So that's why information can't increase

[FreezBee]

Hi!

Trying to figure out, why Information can't increase I stumbled across Lee M. Spetner, a creationist/IDist information theorist. I have criticized his approach in this EvoWiki article: The Spetner Anomaly.

The background is as follows: In an interchange with Edward E. Max, Spetner has tried to prove that mutations cannot increase information, that is, decrease entropy. In my article I try to show that accepting Spetner’s argumentation may lead to some strange conclusions. Spetner’s argumentation is interesting because it actually makes it clearer, what creationists mean, when they claim that mutations cannot increase information.


- FreezBee

 

[shernren]

I love pointing to this article where Spetner admits that (oops!) mutations can increase, and have increased, information content in the genome. Enter our star the nylon bug:

"It's interesting, first of all, that the URL you pointed to picked the "nylon bug" as an example of a random mutation yielding a gain of information. (The short answer is, the mutation does yield an increase of information, but was it random?) . ...

(bolds in original from http://www.nmsr.org/nylon.htm#spetner ; underlines my added emphasis.)

whoopsies. Never mind that I still haven't seen a well-ordered information content function definable over a genome or proteome which fits the creationists' contention yet. This clinches the case. Of course, the only way to know that the mutation is non-random is to isolate its mechanism of being influenced by the environment - something I highly doubt creationists will be able to do.

After looking at your article (link here: http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/The_Spetner_Anomaly ) I have a few things to point out.

I like how you described where generalization would be better than specialization. However, you seem to be ignoring the fundamental flaws in Spetner's logical chain:

A: Adaptive advantage is conferred by an increase in genomic / proteomic information content.
B: Specialization confers adaptive advantage over generalism.
C: Mutations provoke generalism over specialization.
C+B: Mutations do not confer adaptive advantage, in fact they are maladaptive.
C+B+A: Mutations do not increase genomic / proteomic information content.

You have successfully destroyed B, but not really explicitly stated how it is necessary (well, maybe that's just my anal-ness ). More importantly you have left A untouched. Can creationists prove that a genome with more information always performs better than a genome with less information? Or are they assuming /defining it tautologically? - "the more adaptive a genome the more information, hence we define the information content of a genome as the measure of its adaptiveness." If they have no external gauge for information content then their argument reduces to a standard "mutations do not confer adaptive advantage" argument and then the information "wrappers" are simply jargon.

[after re-reading] okay, I see that you have done that in the first few paragraphs. I guess it wasn't clear enough for me. Maybe you could have a "common creationist flaws encountered" section where you can be explicit about it. Or maybe it was just me.

This indicates a wider creationist tendency to incorporate scientific terms into pseudoscientific arguments. This is the same kind of problem that we see (albeit more blatantly) in Second Law of Thermodynamics "counterarguments".

Also, technically 0 log 0 is undefined (since log 0 is undefined). Or am I missing something here?

 

[chilehed]

In an interchange with Edward E. Max, Spetner has tried to prove that mutations cannot increase information, that is, decrease entropy.

And of course, that in itself is a meaningless exercise because information has no thermodynamic entropy, and there's no Second Law of Information Entropy.