Creationist argument about DNA and information

[Son of Inigo]

Daniel,

What do you think of the information I presented in this post?

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=11180726#post11180726

It, and the links it contains, answers your question. Completely and simply.

Rebut those Daniel.

 

[marplots]

I can use, to communicate: "Look out there's a Tiger behind you": chalk, ink, graphite, sand, toothpicks, strawberry jelly...

Is the Strawberry Jelly(ect) telling you there's a Tiger Behind You?? Or just an Intelligent Agent using different Mediums??

There is always a "medium" though. Just because you use different physical things doesn't remove the physical nature. I can have all those things at the same temperature (or a different temperature), but that doesn't mean temperature is independent from matter and energy, nor that temperature requires an intelligent agent.

So I write on a Chalk Board "Look Out, there's a Tiger Behind you!!" you read it; then I erase the board with my hand. Are you still aware of the Message/Information you just read/understood?? What if someone walks in right after I erased it...can they liberate the message by reconstructing the chalk dust from my hand ??

Interesting. You seem to think that destroying the arrangement of a physical thing somehow means that the physical thing shouldn't be different? Wasn't that the point of rearranging it? A better example would be to not change the physical thing at all and show how it can lose the property of interest, which would be the case if information has an independent existence.

 

[JeanTate]

OK, please extract the Information in this "Contextual" 'data'...

eyfmv sbekfl ehaftjf imyayeod fasfstllgjda kolvn evtrsxrefd qzofdwr pgjdfner yerithdnvkdkg mdskd.

??

Text strings like this have been posted (by Daniel, and others), and discussed, several times already.

I think it's an interesting exercise, to see what steps one could take to extract the information (or Information, or "INFORMATION", or ...) in this, or any, text string. Here are a few methods, off the top of my head (I'm sure other readers could quickly, and easily, add new ones):

* put it into Google Translate, and run through all the languages it has
* calculate (?) the letter-frequencies, and see what matches there are to those of known languages (this will identify a possible, simple, cipher)
* simulate a human hitting keys on one kind of common keyboard, calculate correlations
* using the number of ASCII characters per "word", search for text strings of the same length and with the same number sequence (this may identify another kind of simple cipher)
* create your own, very simple, private language in which each of the 'words' has meaning; translate it into English (someone has already done this, or so they claim )

Among other things, any of these would highlight at least one inconsistency in how Daniel uses the term information (or Information, or "INFORMATION", or ...); remember what he has written about Senders and Receivers? About Messages? About Semiotics? About CODE? About ...

 

[Perpetual Student]

Then you say..."displaying Aspberger's-like lack of understanding of expressions, or a lack of comprehension or understanding."

That's pretty hilarious





Really?? How on Earth sir can INFORMATION be the Physico-Chemical link when Information is neither Matter or Energy:

Norbert Wiener Professor Mathematics MIT...

“Information is information, neither matter nor energy.”
Wiener, N., Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, Hermann et Cie, The Technology Press, Paris, 1948.

Pray Tell...?

So are you saying Physico-Chemical is neither Matter or Energy? Are they 'Synonyms' This is Aspberger's^10000...
Are you familiar with The Law of Non-Contradiction, by chance?


oy vey

Do you ever respond without insults and irrelevant blabber? Do you think somehow it compensates for the lack of scientific substance in your comments?
No one here is fooled!

 

[marplots]

Text strings like this have been posted (by Daniel, and others), and discussed, several times already.

I think it's an interesting exercise, to see what steps one could take to extract the information (or Information, or "INFORMATION", or ...) in this, or any, text string. Here are a few methods, off the top of my head (I'm sure other readers could quickly, and easily, add new ones):

* put it into Google Translate, and run through all the languages it has
* calculate (?) the letter-frequencies, and see what matches there are to those of known languages (this will identify a possible, simple, cipher)
* simulate a human hitting keys on one kind of common keyboard, calculate correlations
* using the number of ASCII characters per "word", search for text strings of the same length and with the same number sequence (this may identify another kind of simple cipher)
* create your own, very simple, private language in which each of the 'words' has meaning; translate it into English (someone has already done this, or so they claim )

I don't think you could do it that way because you'd never be sure you extracted something intended. Kind of how numerology and the bible code works. Under this guise, the "information" just means a pattern that triggers another pattern in our minds (although "minds" aren't required). Saying that the pattern triggered has independent meaning is a separate step.

 

[Reality Check]

Daniel: Norbert Wiener is a Mathematics Professor who writes about math and machines

Norbert Wiener Professor Mathematics MIT...

Irrelevance (and a lie by quote mining?) from Daniel.
17 March 2016 Daniel: Norbert Wiener is a Mathematics Professor who writes about mathematics and machines!

Information is information - who would have ever known this !

Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine was written by Norbert Wiener and published in 1948.[1] It is the first public usage of the term "cybernetics" to refer to self-regulating mechanisms. The book laid the theoretical foundation for servomechanisms (whether electrical, mechanical or hydraulic), automatic navigation, analog computing, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and reliable communications.

 

[ComfySlippers]

It's tough on this forum when the avalanche of responses come it. You almost have to pick out those things you find interesting and have a good response to. It just gets overwhelming.

The mistake being made is in assuming that Daniel actually wants to discuss Science. He doesn't. He has very little understanding of the subject. This discussion doesn't even belong in SMMT, it's religious claptrap.

He's a Creationist. They don't understand Science.
Like all religious apologists, he deals in Equivocation Fallacies and Fallacies of Ambiguity.
Copy & Pasting childish nonsense from their gurus.

"Information", "Laws", "Rules", "Theory" etc. are words they like to play with because they think they are the gotchas.

It's all very juvenile but that's how Creationists roll.

Funny as hell though. They say the most stupid things.

Do you ever respond without insults and irrelevant blabber? Do you think somehow it compensates for the lack of scientific substance in your comments?
No one here is fooled!

That's pretty much all they ever have.

 

[marplots]

Funny as hell though. They say the most stupid things.

I don't care; it sometimes leads to interesting places. I have been thinking about information and it's a surprisingly deep topic. This extends past whatever toys he may want to play with.

 

[ComfySlippers]

I don't care; it sometimes leads to interesting places. I have been thinking about information and it's a surprisingly deep topic. This extends past whatever toys he may want to play with.

It's only as deep as you want to make it.
The Creationists' idea of deep is very shallow, certainly not scientific.

 

[marplots]

It's only as deep as you want to make it.
The Creationists' idea of deep is very shallow, certainly not scientific.

Yeah, but they aren't the only ones to read. Skip those, get to the good stuff.

 

[ComfySlippers]

Yeah, but they aren't the only ones to read. Skip those, get to the good stuff.

Agreed. As long as everyone involved in the discussion knows that Daniel couldn't give a toss about DNA. His thread is about playing games with the word 'information' in order to prove goddidit.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

“Information is information, neither matter nor energy.”
Wiener, N., Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, Hermann et Cie, The Technology Press, Paris, 1948.

Trivially true. If information was matter or energy then we wouldn't need the word 'information'.

But why do we need any of these words? Because our puny brains are incapable of understanding the Universe in its entirety, so we have to break it down into concepts we can understand. So we talk about 'matter', 'energy' and 'information' as if they were things with a separate existence, when in reality they are all attributes of a system which can only be properly described by a network of mathematical formulas.

Information is ASSIGNED to a Medium by Intelligent Agents, ONLY...

More semantic games. Every word is ASSIGNED a meaning by humans. 'Information' is whatever we decide it is, but that has no effect on the workings of the Universe. We may have decided to call replication of DNA 'information transfer', but it still happened before we even knew that DNA existed. Phenomena do not owe their existence to our inventing words to describe them!

 

[Daniel]

There is always a "medium" though.

Yes. What's your point??

Just because you use different physical things doesn't remove the physical nature.

The INFORMATION isn't PHYSICAL, for Cryin out LOUD!!!


THIS is what you're saying when it comes down to it:


You come home from work you check the counter it says...

"Look Out there's a Tiger Behind You!!"... in Strawberry Jelly.

Your Conclusion: The Message (Information) is an Emergent Property of the Strawberry Jelly.

Now.... you can believe that for all it's worth and hold on to it with a tenacious Kung Fu Death Grip, but let me give a some advice...

TIP: Whatever you do, don't EVER say it out-loud in the remote vicinity of any Mental Health Professionals. Follow?


regards

 

[Son of Inigo]

Yes. What's your point??





The INFORMATION isn't PHYSICAL, for Cryin out LOUD!!!


THIS is what you're saying when it comes down to it:


You come home from work you check the counter it says...

"Look Out there's a Tiger Behind You!!"... in Strawberry Jelly.

Your Conclusion: The Message (Information) is an Emergent Property of the Strawberry Jelly.

Now.... you can believe that for all it's worth and hold on to it with a tenacious Kung Fu Death Grip, but let me give a some advice...

TIP: Whatever you do, don't EVER say it out-loud in the remote vicinity of any Mental Health Professionals. Follow?


regards

Pigliucci, M. (2011). What about “information”? EMBO Reports, 12(2), 92. http://doi.org/10.1038/embor.2010.213

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3049437/

For the third time Daniel, read the article that I have linked. It answers your questions about information. It does, really.

Unless, as some others have stated, you are not really here to discuss and learn anything, then by all means, ignore that article. Your world-view will be safer if you don't read it.

 

[marplots]

THIS is what you're saying when it comes down to it:


You come home from work you check the counter it says...

"Look Out there's a Tiger Behind You!!"... in Strawberry Jelly.

Your Conclusion: The Message (Information) is an Emergent Property of the Strawberry Jelly.

Now.... you can believe that for all it's worth and hold on to it with a tenacious Kung Fu Death Grip, but let me give a some advice...

TIP: Whatever you do, don't EVER say it out-loud in the remote vicinity of any Mental Health Professionals. Follow?


regards

What you are calling information is just a stimulus - no more and no less than if I had seen the tiger for myself. The fact that jelly can be arranged to induce a stimulus in my brain is one consequence of my understanding language (and tigers). There is nothing special going on here.

The only reason you need the word "information" at all is because you are separating out the jelly from the system (me and all my experiences plus jelly). It would be exactly the same thing to say that sunlight "informs" chlorophyll in a leaf. Stimulus, response. No mystery needed. No human needed.

I am sorry to have to take the magic away. I honestly take no pleasure in it.

 

[RussDill]

The mistake being made is in assuming that Daniel actually wants to discuss Science. He doesn't. He has very little understanding of the subject. This discussion doesn't even belong in SMMT, it's religious claptrap.

I don't think that's the best way to describe it. The better way is that he specifically rejects science and then instead claims what he is doing is science. Geology, climatology, astronomy, cosmology, relativity, evolution, radiometric dating, plate tectonics, etc. All of these and many more he rejects as not being science or not even existing.

 

[JeanTate]

I don't think you could do it that way because you'd never be sure you extracted something intended.

Hmm ...

Whole lots of cans just opened, not just re what Daniel has written (irrespective of what he intended).

If DNA is/contains information (obligatory references to Daniel's uses omitted), no one can "be sure you extracted something intended" (bold added), right? Though I think, per at least some of his posts, Daniel thinks no one can even know what was intended, let alone be sure (only god/God/GOD/gawd/the FSM/the Buddha/... can know that, and she/it/he/they seem rather, um, reluctant to state their intention publicly and unambiguously).

Too, you seem to be making a distinction between information intended to be (in) a text string and information as the term is used in thermodynamics (closely related to entropy), information theory (the terms can be shown to be equivalent; see the WP article I linked to earlier), and more.

For example, in information theory the role of "intended" is not 100% crystal clear.

Kind of how numerology and the bible code works. Under this guise, the "information" just means a pattern that triggers another pattern in our minds (although "minds" aren't required). Saying that the pattern triggered has independent meaning is a separate step.

Yes. But.

As the Sender, in what I quoted (i.e. Daniel), has not indicated what was intended (and as he didn't write it down, before he hit 'post', in a form that can be independently and objectively, we'll never know, for sure). Queue an entirely arbitrary and biased set of "Daniel" quotes ...

 

[turingtest]

Pigliucci, M. (2011). What about “information”? EMBO Reports, 12(2), 92. http://doi.org/10.1038/embor.2010.213

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3049437/

For the third time Daniel, read the article that I have linked. It answers your questions about information. It does, really.

Unless, as some others have stated, you are not really here to discuss and learn anything, then by all means, ignore that article. Your world-view will be safer if you don't read it.

He's not here to discuss, and I think that's been obvious since at least this post, 18 pages and two weeks ago:

...

Once you reckon that there MUST BE "A CREATOR", then it's time to find out WHO that is.
I can tell you that it is Jesus Christ. But, and this is very important...I've found through the years that "YOU" must find that for "YOURSELF". I've led you this far, the rest is up to you.

regards

He's here to preach, nothing more; I think, at this point, as marplots says, an interesting discussion can still be had, things can be learned...but there's no discussion to be had with Daniel, and no information from him.

 

[Reality Check]

Following the creationist tradition of quote, mining, etc. and adding to it with putting people presenting science on ignore shows that Daniel is definitely not here to discuss science.
Lies by quote mining; some actual lies; cherry picking; ignorance; unsupported assertions; and begging the question seems all we have from Daniel so far
8 March 2016 Daniel: Cite the value of DeltaG for reaction of Nucleosides forming from bases and sugars (and you need to learn what Gibbs free energy actually means!).
9 March 2016 Daniel: A lie by quote mining Mayr 1988: 162 (he provides his definition of evolution in the next sentence that you mined out)
15 March 2015 Daniel: A lie about Joyce and Orgel in The RNA World 1993 (authors writing about abiogenesis starting from RNA obviously do not think that abiogenesis started with DNA!).

The first post has a list with the really relevant question of:
7 March 2016 Daniel: Why are the creationists at AIG and you, Daniel, allowed to use the fallacy of begging the question by assuming that information has to be designed and concluding that information in DNA is designed?

 

[Perpetual Student]

Agreed. As long as everyone involved in the discussion knows that Daniel couldn't give a toss about DNA. His thread is about playing games with the word 'information' in order to prove goddidit.

This has become more than amply clear. In no discussion has Daniel been able to go beyond semantics to substantive science.
I wonder if some headway could be made with him if he were isolated in a room having a one on one conversation where there is no computer to access (eliminating quote mining & cut and paste). An agreed upon definition for the word information -- or some other word or phrase like contextual data -- might be found so that a discussion beyond semantics might ensue.