Information as the source of life (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, November 26, 2015, 13:23 (3284 days ago) @ David Turell

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.-DAVID: 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.-Thank you for repeating and emphasizing the point I have made repeatedly and emphatically in my post: that there is a difference between information and the intelligence that uses it. That is what is missing from the article you recommended.-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.
DAVID: 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.-I have not questioned the concept of ‘information', but only the way in which it has been used so indiscriminately as to blur its meaning: specifically, in order to conflate the information that is used and the intelligence that uses it. A vivid illustration of that was your earlier claim that “information runs life” (later corrected to the very different “life runs on information”), whereas you are now confirming that the intelligence which uses information is what runs life (“maintain(s) living organisms”). See also below for the same confusion.-dhw: 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.-DAVID: You are right. But life had to start with available dynamic useful information, which inorganic material does not have. It has static, descriptive information.-And once again you are blurring the dividing line between intelligence and information. My point is that what you call static, descriptive information is what intelligence uses. Inorganic material is full of useful information, but it does not have the intelligence to use it. So what is this “dynamic” information? You have made the distinction above: “...some sort of living intelligence must use and/or follow the information to maintain living organisms”. As I understand it, your argument relating to the origin of life is not that “dynamic information was needed”, but that intelligence was needed - namely, that of your God, who assembled the meaningless letters (static information) into something meaningful (dynamic), i.e. life. Neither intelligence nor life IS information. Information does not use information in order to maintain information. Intelligence uses information to maintain life. Your very own words. What could be clearer?
 
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.
DAVID: Yes.-And design by a mind is design by intelligence, not by information.