Information as the source of life (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, November 26, 2015, 00:11 (3285 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: The repository contains information collected from the past, but information is the ability to make predictions? So we have a repository of abilities to make predictions? May I suggest that the genome contains information about what has worked in the past, and it contains a mechanism that is able to use that past information to deal with current situations. Therefore, information is not the ability to make predictions, but it is the material which some form of intelligence (more anon) uses, among other things, to make predictions.-However the information appeared. it MUST have developed from intelligence and some sort of living intelligence must use and/or follow the information to maintain living organisms.-> dhw: What is critical is the intelligence needed to use existing information in order to innovate. Innovation will be based on the use of past and current information, and I agree that it also entails prediction (how something will work), and then, as I understand the terms, it provides new information.-This has been the point all along, when you were questioning the introduction of the concept of 'information' into our discussion of how life and evolution work.-
> dhw: Yes indeed, information COMES FROM evolution. And it has accumulated from single-celled organisms to vastly complex ones like humans through some kind of mechanism that USES the information already accumulated to create new information. Information by itself is as useless as random letters in the alphabet. It is the product of evolution, not the driving force, and it is not the ability to make predictions, and it doesn't run life or make life evolve. That is the intelligence that uses the information, or that puts the letters together in a meaningful form. I agree that the process of accumulating information would not be possible without evolution, but that does not tell us what it is within the genome that actually does the accumulating and uses the information.-You are right. But life had to start with available dynamic useful information, which inorganic material does not have. It has static, descriptive information.-> 
> dhw: To conclude that “the first piece of information” has to have arisen by chance seems to me a complete non sequitur..... I agree with David: “It's either chance or design by a mind.” 50/50. And not “has to have” - either way.-Yes.