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Author
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Topic: The Origin of Biological Information
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Doug Wedel
Member
Member # 1901
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posted 07. March 2006 20:35
[APOLOGIZE AGAIN FOR TRUNCATED POST]
...that wasn't designed.
So I thought either the 100-digit string I had specified WAS or WAS NOT designed by an intelligent creature. It turned out that I was incorrect in that belief.
I will remain open to any further elucidation of exactly what you mean.
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Irving
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Member # 535
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posted 07. March 2006 20:45
Doug,
Your missing the bigger picture by only focusing on the number itself. I would sugges that Pi doesn't "contain," CSI. It "is" CSI. The key point... It doesn't necessarily take a designer to create CSI. It takes a designer to manifest CSI in an independent environment.
Can you describe for me, what you believe independence and detachable means in terms of CSI?
[ 07. March 2006, 20:54: Message edited by: Irving ]
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Doug Wedel
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Member # 1901
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posted 07. March 2006 22:09
quote:
Can you describe for me, what you believe independence and detachable means in terms of CSI?
I just re-read very carefully Dembski's
"Intelligent Deesign as a Theory of Information" in which he lays out the CSI concepts. He doesn't seem to discuss these concepts that you believe are crucial, or perhaps he does so under different terms?
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Doug Wedel
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Member # 1901
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posted 07. March 2006 22:25
After feeling the resistance in here to changing core definitions, and after very carefully thinking about Dembski's concept of Complex Specified Information, I do believe that I can proceed with my demonstration using this terminology, although I will need some help from you to make sure I always interpret things correctly.
What I plan to demonstrate is an algorithm that combines chance and necessity to produce CSI. I will show how a mechanism can evolve the ability to make smart choices.
Before I begin, though, there are a couple of minor clarifications that I need from the cognoscenti in here on CSI.
-- Does CSI in any way take into account the "semantic value" of information, i.e. its meaning? How does you talk about CSI and meaning?
-- Dembski stresses the importance of decision-making, and the role of information in decision-making. Does Dembski anywhere consider the possibility of assessing the value of information based on the success or failure of the decisions made?
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Irving
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Member # 535
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posted 07. March 2006 22:32
Doug,
quote:
I just re-read very carefully Dembski's
"Intelligent Deesign as a Theory of Information" in which he lays out the CSI concepts. He doesn't seem to discuss these concepts that you believe are crucial, or perhaps he does so under different terms?
You don't have to go very far. :-)
It's right here at iscid.org!
http://www.iscid.org/encyclopedia/Specified_Complexity
Specified Complexity
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Irving
Member
Member # 535
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posted 07. March 2006 22:37
quote:
What I plan to demonstrate is an algorithm that combines chance and necessity to produce CSI.
Necessity may be the mother of invention, but it's not related to CSI. I think that's the point I'm trying to get across.
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Doug Wedel
Member
Member # 1901
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posted 07. March 2006 22:44
quote:
Can you describe for me, what you believe independence and detachable means in terms of CSI?
I think I get how you use the terminology now. There has to be some kind of template for recognizing a pattern that is separate and detachable from the dataset where you might find that pattern, something like that, so when you get a "hit" when you're comparing the detachable template to the actual dataset you then have the case of the arrow striking the prepainted target.
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Irving
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Member # 535
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posted 07. March 2006 23:03
quote:
I think I get how you use the terminology now. There has to be some kind of template for recognizing a pattern that is separate and detachable from the dataset where you might find that pattern, something like that, so when you get a "hit" when you're comparing the detachable template to the actual dataset you then have the case of the arrow striking the prepainted target.
Yes (depending on your use of the term dataset). Which brings us back to the original question:
quote:
Algorithms and natural laws are utterly incapable of producing information.
Because the template is independent of them. Pi is the template. It is independent of the physical laws regarding the emission of radiation. Discovery of a
physical emitter, emitting a sequence in accordance with the Pi template in decimal notation (of sufficient length), is an inference of Design.
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David L. Hagen
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Member # 323
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posted 07. March 2006 23:49
Doug
quote:
I recommend you stick with physical systems.
An information processing system is very different from a thermodynamic system even though the former is not entirely disengaged from the latter. Information has no weight. If all the information that was ever created on all the computers that ever existed were downloaded onto one huge hard drive the precise weight of the hard drive would not change. Thus, information processing, though connected by a difficult to define nexus to the thermodynamic realm, is nevertheless in a realm of its own when it comes to discussions, definitions, and measurements of "order" and "disorder".
{DH Comments withdrawn: See repost on March 8, 2006}
You cannot store, copy, or transmit information in the physical universe without some quanta of energy change per bit of information. It also requires a rearrangement of matter or a change in momentum per bit. e.g. magnetic domains on a hard drive or photons in a fiber channel.
{DH Withdrew comment: See repost March 8, 2006.}
The material/energy storing the information etc is subject to the 2nd law unless overriden by intelligent design to preserve the information. -which also takes matter and energy.
{DH Withdrew comment: See repost March 8, 2006.}
[ 08. March 2006, 13:44: Message edited by: David L. Hagen ]
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Doug Wedel
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Member # 1901
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posted 08. March 2006 09:51
quote:
Your description of "information" is Platonic and idealistic with no relation to the physical universe.
I don't understand. Do you think information is _physical_? I described specifically how information impinges on material reality. I discussed how it impacts the survival of organisms. Why are you caricaturing my posts?
quote:
Your computer, software and the power supply that you use to process your super demonstration all embody CSI (using intelligent design separate from necessity or chance), so before you even start you are showing that intelligent design is required, (not necessity and chance without intelligent design.)
This is very depressing. Just what I was afraid of. Forget disproving anything!! Any formal proof, any mathematics, embodies CSI!!!!!! You can never ever prove it wrong. Is this really what you're saying? Why didn't you say that after my first post?
quote:
If you believe you can demonstrate CSI from necessity and chance, then your are also a candidate for applying for a perpetual motion machine. That is the one class of patents that the patent office requires that you demonstrate.
Why do you say this? I have been offering to "demonstrate" my proof from my very first post.
Do you think I'm some type of lunatic?
quote:
So here, I would ask you to demonstrate how you get "CSI" with chance and necessity. That is a contradiction in terms, or a lack of understanding, or not realizing that you are starting out using an intelligent design to try to "prove" that you can do without.
Look, I am trying to prove that a Nobel Prize winning physicist is right. You have a tautologous understanding of the problem in which disproving your central tenet is utterly impossible because the very apparatus by which one would disprove it, mirabile dictu, proves it!
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Micah Sparacio
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Member # 6
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posted 08. March 2006 10:35
Doug,
The most convincing proof, if your interest is in convincing others who do not yet agree, is going to involve the natural origin of CSI.
The problem is that the most abundant physical instantiation of CSI, namely life itself, is, at least among those who take CSI seriously, a source of controversy.
So the situation you find yourself in is one where
1. The people who think CSI is a crock, already think that CSI is biologically derived -> that CSI is always the product of biological organisms, which are themselves the product of chemical interactions over deep geological time.
2.The people who take CSI seriously, are either convinced that the origin of life and the origin of human intelligence are still hard scientific questions that, given our current knowledge set, aren't amenable to a clear scientific answer, or they are already convinced that Mind preceded matter.
In the second set, you've got two types of people. First, you've got those who think the origin of CSI is still a deep scientific mystery. In the second case, the origin of CSI resides in some cosmic Mind.
In neither case will you succeed at a proof without clearly demonstrating that a physical system, unaided by intelligence, reproduces some detachable pattern. It would help if you could reproduce the situation, or find the systematic origin of CSI in some natural process.
The problem comes around. The first set of people will say "Ah, but we have evidence of such an origin all around us: the presence of biological organisms." The second set of people will say, "No, that begs the question."
And around, and around.
Let me say, however, that I share your frustration when CSI is presented as virtually unfalsifiable (just as I get frustrated when the gradualist suggests some wacked-up scenario for its falsification). In other words, I'd lose my patience if, upon observing the natural origin of life on a series of planets by purely chemical means, the defenders of CSI said something like this: "Ah, but that just means that the CSI for life is built into the very fabric of the natural laws governing the universe."
Of course, that would then take us to the level of pure intuition and CSI would do absolutely no theoretical good. It would be like saying, "Natural laws can't produce CSI because the natural laws themselves have CSI built into them." That could be true, but it is pure intuitive assertion.
[ 08. March 2006, 10:37: Message edited by: Micah Sparacio ]
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David L. Hagen
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Member # 323
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posted 08. March 2006 13:33
Thanks Micah for a measured response and perspective.
My apologies Doug for a hasty agressive reply. I do not want to caricature your posts, but to challenge towards providing a sound objective perspective. I apologize for the apparent tautology etc. in my comments in my last post above and withdraw them. Please withdraw them from your response.
I read more into your statement on information than you probably intended. I was reacting against unrealistic computer models published by some allegedly showing evolution, where the essential core replication and energy functions were excluded, and where unrealistic rewards of energy were given for increasing complexity. See discussions of AVIDA:
Evaluation of neo-Darwinian Theory with Avida Simulations Evaluation of neo-Darwinian Theory with Avida Simulations
Let me rephrase:
Yes information can be stored. We popularly think of information as "massless". However:
Information & Matter: Storing, copying, and transmiting information in the real world requires a physical change of the spatial configuration of matter, or of the transmission of matter or energy. e.g. magnetic domains or photons.
Information & Energy: Storing, copying or transmitting information further requires energy. e.g. there is a minimum amount or number of quanta of energy required to store a bit of information, depending on the storage format.
Because of the quantum nature of energy and matter, I believe that if you look into it deeper, you will find that you cannot configure any system in the physical universe
quote:
"in which order can be increased for arbitrarily small amounts of energy"
Thus, I recommend you reconsider your statement, and all associated consequences in your model. i.e., may I recommend that you carefully account in your system for the reordering of matter and energy required to process information. More particlarly, consider the information embedded within your processing system. I expect that the information processing that you wish to demonstrate does not occur in a vacuum without energy.
I expect that you will find that complex specified information, such as a design by an intelligent designer, will be found to be used to configure the information processing system itself within your model.
Now we can model an information system on a computer. However, let me encourage you to include within your computer model, the information, energy, and matter required to form and operate the information processing and selection system by which you perform your algorithms and artificial selection. i.e., take into account the critiques of ARVIDA, and model a system that has some relation to physical biotic systems.
I expect that this challenge will be something like achieving a perpetual motion machine. You are most welcome to try, but I have serious doubts about the achievability of your stated goal.
Regarding CSI, I understand Dembski's filter to show that a complex secified pattern, such as information clearly specified by an intelligent designer, which specifies something that is not prescribed by natural law (cf crystalization), if of sufficient complexity, cannot be obtained by chance within the known universe at the fastest rate of rearranging all particles over all time at the fastest rate possible. eg ~10^120.
e.g., Encoding the text of the Encyclopedia Britanica on a CD.
The information within the genome is nominally of similar complexity. This then raises the question as to how that information can be obtained by necessity or chance. Since there does not appear to be any natural means to do that, we infer an intelligent designer as the source of that information.
I am working to systematize such thoughts and formulate a corresponding ID theory that is predictive. This will include some of the above concepts.
[ 08. March 2006, 14:27: Message edited by: David L. Hagen ]
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Doug Wedel
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Member # 1901
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posted 08. March 2006 15:23
Micah, thanks for your post. You say
quote:
So the situation you find yourself in is one where
1. The people who think CSI is a crock, already think that CSI is biologically derived -> that CSI is always the product of biological organisms, which are themselves the product of chemical interactions over deep geological time.
2.The people who take CSI seriously, are either convinced that the origin of life and the origin of human intelligence are still hard scientific questions that, given our current knowledge set, aren't amenable to a clear scientific answer, or they are already convinced that Mind preceded matter.
There is one thing I don't understand here. You speak of CSI as if it were itself something to be proved or disproved, and that was not the way I was _beginning_ to understand CSI. The way I understand CSI from reading Dembski and other material is that it is a way of defining information, or rather, a subset of information. Isn't that correct? You can either accept the definition or not, but it's not a matter of _belief_ or _proof_, is it?
quote:
Let me say, however, that I share your frustration when CSI is presented as virtually unfalsifiable (just as I get frustrated when the gradualist suggests some wacked-up scenario for its falsification). In other words, I'd lose my patience if, upon observing the natural origin of life on a series of planets by purely chemical means, the defenders of CSI said something like this: "Ah, but that just means that the CSI for life is built into the very fabric of the natural laws governing the universe
An unfalsifiable argument is like a program that won't halt -- it just goes on forever ;-) But here again, Micah, I am perplexed by how you speak of CSI. Is it CSI that is to be falsified? I thought CSI was just the way we were agreeing to define a certain subset of information. I thought that what we were discussing is how information gets created and whether or not it can be created by algorithms and natural laws.
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Micah Sparacio
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Member # 6
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posted 08. March 2006 16:13
CSI is still a controversial concept, and I'm pretty sure I know why: because the specification aspect of CSI is a relational property where the relata are A)an informational pattern B) a user of the informational pattern and C) a copy of the informational pattern.
Here's the issue: the two pieces of information are always related by means of an intelligent cause (the user of information). Identifying the specification is not always easy because it is, in virtue of being partly constituted by an intelligent cause, not amenable to observation.
So, the concept of CSI is controversial, in my opinion, because it involves a complex relational property that isn't easily harnessed in moving from C) instantiated informational pattern back to B) and A). It is easier to suppose that such a complex property does not exist - that it is an illusion, brought about by a complex arrangement of more basic and fundamental properties.
I hope this answers your question. You shouldn't think of CSI as a property of certain independent , isolated bits of information. Rather, CSI is a relational property that describes information produced by an intelligent agent for a purpose which mirrors an independent informational pattern
So, let's take the following bit string to make what I'm saying more clear:
0010101010001010001000111011110100101000111010010101010010
Though I'm being atypical, it is not appropriate to ask of this bit string whether it is CSI. You don't say of individual, isolated information that it is CSI. Rather, it would be more appropriate to ask whether this bit string was the C) component of the CSI relation. In other words, was this bit string produced by an intelligent agent to match some some other independent pattern of information?
[ 08. March 2006, 16:15: Message edited by: Micah Sparacio ]
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Doug Wedel
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posted 08. March 2006 16:18
David,
Everybody gets the right to have an occasional off-tempo post ;-) No offense.
quote:
Now we can model an information system on a computer. However, let me encourage you to include within your computer model, the information, energy, and matter required to form and operate the information processing and selection system by which you perform your algorithms and artificial selection. i.e., take into account the critiques of ARVIDA, and model a system that has some relation to physical biotic systems.
Actually, the question that we began with was a choice between two propositions: (1) algorithms and natural laws can create information [albeit by an as yet undiscovered method]; or (2) algorithms and natural laws can't create information so you have to look elsewhere for the source of information.
Implicit in this question is a Turing Machine, specifically, a Universal Turing Machine, because it doesn't make sense to speak generally of what algorithms can and cannot do without assuming some type of Turing Machine on which the algorithms will operate. So I'm just building a proof that begins: ASSUME A TURING MACHINE ;-)
I suspect from your deep dissatisfaction with my line of thinking that you may prefer a more philosophical approach to this subject matter. I can sense there are _enormous_ philosophical differences in the way in which we approach this subject, and if you will allow me, I will attempt to explain what I mean.
First of all, I accept the "intelligent design" hypothesis, but I think intelligence is part of nature.
Now, I imagine from your perspective that such a statement just doesn't make sense. In fact, it may even seem preposterous to you ;-) But I would just remind you that virtually all of the greatest science that has been done in the last 100 years has been done with a fixed vision focused on uncovering mechanism and natural law, and that this fixed vision has led from one unbelievable achievement to the next.
Let me try to briefly put this in an historical perspective if you don't mind. Think back to 1943 when Erwin Schrodinger gave his great lecture, "What Is Life?", and motivated brilliant young scientists like Francis Crick and Tom Watson to change their lines of inquiry and beginning focusing on uncovering the secrets of life. What was it about Schrodinger's lecture that so electrified these brilliant young scientists? It was this: science had known since Mendel, or at least since the revival of Mendel, of the algebra of inheritance. But no one knew quite what to make of it. Then George Gamow, the great physicist, said [I think it was him, wasn't it?], hey, if you look at these numbers, what's coming out of these living cells, THERE'S GOT TO BE A CODE IN THERE.
Gamow's idea was so far out that most people paid no attention whatever. After all, most of Gamow's ideas were from realms far beyond the ken of mere mortals. But then along came Schrodinger, every bit Gamow's equal, one of the real titans of science, and he says, by gum, Gamow's right. And thats what he told the lads in Edinburgh in those lectures: lads, he said there's a code in there! Life is written in code! Schrodinger didn't say it quite like that. He said there was an "aperiodic crystal" in the living cell. That it contained information about the organism. That somehow it operated against the thermodynamic gradient.
Scrodinger took Gamow's logical idea and said: there has to be a mechanism. The idea that there was a mechanism in the heart of life, and the idea that this mechanism was somehow mathematical, that there was information in there, was absolutely exhilirating to the young scientists, and of course we know what came of that mad pursuit -- molecular biology.
But just before Crick and Watson popped their double helix out of the oven in 1953 (?), another great scientist, probably the greatest of the lot, was contemplating the further logic of life, the logic of evolution itself, and this was the incomparable John von Neumann, who just before he died of cancer put together his "Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata" which showed how a mechanism could reproduce with variation.
I used to be young myself. I read von Neumann when I was young, and Crick and Watson. I followed the progress of molecular biology as I was growing up. Throughout my life one of my favorite studies has been the the purely formal logical inquiry into how von Neumann's self-replicating automata could "get smarter." How could they acquire information from their environment and learn how to effectively process it without a lot of expert information being built in. What I am trying to do in here is to demonstrate some of my results, to expose them to my peers, and hopefully, to receive a "fair and balance" opinion. ;-)
There is a great deal of talk in this milieu about "irreducible complexity." I accept Behe's argument. There is an amazing irreducible complexity about the universe itself, well known to the metaphysicians of the anthropic principle. What can it possible mean that there is such a thing as Planck's constant, and that matter equals energy times the speed of light squared? One thing for sure: at the heart of the physical universe, at the heart of the whole shebang, are formulas, exact formulas.
I am looking for the "irreducible complexity" of life, the simplest possible mechanism with the simplest possible formula, that could "take off" in an evolutionary sense. You seem to want me to prove that something can be gotten from nothing. But I'm really only attempt to prove that automata can evolve and become more intelligent.
I suspect you do not share my passion for mechanism ;-) You may find it depressing or even demeaning or sacrilegious. But it is in the Scripture that we read: the truth shall set you free -- and I promise you that's what I'm after, too.
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