ID, Information, and Human Perception

In another thread I brought up Alphabet soup. If I were eating alphabet soup, and the letters floated around and spelled out the word, I dunno, "Jesus", that would be a perfect example of an ireducably complex system, and new informataion coming from nothing.If I remove a leter, the word "Jesus" loses it's meaning. Each letter is important to the structure. Also, the chances of the word forming, are astronimical, but being an alphabet soup fan, I can tell you it happens all the time Anyway...What makes life, the universe, and everything so much more different than this alphabet soup? We have smaller things floating about, knocking into each other, makeing bigger things, etc. etc. All that "soup" is bound to spell out some words, so why is it so hard to belive that information, and indeed life, can come from this?I think the root of the problem lies in the "information" idea. ID'ers seem to find something special in the concept of information, DNA as information, and so on. But what they don't seem to understand is that we identify this information as stuff that is meaningfull to us, as humans!That is: "a rock contains no information, a pile of sand dosn't, but holly crap that bird does cuz I can relate to a bird!"But in truth that bird is no different from the rock. Just another asemblage of matter. Just as my alphabet soup with the word "Jesus" would leave a dog unimpresed, as the dog probably has no concept whatsoever of what the little pasta bits are, much less language. Yet, Im sure the dog can find much meaning in poop, and in other dogs' rear ends which we as humans will never fully grasp as meaningfull I think IDers are mistakeing human assigned "meaning" for reality. If we were not here to intepret it would this "information", or "ireducible complexity", exist at all?

Im assuming you were responding to me.I didn't say information dosn't exist, I was saying that ID'ers are confusing information for human assigned "meaning". They are different things all together.ID'ers missinterpret the natural world by assuming that just because something has meaning to us, it is inherently special, and contains IC information.But this is not so, humans impose meaning on the world around them. The world around them has no inherent meaning. It just is.get it?

Some remarks about the assumed similarities between alphabet and DNA soup: Yes there is, the alphabet soup word relates to a human imposed concept, as does the DNA "word".Say this particular DNA makes a dog. Nature dosn't care if we call the thing a dog, nature is just doing what it does. We impose the concept of 'dog' on what is otherwise the meaningless, arbitrary, bi-product of a DNA "word" I don't think I understand this point. Im just watching the floating letters, float around bumping into each other. I think imposing Natural Selection streatches the metaphore a bit too far . But I guess you could say, natural selection is pasta which is able to float. Because not all of them can.Again, the meaning is irrelivant. It makes no difference if the word is "whakhj" or "jesus". The meaning if imposed by humans. Irelivant. In this metaphore I represent all of humanity, and dutch has no meaning to me. Irelevant, See above.

Im sorry, I did mix those up a bit. Let me put it this way:Information, is stuff like DNA. I suppose in it's simplest definition, some form of stored data.Meaning, is what we assign things this information produces. Meaning is the human assignment of certain "information" being more special than others.I remember one ID argument where this fellow showd an egyptian sculpture, of a man. And said we can tell ID was involved, because the statue containd speciffic "information" which we could see in it. It had stored data concerning the likeness of a man.The man continued to compare the statue to DNA, saying that DNA contains information concerning the likeness of various organisims.My refutation to this, is that we are picking and choosing what has information and what doesnt. Furthermore, we are mistaken by saying that information cannot arise on it's own.That statue has no meaning to a dog, or a bird, it only means sumthing to us humans. Everything potentialy has information in it given the right interpreter.Finaly, meaningfull information, arises on it's own all the time. Ever watch clouds? Remember the famous face on mars? or the man in the moon?I hope this helps you understand my possition better.

Good question!I would have to say, no. Information necessitates an interpreter, or else it is not information. Im not sure I understand your first option. Could you explain? As far as structure, yes. Structure exists. I think we can even take that further and saythat structure is the product of interpreted information

Like I said, I think we stretch the metaphore to far with Natural selection Perhapse, I am that natural selection. Choosing words that only mean something to me. Not quite, more like our perception of the significance of those genes and proteins is meaning. Remember, nature is just coding DNA, the result of the DNA is no diffrent from crystals forming, or the action of fire, it's just interacting chemicals. Our view that this coding is a special process, is the meaning.

I think we showld look further back than DNA soup even, lets go as far back as the elemnts. As all matter is an arangement of them.Well, alphabet soup, ocasionaly produces words we understand. However, this word production does not mean all the other things aren't words also. After all, it is humans which give more meaning to a letter arangement such as "Jesus" as uposed to "ahskdhuw".Likewise, the interaction of the elemnts, producing Dogs or Rocks, are subject to our interpretation as to their uniqueness. We view Dogs as somehow more miraculous than rocks, when in truth they are no diffrent. Just results of the material soup we all live in.

What he said!exactly.

Mr. Golden Ratio I don't think this is an irrational possition at all. I happen to agree with you that this universe is in and of itself a remarkable construct. And indeed quite godlike in the fact that it seems to have just "allways been" in one form or another.I like to think of it in a very Eastern way in the idea that we are all parts of this universe, this cycle of energy, and that death and life are all interrelated. We never truely die but manifest in different forms as our prime material is reused ad infinitum.However, this God, is at best totaly neutral and without intent. He is caught in a state of being, and that is all he does. Like the aborigional mythos, we are all caught in his irrational dream Wow dude!hehehehSorry to wax poeteic

No, I meant it in praise!I think you put what I was trying to say very clearly! I was saying "what he said!" as in, "I mean what he said!".heheh.What you posted was good.

What would you consider unorganized data? What is unorganized about the molecular structure of a quarts crystal for example? Everything in this universe is potential data, and can be viewd as organized in some context.Could you show an example of disorganized data?I see nothing intrinsicaly special about DNA. Could you explain further? Yes, but recursivity does not necessitate intellect. For example, if you go out to arizona you see these crazy rock formations. Alot of them are incredibly complex structures.One I recal is this particularly big stone perched on this very thin column. It looks impossible, like a crane had to put it up there. But what happend was that the stone was of harder rock than the piller it was perched on. Over thousands of years watter eroded the piller from what was once a huge chunk of flat land.So you see, the stone relied on simpler sub-structures, to produce even more comples structures. Yet this process involved no intelect.If you want something closer to the subject at hand, you could easely point to crystal formation. There you have molecules organizing themselves into recursive patterns to produce even more complex formations. I don't see why this would be particular to ID. The universe is greater than the sum of it's parts. A rock is, a pile of dirt is. How is this particular to ID? Sel-organization occurs outside of life as well. The very existance of the galaxy, crystals, etc. are all based on "self-organizing" mechanisims.EDIT:I just noticed your link! I will review what this fellow has to say, perhapse he sheds more light on the subject than you or I can.I will respond more later once I have digested the paper you have provided.[This message has been edited by Yaro, 03-17-2004]