I need some help from the YEC's on this board

[rcorlew]

The molecule K9

Now that is just funny, that would explain why my dog is so hyper at times.

 

[pgp_protector]

Now that is just funny, that would explain why my dog is so hyper at times.

I'd be worried if you dog has a lot of that in them.

 

[rcorlew]

I'd be worried if you dog has a lot of that in them.

Well he has been known to hang around the shed where we keep the gas cans. Probably could explain the countless times he chases his tail.

 

[metherion]

Well, according to the wiki article, the reduced Gibbs entropy of a system is the number of yes/no questions that are needed to obtain the microstate, given that we know the macrostate.

And I'm GUESSING since it's information, it would be in bits, each bit being 1 yes/no question.

Of course, I could be TOTALLY off base here, but this is how it seems to work given the article.

So, a hydrogen atom could have (again, if I understand rightly), one bit of information.

Does the electron have the quantum number 1 0 0 -(1/2)?
If yes, it does, if not, the only one other one it could have is 1 0 0 +(1/2).

Two hydrogen atoms would have twice that.
Does the electron from the first H have the quantum number ...?
Does the electron from the second H """" ?

Then, of course, bonds would be really complicated, and I have no idea how one might go about doing that.

Of course, I could be COMPLETELY wrong. I wish I could take a class on it... hrm.

Metherion

 

[rcorlew]

Well, according to the wiki article, the reduced Gibbs entropy of a system is the number of yes/no questions that are needed to obtain the microstate, given that we know the macrostate.

And I'm GUESSING since it's information, it would be in bits, each bit being 1 yes/no question.

Of course, I could be TOTALLY off base here, but this is how it seems to work given the article.

So, a hydrogen atom could have (again, if I understand rightly), one bit of information.

Does the electron have the quantum number 1 0 0 -(1/2)?
If yes, it does, if not, the only one other one it could have is 1 0 0 +(1/2).

Two hydrogen atoms would have twice that.
Does the electron from the first H have the quantum number ...?
Does the electron from the second H """" ?

Then, of course, bonds would be really complicated, and I have no idea how one might go about doing that.

Of course, I could be COMPLETELY wrong. I wish I could take a class on it... hrm.

Metherion

You pretty much have the concept, when you add another atom you do not add one bit (from the other atom) you add another bit about their relationship (how they are bonded). When yo split the two atoms apart you are not left with just two bits, you still have the third bit which is the information describing how they split.

 

[shernren]

Warning: I'm going to describe a thought experiment that makes Schrodinger's cat look like something from an RSPCA pamphlet. If you dislike imagining violence to animals, please turn off your imagination.

The only part that really pertains to biology is this, take a common house cat and it would be able to reproduce for a million consecutive generations unless something acts on the cat to cause a change, the change in the cat's offspring could then be explained by the cause of the change. In other words, things do not just change, something causes them to change and this explains the change in information, in theoretical terms, the change in the cat's information is translated into the information about the change (in this case the cat ate a radioactive grasshopper and now the cat's offspring have two stomachs lol).

Ahh, now I get what you're doing. For jell-o, you nailed it pretty well to the wall. But I'm afraid I can't agree with your ideas about conservation of information. First I'll explain why it doesn't work at the quantum level, and then I'll explain why that matters.

I'll assume you understand the uncertainty principle. More precisely, a quantum particle has a position wavefunction, which is destroyed whenever its position is measured. So let's say I have a Blaster and a Scanner. Mr. Blaster has invented an X-ray gun which fires photons with a given wavefunction; Mrs. Scanner has invented an X-ray detector which detects X-ray photons hitting it.

Mrs. Scanner tells Mr. Blaster that she has more information: Mr. Blaster can specify the probability distribution of the X-rays, but he can't specify where exactly on the screen they will hit, because of the quantum nature of the X-rays. Mr. Blaster on the other hand tells Mrs. Scanner that he has more information: no matter how many X-rays she collects, she cannot specify the exact probability distribution of the X-rays.

Now here comes the cruelty to animals: Mrs. Scanner's detector consists of a thousand cats stapled to a wall. It detects X-rays because X-ray photons hitting the cat cause radiation damage: if a cat gives birth to deformed kittens, an X-ray must have passed through its location. Now, either the Cat Scanner is destroying information (because the wavefunction doesn't replicate the exact positions of the impacting X-rays) or it is creating information (the same), but it can't possibly be conserving information.

And in fact it is possible to see the Earth as a giant spinning Cat Scanner: it is populated by life-forms who (maybe, according to one unpopular view) do nothing but convert the photon wavefunction of the sun into an indecipherable mish-mash of position-measurements via mutations.

So life doesn't conserve any information at the quantum level. However, we could still try to insist on there being some classical law of conservation of information. Maybe conservation of information works like Newtonian physics, useless at the quantum level but invaluable on the classical level.

Unfortunately, chaos theory quickly nips that idea in the bud. It says that, for most classical systems, given a long enough timescale, you need to know that system's initial state to infinite precision to know that system's final state to any precision: the earlier information becomes lost otherwise. However, as the precision of a system's state measurement increases, it will pass a threshold where quantum effects begin to matter: and as we have seen earlier, in quantum mechanics information is not conserved. Therefore classical mechanics cannot conserve information either.

 

[Chesterton]

...a thousand cats stapled to a wall.

You Evilutionist you.

 

[shernren]

You Evilutionist you.

It sounds like a bar song!

One thousand kitties, stapled to a wall
One thousand kitties, stapled to a wall
Along comes an X-ray, one must take the fall
Now it's nine-nine-nine kitties, stapled to a wall!

 

[rcorlew]

Warning: I'm going to describe a thought experiment that makes Schrodinger's cat look like something from an RSPCA pamphlet. If you dislike imagining violence to animals, please turn off your imagination.



Ahh, now I get what you're doing. For jell-o, you nailed it pretty well to the wall. But I'm afraid I can't agree with your ideas about conservation of information. First I'll explain why it doesn't work at the quantum level, and then I'll explain why that matters.

I'll assume you understand the uncertainty principle. More precisely, a quantum particle has a position wavefunction, which is destroyed whenever its position is measured. So let's say I have a Blaster and a Scanner. Mr. Blaster has invented an X-ray gun which fires photons with a given wavefunction; Mrs. Scanner has invented an X-ray detector which detects X-ray photons hitting it.

Mrs. Scanner tells Mr. Blaster that she has more information: Mr. Blaster can specify the probability distribution of the X-rays, but he can't specify where exactly on the screen they will hit, because of the quantum nature of the X-rays. Mr. Blaster on the other hand tells Mrs. Scanner that he has more information: no matter how many X-rays she collects, she cannot specify the exact probability distribution of the X-rays.

Now here comes the cruelty to animals: Mrs. Scanner's detector consists of a thousand cats stapled to a wall. It detects X-rays because X-ray photons hitting the cat cause radiation damage: if a cat gives birth to deformed kittens, an X-ray must have passed through its location. Now, either the Cat Scanner is destroying information (because the wavefunction doesn't replicate the exact positions of the impacting X-rays) or it is creating information (the same), but it can't possibly be conserving information.

And in fact it is possible to see the Earth as a giant spinning Cat Scanner: it is populated by life-forms who (maybe, according to one unpopular view) do nothing but convert the photon wavefunction of the sun into an indecipherable mish-mash of position-measurements via mutations.

So life doesn't conserve any information at the quantum level. However, we could still try to insist on there being some classical law of conservation of information. Maybe conservation of information works like Newtonian physics, useless at the quantum level but invaluable on the classical level.

Unfortunately, chaos theory quickly nips that idea in the bud. It says that, for most classical systems, given a long enough timescale, you need to know that system's initial state to infinite precision to know that system's final state to any precision: the earlier information becomes lost otherwise. However, as the precision of a system's state measurement increases, it will pass a threshold where quantum effects begin to matter: and as we have seen earlier, in quantum mechanics information is not conserved. Therefore classical mechanics cannot conserve information either.

Yes you pretty much nailed the idea. I do believe that the uncertainty principle does play a role and W.I.M.P.s may have a significant role to play in the matter.

 

[shernren]

Yes you pretty much nailed the idea. I do believe that the uncertainty principle does play a role and W.I.M.P.s may have a significant role to play in the matter.

Err, the Cat Scanner does not conserve information.

 

[rcorlew]

Err, the Cat Scanner does not conserve information.

You are correct, 100% of the X-rays did not fall on the cats which makes this an open system, conservation of information is only 100% applicable in a closed system. One other thing, the information to be conserved would be that cat in the biological sense, each mutation would be explainable by the X-rays and since this was an open system, not all of the x-rays are explained by the cats. That is why this is theoretical physics, as there are no closed systems we can observe.

 

[shernren]

You are correct, 100% of the X-rays did not fall on the cats which makes this an open system, conservation of information is only 100% applicable in a closed system. One other thing, the information to be conserved would be that cat in the biological sense, each mutation would be explainable by the X-rays and since this was an open system, not all of the x-rays are explained by the cats. That is why this is theoretical physics, as there are no closed systems we can observe.

So what if I made my Cat Scanner a DNA Ball? Take the X-ray blaster but now encase it in a hollowed-out sphere of lead, whose inner wall is plastered with a layer of DNA. The system is now closed as every X-ray must pass through the layer of DNA. Yet the same argument as before still holds: knowing all the positions of the DNA point mutations can't give you the initial X-ray distribution, and knowing the initial X-ray distribution can't give you all the positions of the DNA point mutations, so somewhere along the way "information" has been either lost or gained, and it can't have been conserved.

 

[rcorlew]

So what if I made my Cat Scanner a DNA Ball? Take the X-ray blaster but now encase it in a hollowed-out sphere of lead, whose inner wall is plastered with a layer of DNA. The system is now closed as every X-ray must pass through the layer of DNA. Yet the same argument as before still holds: knowing all the positions of the DNA point mutations can't give you the initial X-ray distribution, and knowing the initial X-ray distribution can't give you all the positions of the DNA point mutations, so somewhere along the way "information" has been either lost or gained, and it can't have been conserved.

It would if you could answer all the answerable questions about the initial state of the DNA, the list would be exhaustive but include items like the strength of the nuclear bonds between the base pairs, the position of each DNA at all times during the experiment, the state of each sugar-carbon bond in each strand of DNA and so on.

If you are looking for a direct cause/effect scenario there really is not one in the sense that 3 RADS takes 20 X-Ray photons and the 3 RADS will account for genetic mutations at a ratio of 10:1 or 10 RADS to each mutation, this is partly because not all X-Ray photons are charged with the exact same amount of energy (this allows for things like Satellite Photography using X-Rays.

The conservation would be explained like this, 100% of the change in the information of the DNA would be explained by the X-rays and 100% of the energy (which is also information) emitted by the X-Ray blaster would be explained by the information changes in the DNA. In short order the equation would look like this and be true if reversed:

100% of DNA change = 100% X-Ray emission

The problem with this type of physics is that it is now (an will most likely always be) impossible to track with perfect accuracy the states of say a million or so DNA at all times. This is true with all large experiments such as this, however, on the small scale 1 DNA to one Photon this can be done, and the principle of exchange of information would be scaled up to the larger experiment.

 

[shernren]

It would if you could answer all the answerable questions about the initial state of the DNA, the list would be exhaustive but include items like the strength of the nuclear bonds between the base pairs, the position of each DNA at all times during the experiment, the state of each sugar-carbon bond in each strand of DNA and so on.

But I'm saying that's irrelevant.

Think back to Mr. Blaster and Mrs. Scanner. Mr. Blaster doesn't know where his X-rays will hit Mrs. Scanner's wall; Mrs. Scanner doesn't know how Mr. Blaster's X-ray machine is set up.

This is not a defect of instrumentation. It is not as if Mr. Blaster's problem is that his X-ray machine isn't precise enough, or Mrs. Scanner's great wall of cats isn't dense enough.

Even if his machine is at maximum precision, Mr. Blaster still can't predict where his X-rays will hit the wall;
even if her array of cats is as dense as dense could possibly be, Mrs. Scanner still can't reconstruct the X-ray machine.

The "problem" is with the fundamental quantum nature of reality.

 

[rcorlew]

But I'm saying that's irrelevant.

Think back to Mr. Blaster and Mrs. Scanner. Mr. Blaster doesn't know where his X-rays will hit Mrs. Scanner's wall; Mrs. Scanner doesn't know how Mr. Blaster's X-ray machine is set up.

This is not a defect of instrumentation. It is not as if Mr. Blaster's problem is that his X-ray machine isn't precise enough, or Mrs. Scanner's great wall of cats isn't dense enough.

Even if his machine is at maximum precision, Mr. Blaster still can't predict where his X-rays will hit the wall;
even if her array of cats is as dense as dense could possibly be, Mrs. Scanner still can't reconstruct the X-ray machine.

The "problem" is with the fundamental quantum nature of reality.

Bingo, the bolded part is I guess what I was missing, no the cats could not reconstruct the X-Ray machine and the X-ray machine could not predict its effect on the cats.

In reality you are correct also, this is somewhat not-useful and is only useful in the explanation of an end result, say a mutation in the genome of a dog. You would be able to reconstruct the information that was mutated, knowing that information you could then reconstruct the cause of the mutation but could never reconstruct what caused the cause of the mutation, say a super-nova had occurred and the dog just happened to walk through a small X-ray burst emitted by the super-nova, you could only say that the mutation occurred at "x" time and "x" place by "x" amount of X-rays and that is all.

A good real world example would be mesotheloma, a cancer caused by asbestos inhalation, if you knew the exact state of the cancer and the person's genome type (in particular suseptability to this cancer) you could then accurately reconstruct how much asbestos had been inhaled.

 

[shernren]

A good real world example would be mesotheloma, a cancer caused by asbestos inhalation, if you knew the exact state of the cancer and the person's genome type (in particular suseptability to this cancer) you could then accurately reconstruct how much asbestos had been inhaled.

Hmm, ok, let's take mesothelioma as an example.

So let's say I'm an oncologist and Mr. X walks in with a mesothelioma. "I know this may not quite be your area," he says, "but I want you to tell me exactly how much asbestos I've inhaled."

I take a scan of his lungs. Then, because this is a parable, I pull open my magic cabinet containing lung scans from every person who has ever suffered mesothelioma on this planet. Since the cabinet is magic, it also contains records on exactly how much asbestos each sufferer inhaled and exactly how susceptible they were to mesothelioma. After a long time (or thirty seconds, if I'm being filmed on a medical drama) I realize an awful truth: Mr. X's lung doesn't look exactly like any of the other scans!

Why not settle for just an approximate match? Well, because some of the patients did quite well even though they inhaled a lot and were quite susceptible; some of the other patients, on the other hand, did poorly even though they had little exposure and little susceptibility. So unless I get an exact match, I won't be able to determine exactly what happened to Mr. X.

I then get a brainwave: I might not be able to match Mr. X, but I could generate a probability distribution from the data. I consider my options. Maybe I could generate a probability distribution of the sort: given that Mr. X has his current state of mesothelioma, there is a probability A that he has inhaled a particular amount of asbestos, a probability B that he has inhaled another amount ... but wait, he doesn't want a probability distribution, he wants an exact figure.

Ah! I could construct a kind of reverse probability distribution: given that Mr. X has inhaled a particular amount of asbestos, there is a probability A that his lungs look the way they are now. Does that work? Unfortunately not: I can't measure the probability of his lungs turning out the way they are. This is for the same reason that when all you see is a coin flip heads, you can't work out what the odds of that coin turning heads are.

=========

'Tis interesting, isn't it? Figuring out how determinism meshes with probability and chaos theory.

This was one of the main reasons that Popperian falsificationism was seen to be defective: one can neither falsify nor confirm a hypothesis about a probability distribution. "This coin is fair" is really a statement about what happens when you see an infinity of coin tosses; but you can only ever see a finite number of them, and so the hypothesis is not strictly falsifiable!

 

[rcorlew]

Hmm, ok, let's take mesothelioma as an example.

So let's say I'm an oncologist and Mr. X walks in with a mesothelioma. "I know this may not quite be your area," he says, "but I want you to tell me exactly how much asbestos I've inhaled."

I take a scan of his lungs. Then, because this is a parable, I pull open my magic cabinet containing lung scans from every person who has ever suffered mesothelioma on this planet. Since the cabinet is magic, it also contains records on exactly how much asbestos each sufferer inhaled and exactly how susceptible they were to mesothelioma. After a long time (or thirty seconds, if I'm being filmed on a medical drama) I realize an awful truth: Mr. X's lung doesn't look exactly like any of the other scans!

Why not settle for just an approximate match? Well, because some of the patients did quite well even though they inhaled a lot and were quite susceptible; some of the other patients, on the other hand, did poorly even though they had little exposure and little susceptibility. So unless I get an exact match, I won't be able to determine exactly what happened to Mr. X.

I then get a brainwave: I might not be able to match Mr. X, but I could generate a probability distribution from the data. I consider my options. Maybe I could generate a probability distribution of the sort: given that Mr. X has his current state of mesothelioma, there is a probability A that he has inhaled a particular amount of asbestos, a probability B that he has inhaled another amount ... but wait, he doesn't want a probability distribution, he wants an exact figure.

Ah! I could construct a kind of reverse probability distribution: given that Mr. X has inhaled a particular amount of asbestos, there is a probability A that his lungs look the way they are now. Does that work? Unfortunately not: I can't measure the probability of his lungs turning out the way they are. This is for the same reason that when all you see is a coin flip heads, you can't work out what the odds of that coin turning heads are.

=========

'Tis interesting, isn't it? Figuring out how determinism meshes with probability and chaos theory.

This was one of the main reasons that Popperian falsificationism was seen to be defective: one can neither falsify nor confirm a hypothesis about a probability distribution. "This coin is fair" is really a statement about what happens when you see an infinity of coin tosses; but you can only ever see a finite number of them, and so the hypothesis is not strictly falsifiable!

I do believe that a probability distribution is the best way to determine the quantity of asbestos exposure as measured in cancer state against the genome type of the patient. There would of course be factors within this distribution, the biggest one that I can think of is the rate of cancerous growth, I am operating on what I believe that I have read that the rate of spread is not necessarily linked to the stage of cancer but linked to genetic information, the stage of cancer operates at a consistent rate in its progression. I could be wrong on that, but for this story I will assume I am right.

The oncologist would collect patient data including things like lung function, activity level, genome type, state of immune system, look at the cancer in its spread and stage and decipher an exposure level and time(s) of exposure. I (from observing things) have gathered by assumption that this is how doctors and lawyers can back track exposure to know who to sue. The important thing would be the level of significance attainable for this particular patient, if you can achieve a .1% level then you would have enough judicial proof to win a case. That is the real world scenario of how you can use current state to predict past states, in statistics it would be represented by a line of regression. You would plot the patient's stats say "x" was patient health characteristics and "y" was cancer stage/rate and then compare those to the line of regression created for all similar cases and then make their prediction.

I do realize that this example is problematic and cannot offer 100% certainty, but if the patient insists on 100% certainty then you can assume they are a YEC because to everybody else 99.9% probability would be good enough!

 

[shernren]

I am operating on what I believe that I have read that the rate of spread is not necessarily linked to the stage of cancer but linked to genetic information, the stage of cancer operates at a consistent rate in its progression. I could be wrong on that, but for this story I will assume I am right.

I'll assume you're right too.

The point I'm making is that even in this story, information is not "conserved". The information going into the system is just a single number (or a time series of single numbers): namely the amount of asbestos that Mr. X inhaled at any one time. The information going out of the system, on the other hand, is a probability distribution, which is an infinite number of numbers.

Either information has been lost (because I can't reconstruct that previous single number accurately) or information has been gained (because one number turned into a whole lot of numbers) but it would be a bit strange to say that information has been conserved!

 

[rcorlew]

I'll assume you're right too.

The point I'm making is that even in this story, information is not "conserved". The information going into the system is just a single number (or a time series of single numbers): namely the amount of asbestos that Mr. X inhaled at any one time. The information going out of the system, on the other hand, is a probability distribution, which is an infinite number of numbers.

Either information has been lost (because I can't reconstruct that previous single number accurately) or information has been gained (because one number turned into a whole lot of numbers) but it would be a bit strange to say that information has been conserved!

Perhaps I am not able to explain this the way it was presented to me, I can see how it operates in principle within my mind, but based off your replies and questions I can see that I have failed miserably at this attempt. I (and probably the rest of the world is glad) am glad that I am not a teacher!

As I think about it though, what you say makes sense about the infinite amount of numbers produced by the probability distribution, given the level of significance you do not need to know what the correct number is in the distribution you only need to know that the correct number is represented within the distribution. The correct xy coordinate would conserve the information even if you did not know what the answer was.

 

[shernren]

Are there any papers, textbooks, or academic resources that I can look up this "conservation of information" in? Such a thing, if it was true, would have a tremendous effect in physics at least.