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Author Topic:   What is an ID proponent's basis of comparison? (edited)
Smooth Operator
Member (Idle past 5113 days)
Posts: 630
Joined: 07-24-2009


Message 256 of 315 (518032)
08-03-2009 7:42 PM
Reply to: Message 221 by Wounded King
08-02-2009 2:35 PM


quote:
That was subsequently according to you, when the gyrase lost binding affinity. What I'm asking is did the gyrase have complex specified information in the pre-mutated sequence even though it had no binding partner to have an affinity for prior to the development of the antibiotic?
Yes it did. It was designed that way. The antibiotic was also designed to fit the gyrase.
quote:
No problem, but the gyrase's job isn't to bind an antibiotic that would impair its function. If you are claiming the mutation had an effect other than to change the affinity of gyrase and the antibiotic then that would be a good thing to provide evidence for. All the paper you directed me to does is claim that the loss of affinity between the gyrase and the antibiotic represents a loss of information for the gyrase.
So tell me what job the gyrase no longer performs as well?
I know it isn't but it lost something. That is loss of information. The deterioration of it's structure is the loss of information. If this continues that it can stop doing it's job altogether, and than the organism dies since there is nothing to coil the DNA.
quote:
So it functioned to bind and antibiotic for millenia before that antibiotic was developed? In what way does that fulfil the concept of function?
Nope. It coils DNA. But it's structure is damaged. Therefore it lost information. It's obviously not a fatal loss, but it is a loss non the less.
quote:
Please state this explicitly, you are saying the designer designed gyrase to have a specific genetic sequence which it maintained for thousands of years simply so humans could develop an antibiotic that would be effective for a few decades before the gyrase mutated and made the antibiotic ineffective?
Is that what you are saying?
Obviously not.
quote:
Well we don't know that, you may claim that but it is a quite different thing.
It has never been observed, nor has matter been seen to have properties that are known to produce information, so there is no reason to believe that it can.
Hey, maybe there are little dwarfs turning the Moon around us. But we haven't seen them, so why believe in them?
quote:
So bacteria have a generation time of 1 or so years do they? I'm glad you have helped us gauge your knowledge of biology so succinctly.
Your argument seems to do nothing except make a nonsense of the concept of function as useful in terms of information.
IS this a real argument?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 221 by Wounded King, posted 08-02-2009 2:35 PM Wounded King has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 268 by Wounded King, posted 08-04-2009 3:11 AM Smooth Operator has replied

Smooth Operator
Member (Idle past 5113 days)
Posts: 630
Joined: 07-24-2009


Message 257 of 315 (518033)
08-03-2009 7:52 PM
Reply to: Message 228 by Rrhain
08-02-2009 11:01 PM


quote:
So? If you were to sequence every single bacterium in the lawn, you'd find mutations all over the place. That's the entire point: New "information" is being created. Despite the fact that all of the bacteria are descended from a single ancestor, the genetic sequence of the descendants is not the same as that of the ancestor.
I know it's not the same. That doesn't mean it's new information.
quote:
At least one of those bits of new "information" provides resistance to T4 phage. That's why most of the lawn dies but some colonies survive. If we go with your claim that "no new information" is created, then either every single bacterium is capable of fending off T4 phage or none of them are capable of doing so and thus the entire lawn necessarily reacts as one.
Since the lawn does not react as a single unit, since some bacteria die while others live, your premise of "no new information" is necessarily proven untrue.
Again, you simply don't get it. New genes do not equal new information.
quote:
No. If there is this continual "loss of information," how on earth is anything still alive?
Becasue the loss is gradual.
quote:
That isn't a loss of "information," though. At the very least, it is a neutral shift in the genetic sequence.
Nothing is perfectly neutral. If something losses it's function, it means that it lost inforamtion for that function to do it's job.
quote:
There is an experiment you can run with removing the lactose operon from E. coli. This is the gene that allows them to be able to digest lactose. Under similar processes as the T4 phage experiment (take one, let it grow to a lawn, letting the generations pile up the mutations in the genome), they eventually regain the ability to digest lactose.
Yes, becasue they will use transposons to produce it again and again.
quote:
How is that not "new information"? They literally did not have any ability to digest lactose. If you had fed them only lactose, they would have died. So why is it that the descendants of these bacteria are able to do something that their ancestors can't? If your claim of "no new information" is true, then the lactose operon is always and forever gone because it was specifically and deliberately removed from the genome.
So where did this new operon that can digest lactose come from? A miracle?
Nope, it's a designed mechanism that does this. It has an algorithm that mutates the genome. But algorithms can only give you as much information as you input into them. They can't produce more than you give them. So this ability is just an expression of what the algorithm can do.
quote:
So if I start with a genetic sequence of A and we see a duplication event so that we have AA and then we see a mutation event so that we have AB, how is that not an "increase in information"?
Because that is biologicaly meaningless. You need new CSI, not just one new nucleotide. No new functions are gained by just including one more nucleotide.
quote:
According to your description of Gitt saying that A and AA have the same "information" and that A and B have the same "information," then this process that involves two actions that don't by themselves create new "information" actually creates new "information" since we started with A and we ended with AB which, according to your own description, is new "information."
Gitt's information is not used for biological functions since last two levels can't be quantatively measured. It's describing information in general.
For biological information you need to use CSI. But CSI is from 400 bits and up. That's about 80-something letters of latin alphabet and English language.
quote:
By your description of Shannon, the new "information" step happened at the duplication stage.
So I have to ask you: Where is your justification of "no new information" when we have directly observed processes that result in what you claim is "new information"?
Becasue Shannon's definition of information can't be used for biological functions. Because it only deals with the first level of information, and that is statistics. That's not enough.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 228 by Rrhain, posted 08-02-2009 11:01 PM Rrhain has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 260 by Coyote, posted 08-03-2009 8:46 PM Smooth Operator has replied
 Message 298 by Rrhain, posted 08-19-2009 5:34 AM Smooth Operator has replied

Smooth Operator
Member (Idle past 5113 days)
Posts: 630
Joined: 07-24-2009


Message 258 of 315 (518034)
08-03-2009 7:56 PM
Reply to: Message 230 by kongstad
08-03-2009 1:03 AM


quote:
You are simply wrong!
"MY HOUSE IS BIG"
"MY HOUSE IS BIG"
has twice the information content as
"MY HOUSE IS BIG"
This is very basic!
To claim it has the same information content is just silly!
It has twice Shannon Information (SI), but not CSI. You can't use SI to describe biological functions.
quote:
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?
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.
quote:
In fact you could repeat the 1 5459795 times and still only have the same information content as in the string 1?
Now if you convert 5459795 to hex, and make three pairs it can be interpreted as the string "SOS" using the standard ASCII notation.
So by you claim we can incode the string "SOS" in just one bit?
In fact using standard ASCII we can encode any random finite length text string as just one number, lets call it N.
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.
Thus any string has the same information content?
Either your definition of information content is seriously screwed, or you are mistaken.
Again, the same thing. This is increase in infromation becasue of the different meaning.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 230 by kongstad, posted 08-03-2009 1:03 AM kongstad has not replied

Smooth Operator
Member (Idle past 5113 days)
Posts: 630
Joined: 07-24-2009


Message 259 of 315 (518041)
08-03-2009 8:41 PM
Reply to: Message 247 by Percy
08-03-2009 3:14 PM


quote:
Therefore, the information about the number of petals doesn't come from you, it comes from the flower.
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.
quote:
It turns out you didn't really create any information at all.
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.
quote:
It was new information to you, but you didn't create the information. Rather, the information was communicated to you via electromagnetic radiation (light).
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.
quote:
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.
Exactly, becasue yes, matter can transfer and process information. But it can not originate it. Did teh flower come about by itself?
quote:
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.
I agree, that's transfer of signals.
quote:
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.
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.
quote:
I think I've quoted this to you several times now.
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.
quote:
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.
This is not an argument, this is slander.
quote:
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.
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.
quote:
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?
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.
quote:
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?
Or does the Mona Lisa have more meaning than a chipmunk? Than a fly? Than a bacterium? How would you ever make the comparison?
I can't quantify Mona Lisa, so I can't say. We need a digital source.
quote:
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.
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.
quote:
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?
It's the biological functons. Yes, it's objective, everybody finds them.
quote:
The answer is no, of course not, you do not find this kind of meaning there.
Oh, I see, you dont' find biological functions every time you look at the cell. What do you find? Rocks?
quote:
Meaning is subjective and can't be quantified.
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.
quote:
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.
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.
quote:
What you're calling meaning inside DNA is actually no more than what it does.
Yes, and it does it objectively, not subjectively. Therefore it's real and quantifiable.
quote:
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.
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.
quote:
There is no specific "search target". Whatever increases the chances of reproductive success will be selected. Natural selection is not random.
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.
quote:
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.
Polar bear are perhaps a more clear example, since their fur is always white. White bears do not evolve in temperate climes.
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.
You do know what epigenetics are right?
quote:
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.
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.
quote:
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?
Acutally everything is shown right away for me. No clicking needed.
quote:
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.
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.
quote:
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.
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.
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.
But evolution does not get the information about new biological functions, only about the fitness of organisms which are not correlated to functions.
quote:
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.
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.
quote:
Imagine how tiresome it is to have to actually explain something over and over again. You should try that for a change!
That's waht I'm doing all day long.
quote:
By statistics you mean the number of bits required to convey a message?
Yes I do.
quote:
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.
Actually, if you are going to measure the rpobability of something arising by chance, you obviously need to use probabilities and statistics.
quote:
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:
log23 = 1.585 bits
log24 = 2 bits
2 bits - 1.585 bits = .415 bits
Information has increased by .415 bits
I've already explained that this is increase in Shannon Information (SI), which can not be used to describe biological functions.
quote:
I can only go by what you said, which was that D appearing (a new mutation appearing) has never been observed.
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.
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.
I equated D with new biological function, not a new mutation. In that case, yes mutations do arise, they have been observed.
quote:
Still bored?
Pretty much...

This message is a reply to:
 Message 247 by Percy, posted 08-03-2009 3:14 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 261 by Theodoric, posted 08-03-2009 9:01 PM Smooth Operator has replied
 Message 274 by Percy, posted 08-04-2009 3:40 PM Smooth Operator has replied

Coyote
Member (Idle past 2106 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 260 of 315 (518042)
08-03-2009 8:46 PM
Reply to: Message 257 by Smooth Operator
08-03-2009 7:52 PM


The Fall: Epic Fail
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.
Sorry, that's nonsense. There is/was no such thing. Its a tribal myth.
But because you "fell" for it, you keep trying to shoehorn scientific data into your fantasy world view, twisting it around as needed. But no matter how much you twist and distort it, the data doesn't fit, as posters have been pointing out to you for much of this thread.
You perhaps are a classic example of Heinlein's statement, below, or my tagline:
Belief gets in the way of learning.
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love, 1973

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

This message is a reply to:
 Message 257 by Smooth Operator, posted 08-03-2009 7:52 PM Smooth Operator has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 262 by Smooth Operator, posted 08-03-2009 9:45 PM Coyote has replied

Theodoric
Member
Posts: 9076
From: Northwest, WI, USA
Joined: 08-15-2005
Member Rating: 3.7


Message 261 of 315 (518049)
08-03-2009 9:01 PM
Reply to: Message 259 by Smooth Operator
08-03-2009 8:41 PM


Might help you knew meanings of words
This is not an argument, this is slander.
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.
Slander - Law. defamation by oral utterance rather than by writing, pictures, etc.
Now it would be possible to commit libel on an internet forum.
Libel - defamation by written or printed words, pictures, or in any form other than by spoken words or gestures.
Now what part of the statement defamed them? What part is injurious?
quote:
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.
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
You make lots of claims. The claim of slander jsut shows the type of person we are dealing with

Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

This message is a reply to:
 Message 259 by Smooth Operator, posted 08-03-2009 8:41 PM Smooth Operator has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 264 by Smooth Operator, posted 08-03-2009 9:56 PM Theodoric has replied

Smooth Operator
Member (Idle past 5113 days)
Posts: 630
Joined: 07-24-2009


Message 262 of 315 (518059)
08-03-2009 9:45 PM
Reply to: Message 260 by Coyote
08-03-2009 8:46 PM


Re: The Fall: Epic Fail
quote:
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.
I'm not a Christian, now go away. You are going off topic. Go and discuss religion somewhere else.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 260 by Coyote, posted 08-03-2009 8:46 PM Coyote has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 263 by Coyote, posted 08-03-2009 9:47 PM Smooth Operator has replied

Coyote
Member (Idle past 2106 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 263 of 315 (518061)
08-03-2009 9:47 PM
Reply to: Message 262 by Smooth Operator
08-03-2009 9:45 PM


Re: The Fall: Epic Fail
quote:
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.
I'm not a Christian, now go away. You are going off topic. Go and discuss religion somewhere else.
Lets start a new thread for this discussion. Game?

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

This message is a reply to:
 Message 262 by Smooth Operator, posted 08-03-2009 9:45 PM Smooth Operator has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 265 by Smooth Operator, posted 08-03-2009 9:57 PM Coyote has not replied

Smooth Operator
Member (Idle past 5113 days)
Posts: 630
Joined: 07-24-2009


Message 264 of 315 (518062)
08-03-2009 9:56 PM
Reply to: Message 261 by Theodoric
08-03-2009 9:01 PM


Re: Might help you knew meanings of words
quote:
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.
Slander - Law. defamation by oral utterance rather than by writing, pictures, etc.
Now it would be possible to commit libel on an internet forum.
Libel - defamation by written or printed words, pictures, or in any form other than by spoken words or gestures.
Now what part of the statement defamed them? What part is injurious?
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.
quote:
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
You make lots of claims. The claim of slander jsut shows the type of person we are dealing with
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.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 261 by Theodoric, posted 08-03-2009 9:01 PM Theodoric has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 266 by Theodoric, posted 08-03-2009 11:01 PM Smooth Operator has replied
 Message 271 by Dr Adequate, posted 08-04-2009 9:11 AM Smooth Operator has not replied

Smooth Operator
Member (Idle past 5113 days)
Posts: 630
Joined: 07-24-2009


Message 265 of 315 (518063)
08-03-2009 9:57 PM
Reply to: Message 263 by Coyote
08-03-2009 9:47 PM


Re: The Fall: Epic Fail
quote:
Lets start a new thread for this discussion. Game?
I'm all for it...

This message is a reply to:
 Message 263 by Coyote, posted 08-03-2009 9:47 PM Coyote has not replied

Theodoric
Member
Posts: 9076
From: Northwest, WI, USA
Joined: 08-15-2005
Member Rating: 3.7


Message 266 of 315 (518072)
08-03-2009 11:01 PM
Reply to: Message 264 by Smooth Operator
08-03-2009 9:56 PM


Re: Might help you knew meanings of words
Well it seems people think Gitt has Shannon all wrong.
quote:
Since Gitt has gotten Shannon backwards, his writing is completely scrambled and confused.
quote:
In this case, he directly contradicts Shannon's own theorem and writings! That is, Shannon used the fact that a disturbance decreases the information to prove his theorem!
quote:
Note that Gitt uses the word 'theorem' but does not give his axioms nor does he prove his theorems using axioms.
Sounds like Gitt likes to use fancy words but doesnt really know what they mean.
Source
So is he being "slandered" here too? Seems like the writer is pointing out glaring problems with Gitt's work
It's not they, it's him. Werener Gitt is one person.
The reason for the misunderstanding is your inability to cut and paste.
Percy writes:
I know that Spetner 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.
what you posted as being said by Percy
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.
Hmm, so maybe you should realize that you are the one that f'd up.
As for Spetner read this from the preface of his book Not by Chance. Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution(New York: The Judaica Press, 1998).
quote:
"...I met the evolutionary theory in a serious way, and I found it hard to believe. It clashed not only with my religious views, but also with my intuition about how the information in living organisms could have developed."
Totally driven by religious motives.
Do you know what happens to fighter pilots when they rely on intuition? They die.
As for his information theories.
quote:
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
Source
Author of the review is Mark Perakh professor emeritus of Mathematics and statistical mechanics at California State University, Fullerton in Fullerton, California.
Try this one too
http://home.wxs.nl/~gkorthof/kortho36.htm
I highly suggest you read these reviews. You might find what other scientists have to say about these two quite interesting.

Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

This message is a reply to:
 Message 264 by Smooth Operator, posted 08-03-2009 9:56 PM Smooth Operator has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 267 by Smooth Operator, posted 08-04-2009 12:33 AM Theodoric has not replied
 Message 270 by Percy, posted 08-04-2009 8:57 AM Theodoric has not replied

Smooth Operator
Member (Idle past 5113 days)
Posts: 630
Joined: 07-24-2009


Message 267 of 315 (518099)
08-04-2009 12:33 AM
Reply to: Message 266 by Theodoric
08-03-2009 11:01 PM


Re: Might help you knew meanings of words
quote:
So is he being "slandered" here too? Seems like the writer is pointing out glaring problems with Gitt's work
What exactly did Gitt contradict in Shannon's paper?
quote:
Totally driven by religious motives.
Do you know what happens to fighter pilots when they rely on intuition? They die.
Spetner is motivated by religious views? Okay, so what? What is your point? Is he quoting Bible to prove his point?
quote:
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
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.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 266 by Theodoric, posted 08-03-2009 11:01 PM Theodoric has not replied

Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 268 of 315 (518114)
08-04-2009 3:11 AM
Reply to: Message 256 by Smooth Operator
08-03-2009 7:42 PM


IS this a real argument?
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.
I know it isn't but it lost something.
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?
That is loss of information. The deterioration of it's structure is the loss of information. If this continues that it can stop doing it's job altogether, and than the organism dies since there is nothing to coil the DNA.
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.
But it's structure is damaged. Therefore it lost information. It's obviously not a fatal loss, but it is a loss non the less.
How is the structure damaged? Change need not equal damage, either at the nucleotide or amino acid level.
Obviously not.
Then what function do you think this amino acid was specified for?
It has never been observed, nor has matter been seen to have properties that are known to produce information
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.
TTFN,
WK

This message is a reply to:
 Message 256 by Smooth Operator, posted 08-03-2009 7:42 PM Smooth Operator has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 272 by Smooth Operator, posted 08-04-2009 3:02 PM Wounded King has replied

Parasomnium
Member
Posts: 2224
Joined: 07-15-2003


Message 269 of 315 (518119)
08-04-2009 4:33 AM
Reply to: Message 253 by Smooth Operator
08-03-2009 7:29 PM


Re: New information? Easy!
Smooth Operator writes:
Yes, now it contains everything it needs to be new information. But the problem is, this does not happen by the influence of matter itself in real life.
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.
Mutations either modify the genome to have a different expression of genes, with the same informational content, or they deteriorate it. There are no adding of information. And the selection can't help you because of the NFL theorem.
I don't know which textbooks were used to teach you, but they can't have been about biology, that much is clear.
{...} do you understand that this does not happen in real life, because evolution does not know what it is supposed to pick? And if it doesn't it's going to select what has the best fitness on average. But fitness is not corelated with new information, so it's useless.
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.

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 253 by Smooth Operator, posted 08-03-2009 7:29 PM Smooth Operator has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 273 by Smooth Operator, posted 08-04-2009 3:10 PM Parasomnium has replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 270 of 315 (518147)
08-04-2009 8:57 AM
Reply to: Message 266 by Theodoric
08-03-2009 11:01 PM


Re: Might help you knew meanings of words
Hi Theodoric,
We both get a kick in the pants this time. It suddenly struck me last night while doing a little nighttime reading (about Dembski and CSI, ironically) that I'd said "Werner" when I meant "Spetner". I immediately corrected the two posts where I'd referred to "Spetner" as "Werner". Evidently SO responded before I corrected, so he didn't screw up his cut-n-paste. There are timestamps on the messages and the edits that should confirm this.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 266 by Theodoric, posted 08-03-2009 11:01 PM Theodoric has not replied

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