Information: A problem for evolution?

mythbuster · May 14, 2005

gluadys said:
Why not? Seriously. I don't know why not.
Now, I'd agree right off the bat that it is not complex, specified information. But the whole point of the adjectives is to delineate a sub-set of a larger field called information. Outside the boundaries of CSI, there is still
information that is complex but not specified,
information that is specified but not complex.
Can one also have information that is neither specified nor complex?
In any case, why would the rock not constitute information in some other form than CSI?
Doesn't that make more sense than saying it is not information at all?
Again, I don't understand why you put (zero) after "probability". What does it mean to say the probability of a rock is zero?
Maybe I don't understand something about probability here. To me, a zero probability would be that something cannot exist at all. Yet rocks and piles of leaves manifestly do exist.

Of course, the general statement does not apply to specific instances. That rocks exist does not set a probability that this rock exists. I can see that such a probability would indeed be very low, but if the rock exists, how can the probability of its existence be zero?
What am I missing here?
Also, can you explain the reference to a symbol set?

Shalom GLUADYS
First as far as probability is concerned, I remember challenging my math mentor (Dr. Book) about this and he told me that "...zero probability events happen all the time!" Boy was I surprised to hear that!

An example of a zero probability event is to select a number from the number line. Or for that matter select a number from any continuos interval of the number line. The probability of selecting any number is zero, nevertheless we do it all the time.

But for this discussion I really recommend that we jettison all the theory and all the math and all the talk about complex specificity. Lets just forget about all that and use our intuition. I am convinced that you (and everyone else) has an intuitive sense of what information is.

Lets consider a fictitious spy movie where the entire plot is surrounded around the idea of stealing secret information stored in a computer somewhere. Stealthy spies break into the very secure building and gain access to a computer and transfer the information to a disk. At the last minute someone sees them and a chase ensues. All the stealthy spies are caught and murdered but not before the disk containing the information is inserted into a portable rocket and launched to a remote site. Because the information is gained the mission is considered a success.

We could all watch this movie and not be confused about "what is information?"

Today ther are people who steal information. And if they get their hands on (so to speak) your information it can make your life miserable.

gluadys · May 14, 2005

mythbuster said:
Shalom GLUADYS
First as far as probability is concerned, I remember challenging my math mentor (Dr. Book) about this and he told me that "...zero probability events happen all the time!" Boy was I surprised to hear that!

An example of a zero probability event is to select a number from the number line. Or for that matter select a number from any continuos interval of the number line. The probability of selecting any number is zero, nevertheless we do it all the time.

Ok. Now that makes sense.

But it still doesn't make sense that the rock is not information.

Can you clarify why you say that? Especially in light of shernren's post?

mythbuster · May 14, 2005

gluadys said:
Ok. Now that makes sense.

But it still doesn't make sense that the rock is not information.

Can you clarify why you say that? Especially in light of shernren's post?

The fact that the rock is, or is not, complicated does not mean that it contains any information at all. Perhaps even on an atomic level the rock is probably more sophisticated than any of us could imagine, but complexity is not in itself information.

I would say that the more complex an object is the more information is needed to describe the object. And that information would be conveyed by means of symbols or characters. That is why in an earlier post we talked about the number of bits per symbol. It is by the arrangement of symbols that information is conveyed. We do not have such an information conveying structure present in our rock.

gluadys · May 14, 2005

mythbuster said:
The fact that the rock is, or is not, complicated does not mean that it contains any information at all. Perhaps even on an atomic level the rock is probably more sophisticated than any of us could imagine, but complexity is not in itself information.

I would say that the more complex an object is the more information is needed to describe the object. And that information would be conveyed by means of symbols or characters. That is why in an earlier post we talked about the number of bits per symbol. It is by the arrangement of symbols that information is conveyed. We do not have such an information conveying structure present in our rock.

If I am understanding you correctly, then all information about the rock exists in human records and in the human memory, not in the rock itself. Information depends, in the first place, on perception, and is then conveyed from one person to another by some form of symbol system.

To me this implies that all information is generated by humans who study things. There is no information in anything outside of the human mind. And information is conveyed from one person to another by some form of symbol system.

Is that a fair inference from what you are saying?

shernren · May 15, 2005

But for this discussion I really recommend that we jettison all the theory and all the math and all the talk about complex specificity. Lets just forget about all that and use our intuition. I am convinced that you (and everyone else) has an intuitive sense of what information is.

Oh dear. when the science and the math doesn't seem to like you it's time to try intuition!

Intuition can be very wrong at times in science and math. Intuition tells us that heavier objects intrinsically fall faster than lighter objects. Intuition tells us that putting two plates very close together should not cause any extra force between them besides the gravitational force (Casimir effect) or that light should have an infinite speed (when it actually has a finite, but very large, speed), or that it shouldn't make any difference to a clock whether it is static or moving.

Anyway, to take up your intuitive gauntlet: isn't it intuitive that a process which results in small changes, would also be able to by accumulation of those small changes result in big changes?

Robert the Pilegrim · May 15, 2005

shernren said:
Actually, a rock represents a whole lot of information. Let's take 1g of pure calcium carbonate. It contains, what, 10^10 electrons? (Off the top of my head: probably more?)

Very roughly speaking, a mole's worth of electrons i.e. 10^23 ...

Now try encoding all the energy levels of all the electrons in that 1g of calcium carbonate..

But most of that information is degenerate, thermodynamics and solid state physics works for a reason.

If it is entirely randomized, or entirely crystalized there is a single domain, otherwise you have to break down your material into domains, which could still leave you with a whole lot of information.

Hmmm, what is the difference between data and information?

shernren · May 15, 2005

Hmmm, what is the difference between data and information?

Good question!

My point was that information is not as intuitive as we think. Thermodynamics and solid state physics work only to a point. That's why we have "non-ideal gases". But still, I get your point. It is easy to approximately encode some physical systems with small amounts of information. but not exactly, would you agree?

Robert the Pilegrim · May 15, 2005

shernren said:
It is easy to approximately encode some physical systems with small amounts of information. but not exactly, would you agree?

Yes.

shudder, bits and pieces of information theory I picked up in a networking course are coming back to haunt me now.

'Common sense' works well with things that we 'commonly' work with. Outside of that it is a very poor guide.

shernren · May 15, 2005

I believe the rigorous statement of the problem YECists are throwing at us in terms of information theory and "macroevolution" is:

Is there, from a highly simple and unspecified information set A [first nucleic acid sequence]
a path consisting purely of random additions and selective concentrations [mutations and natural selection]
to highly complex and specified information set B? [current biodiversity]

And even then I have no idea how the "simple / complex" and "unspecified / specified" in the above would be rigorously defined. Takers?

mythbuster · May 15, 2005

gluadys said:
If I am understanding you correctly, then all information about the rock exists in human records and in the human memory, not in the rock itself. Information depends, in the first place, on perception, and is then conveyed from one person to another by some form of symbol system.

To me this implies that all information is generated by humans who study things. There is no information in anything outside of the human mind. And information is conveyed from one person to another by some form of symbol system.

Is that a fair inference from what you are saying?

Yes, that is fair.
You have really zeroed in on the implications of information (and of new information, the purpose of this thread). Information will always require an intelligent source.

mythbuster · May 15, 2005

shernren said:
Oh dear. when the science and the math doesn't seem to like you it's time to try intuition!

Intuition can be very wrong at times in science and math. Intuition tells us that heavier objects intrinsically fall faster than lighter objects. Intuition tells us that putting two plates very close together should not cause any extra force between them besides the gravitational force (Casimir effect) or that light should have an infinite speed (when it actually has a finite, but very large, speed), or that it shouldn't make any difference to a clock whether it is static or moving.

Anyway, to take up your intuitive gauntlet: isn't it intuitive that a process which results in small changes, would also be able to by accumulation of those small changes result in big changes?

Dear shernren,

We are not afraid of science and math at all. And it is also true that our intuition may be wrong. Nevertheless an intuitive explanation for abstract information is sometimes quite effective. In fact there are times when intuition can be quite helpful for other abstact concepts.

Here is an example. What is the the derivative dx/dy of a function? Well of course we can give a technical definition. Or we can talk about slope and steepness. Kids (and adults) have an intuitve sense for steepness and we can exploit that to teach them calculus.

shalom

shernren · May 16, 2005

Point taken. Sorry if I've been hasty.

Okay then, here goes:

If an organism A has a trait 1 which changes characteristic from a to b, is that an increase, decrease or non-change in the quantity and quality of information? For example, when a mutation changes normal hemoglobin to sickle-cell hemoglobin.

gluadys · May 16, 2005

mythbuster said:
Yes, that is fair.
You have really zeroed in on the implications of information (and of new information, the purpose of this thread). Information will always require an intelligent source.

I'm not so sure of that.

I wonder if you are confusing the existence of information with the recording of information.

The symbol set you spoke of is certainly necessary for recording and transmitting information so that a human being can understand it.

But such encoded information still begs the question of where the information was before a human hand/mind recorded it.

A researcher records the dimensions, shape, colour, weight, mineral content, etc. of the rock. But the researcher did not invent these things. She only recorded her measurements.

So where was the information before a human recorded it for human consumption, if not in the rock itself?

I find it difficult to suppose that only information in a format digestible by the human mind is information. I guess it depends a lot on your epistemology. Does anything we know relate to a real world outside the mind?

If not, why do we agree on so much information? Why do we distinguish objective from subjective information?

mythbuster · May 16, 2005

gluadys said:
I'm not so sure of that.

I wonder if you are confusing the existence of information with the recording of information.

The symbol set you spoke of is certainly necessary for recording and transmitting information so that a human being can understand it.

But such encoded information still begs the question of where the information was before a human hand/mind recorded it.

A researcher records the dimensions, shape, colour, weight, mineral content, etc. of the rock. But the researcher did not invent these things. She only recorded her measurements.

So where was the information before a human recorded it for human consumption, if not in the rock itself?

I find it difficult to suppose that only information in a format digestible by the human mind is information. I guess it depends a lot on your epistemology. Does anything we know relate to a real world outside the mind?

If not, why do we agree on so much information? Why do we distinguish objective from subjective information?

Those are some hard questions. But I think you see the implications of the existence of information. So far we have only considered objective information and not meaning or anything like that. Shannon just wanted to quantify a communications channel so he had to define terms, and that did not include meaning.

mythbuster · May 16, 2005

shernren said:
Point taken. Sorry if I've been hasty.

Okay then, here goes:

If an organism A has a trait 1 which changes characteristic from a to b, is that an increase, decrease or non-change in the quantity and quality of information? For example, when a mutation changes normal hemoglobin to sickle-cell hemoglobin.

Sorry, I just don't know.

shernren · May 16, 2005

Then we can close this thread. none of us knows what we're talking about!

gluadys · May 16, 2005

mythbuster said:
Those are some hard questions. But I think you see the implications of the existence of information. So far we have only considered objective information and not meaning or anything like that. Shannon just wanted to quantify a communications channel so he had to define terms, and that did not include meaning.

Oh, indeed, meaning adds a whole 'nother level of complexity to the whole "information" discussion.

So, applied to biological information, we are a long way from even defining basic terms.

mythbuster · May 17, 2005

gluadys said:
Oh, indeed, meaning adds a whole 'nother level of complexity to the whole "information" discussion.

So, applied to biological information, we are a long way from even defining basic terms.

I don't think that we are far at all.
Because what we have in biology is sort of a set of instructions. That certainly is information and its existence has deep implications. But the instructions contained in cells don't have meaning in the sense that, say, the Bible has meaning. Shannon theory can be used to quantify the information carrying capacity of chromosomes but we know (think) that not all of that capacity is used.

Information has at least two types.
1) Subjective information (meaning, "God became man that man could become God" Athanasius 298-393 AD)
2) Objective information (instructions, computer code, DNA, Drake defeats the Spanish Armada in 1588)
Both types of information imply an intelligent source.
Both use symbols and are transcendent. That is the Bible can exist in a book, or on a CD, or on a tape, or in my memory.

mythbuster · May 17, 2005

shernren said:
Then we can close this thread. none of us knows what we're talking about!

\

HA! I'm still laughing!

Robert the Pilegrim · May 17, 2005

mythbuster said:
Information has at least two types.
1) Subjective information (meaning, "God became man that man could become God" Athanasius 298-393 AD)
2) Objective information (instructions, computer code, DNA, Drake defeats the Spanish Armada in 1588)
Both types of information imply an intelligent source.

A big rain erodes dirt leaving uneven surface with pits and runoff valleys.

The next time it rains the water follows the valleys and collects in the pits.

Was the first rain intelligent?

Information: A problem for evolution?

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