Any arguments against the creationists' argument that genetic info. can't increase?

mythbuster said:

________________________________________
SEQUENCED ORGANISMS
Organism Genome size Completion
date Estimated no.
of genes
H. influenzae 1.8 MB 1995 1,740
S. cerevisiae 12.1 Mb 1996 6,034
C. elegans 97 Mb 1998 19,099
A. thaliana 100 Mb 2000 25,000
D. melanogaster 180 Mb 2000 13,061
M. musculus 3000 Mb - unknown
H. sapiens 3000 Mb - 35,000-45,000

And the table shows there is a difference in information that can be measurred.

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Read the article. Mb means Megabases, not Megabits. Nice try, but the article is talking about sequencing the entire human genome - it never tries to assign units or quantify information content in an isolated genome. We can compare the base sequence in two genomes, but that's not quantifying the information content in a genome. Genome length is irrelevant - if it were, marbled lungfish have almost 40 times as much "genetic information" as humans, whatever that means.

3000 M bases at two bits per base means 6 Gbits right? That was my original estimate for information storage capacity for we big brained humans.
Maybe the lung fish has more genetic information, so what? If it has more (or less) it is still more (or less) which is the whole point.
Information can be measured. And, like it or not, some things are more complex than others. The more complex the more information is required for assembly.

mythbuster said:

3000 M bases at two bits per base means 6 Gbits right? That was my original estimate for information storage capacity for we big brained humans.
Maybe the lung fish has more genetic information, so what? If it has more (or less) it is still more (or less) which is the whole point.
Information can be measured. And, like it or not, some things are more complex than others. The more complex the more information is required for assembly.

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Ok you say Information can be measured.

Of these two, who has more info

1)0100001101100001011011100010000001111001011011110111010100100000011011010110010101100001011100110111010101110010011001010010000001101001011011100110011001101111

2)0110101101101100011010100110000101110011011001100110101101101100011110010110010101110111011010000110011001100001011010110110101001101000011000010110110001100110

mythbuster said:

3000 M bases at two bits per base means 6 Gbits right? That was my original estimate for information storage capacity for we big brained humans.
Maybe the lung fish has more genetic information, so what? If it has more (or less) it is still more (or less) which is the whole point.
Information can be measured. And, like it or not, some things are more complex than others. The more complex the more information is required for assembly.

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By your logic, an insertion mutation increases genetic information. Those occur all the time.

mythbuster said:

3000 M bases at two bits per base means 6 Gbits right? That was my original estimate for information storage capacity for we big brained humans.
Maybe the lung fish has more genetic information, so what? If it has more (or less) it is still more (or less) which is the whole point.
Information can be measured. And, like it or not, some things are more complex than others. The more complex the more information is required for assembly.

Click to expand...

I'm confused by your argument. Are you using the definition of information as the minimal number of bits required to describe any string? If so, that means the more random the string, the more information it has. Occurring to that definition, information has increased since nearly every insertion mutation increases the number of bits needed to describe a string.

We are dealing with assembly instructions coded into DNA with an alphabet. If evolution is going forward anywhere then new assembly instructions are needed to assemble new products that have new functions. Over time there is an increase in information and some things will just be more complex. If the fossil record is true then it looks like (some) things are getting more complex.

The information needed to construct the space station is more than the information needed to make a toothbrush.

“I'm confused by your argument. Are you using the definition of information as the minimal number of bits required to describe any string? If so, that means the more random the string, the more information it has. Occurring to that definition, information has increased since nearly every insertion mutation increases the number of bits needed to describe a string.”

random_guy,

I am saying that information can be measured and the information storage capacity in the cells of big brained humans is around 6 Gb. Moreover we know what some of this storage space is used for: it codes for the tens of thousand of proteins needed to keep the machine working. If you have an insertion mutation that is useful then there is an increase in information and you have made a good argument showing a natural pathway to the increase in information.

"Ok you say Information can be measured.
Of these two, who has more info
1)0100001101100001011011100010000001111001011011110111010100100000011011010110010101100001011100110111010101110010011001010010000001101001011011100110011001101111
2)0110101101101100011010100110000101110011011001100110101101101100011110010110010101110111011010000110011001100001011010110110101001101000011000010110110001100110
"

What is worth more, a 1000 G hard drive or a 10 G hard drive? What costs more, ten movies or one?

Then that settles it: insertion mutations have proven to be beneficial, so this creationist argument is wrong.

mythbuster said:

"Ok you say Information can be measured.
Of these two, who has more info
1)0100001101100001011011100010000001111001011011110111010100100000011011010110010101100001011100110111010101110010011001010010000001101001011011100110011001101111
2)0110101101101100011010100110000101110011011001100110101101101100011110010110010101110111011010000110011001100001011010110110101001101000011000010110110001100110
"

What is worth more, a 1000 G hard drive or a 10 G hard drive? What costs more, ten movies or one?

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Well for ME my 10G is worth more as it has my source code

and 10 $0.99C movies cost less than 1 $19.99 movie.

mythbuster said:

random_guy,

I am saying that information can be measured and the information storage capacity in the cells of big brained humans is around 6 Gb. Moreover we know what some of this storage space is used for: it codes for the tens of thousand of proteins needed to keep the machine working. If you have an insertion mutation that is useful then there is an increase in information and you have made a good argument showing a natural pathway to the increase in information.

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Wait, but that's not how information theory works at all. You said that you can measure information using information theory, but now you're using different definitions.

Using your definition, rank how much information each person has: Down Syndrome (extra chromosome), Turners Syndrome (missing sex chromosome), or normal genotype.

Okay, so far we have three different definitions of information proposed by mythbuster.

First the definition from the article he cited is the similarity between two different strings of DNA. More similarity means more information by this definition. This definition does not attempt to assign an information content to any single string.

Second, information is defined as the number of base-pairs in a string of DNA. This definition does not distinguish between a randomly generated string and genetic material -- i.e. a longer random string has more information than a string that codes for a human by this definition.

Third, information content is directly proportional to complexity. For this to be a useful definition, we'd have to define complexity and be able to measure it based on DNA sequences, not simply on a subjective measure of how complex an organism is.

These definitions are mutually exclusive, so can we perhaps pick one and discuss how it is useful in quantitatively determining the amount of information in a string of DNA?

I'd still be interested in a link to a scientific paper that suggests and uses a definition of genetic information that can be used to place a set of DNA strands into order from most information to least information. This subjective, "humans are obviously more complex than monkeys so our DNA obviously has more information" fails to define "complex" and "information" as well as defining the relationship between units of complexity and units of information.

Deamiter said:

Okay, so far we have three different definitions of information proposed by mythbuster.

First the definition from the article he cited is the similarity between two different strings of DNA. More similarity means more information by this definition. This definition does not attempt to assign an information content to any single string.

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The purpose of the one article was only to show that there is an informational content in DNA. That is all. Way back at the beginning of this thread there seemed to be a dispute if information could even be defined. The article was sort of a starting point that information even exists.

Second, information is defined as the number of base-pairs in a string of DNA. This definition does not distinguish between a randomly generated string and genetic material -- i.e. a longer random string has more information than a string that codes for a human by this definition.

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What I am trying to say, and not doing a very good job, is that in the DNA strand is an alphabet of four characters and that each character is worth two bits and can therefore be quantified. Some regions in the DNA appear to be random and some are code. The reason that I bring up the total storage capacity in human DNA is just to get the conversation off the ground regarding information. That is all.

Third, information content is directly proportional to complexity. For this to be a useful definition, we'd have to define complexity and be able to measure it based on DNA sequences, not simply on a subjective measure of how complex an organism is.

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Complexity is not ment to be a definition of information. My garage is less complicated than the Staples Center. The giant double helix molecule of DNA is more complex than a single amino acid. A bat (the kind with sonar) is more complicated than an amoeba. We always go around and around on this point. If we are going to build something we need plans and the more complex the building project the more complicated the plans. It follows that some DNA coding sections will have more information than others. And that at 2 bits per character it can be measured.

Maybe I’m wrong because in electrical engineering we make relative measurements all the time.

mythbuster said:

The purpose of the one article was only to show that there is an informational content in DNA. That is all. Way back at the beginning of this thread there seemed to be a dispute if information could even be defined. The article was sort of a starting point that information even exists.

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Information can certainly be defined, and there are certainly definitions of information that will permit you to assign a value to a sequence of DNA. The problem is that there are multiple ways of defining information, which are useful for multiple purposes; if the poster wants to formulate an argument about evolution and information, he has to pick one and actually apply it.

The original argument depends on some connection between complexity and information, and suggests that more genetic information is needed for complex organisms than for simple ones. This is a reasonable assertion, and can be made concrete in various ways, e.g. by estimating the minimum number of base pairs needed for the genes of different types of organism, or by counting the number of protein products produced, or the number of cell types. None of these measures is ideal, but they can work pretty well. If you choose any of them, however, you will discover that mutation can easily increase information by that definition.

So at this point, the original argument is that an undefined quantity must increase for evolution to be true, but cannot increase by mutation. It is true that there exist quantities that increase during evolution, and it is true that there are quantities that cannot be increased by mutation, but the original post provides zero evidence that there is any quantity that has both of these properties.

mythbuster said:

The purpose of the one article was only to show that there is an informational content in DNA. That is all.

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No, it wasn't. The purpose was to show how much of the information could be used to find homologuous substrings. Read the article again.

Just because you used the article to support your position doesn't mean that it was the article's purpose

mythbuster said:

Way back at the beginning of this thread there seemed to be a dispute if information could even be defined. The article was sort of a starting point that information even exists.

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The dispute was not about whether it could be defined, but rather how you were defining it.

mythbuster said:

What I am trying to say, and not doing a very good job, is that in the DNA strand is an alphabet of four characters and that each character is worth two bits and can therefore be quantified. Some regions in the DNA appear to be random and some are code. The reason that I bring up the total storage capacity in human DNA is just to get the conversation off the ground regarding information. That is all.

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Two problems here:
1. Some non-coding DNA has a purpose (e.g. turning genes on and off)
2. we've shown that the number of coding nucleotides has been can increase.

mythbuster said:

Complexity is not ment to be a definition of information. My garage is less complicated than the Staples Center. The giant double helix molecule of DNA is more complex than a single amino acid. A bat (the kind with sonar) is more complicated than an amoeba. We always go around and around on this point. If we are going to build something we need plans and the more complex the building project the more complicated the plans. It follows that some DNA coding sections will have more information than others. And that at 2 bits per character it can be measured.

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How can you measure it then? The number of coding bases? Once again, we've already shown that the number of coding bases can increase.

mythbuster said:

Maybe I’m wrong because in electrical engineering we make relative measurements all the time.

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You're wrong because you don't get it.

Let me just quickly say that it's true, information can be defined and quantified. The problem we're talking about here is that the OP CLAIMED that genetic information cannot be created without defining genetic information.

In trying to defend the OP, you'd not only have to show that a particular definition can be applied to genetic material but that that by that definition, genetic information cannot be created through mutations. So far, we haven't even been able to concretely define genetic information but more importantly, none of the proposed definitions even remotely suggest that genetic information cannot be created.

Let's just not forget the OP here -- while discussing genetic information is certainly on topic, just abstracting being capable of defining genetic information doesn't mean much in terms of the OP's claim that genetic information cannot increase through mutations. THAT is the claim that we reject and in order to support the claim you not only need to concretely define "genetic information" (not just show that you CAN) but you need to show that that definition leads to the conclusion that information cannot be created.

I've never seen a creationist TRY to define genetic information which confuses me because they seem to be repeatedly claiming that genetic information cannot be created these days.

Deamiter said:

I've never seen a creationist TRY to define genetic information which confuses me because they seem to be repeatedly claiming that genetic information cannot be created these days.

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Then you need to read more, because they have tried, and the results are shocking.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v10/i2/information.asp

1. No information can exist without a code.
2. No code can exist without a free and deliberate convention.
3. No information can exist without the five hierarchical levels: statistics, syntax, semantics, pragmatics and apobetics.
4. No information can exist in purely statistical processes.
5. No information can exist without a transmitter.
6. No information chain can exist without a mental origin.
7. No information can exist without an initial mental source; that is, information is, by its nature, a mental and not a material quantity.
8. No information can exist without a will.

Way to go for ad-hoc declarations of victory. Of course, a paper originally published in a telecommunications journal is entirely solid theoretical grounds on which one can tell geneticists that they've been wrong for the past hundred years.

shernren said:

Then you need to read more, because they have tried, and the results are shocking.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v10/i2/information.asp

1. No information can exist without a code.
2. No code can exist without a free and deliberate convention.
3. No information can exist without the five hierarchical levels: statistics, syntax, semantics, pragmatics and apobetics.
4. No information can exist in purely statistical processes.
5. No information can exist without a transmitter.
6. No information chain can exist without a mental origin.
7. No information can exist without an initial mental source; that is, information is, by its nature, a mental and not a material quantity.
8. No information can exist without a will.

Way to go for ad-hoc declarations of victory. Of course, a paper originally published in a telecommunications journal is entirely solid theoretical grounds on which one can tell geneticists that they've been wrong for the past hundred years.

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When since does a few baseless assertions constitute a definition? A proper definition would have to include what information is, how it can be measured and the effects of an increase or decrease of information.

A good way to define information would be to answer the question I brought up in this thread: In what way does the human genome contain more information than a bacterium genome?

Impaler said:

A good way to define information would be to answer the question I brought up in this thread: In what way does the human genome contain more information than a bacterium genome?

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Yeah. If new information isn't needed for new features, then the information doesn't matter. I thought this explained everything pretty well:

FishFace said:

I don't think many of us understand what the creationist is getting at when they say, "but no new information was added," because what they are trying to say, albeit it in a very poorly described manner, is valid.

When we explain evolution, we might use the example of a giraffe's neck getting longer, and the tree getting taller, and so on until practical limits take over. Or we might cite antibiotic resistance which often occurs through inactivation of a protein, preventing binding. The thing is, if these kinds of changes are the only ones possible i.e. making something taller, faster, bigger, smaller or just plain gone, then evolution would not work. You need a process by which the neck itself evolved, or by which a bacterium evolved the protein the first place.

That is what the creationist is trying to say, I think, when they complain about information. Now, we know, of course, that there are obvious instances when novel functions have arisen - nylonase, for example, or the many antibiotic resistances accomplished through novel proteins.
When we explain these things, it may transpire that the creationist simply says, "but that's just reshuffling existing information." In which case new information isn't necessary for evolution.
But new features are necessary.

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elcapitan said:

Yeah. If new information isn't needed for new features, then the information doesn't matter. I thought this explained everything pretty well:

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Wow, information not needed. Sounds like someone is trying to pull a rabbit out of an empty hat. New features just pop into existence sounds like hocus pocus to me.

OT I agree creationist's have trouble in defining "genetic information" just like evolutionist have trouble defining "the fittest" without going back to that which survives.