Information Complication (General)

by David Turell , Friday, October 30, 2015, 20:27 (3310 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Some of us would be content to say that to create something that can survive requires intelligence and planning. I don't think anyone would have the slightest difficulty understanding us.-Perfectly logical.
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> dhw: However, although clearly ALL THAT IS brings intelligence, information and everything else together in a great oneness, and although I agree that intelligence is nothing without information, ... Even though I can't share David's faith in a single intelligence that somehow planned all the information in the universe even before the universe existed (David believes it started with the Big Bang - whereas I reserve judgement, as usual), I still share his scepticism that all the information required for life could assemble itself by chance.-Fine so far.- > Dhw: You say “information runs life.” I don't know what runs life, but I'm pretty sure that it entails a mechanism that processes and uses information.-> DAVID: Then we agree, life runs on information.
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> dhw: That is not the same as “information runs life”! What runs life is a mechanism that processes information, and we don't know what that mechanism is, either in running life itself or in engendering intelligence.-We are currently exploring the genome and its modifying layers of control. That endeavor is defining a stupendous degree of complexity. And there is no question the genome uses information to run life.-> dhw: As I keep saying, information tells us what matter is, does and can be used for.-Shortsighted definition. Information runs all biological forms, when it is interpreted by the genome mechanisms.
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> David's comment: That is the point: information is not material and life operates on information contained in material.
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> dhw: That is also my point, but there is something missing here, and that something is the reason why I am constantly complaining about your use of the word “information”. Evolution entails changes in materials. If we agree that those changes do not come about by chance, we have THREE elements: 1) materials, 2) the information contained in those materials, and 3) the something that collects, processes and uses that information.-'3' is the genome reading the coded information and the modifications of that information taken from the material code DNA that carries the information.-> dhw: Generally, you like to refer to it as “intelligent/planning/ dynamic information”, which gives us information processing information, but in fact you recognize only two “operators”: a dabbling God, or a 3.8-billion-year programme for all the changes.-I guess I am not clear or a presume too much in discussion: The information at the start of life is what you refer to as the 3.8 byo program. What is so unclear to you about life having to start with an operational program? If God guided evolution, then He may have modified it along the way. If God made the universe then He is capable of a start program lasting 3.8 billion years. Life runs on instructional information. Speciation must also have an operational program.-
.dhw: My point is that not only the distinction between matter and information but also that between what is processed (information) and what does the processing (intelligence of whatever sort) is “absolutely indispensable to clarity of thought about evolution”.-Fully agree, except that seems to be your stopping point in thought. I've brought you kicking and screaming to recognizing the importance of information to the functioning of life. Functional dynamic information runs life and how life interprets and uses that information is now under discovery. And it may all be automatic at the autonomic level (bodily functions)and free floating at the cerebral level which is where real intelligence sits.