biology, in physics, and in psychology: DNA, RNA;
DVD's, videotapes; long-term memory, short-term memory, nerve
impulses, hormones. The material representation is irrelevant, what
counts is the information itself. The same software can run on many
machines.''
So he would be just saying that information is independent of matter,
therefore matter doesn't matter as much. That makes a bit more sense,
but not much.
--
-- Marko Grönroos, ma...@iki.fi (http://www.iki.fi/magi/)
-- Paradoxes are the source of truth and the end of wisdom
Mark Elkington
Richard Wein wrote in message <8rpnrc$ni1$1...@supernews.com>...
>>Where does information fit into this? Which sequence, 11111111 or
11010100,
>>contains more infomation? Without a context, we cannot say. This is
where
>>Gitt's coding rules come in, and Demski's CSI.
>>
>>The sequence of base pairs in a genome only contains information in the
>>conext of protien manufacture. In that context it becomes complex
>specified
>>information. For this reason I find CSI a satidfying concept, pending
>>formalisation.
>
>You should bear in mind that there's no connection between Dembski's CSI
and
>Kolmogorov's algorithmic notion of information (despite Dembski's claims
>that there is):
>
>"It is CSI that within the Kolmogorov-Chaitin theory of algorithmic
>information takes the form of highly compressible, non-random strings of
>digits (cf. Kolmogorov, 1965; Chaitin, 1966)." Dembski, "Intelligent Design
>as a Theory of Information",
>(http://www.leaderu.com/offices/dembski/docs/bd-idesign2.html)
>
>For example, take a random number sequence having no discernible pattern.
In
>K-C terms, this has high information content, because it is not
>compressible. But, in Dembski's terms, it has zero CSI, because it's
>unspecified.
Yes. In fact, take the lower bound. Does a "fully" compressible string of
say all ones (111...) therefore have the highest possible information
content?
My intuition here is that maximal information is represented by somewhere in
between all ones and an incompressible string.
CSI according to Demski is "information" that is both:
- complex (which he defines as low probability)
- specified (which is where my confusion comes in)
Did he elaborate on his definition of "specified" in his correspondence?
Regards,
Mark Elkington
sc...@home.com
is that matter is not all that informative.
scott
sc...@home.com
>Richard Wein wrote:
>
>> One issue that I didn't mention in my Amazon review is the subject of CSI
>> (because the term isn't used in "The Design Inference"). However, it turns
>> out that CSI (Complex Specified Information) is simply probability
>> transformed by the taking the logarithm to base 2 and negating. Why does
>> Dembski transform probabilities in this way? No good reason. It just adds an
>> additional layer of obfuscation and an extra opportunity for equivocation.
>
>exponentially for a linear change in probability.
>
>Thus anything deemed highly unlikely is, by coup of definition, also deemed to
>be "highly specified", which immediately raises the naive question of "who
>specified it?".
>
>Which is exactly the argument we often see here without the extra layer of
>mathematical obfuscation: "that's extremely unlikely, and thus must be the
>result of intelligent design".
>
Have you actually *read* anything Dembski
has written?
low probability = C
It's not that it's extremely unlikely that leads
to "design."
An example:
If we are playing poker, I'm dealing, and you
receive a straight flush to the Jack, but I
"just happen" to win the hand by having a
straight flush to the Queen, are you going
to accept that it just happened "by chance"?
Two straight flushes dealt in the same hand
is certainly a highly improbable occurrance,
but is that enough to call it "design"?
For Dembski, specificity is separate from
complexity.
Scott
Matt Silberstein
at...@best.comNOSPAM (Mark Isaak):
>When you finish this to your satisfaction, I hope you submit it as a FAQ.
>In the meantime, I nominate it for POTM.
>
>In article <gordon-11739F.19062607102000@[127.0.0.1]>,
>Gordon Davisson <gor...@tardigrade.org> wrote:
>>Ok, I'm feeling foolish, so I'll take the plunge and try to defend the
>>idea that thermodynamics is connected to information theory (though the
>>connection is probably not what you'd expect).
I just read that Leo Szilard (physicist and biologist, btw) wrote a
paper on the connection between thermo and information. I have not
seen the paper, has anyone else?
[snip]
--
Matt Silberstein
Let me ride on the wall of death one more time
You can waste your chances on the other rides
This is the nearest to being alive
Let me take my chances on the wall of death
R.T.
thewilkins
Silberstein <mat...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> In talk.origins I read <8rq3vt$1d7d$1...@nntp1.ba.best.com> from
> at...@best.comNOSPAM (Mark Isaak):
>
> >When you finish this to your satisfaction, I hope you submit it as a FAQ.
> >In the meantime, I nominate it for POTM.
> >
> >In article <gordon-11739F.19062607102000@[127.0.0.1]>,
> >Gordon Davisson <gor...@tardigrade.org> wrote:
> >>Ok, I'm feeling foolish, so I'll take the plunge and try to defend the
> >>idea that thermodynamics is connected to information theory (though the
> >>connection is probably not what you'd expect).
> I just read that Leo Szilard (physicist and biologist, btw) wrote a
> paper on the connection between thermo and information. I have not
> seen the paper, has anyone else?
I read Brioullin's discussion of it, but not the paper. Also see John
Peirce _An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and
Noise_ Second edition, Dover, 1980, p 198ff for a discussion of
Maxwell's Demon and Information.
WickedDyno
For one hand of poker, I would certainly not draw that kind of
conclusion; coincidences do happen.
--
| Andrew Glasgow <amg39(at)cornell.edu> |
| SCSI is *NOT* magic. There are *fundamental technical |
| reasons* why it is necessary to sacrifice a young goat |
| to your SCSI chain now and then. -- John Woods |
Mark T. VandeWettering
Mark Elkington <melki...@ness.com.au> wrote:
>Yes. In fact, take the lower bound. Does a "fully" compressible string of
>say all ones (111...) therefore have the highest possible information
>content?
>
>My intuition here is that maximal information is represented by somewhere in
>between all ones and an incompressible string.
Over strings of binary digits, entropy in the sense of Shannon's theory
occurs when the string is incompressible. In that case, it takes the maximal
amount of bits to encode (this kind of follows from it being incompressible).
Therefore incompressible is the same as "most random" and "specifying
maximal information."
>CSI according to Demski is "information" that is both:
>- complex (which he defines as low probability)
>- specified (which is where my confusion comes in)
Indeed. This nebulous concept has eluded me as well. Anyone?
>Did he elaborate on his definition of "specified" in his correspondence?
Mark
>Regards,
>Mark Elkington
--
Mark VandeWettering's .signature contains six As, two Cs, three
Ds, twenty four Es, eight Fs, seven Gs, six Hs, fifteen Is, two
Ks, two Ms, sixteen Ns, nine Os, eight Rs, twenty eight Ss, twenty
one Ts, five Us, five Vs, eight Ws, four Xs, and four Ys.
Richard Wein
[...]
>An example:
>
>If we are playing poker, I'm dealing, and you
>receive a straight flush to the Jack, but I
>"just happen" to win the hand by having a
>straight flush to the Queen, are you going
>to accept that it just happened "by chance"?
>
>Two straight flushes dealt in the same hand
>is certainly a highly improbable occurrance,
>but is that enough to call it "design"?
Good question. How about applying Dembski's methods, and telling us whether
they give a result of design in this case or not? ;-)
Richard Wein
>>CSI according to Demski is "information" that is both:
>>- complex (which he defines as low probability)
>>- specified (which is where my confusion comes in)
>
>Indeed. This nebulous concept has eluded me as well. Anyone?
If you haven't already done so, read Dembski's articles at
http://injil.com/real/ri9602/dembski.html and
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/dembski/docs/bd-idesign2.html. These explain
the concept of specification, but don't describe Dembski's formal method for
distinguishing between a valid specification and a fabrication. For that,
you have to read The Design Inference.
As I'm feeling in a talkative mood, I'll try to explain the concept of
specification in my own words, coming at it from a slightly different
direction.
First of all, let me say something about statistical tests in general. The
basic idea behind a statistical test is this. You state the hypothesis that
you want to test (the "null hypothesis") and some event that you're going to
observe. You define some "rejection region" for the outcome of the event,
such that the probability of the outcome lying in the rejection region is
very small. Then, if you get an outcome which lies in the rejection region,
you say "Aha! The probability of getting such an outcome if the hypothesis
was true was only small, but we got that outcome anyway. I can't accept that
such an improbable outcome would actually occur. So I conclude that the null
hypothesis was not true after all."
Note that you have to state your rejection region *before* observing the
outcome of the event, because, once you know the outcome, you can always
select the rejection region in such a way that the observed outcome lies
inside it.
Time for an example, which I'll base on Dembski's description of the Caputo
case, at http://injil.com/real/ri9602/dembski.html. Suppose that, instead of
wanting to know whether Caputo had cheated in the past, we were setting up
a test for whether he would cheat in a similar way in the *next* 41
elections. We would probably select one of the following rejection regions:
- "The Democrats get the top ballot line all 41 times". (Probability = 4.5
x 10^-13)
- "The Democrats get the top ballot line at least 40 times". (Probability =
1.9 x 10^-11)
- "The Democrats get the top ballot line at least 39 times". (Probability =
3.9 x 10^-10)
etc.
Our null hypothesis is that Caputo *isn't* cheating, i.e. that the Democrats
have a 1/2 probability of getting the top ballot line each time. The
probabilities listed above are the probabilities of the outcome lying in the
stated rejection region, on the assumption that our null hypothesis is true.
Our choice between the above possibilities for a rejection zone is based on
what probability we want. This probability is known as the "significance
level" of the test. Note that, whatever significance level we choose,
there's a chance of the test giving a positive result even if our null
hypothesis is true. This would be a bad thing, of course, because we would
then accuse Caputo of cheating even though he was innocent. The more top
ballot lines we require the Democrats to get before we consider the result
to be positive, the smaller the significance level (probability) of the
test, and therefore the smaller the chance of making such an error. On the
other hand, the more top ballot lines we require for a positive result, the
less chance there is of detecting Caputo cheating if he is. So our choice of
significance level is a compromise between these competing requirements.
Typically, statisticians choose a significance level of 0.05 or 0.01, but,
if the issue is important enough (such as destroying someone's reputation),
we might choose a smaller level.
Now, what Dembski wants to do is select a rejection region *after* observing
the event. He sees that the Democrats got 40 top ballot lines out of 41,
suspects that there's something fishy going on, i.e. that the null
hypothesis (Democrats have a 1/2 probability of getting the top ballot line
each time) may not be true, and wants to test this hypothesis. To do so, he
selects the rejection region "The Democrats get the top ballot line at least
40 times". Note that he already knows that the outcome of the event lies
within his rejection region (if it didn't, we wouldn't have suspected foul
play and the test would not have been called for), so he's reversing the
logic of the test:
- In the standard statistical test, we set a probability (significance
level), choose a rejection region that gives that probability of rejection,
and then observe the event to see if we get an outcome in the rejection
region.
- In Dembski's test, we observe the event, fit a rejection region to it,
and then calculate the probability of getting any event in that rejection
region. If the probability is very small (1.9 x 10^-11 in this case),
Dembski concludes that the null hypothesis is false. (Dembski calls it a
"chance hypothesis".)
This sort of rejection region, defined after observing an event, is what
Dembski calls a "specification." However, as Dembski points out, we can't
just select any old rejection region. Once we know the outcome of the event,
we could always define some very narrow rejection region so that the event
*just* fits with in it, and so that the probability of an event in that
region is very small. For example, let's suppose that Caputo hadn't cheated
and that the top ballots had come up in the following sequence:
DRRDRDRRDDDRDRDDRDRRDRRDRRRDRRRDRDDDRDRDD
There's no apparent pattern here, and no reason why we should suspect foul
play. But some bright spark might say: let's define a rejection region to
include this exact outcome only; then the probability of getting an outcome
in this region given the null hypothesis was only 4.5 x 10^-13; since this
probability is so small, I reject the null hypothesis and accuse Caputo of
cheating. Well, clearly, such an accusation would be unfounded, because the
rejection region was selected in an ad hoc way just to fit the observed
event. And this is what Dembski calls a "fabrication", i.e. an invalid
specification.
I hope that clarifies what Dembski means by a specification. Basically, it's
a fair rejection region selected after observing an event. By "fair", I mean
that the choice of rejection region is not biased by one's knowledge of the
outcome of the event. (The terms "fair" and "biased" are my choice of terms,
not Dembski's.)
The problem for Dembski is that there is *no* way to make an unbiased choice
of rejection region once you know the outcome. Because you're deliberately
choosing the rejection region in such a way that the observed outcome falls
within it, the observation inevitably biases your choice.
In the Caputo case, it may seem that Dembski's choice of specification is
the only reasonable one, and therefore must be an unbiased choice. But the
Caputo case is a very simple one, and not representative of the general
case. Furthermore, even in the Captuo case there are problems. (I can
explain these if anyone wants.)
In "The Design Inference" Dembski claims to give a rigorous method for
distinguishing a specification from a fabrication. But his method is fatally
flawed. If anyone wants to discuss it in detail, we can. But you'll have to
first read and understand TDI. The method and Dembski's justification of it
are much too complicated for me to describe here. And you won't find them in
any of Dembski's online articles.
It's important to bear in mind that the idea of specification is not a new
one. Other statisticians have attempted to solve the problem before,
including R. A. Fisher. If Dembski had really succeeded where they all
failed, he would be acclaimed for making a major contribution to statistics,
and I think it would revolutionize the work of statisticians. But, instead
of arguing his case among the community of statisticians, Dembski prefers to
take it to the general public, most of whom are hardly in a position to
assess it. Strange that, isn't it? ;-)
Ironically, even though there is no general solution to the specification
problem, I do believe that a valid specification is possible (in principle)
in the one case that the ID community is really interested in--the origin of
life. Or, to be more precise, intelligent life. Since intelligent life is an
essential prerequisite for conducting any statistical test (or else who
would conduct it?), knowledge that intelligent life exists cannot bias the
specification. Thus, the origin of intelligent life cannot be a fabrication.
And neither can any event which is a prerequisite for the origin of
intelligent life. So, if you can formulate a specification for such an
event, it *will* be a valid specification.
However, I'm quite confident that IDers will never be able to show that the
probability of any such specified event is below the universal probability
bound. Dembski has set himself an impossible target.
>>Did he elaborate on his definition of "specified" in his correspondence?
No, I didn't ask about that. What he says about specification in TDI is
sufficient to see what he's aiming for and that he hasn't got there. My
questions to him were on other fundamental aspects of the Design Inference,
and he didn't answer any of them.
sc...@home.com
And you would chalk it up to coincidence
that I was dealing and that I just happened
to be dealt the higher of the two hands?
Scott
sc...@home.com
>In article <39e0...@nexus.comcen.com.au>,
>Mark Elkington <melki...@ness.com.au> wrote:
>
>>Yes. In fact, take the lower bound. Does a "fully" compressible string of
>>say all ones (111...) therefore have the highest possible information
>>content?
>>
>>My intuition here is that maximal information is represented by somewhere in
>>between all ones and an incompressible string.
>
>Over strings of binary digits, entropy in the sense of Shannon's theory
>occurs when the string is incompressible. In that case, it takes the maximal
>amount of bits to encode (this kind of follows from it being incompressible).
>Therefore incompressible is the same as "most random" and "specifying
>maximal information."
>
>>CSI according to Demski is "information" that is both:
>>- complex (which he defines as low probability)
>>- specified (which is where my confusion comes in)
>
>Indeed. This nebulous concept has eluded me as well. Anyone?
>
"To qualify for the description of living, information must be
meaningful to the system that receives it: there must be a
"context." In other words, the information must be SPECIFIED."
- P.C.W. Davies, The Fifth Miracle, p.34 (emphasis in original)
"The information distributed along a strand of DNA is BIOLOGICALLY
RELEVANT. In computerspeak, genetic data are SEMANTIC data.
Only a very tiny fraction of all possible sequences spells out a
biologically meaningful message.
Another way of expressing this is to say that genes and proteins
require exceedingly high degrees of SPECIFICITY in their structure.
As I stated in my list of properties in chapter 1, living organisms
are mysterious not for their complexity per se, but for their tightly
SPECIFIED COMPLEXITY.
To comprehend fully how life arose from nonlife, we need to know
not only how biological information was concentrated, but also how
biologically useful information came to be SPECIFIED."
- Davies, The Fifth Miracle, p. 112
"The conclusion we have reached is clear and it is profound. A functional
genome is BOTH random AND highly specific - properties that seem almost
contradictory. It must be random to contain substantial amounts of
information, and it must be specific for that information to be biologically
relevant."
- Davies, The Fifth Miracle, p. 119
"Can SPECIFIC RANDOMNESS be the guaranteed product of a deterministic,
mechanical, lawlike process, like a primordial soup left to the mercy of
familiar laws of physics and chemestry? No, it couldn't. No known law
of nature could acheive this."
- Davies, The Fifth Miracle, p. 120
"...novel concepts and classifications are emerging through which
researchers define their work. I shall give here an incomplete list
of some of these...
Specificity: Chemical reactions can be notoriously messy affairs,
leaving one with the unwelcome task of extracting one's intended
product from a whole host of substances produced in side reactions.
That this simply does not happen in the biochemistry of the body,
where each reaction generally gives just the one desired product...
It is the class of molecules called enzymes that is responsible for
the remarkable specificity of biochemical processes."
- Philip Ball, Designing the Molecular World: Chemistry at the Frontier
(Princeton Science Library), Princeton University Press, pp. 5, 7
"Information that is both complex and specified will be called
COMPLEX SPECIFIED INFORMATION, or CSI for short. CSI is
what all the fuss over information has been about in recent
years, not just in biology but in science generally."
- Dembski, Intelligent Design, p. 159
"For a pattern to count as a specification, the important thing
is not when it was identified but whether in a certain well-defined
sense it is INDEPENDENT of the event it describes.
I refer to this relation of independence as DETACHABILITY and say
that a pattern is DETACHABLE just in case it satisifies that relation."
- Dembski, Intelligent Design, p. 133
Richard Wein
[...]
> "The information distributed along a strand of DNA is BIOLOGICALLY
> RELEVANT. In computerspeak, genetic data are SEMANTIC data.
>
> Only a very tiny fraction of all possible sequences spells out a
> biologically meaningful message.
>
> Another way of expressing this is to say that genes and proteins
> require exceedingly high degrees of SPECIFICITY in their structure.
> As I stated in my list of properties in chapter 1, living organisms
> are mysterious not for their complexity per se, but for their tightly
> SPECIFIED COMPLEXITY.
>
> To comprehend fully how life arose from nonlife, we need to know
> not only how biological information was concentrated, but also how
> biologically useful information came to be SPECIFIED."
>
> - Davies, The Fifth Miracle, p. 112
Note that Dembski has his own definition of "specified complexity". He
defines it in terms of probabilities. Can anyone tell us what Davies'
definition of specified complexity is? I think it's very unlikely that it's
the same as Dembski's. (After all, Dembski claims that his method is a new
one.) It's important not to conflate the two usages unless you've checked
that they really mean the same thing.
If I'm right that the two meanings are different, then Dembski is misleading
people like Scott by using the same term. This is known as the "fallacy of
equivocation". We might accept that specified complexity exists in
biological systems because Davies tells us so, and then jump to the
conclusion that Dembski's sort of specified complexity exists in biological
systems just because the two concepts have been given the same name. This
would be a logical error.
Dembski has never demonstrated that his sort of specified complexity exists
in biological systems, and I don't think it does.
> "Information that is both complex and specified will be called
> COMPLEX SPECIFIED INFORMATION, or CSI for short. CSI is
> what all the fuss over information has been about in recent
> years, not just in biology but in science generally."
>
> - Dembski, Intelligent Design, p. 159
Again, Dembski tries to conflate his own notion of CSI with other usages of
the term information. But, as we've seen elsewhere in this thread, they can
mean very different things.
> "For a pattern to count as a specification, the important thing
> is not when it was identified but whether in a certain well-defined
> sense it is INDEPENDENT of the event it describes.
>
> I refer to this relation of independence as DETACHABILITY and say
> that a pattern is DETACHABLE just in case it satisifies that relation."
>
> - Dembski, Intelligent Design, p. 133
What is the "certain well-defined sense" that Dembski's referring to? To
find the answer, you have to read "The Design Inference".
Wesley R. Elsberry
>In <amg39.REMOVETHIS-93...@newsstand.cit.cornell.edu>, WickedDyno <amg39.RE...@cornell.edu.invalid> writes:
>>> In <39E09B82...@mail.utexas.edu>, "Bobby D. Bryant"
>>> <bdbr...@mail.utexas.edu> writes:
>>> >Richard Wein wrote:
[...]
BDB> Two straight flushes dealt in the same hand
BDB> is certainly a highly improbable occurrance,
BDB> but is that enough to call it "design"?
RW>For one hand of poker, I would certainly not draw that kind
RW>of conclusion; coincidences do happen.
SS>Yes.
SS>And you would chalk it up to coincidence
SS>that I was dealing and that I just happened
SS>to be dealt the higher of the two hands?
If Scott was dealing, I wouldn't need such a "coincidence" to
convince me that he had simply carried over to his card
playing the same regard for the truth that we see here in his
argumentation.
[Quote]
How about providing an example of one of
my alleged "misquotes."
If I have indeed "misquoted" I will be more than
happy to withdraw said misquote.
[End Quote - Scott S., <http://www.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=592110054>]
I then documented a pair of misquotes that Scott made. See
<http://www.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=593699394>.
Scott has so far not matched his actions to his words.
Seven months and counting...
I'll excerpt the relevant section.
I caught Scott misquoting Dawkins, both in the unmarked deletion
of four words from a sentence and in not providing relevant
context:
[Begin excerpt from previous post]
HH>Natural selection is not blind, is not purposeless, and is not
HH>unguided in the local utility sense. It *is* blind, purposeless,
HH>and unguided (as far as we can tell) in the teleological sense.
SS>Mutation is not systematically biased in the direction of adaptive
SS>improvement, and no mechanism is known (to put the point mildly)
SS>that could guide mutations in directions that are non-random.
SS> - Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker
SS>Except natural selection at the local utility level,
SS>according to you.
[End Excerpt]
Howard wasn't saying that natural selection guided mutations
in the sense that Dawkins discusses in the passage the Scott
misquotes.
[Quote]
[...] It is only in this fifth respect, the 'mutationist'
respect, that the true, real-life Darwinian insists that
mutation is random. Mutation is not systematically biased in
the direction of adaptive improvements, and no mechanism is
known (to put the point mildly) that could guide mutation in
directions that are non-random in this fifth sense. Mutation
is random with respect to adaptive advantage, although it is
non-random in all sorts of other respects. It is selection,
and only selection, that directs evolution in directions that
are non-random with respect to advantage. Mutationism is not
just wrong in fact. It never could have been right. It is
not in principle capable of explaining the evolution of
improvement. Mutationism belongs with Lamarckism, not as a
disproved rival to Darwinism but as no rival at all.
[End Quote - R Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, p.312]
Notice how Scott extracted only as much of the above as might
falsely be taken to support his point, even trimming without
notice the final four words of the quoted sentence which
indicate an important qualifier is in effect. Notice how only
two sentences further on Dawkins makes the very point that
Scott wished us to believe that Dawkins had set aside. Notice
how often Dawkins mentions "mutationism" as the relevant
context for his comments within the sub-paragraph above, and
how Scott's quote carefully avoids revealing that context.
Notice how Scott took care not to give the precise reference
to his quote, such that checking it was not a trivial task.
I caught Scott failing to provide relevant context in responding
to Sherilyn, another misquote:
[Begin excerpt of previous post]
S>Quite. The following is from page 38 of Behe's book, at the
S>start of the section marked "Irreducible Complexity and the
S>Nature of Mutation."
S>Behe first quotes one of two falsifiability criteria proposed
S>by Darwin: If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ
S>existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous
S>successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely
S>break down.
S>Behe then gives some reasons why he thinks this condition has
S>been met, but asks how we can be sure that it has.
S>"What type of biological system could not be formed by
S>"numerous successive, slight modifications"?
S>"Well, for starters, a system that is irreducibly complex.
S>By _irreducibly complex_ I mean a single system composed of
S>several well- matched, interacting parts that contribute to
S>the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the
S>parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning."
S>It seems like a pretty straightforward statement. Behe is
S>claiming that one type of biological system that would
S>"absolutely" refute Darwin is an irreducibly complex system.
S>He seems to be rather unwilling to demonstrate this, however.
S>The closer one looks at his claims, the more they seem to
S>crumble into dust.
SS>Let's look at what Behe *does* say here
SS>and what he *does not* say here.
SS>He *does* say:
SS>An Irreducibly Complex system is:
SS>"a single system composed of several well-matched,
SS>interacting parts that contribute to the basic function,
SS>wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes
SS>the system to effectively cease functioning."
SS>What Behe *does not* say is:
SS>An Irreducibly Complex system is:
SS>"a system which could not possibly have been formed
SS>by numerous successive, slight modifications."
But Behe does say what Sherilyn said he did.
SS>But for some reason, everyone likes to argue that
SS>Behe actually made the second claim, and completely
SS>ignore what he *really* said an IC system is.
SS>Why is that?
SS>Is it easier to attack as a straw-man?
[End Excerpt]
[Quote (scanned and OCR'd, typos may remain)]
Hitching's argument is vulnerable because he mistakes an inte-
grated system of systems for a single system, and Dawkins rightly
points out the separability of the components. Dawkins, however;
merely adds complex systems to complex systems and calls that an ex-
planation. This can be compared to answering the question "How is a
stereo system made?" with the words "By plugging a set of speakers
into an amplifier; and adding a CD player; radio receiver, and tape
deck." Either Darwinian theory can account for the assembly of the
speakers and amplifier; or it can't.
IRREDUCIBLE COMPLEXITY AND THE NATURE OF MUTATION
Darwin knew that his theory of gradual evolution by natural selection
carried a heavy burden:
If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could
not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modiiica-
dons, my theory would absolutely break down.24
It is safe to say that most of the scientific skepticism about Darwinism
In the past century has centered on this requirement. From Mivart's
concern over the incipient stages of new structures to Margulis's dis-
missal of gradual evolution, critics of Darwin have suspected that his
criterion of failure had been met. But how can we be confident? What
type of biological system could not be formed by "numerous, succes-
sive, slight modifications"?[1]
Well, for starters, a system that is irreducibly complex.[*][2] By irreducibly
complex I mean a single system composed of several well-matched, in-
teracting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the re-
moval of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease
functioning. An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced di-
rectly[*] (that is, by continuously improving the initial function, which
continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modi-
fications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irre-
ducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunc-
tional. An irreducibly complex biological system, if there is such a
thing, would be a powerful challenge to Darwinian evolution.[*] Since
natural selection can only choose systems that are already working,
then if a biological system cannot be produced gradually it would have
to arise as an integrated unit, in one fell swoop, for natural selection to
have anything to act on.
Even if a system is irreducibly complex (and thus cannot have been
produced directly), however one can not definitively rule out the pos-
sibility of an indirect, circuitous route. As the complexity of an inter-
acting system increases, though, the likelihood of such an indirect
route drops precipitously. And as the number of unexplained, irre-
ducibly complex biological systems increases, our confidence that Dar-
win's criterion of failure has been met skyrockets toward the maxi-
mum that science allows.[*]
In the abstract, it might be tempting to imagine that irreducible
complexity simply requires multiple simultaneous mutations - that
evolution might be far chancier than we thought, but still possible.
Such an appeal to brute luck can never be refuted. Yet it is an empty
argument. One may as well say that the world luckily popped into ex-
istence yesterday with all the features it now has.[3] Luck is metaphysi-
cal speculation; scientific explanations invoke causes. It is almost
universally conceded that such sudden events would be irreconcilable
with the gradualism Darwin envisioned. Richard Dawkins explains
the problem well:
Evolution is very possibly not, in actual fact, always gradual. But it must
be gradual when it is being used to explain the coming into existence of
complicated, apparently designed objects, like eyes. For if it is not gradual
in these cases, it ceases to have any explanatory power at all. Without
gradualness in these cases, we are back to miracle, which is simply a syn-
onym for the total absence of explanation.25[*]
[End Quote - MJ Behe, Darwin's Black Box, pp.38-40]
I have marked with [*] various parts of the above quote in
which Behe addresses whether an IC system challenges Darwinian
explanation.
[1] shows Behe asking what type of system could not be produced
by successive slight modifications.
[2] shows Behe answering his question of [1] by saying that IC
systems are such systems.
Either Behe falsely answered the question in [1] or Scott's
representation of this passage is a falsehood. Given Scott's
previous problem in fair quotation, I tend to go for the
latter interpretation. Scott's defense here could be that
Scott included the word "possibly" after "could not" in his
presentation of [1], and thus Behe does not say the question
in *exactly* the way Scott presents it. But in this case we
can only posit Scott deliberately telling us a different
falsehood, that Sherilyn's quotation of that question in
particular was incorrect. The supposed exculpatory difference
between "could not" and "could not possibly" is an example of
strawman fallacy, but on Scott's part, not Sherilyn's.
The above also has Scott utilizing misdirection, in that he
changed Sherilyn's quote of "could not" to the phrasing "could
not possibly". Also, Scott introduced into the conversation
the "confusion" of taking a property of IC as a definition of
IC, apparently to provide some small point upon which could
criticize others.
--
Wesley R. Elsberry, Student in Wildlife & Fisheries Sciences, Tx A&M U.
Visit the Online Zoologists page (http://www.rtis.com/nat/user/elsberry)
Email to this account is dumped to /dev/null, whose Spam appetite is capacious.
"When the sky is gray\The way it is today\I remember..."-WZ
Matt Silberstein
<thewilkins-518B1...@news.bigpond.com> from thewilkins
<thewi...@bigpond.com>:
>In article <7lf2us021abvj9hr9...@4ax.com>, Matt
>Silberstein <mat...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>> In talk.origins I read <8rq3vt$1d7d$1...@nntp1.ba.best.com> from
>> at...@best.comNOSPAM (Mark Isaak):
>>
>> >When you finish this to your satisfaction, I hope you submit it as a FAQ.
>> >In the meantime, I nominate it for POTM.
>> >
>> >In article <gordon-11739F.19062607102000@[127.0.0.1]>,
>> >Gordon Davisson <gor...@tardigrade.org> wrote:
>> >>Ok, I'm feeling foolish, so I'll take the plunge and try to defend the
>> >>idea that thermodynamics is connected to information theory (though the
>> >>connection is probably not what you'd expect).
>> I just read that Leo Szilard (physicist and biologist, btw) wrote a
>> paper on the connection between thermo and information. I have not
>> seen the paper, has anyone else?
>
>I read Brioullin's discussion of it, but not the paper. Also see John
>Peirce _An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and
>Noise_ Second edition, Dover, 1980, p 198ff for a discussion of
>Maxwell's Demon and Information.
>>
Where can I find Brioullin's discussion?
Mark T. VandeWettering
>>[ I said ] Indeed. This nebulous concept has eluded me as well. Anyone?
>
> "To qualify for the description of living, information must be
> meaningful to the system that receives it: there must be a
> "context." In other words, the information must be SPECIFIED."
>
> - P.C.W. Davies, The Fifth Miracle, p.34 (emphasis in original)
Doesn't this seem a teensy bit circular? This implies that any information
that is in a living creature is specified. Of course, Dembski's claim is that
specified information doesn't happen without design, so you've just defined
what you were trying to prove.
> "The information distributed along a strand of DNA is BIOLOGICALLY
> RELEVANT. In computerspeak, genetic data are SEMANTIC data.
>
> Only a very tiny fraction of all possible sequences spells out a
> biologically meaningful message.
>
> Another way of expressing this is to say that genes and proteins
> require exceedingly high degrees of SPECIFICITY in their structure.
> As I stated in my list of properties in chapter 1, living organisms
> are mysterious not for their complexity per se, but for their tightly
> SPECIFIED COMPLEXITY.
>
> To comprehend fully how life arose from nonlife, we need to know
> not only how biological information was concentrated, but also how
> biologically useful information came to be SPECIFIED."
>
> - Davies, The Fifth Miracle, p. 112
This specificity is like observing the particular path that an ant takes in
searching for food. What are the odds that that ant chose that specific path?
Virtually nil. Yet, he did choose that specific path.
Yes, I realize that all paths in this case are fairly equivalent. But natural
selection removes many paths from consideration. It does so without any
SEMANTIC knowledge of what living organisms do, it merely removes them on the
basis of what they do OPERATIONALLY.
> "The conclusion we have reached is clear and it is profound. A functional
> genome is BOTH random AND highly specific - properties that seem almost
> contradictory.
Is the genome random? In what sense? Can Davies use some kind of norm that
is meaningful here? How 'bout specificity?
> It must be random to contain substantial amounts of
> information, and it must be specific for that information to be biologically
> relevant."
In the Shannon sense, random sequences contain the most information. Again,
this argument appears circular. Is all biological information specific?
If so, then you must show that specific information cannot arise from natural
processes. I don't believe that has been shown.
> - Davies, The Fifth Miracle, p. 119
>
>
> "Can SPECIFIC RANDOMNESS be the guaranteed product of a deterministic,
> mechanical, lawlike process, like a primordial soup left to the mercy of
> familiar laws of physics and chemestry? No, it couldn't. No known law
> of nature could acheive this."
Meaningless assertion. Just what is SPECIFIC RANDOMNESS? This paragraph
echoes the problem with the above paragraph. "No, it couldn't." is not a
proof.
> - Davies, The Fifth Miracle, p. 120
>
>
>
> "...novel concepts and classifications are emerging through which
> researchers define their work. I shall give here an incomplete list
> of some of these...
>
> Specificity: Chemical reactions can be notoriously messy affairs,
> leaving one with the unwelcome task of extracting one's intended
> product from a whole host of substances produced in side reactions.
> That this simply does not happen in the biochemistry of the body,
> where each reaction generally gives just the one desired product...
>
> It is the class of molecules called enzymes that is responsible for
> the remarkable specificity of biochemical processes."
And? Is there some reason to believe that this specificity (which I don't
believe is the meaning that was intended in the above quotes) is not
the product of natural selection?
> - Philip Ball, Designing the Molecular World: Chemistry at the Frontier
> (Princeton Science Library), Princeton University Press, pp. 5, 7
> "Information that is both complex and specified will be called
> COMPLEX SPECIFIED INFORMATION, or CSI for short. CSI is
> what all the fuss over information has been about in recent
> years, not just in biology but in science generally."
This repeats his lack of definition for "specified".
> - Dembski, Intelligent Design, p. 159
> "For a pattern to count as a specification, the important thing
> is not when it was identified but whether in a certain well-defined
> sense it is INDEPENDENT of the event it describes.
>
> I refer to this relation of independence as DETACHABILITY and say
> that a pattern is DETACHABLE just in case it satisifies that relation."
Whatever the hell that means.
> - Dembski, Intelligent Design, p. 133
Mark