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Author
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Topic: The Birth of MSR and the End of the Theory of Evolution
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Bruce Fast
Member
Member # 924
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posted 16. February 2006 15:28
Ah, lunch break. I can finally find time to respond.
In truth, I think you run into danger if you attempt to use the characteristics of one paradyme (computers) and try to directly apply them to another paradyme (biology.) I am not quite following how this line of reasoning is going to enhance the validity of your MSR hypotheis.
Let's see, with color image compression, we can do the following:
Given an image of a typical magazine page contianing pictures and text, scanned at 300 dots per inch, and 24 bits of color per dot we get the following:
8.5 * 11 * 300 * 300 * 24 = 201,960,000 bits of data = 25,245,000 bytes. This guy will frequently compress to 100,000 bytes (depending on exact content) for about a 250 to 1 compression ratio!
Now, I take a typical word document -- here's one now, it's 282kb. If I zip it, it becomes 173K, for a compression of 61%.
So what we see is that the amount of compression you can get depends RADICALLY on the nature of the data.
As far as the mutation resistance of compressed data goes, well, that can be complicated too. If we have a piece of DNA that codes for, say the shape of the femer, and also codes for, say eye color, well, eye color is pretty innocous, a mutation there would hardly be deadly to an organism. The femer could then mutate to meet the organism's need, and the eye color could wander about as needed. I understand also that the control that determines the length of a dog's legs, directly affects the length of the dog's snout. This linkage, though it is odd, does not make the dog impervious to mutation. The length of the legs likely takes priority, and the snout goes along for the ride.
I do think DNA data compression, however, may hold some interesting entanglements that make mutation all but impossible, even entanglements that are all but impossible to get to with individual event mutations. Such would, therefore, be in the class of "irreduceable complexity."
PS: Thanks for reading and commenting on my posting. Mine has moved up onto the main screen which will likely give it more exposure.
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KBC1963
Member
Member # 1868
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posted 18. February 2006 11:03
"In truth, I think you run into danger if you attempt to use the characteristics of one paradyme (computers) and try to directly apply them to another paradyme (biology.) I am not quite following how this line of reasoning is going to enhance the validity of your MSR hypotheis."
Well Bruce it like this,
our biological system/machine exhibits all the characteristics of being controlled at a level beyond the capability of the individual cells.
It shows shape constraint of form down to the cellular level and with this observation in mind and the fact that we don't know how that task is accomplished we must determine ultimately what would be minimally required for the unknown control system to constrain our massive mechanical system.
It should be agreed that in order to exercise control over even the simplest cell there must be a signal of some kind that the cell recieves to force compliance to the greater form right? Now no matter how that signal or information is formed represents a parameter or instruction.
So the question then becomes how do you store a parameter to allow for its use in each repetition or replication of a system?
In my mind it seems logical that a parameter must minimally be represented by either digital form such as zero's and ones or in the case of biological systems possibly a specific chemical arrangement that does the same thing. We can see the chemical makeup of the DNA and define it down to a molecular level so we know that somewhere in that formation enough information exists to control all the cells that makeup the mechanical forms within the system.
So logically if there are more cells existing in our form than there are individual chemical components in the DNA then my relating stored information by comparing it to known methods of data compression is resonable, because the bottom line is that you can't get something from nothing.
Bruce you also mention that you liked the PEH idea right? How applicable would file compression be in that scenario where all biologial forms came through one initial set of DNA, imagine the enormity of information that would have to be present in order to allow for the restructuring of the genome at each change into each type of creature on earth. further, would it be logical to assume that all of lifes forms are still encoded into the DNA regardless of current configuration?
I am having a hard time imagining just containing the existing formations of a body into the size of DNA.
[ 18. February 2006, 13:03: Message edited by: KBC1963 ]
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Bruce Fast
Member
Member # 924
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posted 19. February 2006 11:41
quote:
So logically if there are more cells existing in our form than there are individual chemical components in the DNA then my relating stored information by comparing it to known methods of data compression is resonable, because the bottom line is that you can't get something from nothing.
As long as you consider the algorithmic compression algorithms, I agree with the above statement, except the part that I italicised. If there is anything I have learned about algorithmic data compression technologies is that they truly require "out of the box" thinking. When a new one is invented, the reaction is either 'duh' or wow! A harsh reality of data compression schemes, however, is that they always are the product of the type of data being compressed. As the programs I have worked with are not attempting to compress DNA in a method that is accessible for rendering as organisms, so the algorithms are likely to be irrelivant to that data type.
It has long been known that there is enough DNA in a human to render about 300,000 genes. As I understand it, the latest research suggests that only about 20,000 of those genes are relevant. There are two possibilities that I can see: either 20,000 genes is enough, or scientists are missing something, and much of the other DNA is relevant as well. As this is very new science, such a discovery would not be particularly disturbing to the scientific community. In all honesty, I believe that the scientific community is somewhat perplexed that so little of the DNA is involved in an organism's implementation.
As far as the PEH goes, my understanding is that the theory suggests that all of life "grows" like a single multi-celled organism, that nature is just following a predetermined logical pattern. However, I don't believe that the PEH assumes anything like a saltation event, that the only saltation event may well have happened at the point of the big bang. Which is to say, I don't know at all that there is such a thing as "initial DNA". I would think rather that the pattern is hiding in the atomic and quantum characteristics of the various atoms themselves.
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