The great information debate

[MrBaggins]

check your pms loinburger

[MrBaggins]

for the purposes of definition, we will use the following meaning for data

Main Entry: da·ta
Pronunciation: 'dA-t&, 'da- also 'dä-
Function: noun plural but singular or plural in construction
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: Latin, plural of datum
Date: 1646
1 : factual information (as measurements or statistics) used as a basis for reasoning, discussion, or calculation
2 : information output by a sensing device or organ that includes both useful and irrelevant or redundant information and must be processed to be meaningful
3 : information in numerical form that can be digitally transmitted or processed
usage Data leads a life of its own quite independent of datum, of which it was originally the plural. It occurs in two constructions: as a plural noun (like earnings), taking a plural verb and plural modifiers (as these, many, a few) but not cardinal numbers, and serving as a referent for plural pronouns (as they, them); and as an abstract mass noun (like information), taking a singular verb and singular modifiers (as this, much, little), and being referred to by a singular pronoun (it). Both constructions are standard. The plural construction is more common in print, evidently because the house style of several publishers mandates it.


Furthermore...

data

/day't*/ (Or "raw data") Numbers, characters, images, or other method of recording, in a form which can be assessed by a human or (especially) input into a computer, stored and processed there, or transmitted on some digital channel. Computers nearly always represent data in binary.

Data on its own has no meaning, only when interpreted by some kind of data processing system does it take on meaning and become information.

People or computers can find patterns in data to perceive information, and information can be used to enhance knowledge. Since knowledge is prerequisite to wisdom, we always want more data and information. But, as modern societies verge on information overload, we especially need better ways to find patterns.

1234567.89 is data.

"Your bank balance has jumped 8087% to $1234567.89" is information.

"Nobody owes me that much money" is knowledge.

"I'd better talk to the bank before I spend it, because of what has happened to other people" is wisdom.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
check your pms loinburger

It's not that time of the month yet.

[MrBaggins]

*smiles*

remember 5

5) no humor

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Lincoln
The question was whether "meaningful" information could be produced by machine without intelligent input. The answer is no.

What does it mean by

a. machine
b. intelligent input?

It seems that the conventional meaning of a machine has always the connotations of "artificially created." Rarely the word might be used in denoting some biochemical mechanisms but that's always very specific and narrrow.

If you just say a machine, the connotation is there that it has been created by humans. So right off the bat you are begging the question.

Now, what does "intelligent input" constitute? If a machine runs on a fixed internal program without external output, is there intelligent input?

Consider the number pi. If we read the digits of pi as per ASCII in triplets, we will find lots of meaningful information in there. In fact, you can find, for example, everything Shakespeare wrote.

Where is the intelligence in here?

Originally posted by Lincoln
But when we are talking about meaningful information then there must be an agreement between two intelligent agents or machines created by an intelligent agent.

I posit that "meaning" is an entirely human creation. More precisely, it is a concept that only intelligent beings have. I agree that there is no "meaning" without intelligence, but it does not take any agreement at all. Again, I present my example of pi as evidence.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Lincoln
You still require an intelligent agent to establish meaningfull communication.

Not sure if this is correct. Bees, for example, convey information of honey sources to bees in the same nest by various "dances," and other bees do act on such information that is passed. So, is there any "meaningful communication" here? If so, does it mean that bees are an intelligent agent?

Furthermore, "meaningful communication" is not the same as "intrisic information."

[Jack_www]

These are things we know.
Someone wrote the computer program to run this experiment.
The computer itself was made by a human.
The code we use to find meaning in the input of computer is done by a human.
Thus we can see clearly that everything in this experiment need an intelligent source behind it.

[Ethelred]

Part One of Two

Well since Lincoln decided one thread wasn't enough I will post my reply to the PDF he posted on the original thread here.

I haven't read through the thread yet as this is something I had written up for the closed thread before Ming actually closed it. Format isn't my usual because I typed this in Notepad while going over the PDF. It should be clear enough.

Its too big for one post. Thought it might be.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

The author of this essay is Stephen Meyer. As usual Lincoln was carefull not to lets us know where he got it or who Meyers is. He is no biologist. So keep in mind his word is no better than mine and I will show it worse.
This thing is kinda big. I am not going go over it with a fine tooth comb for typos. Sorry about that.

From http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/...les/meyer.html

Stephen C. Meyer, who did his doctoral work in the history and philosophy of science at Cambridge University, is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Whitworth College and Senior Research Fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle.

You might keep this idea in mind Lincoln. He is trying to claim life could not have arisen spontaneously billions of years ago. He is not a Young Earth Creationist. His work can never be used by ICR for instance since their members are required to give an oath to NEVER admit that the Earth is more that about 6000 years old. In otherwords he disagrees with fundamentalists most likely because the evidence is against that. He has retreated to where evidence does not reach and he can freely make up whatever he likes. He does so frequently.

Meyer seems to have written this same article many times in many different forms. I keep stumbling across variations on it. They all boil down to bogus claims of bad odds and irriducible complexity although he doesn't actually use the phrase that is what is doing. He is claiming the odds are astronomical for a molecule he can't justify as needed.

He makes a lot of use of Dr. Oparin's work. Interesting that he has chosen to make extensive quotes from the 1920 that way. He also likes to compare that to work done in the mid 60's. Big on obsolete theory Myer is.

================================================== =
Perhaps the most common popular view about the origin of life is that it happened
exclusively by chance. A few serious scientists have also voiced support for this view, at
least, at various points during their careers.

--------------------------------

Typical creationist fairy story. The change is by chance. The selection is by the environment. They claim its by chance to make it look improbable.

===========================================

While outside origin-of-life biology some may still invoke 'chance' as an explanation
for the origin of life, most serious origin-of-life researchers now reject it as an adequate
causal explanation for the origin of biological information

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

More distortion. It has never been claimed that evolution is by chance.

Except by Creationists of course.

================================================== ==

For the sake of argument, these calculations have often assumed extremely favorable
prebiotic conditions (whether realistic or not), much more time than was actually
available on the early earth, and theoretically maximal reaction rates among constituent
monomers (i.e., the constituent parts of proteins, DNA and RNA).

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More distortion. They chose the conditions they thought were most likely not ones with artifiacialy increased odds. Heck its not even a distortion. Its completely made up. A lie.

================================================== =====

Such calculations have
invariably shown that the probability of obtaining functionally sequenced
biomacromolecules at random is, in Prigogine’s words, “vanishingly small . . .even on the
scale of . . .billions of years” [56]. As Cairns-Smith wrote in 1971:

----------------------------------------------------------

He means molecules chosen by creationists of course. Not molecules chosen to reflect what might have have started life but modern molecules and always especialy complex ones at that they insist must be exact despite that fact that large numbers of variations of the molecule exist in nature and they all do the same job.

Cairns-Smith is not a creationist and said that while pushing his on theory of life getting started on a clay substrate. He would not agree that life cannot get started on it own. He had a different theory as to how it could happen. Few today however think life started as DNA. Maybe Cairns-Smith still does. He does have some books he needs to sell.

================================================== =============

Consider the probabilistic hurdles that must be overcome to construct even one short
protein molecule of one hundred amino acid in length. (A typical protein consists of
about 300 amino acid residues, and many crucial proteins are very much longer.) [18, p.
118].

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Consider that 100 proteins long is NOT a short protien. Many are much shorter and again the author is pretending that the molecules must be the length of modern molecules. He is also pretending it must be exact. Both pretenses are false.

For instance we humans alone have seven different hemoglobin molecules we use not counting the two different adult forms that cause sickle cell anemia. The other six are active prior to birth. All seven function, even the sickle cell varieties function if you only have one copy of it instead of two.
================================================== ==

First, all amino acids must form a chemical bond known as a peptide bond so as to
join with other amino acids in the protein chain.
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Assumption. Bad one too since as he points out there are other bonds found in nature. That modern life does not use them does mean early must have or even did.

===============================================
Second, in nature every amino acid has a distinct mirror image of itself, one lefthanded
version or L-form and one right-handed version or D-form. These mirror-image
forms are called optical isomers. Functioning proteins tolerate only left-handed amino
acids, yet the right-handed and left-handed isomers occur in nature with roughly equal
frequency.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

False. He has no idea what is tolerated. He only know what modern life uses. All the is needed to begin life is a molecule that can copy itself. It need not be levarotary, it need not use polypeptide links, it need not be only protein or DNA or RNA. Its only requirment is self-reproduction. Self copying molecules have been made in the lab that are MUCH shorter that length he has chosen. Indeed the only reason he has chosen that length is to make it look impossible.

No one knows how life got started. No one know what the shortest possible self-reproducing molecule is. However we have made some that are significantly shorter than 100 amino-acids. So his choice of lengths is not even arbitrary. Its just plain wrong.

================================================== ====

I am going to skip on a bit. I can only comment on the most glaring issues considering there are 37 pages of this propaganda piece.

However this is enough right here to show the article is a con on this level at least.
================================================== ======

On the assumption that all sites in a protein chain
require one particular amino acid, the probability of attaining a particular protein 100
amino acids long would be (1/20)100 or roughly 1 chance in 10130.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Two false assumption in one sentence. How typical. There is particular single molecule of 100 amino acid length that must be one that life gets started from. Nor does even moder proteins have to perfect at all times. Everyone has mutations. We all do. About three each. We are alive anyway and we have modern highly adapted and long refined molecules making us up which makes the molecules more dependent on exact reproduction than would be needed in the first life forms.

He goes on to cover varations whithout ever admiting that his assumption was bogus. He continues with the equally bogus insistence on a 100 amino-acid protein. Why proteins instead of DNA like he starts the article with. Only one reason. To make it look it impossible. There are twenty proteins in use and only four RNA molecules and RNA can act as an enzyme and do information storage.
================================================== ====

Dembski, thus, answers the question: “how much luck is, in any
case, too much to invoke in a explanation?”

-----------------------------------------------------

Here comes that heart of the article. Dembski a mathematician. Again insisting on luck only which NO ONE but a creationist says is how evolution occurs.

================================================== ===

Conversely, to have a reasonable chance of finding a short functional protein in a
random search of combinatorial space would require vastly more time than either
cosmology or geology allows.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

False. There are very short proteins. Less than twenty amino-acids long. He clearly is still yammering about
a one hundred amino-acid chain as that does fit those odds.

A twenty amino acid chain of a particular compisition has a random chance of occuring of 1.04 x10 ^26 to one. Looks big eh. Lets say this long enough for a self-replicating molecule. Why not since he made his up using modern stuff? I choose this one that is representitive of short modern proteins. Let us also pretend that only ONE single sequence would have the property of self-replication even though its just as likely that many would if any does. Self replicating molecules have been made that are shorter than this under very special labratory conditions. Its not unreasonably short.

Say the possible reactions occur once every second although there is no reason it couldn't be a shorter time period.

There are 31,536,000 seconds per year.
Let us be very generous to creationist and say the reactions occur once per second per cubic centimeter of water and only talk about a single cubic kilometer of water.

1 x 10^6 cc per cubic meter
1 x 10 ^9 cubic meters per cubic kilometer
Which gives us
1 x 10^15 cc per cubic kilometer and
3.1 x10^7 reactions per cc for

3.1 x 10 23 reactions per year
In just 100 years we have three times as many reactions as needed to get the molecule by random chance.

That is why he picked a excessivly large number. He needed to do that to make it look impossible.

================================================== ====

Dembski has generalized this
method to show how the presence of any conditionally independent pattern, whether
temporally prior to the observation of an event or not, can help (in conjunction with a
small probability event) to justify rejecting the chance hypothesis [33, pp. 47-55].

----------------------------------------------------------

Actually Dembski just claimed that. He claimed that it doesn't have to be prior to event. This is false IT MUST be chosen prior to the event with the statistical technique he used. He did a few other cheats as well. I will get to that later.

The author keeps switching what he is talking about. Sometimes he is talking about modern biology and others he is talking about the beginning of life. He does not exactly justify this shotgun approach. Clearly he does not think he can just depend on one even though he constantly acts as of he has proven his point with his bogus choice of a 100 amino-acid protein.

He is now going the cell route.
=========================================

De Duve and other origin-of-life researchers have long recognized that the cell represents
not only a highly improbable, but also a functionally specified system. For this reason,
by the mid-1960s most researchers had eliminated chance as a plausible explanation for
the origin of the specified information necessary to build a cell [47, p. 7]. Many have
instead sought other types of naturalistic explanations (see below).

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cells are not needed for a self reproducing molecule to function. He only brings it in to add complexity. I guess he knows he has been making his numbers up and they can't stand on their own.

Cells are simple lipid envolopes and can form naturally in water. They aren't exactly hard to get without life. They have been created in the lab through a variety of methods.


Here is actually addressing the RNA ideas.
================================================== =============

Because the same holds for RNA molecules, researchers who speculate that
life began in an 'RNA world,' have also failed to solve the sequencing problemix—i.e., the
problem of explaining how information in all functioning RNA molecules could have
arisen in the first place.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Again with the bogus 'sequencing problem'. How long does the sequence have to be? My 20 amino acid example shows a single specific molecule appearing in less than 100 years in a single cubic kilometer. He doesn't know how long it must be but he does know how long he needs to pretend it must be. So he sticks to very large molecules but in this case he doesn't give numbers. Just says large. We allready know how large he felt he had to make up for amino-acids.

Philosophical error here. He has a degree in it so there is no excuse for this garbage.

==============================================

The properties of the monomers constituting nucleic acids and proteins simply
do not make a particular gene, let alone life as we know it, inevitable.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Who the heck ever said life AS WE KNOW IT is inevitable. Run the same thing again and you won't get us I guarantee it. May not even get DNA. All that any real scientist would say MAY be inevitable is a self-reproducing molecule that evolution can work on. There is no need that it produce us. He thinks he is special I guess. He isn't even good at his job much less special.


Ohh I like this bit of hypocrisy. Its so obvious its funny.

================================================

Origin of life theories can leapfrog the problem altogether, but only by
presupposing the presence of information in some other pre-existing form. Such
approaches “solve” the information problem only by shifting it elsewhere.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

So its OK for him to shift it to an inteligent designer but not for others like the late Dr. Hoyle to shift it to another planet. At least in Hoyles case he is claiming an infinite universe with infinite time. Meyer's 'Inteligent Designer' has cannot arise by accident with infinite opportunity like in Dr. Hoyle's ideas. If life must have a designer than the designer must also have a designer. There is no way around it except to claim magical happenings.

===============================================

Further, the chemical conditions required for the synthesis of ribose sugars are decidedly
incompatible with the conditions required for synthesizing nucleoside bases [97, 85]. Yet
both are necessary constituents of RNA. Second, naturally occurring RNA possesses very
few of the specific enzymatic properties of the proteins that are necessary to extant cells.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Two problems with that. One RNA is not the only choice besides DNA and RNA molecules capabable of copying RNA exist. The one that has been discovered is not perfect for the job but it does show that it may very well be possible.

Link for RNA copying enzyme

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-01n.html

Link for a third possible molecular type for the job PNA Peptide Nucleic Acid . Interestingly enough its Dr Stanley Miller that has done some of the work. The same guy that did the first life in a lab experiments in the 50's.

http://www.accessexcellence.org/WN/NM/miller.html

And here is a PDF on PNA

http://rnaworld.princeton.edu/~rdknight/Papers/Cell00.pdf

I suspect that a combination of types could do the job better than any single type of molecule. Indeed the structures that translate MRNA into proteins are a mix of RNA and protein.

================================================== ==========

Second, for a single stranded RNA-catalyst to self-replicate (which is the only
function that could be selected in a pre-biotic environment) it must find an identical RNA
molecule in close vicinity to function as a template, since a single stranded RNA cannot
function as both enzyme and template.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And how does he know this. He doesn't. He made it up. Small self copying molecules HAVE been made. They DON'T act as he claims RNA must. They do require carefull lab conditions but any experiment we ever do for early molecules will need that as we can't wait one hundred million years and use the entire Earth for the test vessel.

================================================== ===========

If attempts to solve the information problem only relocate it, and if neither chance,
nor physical-chemical necessity, nor the two acting in combination, explain the ultimate
origin of specified biological information, what does?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They don't merely relocate it unless you use his exceedingly questionable numbers.Chance is enough if there is a short enough molecule. No one yet knows the shortest possible self reproducing molecule under early earth conditions. However we do have very short molecules that can do that under special conditions which gives reason to believe a fairly short molecule may be able to do in the real conditions of the early Earth. There certainly is no reason to say it can't be done except to push his creator.

Continued in part Two.

[Ethelred]

Part Two of Two


Do we know of any entity that has
the causal powers to create large amounts of specified information? We do. As Henry
Quastler recognized, the “creation of new information is habitually associated with
conscious activity” [47, p. 16].
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Which of course requires a creator in his point of view. So he is just trying to evade the question of how it arose. Besides I am fully capable of showing how information can be gained once life gets started. Indeed I allready did that on this thread. The information comes from the environment.

I have yet to see anything magical about Man. If we can create information than other things can. Non-intelgent things since the things that make us are non-inteligent. That is we are chemical machines and there is nothing special about it except for the level of complexity. Complexity we could easily have gained from the environment via evolution.

================================================== ========
This generalization—that intelligence is the only known cause of specified
complexity or information (at least, starting from a non-biological source, see endnote xii
above)—has received support from origin-of-life research itself.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I just gave a non-inteligent source of information. In fact the environment we live in is OUR source of information. We don't just make it up we find it out by studying the world and universe around us. We spend a great deal of energy on it and that energy is what enables the increase in complexity. The early earth was a high energy environment fully capable of making unusual and high energy chemicals.

================================================== ==============
Thus, mind or intelligence, or what philosophers call “agent
causation,” now stands as the only cause known to be capable of generating large
amountsxiii of specified information (starting, at least, from a non-living system). As a
result, the presence of a specified information-rich sequence or system provides a basis
for inferring design.xiv

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Or just an excuse to obfuscate for thirty-seven pages. Inteligence is not the only cause possible. He had to make up a lot of stuff to even remotely justify that false conclusion. Bad premises lead to bad logic. He had a lot of bad premises.

================================================== ==========
Recently, a formal theoretical account of such reasoning has been developed. In The
Design Inference, mathematician and probability theorist William Dembski notes that
rational agents often infer or detect the prior activity of other designing minds by the
character of the effects they leave behind.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well Dembski claims that anyway.

================================================== =======
Dembski’s work shows that
recognizing the activity of intelligent agents constitutes a common and fully rational
mode of inference [33, pp. 1-35].
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Actually it does no such thing. Dembski just claimed it did without actually showing it. He did a lot of work and then suddenly left out all the steps between the work he did and that conclusion. He also had some rather dubious manuever in his logic. Like a tautology being passed of as a important step in his logic. For some reason he chose to disguise the nature of the step by showing one side completely with the other side being a black box function described elswhere. The part hidden elswhere is simply the negation of the part he showed. Now why whould he try to obscure that? Why did he even have it in his equation? To make things look more mathematicly mysterious is my guess.

There is one thing Meyer appears to agree with me on. President Kennedy was shot from behind not from the Grassy Knoll. If someone actually reads this remark please don't respond on this thread. Start another and link to it.
================================================== ====

While admittedly the design inference does not provide a deductively certain proof
(nothing based upon empirical observation can), it does not qualify as a fallacious
argument from ignorance.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Sure it does. It argues that we don't know everything so he can try to wedge a god into the gap.

================================================== ===

Instead, the design inference from biological information
constitutes an “inference to the best explanation” [105, pp. 32-88].
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Its not an explanation. The creator would need a creator by the exact same reasoning.

================================================== ====

Causes that have the capability to produce the evidence in question constitute better
explanations of that evidence than those that do not.
---------------------------------------------------------------

Hey something I agree on. Of course he had just admited that he doesn't have anything he can predict with his idea that could support him. So his explantion fails this test.

========================================

They object that the design inference
presented here depends upon a negative generalization—purely physical and chemical
causes cannot generate large amounts of specified information—that future discoveries
may well later falsify. We should 'never say never,' they say. Yet science often says
never, even if it can't say so for sure.
-------------------------------------------------------------

Well considering how his 'design inference' is based on Demski's bad ideas I would say he doesn't much to justify his 'never' nothing at all really to support him. His entire thesis is based on us not knowing answers and a lot of dubious numbers carefully chosen to support him without any real justification for the numbers.

==================================================
Our knowledge of what can
and cannot produce large amounts of specified information may later have to be revised, but so might the laws of thermodynamics.
----------------------------------------------------

Not ours HIS. Not later NOW. There is no reason to revise thermodynamics but his claims are built on quicksand and only a complete rewrite and better reasoning could rescue it as he depends on Dembski for that claim. And Dembski is wrong.

Now for that part about Dembski the source of his statistical claims.

Link to a review of Dembski's book

http://www.nctimes.com/~mark/bibl_science/dembski.htm

http://www.nctimes.com/~mark/bibl_science/dembski.htm

Dang it the really good review keeps disapearing. It is or at least was on AOL.

However Google has cached a copy of it.

http://216.239.35.100/search?q=cache:HWum7ncyGKwC:members.aol.com/echiprt/dembski.htm+&hl=en

That link should get you to it. I can post a zip of it if anyone wants.

Here is the start, an intro and some information on the author of the review so you can see that the reviewer is both competent to do it and actually believes in Inteligent Design himself.

A critique of "The design inference"
by Eli Chiprout
research staff member

Introduction

This paper will critically examine some central logical pillars in the thesis entitled "The design inference - eliminating chance through small probabilities" by William A. Dembski (1997). While the number issues in this thesis that require detailed discussion are many, it will not be possible to cover all necessary topics in this brief paper. A detailed thesis by a well-informed and critical author such as Dembski cannot be clarified and critiqued properly by a short paper. The aim of this paper will be to examine only some of the central ideas and explanations offered by Dembski and show why these may need to be revisited and perhaps replaced by ideas that enable a more logically consistent approach. There is one serious point given towards the end of this paper which shows, I believe, why the thesis fails and I am not sure that it can be remedied. If it is remedied however, several points brought out along the way will be important to address as well.

At the outset of the paper let me plainly state my background. I am a theist who concludes that the universe is intelligently designed based on numerous lines of evidence. However, while Dembski's thesis seems to, in a very broad way, align itself with that conclusion, I cannot accept his main line of argument for that reason alone. I don't believe that correct conclusions should be accepted based on unclear deductions.

IBM research division

===========================================

Basicly what that paper did was pair two ideas. Ireducible Complexity and Dembski's attempt to show inteligent design statisticaly. The constant attempts to force enormous complexity on any possible self-reproducing molecule was the Ireducible Complexity part and there is no justification for the molecule size chosen by Meyer except for his desire to invent a cosmic level of improbabiltiy. As for Dembski even if he made no errors in his math he never showed Inteligent Design only a design and the designer not only could be the environment, all evidence so far shows that the environment is the designer.

[Jack_www]

Ethelred, I know you have a lot to say. If you are planning to make anther large post, can you wait untill someone has responded to this one? I think that would help out a lot of people, or at least me anyways.

[monkspider]

I just read your webpage Lincoln, highly revolutionary stuff!!!

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by Jack_www
Ethelred, I know you have a lot to say. If you are planning to make anther large post, can you wait untill someone has responded to this one? I think that would help out a lot of people, or at least me anyways.

That was directed to something Lincoln posted in the previous thread. I am going to go over the rest of thread now. I may or may not reply to parts of it that don't deal with Dembski and Myer and the claims of statistical proof.

Yes I know its a lot. But the PDF was 37 pages plus it had more pages of notes.

[Ethelred]

Re: The great information debate

Originally posted by Lincoln
1. Stick to the topic.

I did till you left the other thread. Others didn't want to for some reason.

2. Please make answers concise if at all possible.

That is a big IF for this topic.

3. There is no reason to call each other names. We are all learning so let’s see where this leads.

Sounds good to me.

4. Please no general debate on evolution. Only that portion which is relevant to this topic. Remember we are talking about the ORIGIN here so we cannot use existing life to solve the problem of the beginning of it.

You are doing that yourself so don't ask it of others. The beginning of life includes the beginning of evolution and you asked questions that clearly dealt with things that would come after the beginning. Indeed that part that follows this is an excellent example of how you are doing that.

Okay here is my answer to Etheired:

You said that survival is the key to preserving one order of RNA over another regardless of whether the code or translation mechanism is known.

I said survival is the key to what is retained out of random changes. If there is no survival there is no retention.

What would cause one random order to survive and not another?

Interaction with the evironment which is where the information comes from.

And why would the one surviving be more beneficial to preserving the “species” (or proto life) than another?

Because it survived and the other didn't. There is no other measure of benifit. Any change must either contribute or at least not hinder suvival.

If we are trying to make a code here along with a translation process with the use of mRNA, tRNA, ribosomes and the chain of nucleotide “letters”. What advantage is there even if a particular order survives if the code is not known beforehand?

See what I mean about you mixing evolution in yourself. You can't talk about that without talking about evolution. Its inherent in life.

The advantage again is reproduction versus not reproducing. A particular order only matters if is can be reproduced. You are still talking about things that came AFTER life began. Its clear that life must have started as a self-reproducing molecule yet you insist on dragging in modern biochemistry that has evolved for billions of years.

You say that “the triplets come later” when DNA supposedly takes over.

Yes.

But regardless of when DNA takes over what good is the random sequence of RNA or even an ordered sequence if the triplets are not discerned?

All that matters is wether it can be copied in the beginning. Again triplets must have come after the beginning unless there was on heck of an accident.

The code is made up of triplets. How do they become significant so that they can survive as triplets?

Yet again the triplets are modern in comparison to the beginning of life. Again you ask for speculation. So here is some.

The triplets came later. What ever came first the DNA must have come later and a seperate copying mechanism was allready there from before DNA arose. It likely that cells came into being about the same time in my view. That would keep the parts together. Keep in mind a cell envelope can be a simple lipid meniscus that formed around preexisting molecules.

Once there are seperate mechanisms for data storage (DNA or RNA at that point) and copying (some sort of RNA-Protein mix I would suppose) other details of modern cells can arise. Such as specific codes.

Specific codes would be more efficient in copying than simply matching up sections of DNA or RNA with whatever amino-acid has some small affinity for the segment. So a code of some seems likely to form from what I can see. Three DNA or RNA units is pretty much a minimum so its no suprise that its three.

And how is the unique (and mandatory) 3 dimensional folding of the enzymes and associated proteins foreseen by the process as it is evolving?

What is this insistance on things being forseen. Nothing is forseen. It simply is. Or is not. The folding simply happens as the protein is stitched together. It either works or it doesn't. If it doesn't its not going to help the organism. Failure to reproduce may occur. Even if it doesn't a similar organism with a better protein will reproduce more rapidly using up the resources and starving the less efficient.

If the process actually works in a reverse order (proteins first with the accompanying information) how does this information (AA sequence) get turned around into a code?

Why assume that? That is Lamarckian. Its not the way life works now or most likely in the past. The information comes from the pruning by natural selection. I made that clear allready. That is when you disapeared from the other thread.

Anyway, you said that you didn’t know so you don’t have to answer any of these questions. But maybe someone else can.

No one can. You are talking about billions of years ago. Speculation is all that is possible. Even if lab experiments can ever confirm these as possible it will still be speculation that things happened that way.

[Lincoln]

Urban Ranger said:

“Now, what does "intelligent input" constitute? If a machine runs on a fixed internal program without external output, is there intelligent input?

Consider the number pi. If we read the digits of pi as per ASCII in triplets, we will find lots of meaningful information in there. In fact, you can find, for example, everything Shakespeare wrote.”

MrBaggins said:

“Define how the algorithm is intelligent according to:

the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge
the faculty of thought and reason.”

And then MrBaggins gave a definition of ‘data’ which I think we should use here, agreed? Everyone yes__ No__ . Here is the definition:

1 : factual information (as measurements or statistics) used as a basis for reasoning, discussion, or calculation
2 : information output by a sensing device or organ that includes both useful and irrelevant or redundant information and must be processed to be meaningful
3 : information in numerical form that can be digitally transmitted or processed

data

/day't*/ (Or "raw data") Numbers, characters, images, or other method of recording, in a form which can be assessed by a human or (especially) input into a computer, stored and processed there, or transmitted on some digital channel. Computers nearly always represent data in binary.

Data on its own has no meaning, only when interpreted by some kind of data processing system does it take on meaning and become information.

People or computers can find patterns in data to perceive information, and information can be used to enhance knowledge. Since knowledge is prerequisite to wisdom, we always want more data and information. But, as modern societies verge on information overload, we especially need better ways to find patterns.

1234567.89 is data.

"Your bank balance has jumped 8087% to $1234567.89" is information.

Is that above definition of data agreed upon here Yes__ No__

The above definition (at least as a beginning basis for discussion is also assumed to be true, i.e., “1234567.89 is data.

"Your bank balance has jumped 8087% to $1234567.89" is information.

Assuming that these are acceptable definitions here is another quote from Urban Ranger:

“What does it mean by

a. machine
b. intelligent input?

It seems that the conventional meaning of a machine has always the connotations of "artificially created." Rarely the word might be used in denoting some biochemical mechanisms but that's always very specific and narrow.

If you just say a machine, the connotation is there that it has been created by humans. So right off the bat you are begging the question.”

Okay here is my response:

The pi example used in a machine, i.e., a computer (not necessarily created by humans for discussion here) is a flow of data that produces meaningful information when it is assigned value by a person or another computer. It is only data until it is interpreted. For example:

The flow of data that is the result of entering pi into a computer is not defined yet. On observing this data we notice certain patterns and order. So to test whether this data is information we can see if it produces results. Another computer programmed properly can use that data in a meaningful way and produce specific results.

Therefore the proof is in the pudding, or, does the data have a practical value? In the case of the pi problem we can say yes.

So in dealing with ‘information’ or data from an unknown source we must test the flow of data and see if it produces results. On a basic level Urban Ranger’s example is information and not just data.

Now let’s look at the example that MrBaggins gave in the beginning. What is the test we can use here? In his no example there is no test because another computer is not going to go to sleep when the first says “I am going to bed.” So let’s assume that the GA (genetic algorithm) that he used produced the phrase, “Turn the machine off”. Now feed that ‘information’ (or data) into another machine and see what happens. To save time I will tell you what will happen – nothing. Why?

Because there is not a machine that can interpret the data without an understanding between the two systems. Both data processing systems must be coordinated. Values must assigned by someone who has values and those values entered into the program. So we then have another rule and that is there must be communication or coordination before there can be true information that has a practical value.

Then it is also true that in Urban Ranger’s example that there must be communication in order to translate the data in the first machine into useful information that can be put to work. So we can, on the most basic level of information, formulate the following rules:

1. There must be statistics (a definition of the order of bits of data).

2. There must be semantics (there must be an actual meaning) in order to distinguish the bits from randomness. E.g., “up” must have a meaning to distinguish it from “down”. If there is no meaning assigned to this particular order of letters then it is simply gibberish to another person or system.

3. There must be pragmatics (the information must actually do something).

4. There must be coordination or communication between the two systems. They both need to know what the data means and how it is to be used.

[Sava]

I tried reading this thread. Now my brain hurts. THANKS GUYS!