More about how evolution works: look at the video (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, October 24, 2015, 15:48 (3316 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: I have great difficulty with the current all-pervasive concept of “information”. You and I seem to agree that there is a constant process of transformation by which eternal energy changes into matter into energy into matter and so on. This means there is a constant flow of “information” in the sense that new things are happening all the time ("creating all that is"), but that doesn't mean they are being guided or observed or used by any intelligence.
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> Again, information about what? If we are thinking of life on planet Earth, the information has to be about matter - basically, how inanimate matter can be transformed into living matter.
 
> if I throw a stone into the water, can I really assume that the stone and the ripples are conscious at ANY level of what they are doing? Yes, there is “information” in the sense that things happen, and vibration may be the key to cause and effect, but neither information nor vibration implies consciousness at a level capable of deliberately creating life. So I don't think anybody would call that “God”. These are deep waters, and I confess that I am way out of my depth, but perhaps I am not alone!-Simple solution for you. You are struggling in the above quotes with descriptive information: the characteristics of ripples in water, energy and matter interchanges, new things happening all the time ( a flow of events). Descriptive information is the sort that describes the lattice of a crystal. But to achieve the specified complexity of living matter obviously requires a planning type of information which is provided by a complex code like DNA. Codes carry information, a point that cannot be avoided. Intellects make codes, crystals don't, even though crystals carry information of a static sort. Logical. The essay I presented yesterday by Lightman talks of the rarity of life in the universe. Obviously, special information was necessary to create it from the inorganic universe. Life is a separate microcosm universe within the universe, a very special segment of reality.