Information Complication (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, November 04, 2015, 08:30 (3306 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: And I do not reject the word information; I reject your obfuscating use of it, as in “information runs life”.
DAVID: I'll form it slightly differently: living matter uses information to run its processes. it cannot exist in a living form without that information.-That's more like it. Thank you.-dhw: I do not like this conflation of the mechanism that does the processing and the information that is processed.
DAVID: Sorry you don't like it, but the information at the foundation of the living process and the mechanism for reading that information are all contained in each cell.-Yes indeed. Thank you for at last ceasing to conflate the mechanism and the information. However, I'd like to add that the mechanism at the foundation of the living process also reads information that comes from outside the living cell. The cell/cell community would not survive or evolve if its reading mechanism could not process and use the information it absorbs from the environment. -dhw: 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”.
DAVID: I've admitted that my short-cut English confused you. Information and the mechanism to read the information and use it are two separate but inseparable parts of living matter. Which brings me to the other consideration: what gave first life the initial information to use?-By describing the mechanism as information that processes information, you did indeed confuse me, and I am delighted that you now agree to draw a distinction between the two. What gave first life the initial information to use? Shouldn't you also ask what gave first life the mechanism with which to use the initial information? You know the answers perfectly well! Some people say it was an unknown supernatural intelligence they call God or Allah or Jehovah or Yahweh or Mbombo or Unkulunkulu or Nanabozho (real names by the way). Others say it all came about by chance. Some of us admit we don't know.