What exactly is ID?

That is not, of course, the definition of "information" used in science, or in mathematics, nor indeed in the English language as it is usually spoken.I therefore suggest that to avoid ambiguity we should call this new property Brad-H-information.Now, do you have any evidence that there is any Brad-H-information present in the genome of any organism that has not been the subject of genetic engineering?

Bacteria can have recessive genes now?And here was I thinking that they were haploid. But this is demonstrably untrue: such evolutionary events can be observed when we know for certain that the gene in question was not present in the original line.---I have a question for you. You have obviously spent no time whatsoever researching the subject that you're talking about. So why are you talking about it? You can only hope to be right about anything by sheer good luck. Consequently, you must inevitably bear false witness over and over again, as you have done in this post. Does this not bother you?

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No, I am saying that (a) intelligence is required for the origination of information, and (b) it is not necessary for the continued transmission of information. And that does fit the Wiki def.

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I really need to get this absolutely clear. When you say that "intelligence is required for the origination of information" is that part of your definition, or is it an assertion ? Because it certainly isn't part of the Wikipedia definition.

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The changes we "know" that occur in the DNA are just as you said, changes with no sign of a designer. But they are not changes that can explain its origin as a whole to begin with.

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However, they do go some way to explaining the information we currently find in the DNA of existing organisms. And we certainly do get new variations carrying useful information (by the Wikipedia definition) that was not previously available. The question is, is this information by your definition and if not, why not ?

When you say "Stop me if I'm going to fast for you," it sounds like you're about to launch into an explanation of how Smooth Operator misunderstands 2LOT and what the proper understanding is, but you never actually do that. You say you've actually studied thermodynamics, something I think very few, even here, can legitimately claim, so I think we'd all benefit if you would fill in the blanks. Thanks.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

I had a real battle with myself resisting replying to this one, glad you picked up on it, but I doubt this is enough information for Brad H to understand where he has gone wrong. For instance, does he understand what makes a gene recessive, or even what haploid means?More generally, you're doing pretty much what Smooth Operator is doing, noting where you disagree while offering little in the way of explanation. The major difference between you two is that your objections are based on actual science, but given that you tend not to fill in the scientific background it would not be possible for an uninformed observer to distinguish any difference in merit between your arguments. Don't go there. Being mistaken and lying are two different things.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

While you are obviously correct to bring up the difference between the traditional mendelian concept of recessive genes in sexual poulations in contrast to an asexual haploid organism I think there is a case to be made for potential forms of recessive inheritance in bacteria.The obvious one is the presence of multiple forms of genes in plasmids outside of the central bacterial genome. This could easily allow for the presence of a gene whose phenotype was suppressed in the presence of other 'allelic' forms of the gene.The other possibility is for multiple copies of a particular gene to be present in the bacterial chromosome. When similarly a particular 'allelic' form may have its phenotypic effect masked.Clearly these 'recessive' form scenarios have major problems, principally how such effectively functionless copies would be preserved in the population waiting for an evironment where their function could finally be realised. Essentially positing such dormant 'recessive' genes makes an extremely unlikely hopeful monster scenario. Arguably many antibiotic selection experiments rely on replication in a non-selective environment to generate a large panel of 'hopeful monster' variants, but we know from experience that the levels of bacterial multiplication and mutation rates allow us to generate enough 'hopeful monsters' for it to be a viable strategy.In a less extremely selective environment we don't need to rely on such 'hopeful monsters' pre-existing as they can arise within an ongoing population, this would perhaps be better modelled by a bacteriostatic environment where the antibiotic only limits or strongly reduces the growth rate of the population rather than actually killing it. Since Streptomycin has a bacteriostatic effect at lower concentrations I'm not sure which scenario would more accurately reflect the conditions under which streptomycin resitant variants usually arise.TTFN,WKEdited by Wounded King, : No reason given.

Well, the obviously false proposition that "all matter tends to disorder" is simply not a tenet of thermodynamics any more than the obviously false proposition that "all elephants ride unicycles" would be. I don't think I have to give everyone here a crash course in thermodynamics to point out that the theory of thermodynamics does not imply stuff that is blatantly untrue.However, as luck would have it I have written an article, here, explaining what the Second Law of Thermodynamics actually says. You notice how long it is and how much math there is and how many diagrams are needed?So it's quicker just to point out that the second law of thermodynamics doesn't mean whatever crazy counterfactual crap Smooth Operator chooses to make up.

No, we aren't stuck. I've already told you and I'll tell you again.Go ahead, use CSI.Just use it on something to prove it WAS designed but which we, in no way, have any idea HOW it was designed/created.You are using this to demonstrate proof of concept so we can check it against Creationism.If Creationism is the _ONLY_ example, then this is not a valid way of evaluating it.It's like having a "Zimzom Detector" which is the only thing which detects "Zimzoms". Can't prove it right or wrong.

The difference is that anyone can look up the words I'm using and find out their meaning, whereas what Smooth Operator means by "genetic entropy" is currently known to at most two persons: himself and God. Damn, I forgot to post an introductory course in genetics.Now if only there was some other way in which Brad H could find out the meaning of the words he's employing. Suppose, for example, that he had at his very fingertips a vast yet easily searchable compendium of human knowledge in which he could easily find out the meaning of such basic concepts as what it means to say that an allele is recessive. I never said otherwise.But there are cases where negligence is as culpable as intent. Suppose that I was to toss a coin to decide whether or not to say that you were an arsonist ... and then again to decide whether to accuse you of burglary ... and then again for drunk-driving ... and so forth all the way through the statute book.Now, I have no idea whether or not you have in fact committed any crimes, or if so which ones, so I would not be saying things that I positively knew to be false. But on the other hand if I adopted such a procedure it would be well-nigh miraculous if I managed to avoid giving false testimony against you.Surely the commandment against bearing false witness does not just mean that we should merely avoid saying things that we positively know to be false --- surely it means that we should make some sort of effort to make sure that our testimony is true. If we try our best, and fail, that's one thing. If we don't try at all, that's another.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Well, it's a fine point. But I don't think that talking about an allele being recessive makes much sense unless you're talking about homologous chromosomes.Suppose that the same scenario you visualize for bacteria was true of two (or, depending on how you look at it, four) genes that I have, one on chromosome 3 and the other on chromosome 17. Would the words "dominant" and "recessive" really apply to the interaction of the genes on non-homologous chromosomes?Anyway, I'm pretty sure that that wasn't what Brad H meant.We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

So after I make about six requests for a response to the extended time involved, and the lack of this genetic entropy in all of that time, you finally respond to another poster with the requested information. I guess I'm on your ignore list for bringing up these inconvenient facts, eh?And after all this time your answer ranges from non sequitur to nonsense!You first throw out the "what if" of questioning the long duration of life on earth. (I figured from the beginning you were coming from a belief in biblical literalism.) That "what if" does nothing to dispute that long age, estimated at over 3.5 billion years. Unless you can provide some evidence that life has not been around that long your response is both meaningless and a non sequitur.Then you finally admit that genetic entropy is nonsense. "Well, it hasn't killed life off after 3.5 billion years, but just you wait! It'll get you yet! It'll get you all!" (Sounds like a line from a B movie.)In spite of your belief in biblical literalism, doesn't it ever occur to you that this genetic entropy concept is just wrong? That it isn't going to happen as you have been telling us in this thread? That it is a religious belief based on "the fall" rather than a scientific concept based on evidence?Or are you so committed to biblical literalism that you just can't entertain any idea that contradicts the bible?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Hi Dr Adequate,I don't believe explaining 2LOT principles in layperson's terms is an unreasonable request, particularly when the term "entropy" is being thrown about. If you think the request unreasonable and are unwilling to comply with it then you had best avoid the topic of thermodynamics in this thread.To everyone,If your preference is to mock what someone else is saying rather than to explain why it's wrong (with perhaps a side note about why derision might be appropriate), don't bother posting. I've posted over 20 messages to this thread. I think what I'm looking for is pretty clear. If you need clarification please post to Report discussion problems here: No.2 or send me a PM, because I'm not posting any more requests or explanations. It would be stupid of me to continue doing so because obviously no one is paying any heed, or possibly I have lost the ability to express myself in plain English. So I'm expressing myself solely with 24-hour suspensions in this thread for now.Please, no replies to this message in this thread.Edited by Admin, : Typo.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Quicker maybe, in the short-term; but not nearly as efficient. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that 100% efficiency isn't achievable, because energy gets lost due to the way it spreads out, and getting it back itself is a use of energy, which costs more than it pays.A good example is Maxwell's Demon, a pin-dancing "thought experiment" from the good old days when people knew what thermo- meant. A stove loses heat, can't be helped, so you have to fuel it. If it didn't lose heat, reduce in caloric content over time as it were, then it ought to stay hot forever and you wouldn't need to fuel it. What use it would be, I don't know, we use them to heat things, but let that pass for a moment. Can it really not be helped?Let's postulate a demon, there in the stove, who chases the little hot air molecules for us, and grabs them, and drags them back into the stove, so the heat doesn't get lost. In a case like this, do we have 100% efficiency? No, because the demon is doing work, work requires energy, and energy is what he is supposedly saving for us, we have to fuel him somehow. So now instead of wood we have to burn sinners or something. Still fuel, energy still lost.Only applies to information, particularly genetic information, in the sense that "a lot of work is done." Even here, all it means is that there has to be a fuel source. There is, the sun, both directly and through secondary manifestations like hot lava, radioactivity, chemical reactions, and the endless spinning of Rudolf Clausius in his grave. Nothing to do with emergent systems like evolution and intelligence being unable to develop on their own, they result from the inevitable increase in complexity among large stochastic systems, and represent increasing entropy overall, not decreasing, not ever.

If I may lend a hand here . . .You are missing out on a very important experiment, the Lederberg-Lederberg (a husband and wife team) plate replica experiment. You can read the original paper here: LinkWhat they did was start with a single bacterium. From that bacterium they created a lawn of bacteria descended from that single ancestor on an agar plate. This agar plate had the standard growth media and no antibiotics and was called the master plate. They transferred these bacteria to plates containing antibiotic using a stamp like instrument. What they found was that the antibiotic resistant colonies came from the same spot on the original plate. Even more, they could pick bacteria from this area on the master plate, grow more of them, and use these bacteria to create a new master plate. Lo and behold there were a lot more resistant colonies on the copied plates.What this showed is that they could increase the number of resistant colonies without the bacteria ever coming into contact with antibiotics. The resistant mutants existed in the absence of antibiotics. Also, they were clonal.This experiment, along with the Luria-Delbruck experiment, demonstrated that beneficial mutations occur in the absence of selection. That is, mutations are random with respect to fitness. And in fact, antibiotic resistance is due to changes in DNA. For example:"Spontaneous, streptomycin-resistant derivatives of Erwinia carotovora subspecies carotovora strain ATTn10 were isolated. Sequencing of the rpsL (encoding the ribosomal protein S12) locus showed that each mutant was missense, with a single base change, resulting in the substitution of the wild-type lysine for arginine, threonine or asparagine at codon 43. "
linkThese antibiotic mutants do not have the same genes as their ancestors. They have different genes.

How do you detect this?For example, which bases in this sequence are from the original and which have been added since then:1 atgtcttacg aagctatttg ggctaaaaat caaagactaa atgacgtaga aattataaaa
61 cttgaaaagg atggcttaga tgtaattgaa actataattg acaaatactc taaggaaggt
121 tatgattcaa taacgcctaa agatatgaat agatttaaat gggctggcgt ttacgaacaa
181 aagccaagag agggatactt tatgatgaga gttcgtatta attctggaat aatgacttca
241 gagcaagcaa aagttttagc agggattgct aaagattatg gacgtggaat tgcaaacgcc
301 tctacaagag gagctataca gtttcactgg gttcaggtag aagatttacc ttctatttat
361 gaaagattag aagcttgtgg cctaagtcct tttgaggctt gtggcgattg ccctagaacg
421 atagttggaa atcctcttgc tggaattgat aaagatgaac ttatggatac aactgaactt
481 gtagaacaag ttaataattt cttcttatta aacaaggatt tttctaattt accaagaaaa
541 tttaaaatat caatatcagc tagtatacat aatgcagctc atgcacaaat taatgatctt
601 gcctttactc cagcaacaaa aaaaattgat aatcaggacg taattggttt ccacgtatgg
661 gttggaggag gactttcagc aagccctcat ttagcacaaa aactagatat atttgttaaa
721 ccagaatatg tactaaaggt tgctgaaggt gtatgtacta tttttagaga ttatggatat
781 agggaaaaac gtactcgtgc ccgcttaaaa tttttagtag ctgactgggg agcagaaaaa
841 tttaagaata aattattaga atttactggg gatatgccaa gctcaggtga tgataaatta
901 gcttcatgga atgcatctta ttattttgga gtacattccc aaaatgaaga tggcaaaagc
961 tatattggtg ttagtttacc acttggagaa atcacttgtg atcaactttt agaacttgcc
1021 catatttcag aaaaatacgg agatagaaaa attagaacta cactatcaca aaatttaatt
1081 attacaggca taagtgatga agatatacct tctctattaa aaaaagatgt atttaaacaa
1141 ctttctccaa atccaagtat ttttacagga tacacaattt cttgtacagg taaagaattc
1201 tgtaatttag ccattgttga aacaaagaaa cgtgctaaag aagttatcga atatcttgat
1261 tctaaaatca aactagatac accgttacgt atccatttta caggttgtcc taattcttgt
1321 ggacaaaaac atatagctga tatcagcctc caaggtgcat taataaaaac cgaagatagc
1381 tgtgaggaag catttaccat atggcttggt ggtacactaa acaatggtgg gcagtttgca
1441 gaaaatctaa actaccgtgt aaaatctact gaggttcata tagttcttga gaaaataata
1501 actttctttg aaaaaagtaa gttagagaat gagactttta atgaatttat cgcaagagta
1561 ggaattagta aaatcacaga aaacatataa How do you know that DNA is not the exception to this rule? Can you please give an example using DNA sequence? What are the transmitters and receivers and how do they decide which conditions to choose?