oldmanintheskydidntdoit
Posts: 4999
Joined: July 2006
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Meanwhile, over at OW | Quote | Why should an arbitrary object contain Shannon information?
1. Shannon information can be increased via just noise. So obviously when Dembski speaks of an increase in "information" he's using precise definitions.
One can take a source of noise digitize it and fill a 40 gig disk drive with it. Such a noisy process is arguably increasing some form of information. The file size will show that as the noise is input into the computer, the file size increases, hence an information increase.
But information coming from noise generators cannot be Complex Specified Information by definition. What Darwinists unwittingly try to explain is the presence of specified information. The word “information” in ID literature is referring to specified information, which is a special subset of Shannon information, not Shannon information in general.
Why is it for example you can readily recognize music? Music is a form of specified complexity. Noise is unspecified. Music fits a pattern. Surprisingly you can recognize music as music even if you’ve never heard it before or explicitly have the pattern before hand in your brain. Why is that? The answer as to why you can recognize patterns you’ve never seen before is in Dembski’s latest work on specification.
10 megs of music and 10 megs of noise are both Shannon information measures of bytewise content on your disk drive, but hopefully you can see that 10 megs of music is specified information and 10 megs of noise is not (or at least not demonstratively specified).
The question is why does biology (like music) give us recognizable patterns rather than noise? Noise can not be the answer (by definition), but design can be.
If Joe ID-Proponent said:
f(x) = 2.146514159 x^2
therefore calculus shows the derivate, f’(x), is described by
f’(x) = 4.293028319x
Joe ID-Proponent can claim calculus demonstrates his idea is true, whereas PZ ID-Opponent will claim:
“I see no where in mathematical literature where f(x) is defined as
2.146514159 x^2. ID proponents are liars and con artists. I dare them to cite a peer-reviewed paper where f(x) is defined this way.”
We have a similar situation with the idea of specified complexity. It’s definition makes it a subset of the body informational constructs studied in information science. Thus all the ideas applicable to the field as a whole are applicable to specified complexity.
I’m not aware that “specified complexity” is explicitly a term used in information science, but neither am I aware that f(x) = 2.146514159 x^2 is in any peer-reviewed math journal. It does not mean specified complexity is outside of information science any more than the idea f(x) = 2.146514159 x^2 and its derivative are outside of mathematics.
When I say “information science shows specified complexity is destroyed by noise”, people like Mark Chu-Carroll will jump all over the statement in the manner that PZ ID-opponent does.
But if a communication engineer said, “noise destroys information” (i.e. noise destroys a musical recording), most would colloquially understand what was meant, even though, in one sense, as I pointed out, you can demonstrate “noise increases information”. But when we carefully look at the intended meaning, the paradoxes evaporate.
2.
But what is meant by specification?
http://www.designinference.com/documents/2005.06.Specification.pdf
3.
I assume that in the PBS case you mean the minimum amount of information required to practically re-produce the object being specified.
Not reproduce, to represent a particular specification. There are many variants of sandwiches but only a limited number of targets that qualify as a pb sandwich. For another example, whether I'm sad or happy need not include the physical state of my face. So that can be represented by 1 informational bit (although it does get into philosophy on whether my emotional state is a chance event). |
When questioned on his maths Patrick (for it is he!) breaks down and admits it's a Frankenstein post
| Quote | it is possible I am mistaken. I haven't asked Bill directly but I have discussed this subject with other ID proponents and no one noted any errors.
Even the most detailed description of how to assemble a PBS would be significantly shorter than the 500k you estimated.
Oh...I see where the problem is. I pulled this article from several posts. At the beginning:
"500k = ~ 5 millions of DNA base pairs, each capable of storing 2 bits; and, BTW, that capacity is what Shannon info is about"
That was written by someone else and it's not referencing a PBS, that's referencing biological information. For the PBS I wrote "So the pb sandwich contains 69 informational bits at most" The full quote from the other person, kairosfocus:
If life spontaneously diversified at body plan level from microbes [500k - ~ 5 millions of DNA base pairs, each capable of storing 2 bits; and, BTW, that capacity is what Shannon info is about] to men, we need to credibly see how the required functionally specified, complex, organised fine-tuned information came to be.
I'll rewrite the opening section so it is not so confusing. |
Seems they are playing ID bingo, copying and pasting bits together till they get an appearance of coherency. http://www.overwhelmingevidence.com/oe/node/361#comment-1846
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I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies".
FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand
Gordon Mullings
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