Evolution is degeneration

[judge]

An interesting online book translated form dutch to english. (it does suffer a bit from awkward wording at times, but none the less is interesting)

 

http://www.evolution-is-degeneration.com/

 

[fragmentsofdreams]

The problem with theories based on information theory is that they ignore the fact that genes have different meanings in different environments or when combined with different genes.

 

[seebs]

The thing is, we can do genetic algorithms, and we can show "new information" in them... we have *shown* that mutation+selection produces new information. Why are people still arguing this? We *know*.

 

[nyj]

13th March 2003 at 10:59 AM seebs said this in Post #3

we have *shown* that mutation+selection produces new information.

By "new" do you just mean "different" or do you mean "additional"?

 

[fragmentsofdreams]

Yesterday at 03:07 AM nyj said this in Post #4



By "new" do you just mean "different" or do you mean "additional"?

Different information in the organism; additional information in the population.

 

[seebs]

15th March 2003 at 03:07 AM nyj said this in Post #4
By "new" do you just mean "different" or do you mean "additional"?

What exactly do you mean by "additional" that isn't the same as "different"?

As in "the resulting thing is more complicated than the original, and has things in it that were not
there", yes.

Keep in mind, the only difference between

Our Father, who art in Heaven
and
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

is "difference". There's no additional information; we just changed an A to an O, an A to a u, an A to an r... But obviously, one has "more" information than the other.

Selection and mutation increase the amount of information in a system, in any way that we would normally measure "information". More genes, more variety of genes, larger minimal representation, you name it.

 

[Follower of Christ]

13th March 2003 at 11:59 AM seebs said this in Post #3

The thing is, we can do genetic algorithms, and we can show "new information" in them... we have *shown* that mutation+selection produces new information. Why are people still arguing this? We *know*.

SPECULATION!!

I will need to see your ''evidence'' for this.
NOT conjecture.
EVIDENCE.....

 

[seebs]

19th March 2003 at 12:42 PM Follower of Christ said this in Post #8

SPECULATION!!

I will need to see your ''evidence'' for this.
NOT conjecture.
EVIDENCE.....

Could you be specific? I mean, I don't have any reason yet to believe that you have the formal training you'd need to understand information theory and genetic algorithms. I can tell you that this is well-known research that's been done with FPGA chips; there's a guy who's "bred" chips that can distinguish between two words reliably, but no one knows how they work.