Common Design and Phylogenies

[Loudmouth]

Off topic, but a quick mention.

With respect to Shannon information, Tom Schneider has already shown that evolution mechanisms can increase information. If anyone is interested . .

Nucleic Acids Res. 2000 Jul 15; 28(14): 2794–2799.

Evolution of biological information
Thomas D. Schneider

How do genetic systems gain information by evolutionary processes? Answering this question precisely requires a robust, quantitative measure of information. Fortunately, 50 years ago Claude Shannon defined information as a decrease in the uncertainty of a receiver. For molecular systems, uncertainty is closely related to entropy and hence has clear connections to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. These aspects of information theory have allowed the development of a straightforward and practical method of measuring information in genetic control systems. Here this method is used to observe information gain in the binding sites for an artificial ‘protein’ in a computer simulation of evolution. The simulation begins with zero information and, as in naturally occurring genetic systems, the information measured in the fully evolved binding sites is close to that needed to locate the sites in the genome. The transition is rapid, demonstrating that information gain can occur by punctuated equilibrium.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC102656/
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[In situ]

That is not what question begging is.

You misunderstood what I meant, I meant "it begs me to ask the question".

 

[In situ]

The peptide sequence does have the same information content (same entropy, same number of bits); I was referring to the sentences.

The information content is still the same. It does not matter if you spell it different.

 

[In situ]

How do genetic systems gain information by evolutionary processes? Answering this question precisely requires a robust, quantitative measure of information.

Intelectual acrobatics.

 

[In situ]

I mistakenly wrote that post thinking that I had asked a creationist that question - what I wrote above still stands re: creationists that present "information" arguments.

I failed to see any question in you commet, but if you say there is one then I am not the one to say it isn't.

 

[In situ]

I mistakenly interpreted your post as coming from the creationist you were replying to. My mistake!

You seams to believe there are creationist everywhere. Will a hug help?

 

[In situ]

We OBSERVE a nested hierarchy. It isn't an assumption.

The next respond from the devoted YEC is: "facts can be interpreted" , i.e. true is false and false is true. In particular truth is false when the devoted YEC don't like the truth.

 

[Loudmouth]

The next respond from the devoted YEC is: "facts can be interpreted" , i.e. true is false and false is true. In particular truth is false when the devoted YEC don't like the truth.

The answer to this YEC canard is . . .

What good are facts without interpretation? What you need to demonstrate is how the interpretation is wrong, not that the interpretation exists to begin with.

 

[In situ]

As you have already been shown, automobiles do not fall into a nested hierarchy when considering all characters.

In particular automobiles do not reproduce. Maybe it help if one clarify what is meant with "all characteristics" - "all inherent characteristics". One can wonder what kind of inherent characteristic an automobile possible can posses?

Or as I once pointed out to a creationist that tried to pull it off with airplains; have you ever seen a F-16 brooding on eggs or an Airtbus 320 feeding there little Airbus 330?

 

[In situ]

What good are facts without interpretation? What you need to demonstrate is how the interpretation is wrong, not that the interpretation exists to begin with.

No. Do not play their game. You cannot interpret a fact. A facts is an observation. You cant interpret an observation. It is what it is. What creationist does is confusing laws and rules with facts. But I cant blame them, scientist do that from time to time as well. For instance it is not a fact that all crows are black, because it is not an observation. It is an generalization from the observations whenever a crow been observed it has been black. The observation is a fact, the generalization (the law) is not. A fact is a singular instance of a measurement.

In other words, induction are not facts - they are interpretations of fact. (Call it "theory" if you prefer but not facts).

There is another type of observation that can be made as well. And that comes from logical deduction. When you collect the facts you can turn them into a formal system, where all the facts forms the premises. Whatever conclusion that comes out from a deduction is a fact. If you do this with the facts of biology it turns out that macro evolution and common ancestor is a fact... (as if that wasn't obvious from the facts already).

Btw, I have already done this deduction in a post long ago...

The point is, when we discuss with YEC's we need to walk on eggshells with our definitions - give them some slack and they are gone in their semantic rhetoric with double meaning that tuns with the wind....

Don't give them wind in the sails by using their own erroneous terminology.

 

[The Cadet]

The information content is still the same. It does not matter if you spell it different.

But it's not just spelled differently; there are objectively more "bits". The entropy is apparently the same (it's still the same language), but the number of bits is different. Ergo, there is a difference in information content. The meaning we derive from it is the same, but this is not the same thing as the information content, at least going by Shannon's definition.

 

[Loudmouth]

No. Do not play their game. You cannot interpret a fact. A facts is an observation. You cant interpret an observation. It is what it is.

The entire purpose of doing science is to interpret facts.

"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered."--Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory"

 

[In situ]

But it's not just spelled differently; there are objectively more "bits". The entropy is apparently the same (it's still the same language), but the number of bits is different. Ergo, there is a difference in information content. The meaning we derive from it is the same, but this is not the same thing as the information content, at least going by Shannon's definition.

Does not matter if there "objectively" is one bit, 1000 bits or one million bits. If one billion bits maps to one bit then the information content is one bit. (The storing capacity of a media is unrelated to the information content).

If Shannon believe the same things you talk about then Shannon does not know what he is talking about. However, I find it more more likely it is you that do not know what you are talking about.

Information content "exists" in the mapping, i.e. what we call the "meaning" or semantic. What you are confused about is the syntax and its relation to semantics. Syntax is the "carrier" of meaning. We call the carrier 'media'. Media have always a physical representation. The "size" of the media does not matter for the meaning. Further more, media can be destroyed - information cannot. If what you say is true, that information is somehow dependent on the media, then it implies that information can be destroyed, which is nonsense. Information cannot be destroyed because it does not exists (with a physical representation). Semantic has no physical representation because semantic is "information", "mapping", "meaning" or whatever you like to call it and as such it does not exists.

 

[Loudmouth]

In the end, creationists try to define information so that evolution can't produce it. However, in doing so they define a gain in information as something that is irrelevant to producing the biodiversity we see today. It's a bit like defining an airplane as a craft which has 100 jet engines attached to 6 different wings, and anything with fewer wings or engines can not possibly fly.

 

[In situ]

The entire purpose of doing science is to interpret facts.

A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.
-- Bertrand Russell

In the sense of creating theories (judgments) from the facts - if that is what you mean with that?

 

[Loudmouth]

A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.
-- Bertrand Russell

In the sense of creating theories (judgments) from the facts - if that is what you mean with that?

A hallucination is not an empirical fact, which is what science uses. Science also creates theories, which are an interpretation of those facts. The entire purpose of doing science is to produce interpretations, not to simply write down facts. If it was just about facts, then it would be called Observation, not Science.

 

[In situ]

In the end, creationists try to define information

In the end they are wrong, because as a biologist you know that the concept of "information" is of limited use in biology.

What matters in biology is structure, this because structure defines function. In other word it is all about chemistry - not information theory. Now it so happen that in chemistry physical structures causes a chemical reaction from one type of molecules to another. As such, when the structure (read: encoding) cause a reaction (read: mapping) it can be viewed as "information" processing, but what we really talk about when we say "information" is chemical reactions dependent or caused by a structure, i.e "information" = "chemical reaction".

Knowing this, we can translate what YEC says into what it really means:

• new chemical reaction cannot be created
  
• it is impossible to add new chemical reactions
• what new chemical reaction have been added?
• you can only lose chemical reactions
• etc, etc....

Is this true? No it isn't.... it is nonsense in combination with ignorance!

As usually it is a matter of semantic confusion. The fact that YEC does not have any evidence to bring to the table, in combination with poor scientific knowledge AND a desperation to find evidence makes them look under every stone for anything they perceived as a conflict with the theory of evolution. By conflating two different and unrelated field based on words similarities they mange to find "proofs" that evolution is "impossible". But these "poofs" is always based on ignorance and word games on their own part.

Ignorance has never stopped anyone from doing anything...

 

[In situ]

A hallucination is not an empirical fact

Empirical = based on experience, i.e your senses, i.e. an observation, i.e. a fact. What an hallucination is not is an independently verifiable fact.

 

[In situ]

Science also creates theories, which are an interpretation of those facts.

I don't know if you missed the edits I made in my first post, but if go back. you will see I made the remark: "Call it a theory if you like, but not a fact"

 

[PsychoSarah]

Wow, the absence of creationists posting right now has left us trying to fill in the debate gap and propose the types of arguments they would give so that we may destroy them. Is this not how strawmanning starts?