What is an ID proponent's basis of comparison? (edited)

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You are simply wrong!

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"MY HOUSE IS BIG"
"MY HOUSE IS BIG"

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has twice the information content as
"MY HOUSE IS BIG"

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This is very basic!

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To claim it has the same information content is just silly!

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It has twice Shannon Information (SI), but not CSI. You can't use SI to describe biological functions.

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Lets keepit simple. By your claim the string 1 has the same information as the string 11. But then the string 1111 has the same content as 1 no?

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No, because the first one means "one", the second one means "eleven", and the third one means "thousand one hundred and eleven". Different meaning, different information.

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In fact you could repeat the 1 5459795 times and still only have the same information content as in the string 1?

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Now if you convert 5459795 to hex, and make three pairs it can be interpreted as the string "SOS" using the standard ASCII notation.

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So by you claim we can incode the string "SOS" in just one bit?

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In fact using standard ASCII we can encode any random finite length text string as just one number, lets call it N.

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You can then represent that number as N repetitions of a string. Your claim is that N repetitions of a string has the exact same information content as the string itself.

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Thus any string has the same information content?

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Either your definition of information content is seriously screwed, or you are mistaken.

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Again, the same thing. This is increase in infromation becasue of the different meaning.

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Therefore, the information about the number of petals doesn't come from you, it comes from the flower.

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That is true. But the flower didn't create that information about how many petals it will have. It is only constantly transfering it to it's ofspring.

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It turns out you didn't really create any information at all.

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Yes, I did, in my mind. I could have written any number I wanted. Should I have chosen to write the wrong number, it would still be new information.

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It was new information to you, but you didn't create the information. Rather, the information was communicated to you via electromagnetic radiation (light).

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False and true. I did create new information in my mind. Becasue that's what minds do. They create knowledge. Matter can only, as you just pointed out, transfer information.

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We can even go beyond this to an example that doesn't involve people at all. How does a flower know to open it's petals in the morning? It knows because the rays of sun communicate to the flower that the sun has risen and day has begun. No mind or intelligence was involved.

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Exactly, becasue yes, matter can transfer and process information. But it can not originate it. Did teh flower come about by itself?

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We can just as easily create examples that don't involve life at all. A pool of water receives information from the sun in the form of electromagnetic radiation and heats up.

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I agree, that's transfer of signals.

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It would be very convenient for your position if information were something that could only be created by a mind or intelligence, but that's not how it is defined in information theory. The problem of communicating information is one of sending one message from a set of possible messages from point A to point B. There's nothing in information theory about message sets only being created by minds, or that only minds can send and receive information.

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Well this is where you are wrong, sine you equate Shannon's model of information with the entire theory of information. Thus effectively making it useless for anything other than communication.

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I think I've quoted this to you several times now.

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Yes, and I explained to you why you are wrong. Shannon said that meaning has nothing to do with engineering problems, but not with information theory altogether. His theory didn't include meaning becasue it's was the first model of information ever. Science advances, that's how it goes.

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I know that Werner and Gitt claim that meaning is part of information theory, but their ideas have not had any influence at all within science. Their only audience is creationists. Their ideas are not underpinned by research and do not have any mathematical foundation.

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This is not an argument, this is slander.

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But it isn't just that their ideas have been ignored by science, a simple thought exercise can convince anyone that meaning cannot be quantified. Just think about it. How would you quanity meaning? How much meaning is there in a pebble? A tree? The Mona Lisa? There's no answer. Meaning is an interpretation people make and it is subjective.

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Again, you are painfully wrong. Dembski has done it wonderfully with CSI. Meaning is represended with specifications. You calculate the probabillity of an object that has a specification and you quantified the frist three levels of information.

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What would it mean to have an increase in meaning? How would you add to the meaning of the Mona Lisa? Does the Mona Lisa have more or less meaning than the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?

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We'll use simpler examples."MY HOUSE IS BIG" - this is information and means that my house is big."MY HOUSE IS BIG"
"MY HOUSE IS BIG"
"MY HOUSE IS BIG"
"MY HOUSE IS BIG"By duplicating it 4 times I added no new meaning, even though I increased the number of letters. Still no new meaning arises."MY HOUSE IS BIG"
"AND IT HAS A RED ROOF"Ah, but now, even though I have only two statements with less letters, I have more meaning, therefore more information. You have more knowledge about the house. You have more meaning. The first statement means that I have a big house. The second one means that it has a red roof. This is increase in meaning, therefore increase in information.In the previous example, no matter how much we duplicated the first statement, the meaning is always teh same. Therefore, no new information.

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Or does the Mona Lisa have more meaning than a human being? Yes? No? Whatever your answer, how did you quantify the meaning so you could do the comparison?

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Or does the Mona Lisa have more meaning than a chipmunk? Than a fly? Than a bacterium? How would you ever make the comparison?

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I can't quantify Mona Lisa, so I can't say. We need a digital source.

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Information theory is a very mathematical science, and our inability to quantify meaning, indeed to objectify it in any way, leaves meaning forever outside its realm.

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No, I'm sorry, but it's you who can't quantify it. If you understood Dembski's work, you would know that he successfully quantified the first three levels.

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Say you look within the cell to its DNA and think you find meaning there. What is the meaning that you find? Do you find love? Peace? Tranquility? Is the meaning that you find the same meaning that everyone else finds, which is required if there is any objective quality there?

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It's the biological functons. Yes, it's objective, everybody finds them.

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The answer is no, of course not, you do not find this kind of meaning there.

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Oh, I see, you dont' find biological functions every time you look at the cell. What do you find? Rocks?

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Meaning is subjective and can't be quantified.

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Meaning is objective if you use a well defined syntax. A car in English means a car. A tree means a tree. It's not subjective.

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Everyone sees a different meaning. Some people see Jesus in a slice of pizza and find it an incredibly meaningful miraculous event, others shrug their shoulders and finish lunch.

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That's becasue they interpreted it that way without actually being so in reality. But a car is designed and it's a car, regardless of someones interpretation. It's objectively a car.

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What you're calling meaning inside DNA is actually no more than what it does.

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Yes, and it does it objectively, not subjectively. Therefore it's real and quantifiable.

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Coding portions of DNA specify sequences of amino acids to be strung together into proteins. For example, the portion of DNA specifying the amino acid sequence for the common protein hemoglobin has no meaning. It's just a specification. There's no meaning.

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No, it has meaning. It's specification is meaning. The portion of DNA that does specify the sequence of amino acids for hemoglobin is it's meaning. And we can quantify that.

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There is no specific "search target". Whatever increases the chances of reproductive success will be selected. Natural selection is not random.

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Not always, actually, almost never, but never mind benecitial mutations now. The point is that natural selection selects for fitness which is not correlated with biological functions. Just becasue an organims has increased fitness compared to others it doesn't mean it got new biological functions.And if that is so, natural selection has no knowledge about new biological functions and it doesn't select for them. It selects for fitness. That is why it is as good as blind chance at evolving new biological functions.

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That snowshoe hares turn white in winter is under genetic control. The trait of winter color change to white does not evolve in temperate climates. You can bring brown rabbits north to the Arctic, but they won't turn white in winter.

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Polar bear are perhaps a more clear example, since their fur is always white. White bears do not evolve in temperate climes.

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An even better example is the difference in fur color between Arctic and Antarctic baby seals. In the Arctic where there are more predators, especially polar bears, the baby seals of resident species have white fur. In the Antarctic where there are few surface predators, baby seals of resident species have dark fur.

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You do know what epigenetics are right?

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And this is because natural selection is not random. Natural selection means that poorly adapted organisms die or produce fewer offspring, while well adpated organisms survive and produce more offspring. The biological world is continually getting more of what works and less of what doesn't. It isn't random.

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But this has nothing to do with evolving new information. It only has with expressing a certain genotype and selecting it and increasing it's presence in the population. Genes for both fur color were already present in the population. They just weren't expressed.

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The page displays, but the box for the text of the book is blank. But I played with it a bit more, and if you click on the right arrow of the pair labeld "Naslovnica" then it brings you to the table of contents. Click on the link for me - the same is true for you, right? Blank page, you have to click on that right arrow before any text appears?

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Acutally everything is shown right away for me. No clicking needed.

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Anyway, going to page 289 I find chapter section 5.10 titled "Doing the Calculation". It's actually much more than four pages. The first equation doesn't even appear until 297. If you think that Dembski has a method for calculating specified complexity, please describe it here in your own words.

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Very simple, you take the amount of the DNA needed for a specific function, and and you calculate it's probability. If that sequence has less probability than 10^120 (or 10^150 in this book) than that's CSI. Becasue DNA has specification for proteins, it has meaning. Therefore you have quantified the amount of meaning also.

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So your random algorithm works like this: there's a mutation, and whether or not the mutation makes it to the next generation is random.

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And evolution works like this: there's a mutation, and whether or not the mutation makes it to the next generation is a function of how well adpated the organism is to its environment.

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This is consistent with the NFL theorem, because evolution takes more information into account than the random algorith. Evolution includes information about the environment while your random algorithm does not.

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But evolution does not get the information about new biological functions, only about the fitness of organisms which are not correlated to functions.

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Could you provide an example of quantifying semantics. For example, how much semantic information is in the sentence, "My house is big?" And what are the units of semantic information.

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Not enough to quantify with CSI. But as Dembski calculated, the flagellum has the probabillity of 1:10^2954. So now you convert that to bits and you get the CSI of the flagellum.

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Imagine how tiresome it is to have to actually explain something over and over again. You should try that for a change!

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That's waht I'm doing all day long.

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By statistics you mean the number of bits required to convey a message?

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Yes I do.

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Statistics is the realm of probabilities and so forth. At heart the number of bits required to convey one message from a finite set of messages is deterministic and neither statistical nor probabilistic. Information theory can be very statistical, but not for this very simple portion of it.

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Actually, if you are going to measure the rpobability of something arising by chance, you obviously need to use probabilities and statistics.

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I've presented you calculations of the number of bits required to transmit a message several times, and you should address yourself to these calculations since that's what you claim you're talking about. The example is one of a gene of 3 alleles experiencing a mutation to then have 4 alleles. The message set for that gene has grown from 3 to 4, and the number of bits necessary to communicate a message from that message set has changed in this way:

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log23 = 1.585 bits
log24 = 2 bits
2 bits - 1.585 bits = .415 bits
Information has increased by .415 bits

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I've already explained that this is increase in Shannon Information (SI), which can not be used to describe biological functions.

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I can only go by what you said, which was that D appearing (a new mutation appearing) has never been observed.

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In trying to understand someone, one usually tries harder to make sense of people who have a history of saying sensible things. But you haven't been making much sense here, nor explaining very much either, and in another thread you're arguing for geocentrism, so when you appear to be saying something nonsensical like that new mutations have never been observed, then you've got to expect that as wrong as that sounds that people are going to assume you meant precisely what you appeared to be saying.

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In other words, when you build a reputation for saying outlandish things, don't expect that people will be spending much effort looking for sense in the nonsense.

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I equated D with new biological function, not a new mutation. In that case, yes mutations do arise, they have been observed.

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Still bored?

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Pretty much...

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You are arguing that biology always results in a loss of information because of a belief in "The Fall" or whatever you want to call it.

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I'm not a Christian, now go away. You are going off topic. Go and discuss religion somewhere else.

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It is statements like this that make it hard to take you seriously and reaffirms that you are just a troll.
This cannot be slander. It is impossible to slander someone on an internet forum. One could libel them.

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Slander - Law. defamation by oral utterance rather than by writing, pictures, etc.

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Now it would be possible to commit libel on an internet forum.

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Libel - defamation by written or printed words, pictures, or in any form other than by spoken words or gestures.

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Now what part of the statement defamed them? What part is injurious?

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A person who simply dismisses other people's work becouse he does not agree with them, and becasue other people disagree with that person, is making a logicaly fallacy. Call it what you will but it's just plain wrong.

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Seems this is all provable. Can you show they have research and a mathematical foundation to their ideas? Or do you take personal offense, because someone refuted your argument

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You make lots of claims. The claim of slander jsut shows the type of person we are dealing with

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It's not they, it's him. Werener Gitt is one person. Refuted how? By saying that they don't agree with it?The foundations of Gitt's research are in Shannon, Chaitin, etc... His further research is general and not strictly mathematical.

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Lets start a new thread for this discussion. Game?

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I'm all for it...

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So is he being "slandered" here too? Seems like the writer is pointing out glaring problems with Gitt's work

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What exactly did Gitt contradict in Shannon's paper?

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Totally driven by religious motives.
Do you know what happens to fighter pilots when they rely on intuition? They die.

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Spetner is motivated by religious views? Okay, so what? What is your point? Is he quoting Bible to prove his point?

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Spetner's attempt to substantiate his assertion that the amount of information is decreased by the described mutation because this mutation makes the ribosome less specific is itself unsubstantiated. The ribosome may become less specific in relation to streptomycin, but may become instead specific in relation to some other substance. Since information about such a possibility is absent, there is no reason to assert that the specificity in Spetner's sense has indeed dropped. Therefore Spetner's assertion that the mutation in question resulted in a decrease of information is pure speculation with no evidentiary value

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The only problem is that this doesn't happen. We have observed structures deteriorate, but we did not observe them become more suited for other substances. Therefore we did observe loos, but not gain in information.

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Apparently not since you don't seem to be making any sense. I talk about billions of generations of bacteria and you convert that into billions of years. How else are we to understand this unless you think bacteria have generation times close to a year, as opposed to the 20 minutes something like E.coli actually has.

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I thought you were talking about billions of years in Earth's history.

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Did it? the amino acid changed, how do you know that this lead to a loss of information since there is no change in function to tie it to? Aren't you the one propounding Abel and Trevors idea of 'functional information'? If this mutation doesn't change the gyrase's function why should it be a loss of information?

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Becasue it lost it's structure. And the more this happens, the gyrase will eventually be useless.

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You are making a nonsense of the whole CSI argument. There is no deterioration of its structure, you can show absolutely no change in the functionality of the gyrase. It makes no sense to say,'yes but if I change all of the amino acids the protein will cease to function' as that says nothing to what this particular amino acid change does.

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I didn't even mention CSI. I was talking about structure. You do not have to lose ALL the functionality to lose information. You can lose some part of the structure and you lose some of the information.Look, look at the word -> INFORMATION.Do you see it? Now remove the first 2 letters. And what do you get?You get the word -> FORMATION.Now lose the last 5 letters. And what do you get?You get the word -> FORM.Taht's right, information, in the physical world is represented by a structure, a form of some kind. If you lose a bit of that form you lost information.

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How is the structure damaged? Change need not equal damage, either at the nucleotide or amino acid level.

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A random change almost always equals damage. Or fine tuning, but never an improvement, or an increase in information. So yeah, it's a damage, like the sickle cell disease.

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Then what function do you think this amino acid was specified for?

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It is the part of the gyrase's structure.

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You presumably mean CSI here or 'functional information' since information streams into us from the universe all the time from a countless number of material entities.

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Exactly, that is what I mean. And no, it's not information that is coming to us, those are just signals. Unless you mean Shannon information, well than anything goes!

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I suppose you must have overlooked a good few publications that describe, in detail, just this kind of mutation. Gene duplication is a very common occurrence in nature, it's been observed in genomes that have been sequenced. These genomes have been found to be riddled with duplicated genes, sometimes even multiple versions of the same original, which were subsequently altered by yet more mutations, making the original and the copy (or copies) diverge. It definitely happens, and you can read about in the literature. Your denial of it is as ridiculous as denying that the moon exists.

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I do not deny that genes exist. I do not deny that mutations exist. I do not deny that gene duplication exist.I deny that this above mentioned process can bring forth new biological functions. Because it can't. It has never been OBSERVED to.Notice the all caps OBSERVED. What countles articles do, is they ASSUME that this process brought about new biological functions. They never observed it, not in a single case. They only assume that that is what happened.

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I don't know which textbooks were used to teach you, but they can't have been about biology, that much is clear.

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Well, now you got me where you wanted, huh!?

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Evolution isn't "supposed" to pick anything. It simply happens that the fittest have a better chance to procreate than the less fit. Anything that gets you among the fittest will better your chances, and new information is no exception to the rule. For example, if all your siblings can only digest leaves of one type, and you develop a mutation that enables you to digest leaves of another type, which would constitute new information in your genome, then you stand a good chance of doing better in life than your siblings.

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Yes, but this is a myth. This doesn't happen. You don't have to explain this process to me, I know how it is supposed to work. But the point remains that it doesn't happen.Did you read Genetic Entropy by Sanford? The genomes are constantly deteriorating, and losing fitness and information. They could not have evolved because of the noise. The more fit do not have enough advantage to be selected by natural selection, so on average, they don't get selcted. The less fit do.And what about near-neutral mutations (NNM)? They are constantly accumulating themselves in our genome and reducing it's informational content. By definition NNM can not be selected out by natural selection becasue of the noise.Like I said, your story does not happen in real life. The opposite is happening, all the genomes are deteriorating.Edited by Smooth Operator, : No reason given.

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That's true, but if you look at your reply you'll see that you've broken up entire explanations into little individual pieces which you address separately. The explanations have to be considered as a whole. Each of your objections only makes sense if the particular little piece you're responding to was all I said. Let me tie it all back together for you, and I'm going to change the example slightly.

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If you made any sense, than your argument would be fine in parts, or in a whole.

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Say we're walking through the woods and we come to a clearing with several large rocks. I ask you to write down how many rocks are in the clearing, and you do so. Where did the information you wrote down come from? It didn't come from you, right? You couldn't have written down the correct information while your eyes were closed. You could have written some number down and that would still be information, but it wouldn't be the information for the number of rocks in the clearing except by luck.

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But the rocks by themselves do not represent information. The paper and the number on them does. Becasue rocks and their number can be explained by a natural process. Teh paper in my hand and the in on it with the number on the paper can not be explained by a natural process not guided by an intelligence.

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So the information about the number of rocks in the clearing did not come from a mind. There is no natural law that information can only come from a mind.

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Actually it did, since I wrote it. The rocks themselves do not present any information. Anything you try to apply to rocks as information is entirely subjective.

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This is the probability of the flagellum genes forming in a single step by chance. We are all in agreement that this would be incredibly unlikely. But these genes didn't come about in a single step by chance. Mutations in bacteria like E. coli (whose flagellum is Dembski's example) occur at the rate of about 10-8 per base pair per generation. It took many, many steps (generations) followed by natural selection to produce the bacterial flagellum, not one.

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But evolution won't help you because of the NFL theorem. That is why Dembski is justified in calculating the formation of the flagellum by blind chance. Since evolution in nature equals blind chance in creating new biological functions. That was actually the whole point of the book. To justify calculating the odds of the flagellum forming all at once, since NFL precludes evolution helping it to form more likely.

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Fitness and "biological functions" go hand in hand.

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No my dear, they do not. This is like saying that red is green. You just made a big mistake.People in Africa who get sickle cell wil have their red blood cells deformed. Thus their genomes will be reduced in information, and their biological functions will be reduced. But guess what? In their environment, they will be more fit than others. So they will be more likely to survive. And they will do so. Not because they evolved some new helpful biological function. But because of loss of information.

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How sharp a carnivore's teeth are is part of "biological function" and is directly related to fitness. Because the environment selects for fitness it is also selecting the "biological functions" that are the expressions of genes, which are in turn in a continuous process of change due to mutation.

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Teeth are not a biological function. The process of chewing is, ATP synthase is, but not teeth themselves.Just because nature might select somebody with sharper teet, plays absolutely no role, non whatsoever, if that same individual has mutations that will in the future form a more powerful ATP synthase. Natural selecton will not later on select some other individual who will have some other mutation that accumulates with the first individual to build this new ATP synthse, just becasue it had sharper teeth, or longer legs.Biological functions and fitnes are not correlated. That is why natural selection is useles in selecting mutations that are supposed to build new structures like the ATP synthase.

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Species of Antarctic fish have evolved antifreeze in their blood.

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No they didn't they had it all along. It just get's turned on when they need it.

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The gene that codes for the antifreeze protein originates from a copy of another gene that codes for a digestive enzyme.

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No, it doesn't that's an assumption based on the assumption that evolution is true.

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We know this because there are large parts of the antifreeze gene that are too similar to the digestive enzyme gene to be coincidental.

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A lot of things are similar, so what? Similarity is not evidence for common ancestry. It can be evidence for common design. Similar cars are not evidence for common descent, but for common design. So why should we believe that similar genes are evidence of common descent, but of common design?

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So a copy that was subsequently altered by mutation has given rise to a new biological function not present in the fish before:

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Actually it was always there. It resided in the so called junk-DNA part of the genome. This part is used to regulate the gene expresion. When it got cold the genes were expressed differently. No new function was actually expressed. Even if it was it would be no evidence for evolution, since the function was already there, jus not expresed before.What actually happened is that the enzymes were regulated in a way to bind the ice cristals closer together so they can't expand. There were just more of them. Nothing new evolved. No new structure came about. Than the blood of the fish does not freeze. The enzymes still perform the same function, but now it's just fine tuned for current low temperature.

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antifreeze in the bloodstream. It's been OBSERVED and DOCUMENTED (note the capitals).

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Yes, it has. And you are wrong about what it means.

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It hasn't lost its strucuture. Its structure has change in a way that has no effect on its biological function but makes it less susceptible to antibiotics. It could have as many structural changes as it could stand that wouldn't effect its function and unless you have a wholly unique understanding of ID, as I'm beginning to think you do, surely you would have to accept that such changes don't represent a loss of information, since they don't affect function. To argue that since changing all the amino acids would render the protein non-functional that therefore any mutation must make the protein less functional is clearly wrong, it isn't even logical.

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When did I say that any change leads to complete loss in functionality? Never. Neither did I say that it lost it structure completely. It lost a part of it. But a loss is a loss.

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But you haven't lost it in this case, it has simply changed. So you have had a change in information. Which given that the original information is probably still extant in the population leads us straight to Percy's examples of how allelic variants can represent informational change.

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Yes you did lose it. And yes it did change. But random changes do not just change things. The deteriorate them.

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And its replacement is an equally effective part of Gyrase's structure.

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What replacement are you talking about?

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Now you are just talking nonsense. In what way is a mutation that does nothing but benefit the protein by giving it resistance to an antibiotic comparable to sickle cell, other than that they are both mutations. As an aside aren't fine tunings supposed to be improvements albeit small ones? If not then what is the point of fine tuning?

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They are the same in teh way that the structure has been damaged. In the gyrase's case, the change was not noticeable. But the loss of information occured.In the case of sickle cell, the deformation of the structure of the red blood cells had a large impact on the human body. And again the loss of information occured.In both cases loss of information and loss of structure and gain in resistance occured. In one case the loss hade less, and in other it had more impact on the function of the organism.

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You now seem to be actually arguing that information is independent of biological function since you don't seem to care if the mutation affects it or not.

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Wouldn't it just be more sensible to agree that the source you quoted was overstating the case? I'm not asking you to accept increases in information even, simply that not all beneficial mutations need to be through a loss of information.

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I already said, soem mutations are fine tuning. But most of them are loss of information.

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Bare assertion is no substitute for actual facts. Give us some scientific data, in what way has the substitution in the Gyrase caused a deterioration?

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It deteriorated the structure.

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I'm quite prepared to accept it might cause a change of function, but not in the complete absence of any evidence which is al you or your source provide. My own literature searches have not produced anything suggesting a loss of function, but many of the papers on such mutations don't look into that aspect of things.

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I never said it was a loss of function. I might be in other cases. But not in this one. It was the loss of ctructure in this case. Which is a loss in information, which over a long period of time, leads to loss of function.

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So you say, but where is the evidence? And you claim evolutionists accept things on faith.

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FORM = STRUCTURE = INFORMATION.LOSS OF STRUCTURE = LOSS OF FORM = LOSS OF INFORMATION.

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So if you are prepared to accept this happens in principle then why not in this particular case? Why couldn't this simply be fine tuning with a benefit, no loss of information but no gain either?

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Because the structure deteriorated.

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Recall that with eyes closed you could not have written down the number of rocks. That's because the information didn't come from you. The information came from the rocks and was communicated to you via light.

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There is no information in the rocks in the first place. The information that there are three rocks comes from me. That there really are three rocks, by themselves is not an information.

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There is no law that states that information can only come from a mind.

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It's not a law, it's something that has never been observed. Therefore I should not believe it.

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I know that Gitt and Spetner tell you this, but as I said before, their ideas are not based upon any research or mathematics. Instead of labeling this slander this time just provide references to their research papers.

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Gitt's work is based on Shannon. But it improves it. But not in a mathematical department, but in general. So there is absolutly no sense to say that his arguments are not valid becasue he didn't use math. He wasn't even supposed to.Statistics
Syntax
Semantics
Pragmatics
ApobeticsTell me which of this levels is not part of information, and why. And while you're at it, define information in general.

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You compared two algorithms, random and evolution. Evolution is informed by the environment, random is not, and therefore evolution has more information available to it and doesn't violate the NFL theorem.

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Random searches are also informaed while they are running. But none of them has any PRIOR knowledge. Therefore they are both useless.

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Let me illustrate with a simple example. We have bacteria in a petri dish whose growth medium is deficient in a necessary nutrient but abundant in another nutrient that the bacteria are unable to metabolize. The bacteria experience new random mutations with each generation.

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The random algorithm randomly selects which bacteria get to contribute to the next generation. Any bacterium that may have experienced a mutation that allows it to metabolize the abundant nutrient has only a random chance of being selected to pass on its genes.

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The evolutionary algorithm selects bacteria on the basis of how successful they are in their environment. Now any bacteria with a mutation allowing them to metabolize the abundant nutrient will thrive and be very likely to pass their genes on to the next generation. This is how evolution outperforms random.

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Otperforms random search in what? Selecting the fitest? Could be. But not in getting you new biological functions.

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Sickle cell anemia is part of biological function which allows those with only one copy of the gene to be more resistant to malaria and therefore to be more likely to survive to reproduce in their environment, an increase in fitness.

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This is not a biological function! What are you talking about? Do you even know how sickle cell works? It DEFORMS red blood cells so malaria can't attach to them very well. This is not a biological function, this is deterioration of red blood cells.

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You can't separate fitness from biological function. They are intimately related. An organism is the sum total of its biological functions and their interactions, and how well that organism fares in its environment is a measure of fitness.

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You understood ABSOLUTELY NOTHING what I wrote. Nothing. Not a single thing. Please concentrate.Yes, I know, that fitness will drop in general if you destroy a biological function. Yes, that is a fact. But what I was trying to tell you, that just because natural selection will select those in Africa which have sickle cell, that doesn't mean that natural selection has selected in that same individual for a new biological function. It has not selected a genome that is going to evolve some new miniature machine like the ATP synthase. That is becasue nature does not select fitness in correlation to biological functions.It only searches for the fitest. It is not searching for new molecular machines.

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Nature selects according to how successfully an organism competes within its environment. If sharper teeth allow it to better compete then whatever genes are responsible for the sharper teeth will be passed on to its descendants. If a "more powerful ATP synthase" allow it compete better then that too will be passed on to its descendants.

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But lets look at the flip side. Let's say that the organism is not a predator but a leaf eater. Sharper teeth might in that case make it less competitive since the sharper teeth tend more to slice and dice the leaves but not to mash them properly, which let's say is helpful to this organism's digestion. Unable to derive enough nutrition from its leaf diet, and in addition burdened with frequent indigestion, it never finds a mate and the mutation dies with it. This, too, is evolution in action.

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Again, you dont' get it, you just dont' get it. Yes, I know what you are saying. That is somewhat true. But the point is that this process of selection is not correlated with evolving NEW biological functions that weren't there before.Tell me what exactly do sharper teeth have to do with a molecular machine that still does not exist in the organism? Nothing! Absolutely nothing.

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Changed the structure.

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And deteriorated it in the same time.

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Changed the information, without affecting the function. Aren't you the one making posts supporting the idea of function as an essential component of measuring information in sequence analyses? If so how are you measuring the information change/loss in this case where you admit it doesn't affect the function?

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It is possible to change the structure without affecting the function. But not in the long run.

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Change of structure = change of form? = change of information?

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Exactly, what's the problem?

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Except if you knew any biology you would know that a change in the primary sequence of a protein doesn't necessarily mean a change in the higher level structures. So in fact in many cases a change in the primary structure will not lead to any change in the secondary or tertiary. There are obvious instances where this is not the case, as with the sickle cell anaemia example, but a change in primary sequence need not lead to a change in the higher levels of structure, as you would know if you understood biology. The fact that enough changes will cause a change doesn't mean that any specific change necessarily does, for example not every mutation in haemoglobin leads to sickle cell.

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Neither did I say it does. I sad that OVER LONG PERIODS OF TIME, these kind of changes lead to loss of functions.

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This doesn't get any truer just because you keep repeating it. Other than through its effect on function how can you justify characterising this as a deterioration? Can you quantify the informational loss in the absence of a change in function? If so how?

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If it was caused by a random change and if the structure is not in it's original form that it is a deterioration.

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You simply assume that any change in the amino acid sequence is a loss of information, but there is no reason for anyone else to drink your cool aid unless you can make a more compelling argument than simply repeating your contention ad nauseam.

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I'm claiming this becasue natural forces do not build up but deteriorate the genome. So there is noreson to believe that slight changes do add information.

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Again, recall that with eyes closed you could not know the number of rocks. You had to look at the rocks in order to know how many there were. The information about the number of rocks did not originate with you. You did not create the information about the number of rocks. You merely translated the information about the number of rocks that was encoded into the light reaching your eyes into information on a piece of paper.

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There is no information about the number of rocks outside of me. The rocks themselves represent rocks, not the information about their number.

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Here's another way of looking at it. Let's say you ask me to go into the woods and count for you the number of rocks in the first clearing I come to. I do this and find a clearing with three large rocks. I decide to communicate this information to you by going to your house and dragging three large rocks into your front yard. You then look at these three rocks and know that there were three rocks in the clearing. If your view about information were correct then when you look at three rocks that a person dragged in, that it would be information communicated to you, but when you look at three rocks that natural forces just happened to leave there then that would be information you created yourself. That's contradictory and makes no sense. Three rocks are three rocks, no matter who or what put them there and no matter whether there was any conscious intent involved.

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That's not contradictory becasue the three rocks in teh first place are not trying to inform me of anything. They are simply there. If I asked somebody to bring me some rocks, and he does so, than I know that this was done by an intelligent agent, and thus is information created by this agent. Than when I see the rocks, I simply read the information somebody created.

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You think that information includes meaning and I don't.

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Well you are simply wrong. It does. This has nothing to do what you think. It's not up to debate. It's a well known fact.

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Information as a concept has a diversity of meanings, from everyday usage to technical settings. Generally speaking, the concept of information is closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control, data, form, instruction, knowledge, meaning, mental stimulus, pattern, perception, and representation.

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Information - WikipediaTell me, how can you have knowledge without meaning? You can't it's insane to even think you can.

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If we're talking about Shannon information then you're wrong.

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But I'm not talking about Shannon Information. Shannon Information is not information in general. It's only a MODEL of information suitable in engineering.

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But Shannon information is the only definition that has any scientific legitimacy.

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Is this a fact or an opinion?

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"Christliche Literatur-Verbreitung" means "Christian Literature Distribution". So only Christian organizations publish Werner Gitt's papers. There's been no scientific peer review, no publication in scientific journals, no acceptance within the scientific community. And in fact, if you look at the Abel/Trevors, the Durston, and the Capra papers, you'll find that Gitt isn't referenced. Scientifically he's a non-entity.

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I don't care. Really I don't care. If you can't refute his claims an you have to resort to PR than you already lost this discussion.

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Now I went through all this only to show that Gitt's views are not currently accepted within the scientific community. It isn't that he's wrong, but that he hasn't yet been found right. You shouldn't be citing Gitt as if his views had any legitimacy, because that is not the case. You shouldn't be reciting Gitt's list from statistics to apobetics and saying, "That's what information is," because it's only what Gitt says information is. No one in science agrees, and since he's never published in any scientific journals, Gitt isn't even offering his ideas to the scientific community for consideration.

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No, he is right. Just becasue you do not accept it, doesn't mean anything. And no, I didn't say that he is the only one who says it, other people do to. It's a well known fact. It's only you who doesn't understand the difference between Shannon information and information in general. If you think he is wrong, fine, but explain why.

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What we have that is quantifiable is Shannon information.

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I know we do. And Gitt's theories aren't even supposed to be quantifiable. Not yet that is. I said so myself. He was talking what information is in general. Do you understand the difference?

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Well, let's be less equivocal about this. As far as selecting the fittest, natural selection is orders of magnitude superior to random selection.

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Not really, if you read Genetic entropy you would know better. But never mind. Let's say that it is as you say. Still, selection for the fittest does not get you selection for the new biological functions.

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Evolution doesn't proceed in jumps of new biological functions. The bacteria in each new generation experience mutations that make them only very, very slightly different from the previous generation. It is these very slight differences that are being acted upon by natural selection. Completely new biological functions arising in a single generation are extremely unlikely to occur and be submitted to the selection mechanism, whether it be random selection or natural selection.

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But they are never going to arise becasue natural selection is as good as blind chance in selecting for new biological functions. Yes, even if we agree that it's better at selecting for fitness than blind chance.

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Blood has a biological function (a number of them, actually), and sickle cell anemia affects its function. It worsens its ability to distribute nutrients to the body, and it improves its ability to provide resistance to maleria.

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But resistance to malaria is a byproduct, not a biological function like the ATP syntahse performs. It's just the INABILITY of malaria to attach it'self to red blood cells, not a new ABILITY.

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This could only be true if fitness were not a function of the biological functioning of organisms. But the two are intimately related. It could be no other way. A change in a gene causes a change in the protein it builds which causes a change in in the way the teeth form which is a change in biologic function. This change in the biology function forming the teeth causes a change in their sharpness which has an effect on fitness.

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Biological functions are expressed outwardly by the organism, and this outward expression affects fitness.

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You are totally missing the point. YOu simply dont' get it. Why? What is so hard to understand here?Just becasue natural selection has a target for fitness, doesn't mean that this target is the same as NEW, and again, I repaet, NEW, not old, but NEW, do you get it now, NEW, NEW, NEW biological function that does not exist yet.Evolution would ahve to evolve some new function by selecting few nucleotides at a time, one generation at a time. But natural selection has no information about this specific function, and it doesn't know that it is supposed to search for it. It doesn't know what sequence it needs to get this new function.Yes, it will select for those who are more fit, but the sequence for fitness does not correlate for a biological function that does not already exist. Which part of this do you not understand?Natural selection is not looking for sequences that have new biological function, it's looking for the fittest. Those two are not correlated. Yes, effective biological functions and fitness in most cases are, but NEW biological functions are not.So natural selection works better than a blind search for fitness, but not for something that it's not even looking for, and that is NEW biological functions.Because it's not looking for them, so it doesn't know if it should keep a nucleotide or not. It can't think in advance. It can't keep a nucleotide and build up a sequence that will be a new biological function because it is not trying to do so. It's only trying to keep the most fit, REGARDLESS if thier genomes are gaining new biological functions.That's why in searching for sequences that perform new biological functions, natural selection equals blind search.