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Author Topic:   Information Theory and Intelligent Design.
Rob 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5849 days)
Posts: 2297
Joined: 06-01-2006


Message 31 of 102 (385086)
02-14-2007 2:49 AM
Reply to: Message 28 by Tom Curtis
02-14-2007 2:34 AM


Re: Massless or Baseless
Tom Curtis:
If the most fundamental constants of physics are not physical, we are using a very strange definition of physical.
Now that is quite a line Tom Curtis... almost a parable if you will.
Don't know who you are, or how you'll take this, but it reminds me that all things give us information by the very fact of their being.
The fact that they are a reality is itself information, yet the information is itself only ideational (or spiritual as I prefer).
I don't think it can be adequately comprehended other than in metaphysical terms... hence the parablic quality. Such is the nature of quantum language and this strange Jesus fellow who claimed to be light.
Thus, Psalm 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Even as a believer, it almost scares me!

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iceage 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5915 days)
Posts: 1024
From: Pacific Northwest
Joined: 09-08-2003


Message 32 of 102 (385087)
02-14-2007 2:51 AM
Reply to: Message 26 by Rob
02-14-2007 2:27 AM


Re: Massless or Baseless
Rob writes:
I shouldn't even answer this...
From reading your answer you didn't....
The argument is that biological systems are based on information, information is massless and therefore cannot have a materialistic origins.
Rob writes:
Yes, I believe that ultimately... everything has a non-material origin.
Then why highlight information as special?
rob writes:
Information is just an excellent example of something non-material.
But you just said everything is non-material.
How about shape, color, charge, magnetisation?
Rob writes:
So the materialist has a problem.
Maybe so, but not in the way your professorial quote contended with a whopper implied unstated assumption.
Rob writes:
And I suppose that color and shape are both conceptual (or ideational) in terms of understanding and order. They are only color in terms of information used by intelligence... So... yes.
Color is independent of intelligence and information. For example, if the sun shines on a black rock or white rock the energy adsorbed is different.
rob writes:
Btw, the only thing out of control in my opinion, is the basis of your questioning as a means of evading the issues.
Please highlight how I evaded the issue. You cut-n-paste a quote that "proves" the non-materialistic origin of life and you are having trouble explaining it - so who is evading?
Edited by iceage, : fixed sentence wording.

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Rob 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5849 days)
Posts: 2297
Joined: 06-01-2006


Message 33 of 102 (385090)
02-14-2007 2:56 AM
Reply to: Message 30 by PaulK
02-14-2007 2:48 AM


Re: Information theory...
The Meyer quote is just silly. If the information on the disk is recorded physically it's a material process - the mass is a red herring. If Meyer doesn't think that the information is recorded physically then how does he believe that it got on there, how it is stored and how it is accessed. ? Is it all magic ?
Matter is only manipulated by intelligent agents (the computer programmers) to impose a pattern that is recognizable to the system.
It is mind over matter to put it that way. I don't understand the difficulty.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 30 by PaulK, posted 02-14-2007 2:48 AM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
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Doddy
Member (Idle past 5910 days)
Posts: 563
From: Brisbane, Australia
Joined: 01-04-2007


Message 34 of 102 (385091)
02-14-2007 3:08 AM
Reply to: Message 24 by Rob
02-14-2007 1:46 AM


Re: Massless or Baseless
Rob writes:
It picks up the pattern. The complex, specified, non-repeating pattern. And this pattern serves to operate the system. Just as the DNA operates the living system.
So, you acknowledge that information can be read by materialistic objects? This information could also be copied (essentially, read and duplicated, but not understood) if the information didn't do anything, but was in the right language (such as an encrypted file, which can be copied, but no meaning can be extracted), couldn't it?
Evolution reads information from the environment (albeit very slowly), and forms organisms based on that environment (hence, they end up specified by their environment). In essence, it does exactly what the computer does when copying the floppy disk (The only difference is that the 'copying' isn't so much making duplicate copies as making things that fit the original, such as making a lock given the key, instead of cutting new keys). Input = environment, copying mechanism = descent with modification + natural selection, Output = organisms. We should not be amazed that the organisms are complex, because the environment itself is complex.
It is not the job of the evolutionary biologist to explain the origins of the information in the environment (i.e. natural laws and existence of matter), but cosmologists and theoretical physicists.

"Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will." (Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.) - Arthur Schopenhauer
Help inform the masses - contribute to the EvoWiki today!

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iceage 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5915 days)
Posts: 1024
From: Pacific Northwest
Joined: 09-08-2003


Message 35 of 102 (385092)
02-14-2007 3:08 AM
Reply to: Message 33 by Rob
02-14-2007 2:56 AM


Re: Information theory...
Let's try this....
quote:
"One of the things I do in my classes, to get this idea across to students, is I hold up two disks. One is blue, and the other one is red. And I ask them, ”what is the difference in mass between these two disks, as a result of their difference in spectral absorption properties.
And of course the answer is, ”Zero! None! There is no difference as a result of spectral absorption properties. And that’s because spectral absorption properties are a mass-less quantity. Now, if spectral absorption properties are not a material entity, then how can any materialistic explanation account for its origin? How can any material cause explain it’s origin?
Did we just "prove" that the physical properties of spectral absorption are not really a materialistic property or did we just commit some blunder in logic.

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Replies to this message:
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Archer Opteryx
Member (Idle past 3598 days)
Posts: 1811
From: East Asia
Joined: 08-16-2006


Message 36 of 102 (385093)
02-14-2007 3:10 AM
Reply to: Message 29 by Rob
02-14-2007 2:36 AM


Re: ever more quotes
But I see your point... It's only the 'Christian lawyers' that are evil...
By the way, he became a Christian in his forties. He converted from his native religion of evolutionary indoctrination.
Those of us who do, make the best witnesses. It's kinda like being a rat to The Mob.
And oh are we hated for it... But we have an excellent witness protection program.
Good to see you back on the boards, Rob. We were getting desperately low on our Minimum Daily Adult Requirement of Self-Dramatizing Fundy Paranoia.
You missed the point, though, even as you provided evidence for it and conceded it. Here it is again.
ID is not a scientific theory. It is a legal strategy.

Archer
All species are transitional.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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Doddy
Member (Idle past 5910 days)
Posts: 563
From: Brisbane, Australia
Joined: 01-04-2007


Message 37 of 102 (385094)
02-14-2007 3:13 AM
Reply to: Message 35 by iceage
02-14-2007 3:08 AM


Re: Information theory...
You could do the same with two lots of one kilograms blocks of water. Hold one up as ice, and one as water, and ask the difference in mass due to their state change. The answer is none, despite the fact that there was clearly a materialistic origin for that change in state.

"Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will." (Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.) - Arthur Schopenhauer
Help inform the masses - contribute to the EvoWiki today!

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PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 38 of 102 (385095)
02-14-2007 3:13 AM
Reply to: Message 33 by Rob
02-14-2007 2:56 AM


Re: Information theory...
quote:
I don't understand the difficulty.
OK it's quite simple.
Meyer argues that information is non material because it is massless. But as we all know the information is physically recorded. It isn't true to say that there is anything non-material about that disk. Meyer is wrong.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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iceage 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5915 days)
Posts: 1024
From: Pacific Northwest
Joined: 09-08-2003


Message 39 of 102 (385096)
02-14-2007 3:18 AM
Reply to: Message 36 by Archer Opteryx
02-14-2007 3:10 AM


Re: ever more quotes
Rob in his martyrdom mode writes:
And oh are we hated for it
Please stop trying to validate yourself with your perceived martyrdom.
If you were arguing Islamic creationism you would receive the same scrutiny. It is your false premise and logic that I question.

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Doddy
Member (Idle past 5910 days)
Posts: 563
From: Brisbane, Australia
Joined: 01-04-2007


Message 40 of 102 (385097)
02-14-2007 3:26 AM
Reply to: Message 10 by Rob
02-13-2007 8:31 PM


Re: Useful quotes
Philip Johnson, as quoted by Rob writes:
And the order is specified, that’s point number two; which is to say that only one complex arrangement will do to operate the computer. If you got another one, you’ve got something that won’t work at all.
Did this just prove that I can't upgrade my PC from Windows XP to Windows Vista or reformat with Linux, because if I do my computer doesn't work?
William Dembski as quoted by Rob writes:
"Just an individual protein . a functioning protein, I mean it has 100, 200, or 300 amino acids. And something like that, your talking improbabilities of something on the order of 10 to the minus 100 to get these things. And that’s just an individual protein. That’s just a building block. That’s like a brick in a house that you’re trying to build up. So just getting those bricks is highly improbable. And then you have to build the whole thing up. Just how complex is it? I think early indications are, that this is way beyond anything that we’re going to be able to reasonably attribute to chance.
Emphasis mine.
Yet another labelling of evolution as 'chance'. I don't think I have to refute that one...
Jonathan Wells as quoted by Rob writes:
“Before Darwinsim took over in the late nineteenth century, virtually every Western Biologist believed in intelligent design. The founders of all the modern biological disciplines; Mendel, who founded genetics, Leneaus, who founded Taxonomy where we name organisms; the early Embyologists, the early Paleontologists . All of these people believed in design, and they founded modern biology.
Darwinism came along and said, ”no . design is an illusion’, but yet it kept all these disciplines . of course that’s what we now work in. And I see the current revolution as a return to our roots; our scientific roots, which were design roots. And so I see science once again returning to a design paradigm.
Argumentum ad antiquitatem. I see science returning to its roots in Greek natural philosophy, and start using using thought experiments rather than actual physical ones. Reductio ad absurdum.
Edited by Doddy, : fixed Latin

"Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will." (Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.) - Arthur Schopenhauer
Help inform the masses - contribute to the EvoWiki today!

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cavediver
Member (Idle past 3644 days)
Posts: 4129
From: UK
Joined: 06-16-2005


Message 41 of 102 (385101)
02-14-2007 5:04 AM
Reply to: Message 28 by Tom Curtis
02-14-2007 2:34 AM


Re: Massless or Baseless
The correct way to state it is that photons have zero rest mass. Also, by definition in relativity, photons are never at rest.
True
As a result they always have a mass
Not true Unless you want to use antiquated terminology from 60 years past. They have "relativistic mass" which is not actually mass at all. They have momentum, hence your solar sail, and from the momentum a mass-like equivalent measure is derived... but it is not mass.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 28 by Tom Curtis, posted 02-14-2007 2:34 AM Tom Curtis has replied

Replies to this message:
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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 42 of 102 (385105)
02-14-2007 7:25 AM
Reply to: Message 13 by Rob
02-13-2007 9:51 PM


Re: Case not so closed...
Abiogenesis inevitably boils down to chemical evolution within the natural laws;
What do you think???
I think that was a massive moving of the goal-posts, and that if you want to believe that life began by some miracle 3.5 billion years ago, that you are free to do so, but that also means it has then proceeded by purely natural means, with evolution of all life forms from that first life form.
That evolution involved "adding" of "information" in the same manner as was shown for the e-coli bacteria, and thus information is no barrier to such evolution of all life from that first life form.
Case closed?
Nah...
You are putting up "fancy" against fact and you are voting for fancy. that is not faith, it is delusion.
de·lu·sion -noun
1. an act or instance of deluding.
2. the state of being deluded.
3. a false belief or opinion: delusions of grandeur.
4. Psychiatry. a fixed false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact: a paranoid delusion.
Kenyon on ”describing the complexity of a living cell’.
Aldous Huxley:
Mathematical and philosophical models of reality are not reality. Thus when they conflict with reality, the conflict is with the model and not reality -- they are wrong. It is really that simple Rob. No matter what you throw at reality, you still need to deal with the reality or you are in a delusional state.
The reality is that the earth is old and that life evolves and has evolved.
You dodged the age of the earth issue last time so that you can pretend it doesn't exist. That too is a form of delusion. Try a dose of reality at Age Correlations and an Old Earth: Version 1 No 3 (formerly Part III)
That's like Subbie's argument that you start with DNA and then add mutation.
So what... how do you get a DNA molecule to begin with?
Look at the research and see what the possibilities are. Do we know for sure? Of course not. But we also do NOT know that it was NOT possible.
See RAZD - Building Blocks of Life for some of those possibilities.
Abiogenesis ...
... still leaves us with 3.5 billion years of evolution as the best explanation for the diversity of life we see on this planet.
And your argument otherwise is refuted and you have totally failed to substantiate a single portion of it.
Case closed?
Pretty much, by your own failure to reply substantiatively, as well as the evidence that refutes your argument.
Enjoy.

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 43 of 102 (385113)
02-14-2007 8:42 AM
Reply to: Message 33 by Rob
02-14-2007 2:56 AM


Re: Information theory...
Rob writes:
Matter is only manipulated by intelligent agents (the computer programmers) to impose a pattern that is recognizable to the system.
The important question concerns whether you've said anything meaningful in terms of information theory.
A first principle in information theory is that concerns the communication of information. Information that is never communicated isn't very useful. Even an information storage device, which many people think of as storing rather than communicating information, is actually a means of communicating information across both time and space, though it does have the important additional quality of persistence.
The common claim that information can only be created by an intelligence usually stems from a confusion of information with meaning. Information is mere bits. In fact, information is measured in terms of bits. Meaning is a human artifact and has nothing to do with information theory.
Perhaps you have some photocell lights outside your house? They turn on when the sun sets? Where do the photocells get the information that the sun has set? Not from you or any intelligence. The whole purpose of photocell lights is to remove the need for an intelligence (us) to manually "tell" (by flicking a switch) the lights to turn on at sunset.
Matter is manipulated by non-intelligent agents all the time. The composition of stars controls the light wavelengths that compose it's spectrum. We can observe this spectrum here on earth and deduce the star's composition. The star has communicated it's composition to us here on earth, and no intelligent agent was involved in this communication. The scientists take this information and recode it into numbers in tables and binary bits on computer disks, but they don't create this information. The star created this information.
Imagine a tree that has been neatly cut down using a chainsaw leaving behind a tree trunk, and someone comes along and counts the tree rings of the tree trunk, and now he knows the age of the tree when it was cut down. The person didn't create that information, all he did was decipher it by counting tree rings. If later on a different person comes along and counts the tree rings he'll get the same answer. If he was creating the information himself he would get a different answer, since he would have no way of knowing what answer the first person created. But they both get the same answer because the information was contained in the tree rings and not just created by the people counting those rings.
The universe is chock-full of information, and all scientists have to do to understand the universe is grasp onto some of that information so that they can record and analyze it.
Transforming or translating information from one form to another is not "creating" information. A photocell turning on a light is not creating information, it is merely transforming information that the sun has set into information that the lightbulb is on. A scientist recording star spectra is not "creating" information, he is merely translating the information in the starlight into other representations that people can save and analyze.
In a way it is analogous to translating a book from one language to another. A translator who is translating a technical article from German to English is not creating information, he is merely translating it. If it's a technical paper about star spectra, then the information in the light from stars was translated into numbers in tables by the original German scientists, and later into different numbers in tables (going from metric to English units) in the English translation. But nowhere in this process did someone "create" the star spectra information. The creation of this information happened way back at the star.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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Tom Curtis
Junior Member (Idle past 6252 days)
Posts: 3
Joined: 02-04-2007


Message 44 of 102 (385118)
02-14-2007 9:24 AM
Reply to: Message 41 by cavediver
02-14-2007 5:04 AM


Re: Massless or Baseless
I learnt my relativity from popular books and articles, so I have been surprised to find that you are right as regards the technical jargon. In particular, I found these articles to eloquently expound your view:
What is the mass of a photon?
Relativistic Mass
If you go too fast, do you become a black hole?
However, I wish to raise three quibbles. First, both formulations "mass equals rest mass" and "mass equals relativistic mass" are formally equivalent. The decision as to which to use is a matter of convenience rather than of fundamental disagreement.
Second, having said that, I notice this:
If we now return to the question "Does light have mass?" this can be taken to mean different things if the light is moving freely or trapped in a container. The definition of the invariant mass of an object is m = sqrt{E2/c4 - p2/c2}. By this definition a beam of light, is massless like the photons it is composed of. However, if light is trapped in a box with perfect mirrors so the photons are continually reflected back and forth in the box, then the total momentum is zero in the box's frame of reference but the energy is not. Therefore the light adds a small contribution to the mass of the box. This could be measured - in principle at least - either by an increase in inertia when the box is slowly accelerated or by an increase in its gravitational pull. You might say that the light in the box has mass but it would be more correct to say that the light contributes to the total mass of the box of light. You should not use this to justify the statement that light has mass in general.

http://math.ucr.edu/...physics/Relativity/SR/light_mass.html
I don't see why we should not use this example to justify the claim that light has mass in general. It clearly shows that while "mass equals rest mass" is convenient for some purposes, "mass equals relativistic mass" is convenient for others. The description of this case using the later convention is intuitive and informative, while that using the former convention (no matter how convenient in other contexts) is obtuse, indeed baroque.
Which leads into the third quibble. The reason discussion of the light box is intuitive using the relativistic mass convention is because we are discussing an emperical case. In fact, SFAIK, only relativistic mass can ever be measured. Rest mass must always be calculated, based on the measured value of relativistic mass and other factors such as relative velocity, accelerations, etc. The significance of this is that, if we were to use a mass criterion of physicality, the only such criterion which could make sense is one based on a measurable mass, ie, relativistic mass. In other words, you are correct about the definitional conventions of physicists regarding mass. None-the-less, you are wrong about the definitional convention on mass used by Meyer in his physicality implies mass criterion. Using the convention Meyer must be using if his criterion is to be even coherent, photons do have mass.

This message is a reply to:
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Rob 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5849 days)
Posts: 2297
Joined: 06-01-2006


Message 45 of 102 (385119)
02-14-2007 9:25 AM
Reply to: Message 36 by Archer Opteryx
02-14-2007 3:10 AM


Re: ever more quotes
ID is not a scientific theory. It is a legal strategy.
ID is indeed 'theo'. Theos comes from the Greek, meaning God.
What is not a scientific theory is science itself when it moves beyond the facts. Rather, it is Theos, which comes from the Greek etc...
The scientific hijack of monotheism was the legal strategy you've inverted and projected. And it's lawyers did a brilliant job in their day. I only help uncover the fraud. And you fight me for political reasons, not scientific ones.
Your disagreement is philosophical and therefore religious in context. You desire to find no meaning, which is by it's nature a philosophical means to an end, and imparts meaning. Very contradictory and convoluted psychologically, emotionaly, and Spiritually.
That is how 'fallen' man behaves 'naturally'.
Paul Davies, theoretical physicist / Australian Centre for Astrobiology:
Davies on the question: ”Does the monotheistic tradition of an intelligible universe have any impact on modern science?’
“The worldview of a scientist, even the most atheistic scientist, is that essentially of Monotheism. It is a belief, which is accepted as an article of faith, that the universe is ordered in an intelligible way.
Now, you couldn’t be a scientist if you didn’t believe these two things. If you didn’t think there was an underlying order in nature, you wouldn’t bother to do it, because there is nothing to be found. And if you didn’t believe it was intelligible, you’d give up because there is no point if human beings can’t come to understand it.
But scientists do, as a matter of faith, accept that the universe is ordered and at least partially intelligible to human beings. And that is what underpins the entire scientific enterprise. And that is a theological position. It is absolutely ”theo’ when you look at history. It comes from a theological worldview.
That doesn’t mean you have to buy into the religion, or buy into the theology, but it is very, very significant in historical terms; that that is where it comes from and that scientists today, unshakably retain that worldview, as an act of faith. You cannot prove it logically has to be the case, that the universe is rational and intelligible. It could easily have been otherwise. It could have been arbitrary, it could have been absurd, it could have been utterly beyond human comprehension. It’s not! And scientists just take this for granted for the most part, and I think it’s a really important point that needs to be made.”
Edited by Rob, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
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