Information Complication (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, November 03, 2015, 08:44 (3306 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: It is not the information that runs life, but the “genome mechanisms” that process and use the information. You are merely adding “genome” and changing processing to interpreting. Information on its own serves no purpose until it is used!
DAVID: My English was not clear. You are correct. The information to run life exists and life has a mechanism to use that information. At least I've got you to recognize that life runs on information, a word you recently rejected.-Thank you. Two small corrections. Life does not have a mechanism: it is living things that have the mechanism. That is the essence of our discussion: what is the mechanism in organisms that enables them to change? You say it's a computer programme, and my alternative is intelligence, or a form of “mind”. And I do not reject the word information; I reject your obfuscating use of it, as in “information runs life”.-DAVID: If God guided evolution, then He may have modified it along the way. dhw: “Guided” is another of your weasel words. He could only “guide” it by programming all the innovations etc. in advance (which is total control, not guidance), or - as you say - modifying/dabbling as he went along.
DAVID: I've admitted I can't tell which. At least you are now admitting that life started with information on board to provide the ability to change.-I would like to be nice to you because you are being so nice to me, but my point is that the first cells must have had a mechanism on board that enabled them to process information. I do not like this conflation of the mechanism that does the processing and the information that is processed.-dhw: In your evolutionary hypothesis, the mechanism is a programme which your God devised 3.8 billion years ago to be passed down through countless organisms and environmental changes. This programme automatically processes and uses the information available at different times and in different organisms to create every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder from bacteria to humans (apart from when God dabbles). In my evolutionary hypothesis the mechanism (perhaps invented by your God) is organisms' autonomous intelligence, which processes and uses the available information for the same purposes.
DAVID: Generally a good summary of where we stand. I would change 'autonomous intelligence' to 'explicit information'.-It is my hypothesis, and you would like to change my hypothesis back to yours. You have now tried to replace the mechanism that processes information - what I call “autonomous intelligence” or “mind” - with “information” described as intelligent, planning, dynamic, instructional, functional and now explicit. How many more adjectives can you find? You have even argued that “life” is the mechanism that processes the information that “runs” life. Life functions by means of a mechanism that processes and uses information. All the confusion is caused by your attempts to describe the mechanism as “information”.