An Alternative to Evolution: pt 2 (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, July 09, 2018, 14:59 (2327 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

Tony: On Information

What David and I are referring to as 'information' is more than just random gibberish. It is:

Data that is (1) accurate and timely, (2) specific and organized for a purpose, (3) >presented within a context that gives it meaning and relevance, and (4) can lead to an >increase in understanding and decrease in uncertainty.

Read more: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/information.html

Specificity, Purpose, Context, Meaning, Relevance, Decrease in Uncertainty.

You could write AGCT infinitely in a random string and eventually come out with every gene every discovered....but most of what you get is garbage. However, we know that strands of DNA are not random. They are specific. They code specific proteins in specific ways, in order to fill a biological purpose, in the context of the species and environment in which they exist. They have meaning to the cellular machinery, in that they convey instructions on how to perform tasks that are relevant to the functions of living.

By definition, DNA is information. The one thing not covered so far is how complex that information is. If DNA were the result of random mutations, where is all the the noise (random non-sense) in the signal (DNA information strand)? Not only is there virtually no signal noise in any known genome, the information stored shows a high degree of complexity.

Biological complexity refers to a measure of the intricateness,
or complication, of a biological organism that is
directly related to that organism’s ability to successfully
function in a complex environment. Because organismal
complexity is difficult to define, several different measures
of complexity are often used as proxies for biological complexity,
such as structural, functional, or sequence complexity.
While the complexity of single proteins can be
estimated using tools from information theory, a whole
organism’s biological complexity is reflected in its set of
expressed proteins and its interactions, whereas the complexity
of an ecosystem is summarized by the network of
interacting species and their interaction with the environment.

You could say that the number of proteins that a genome can code for is the sum of its complexity, but obviously, the organisms overall environment, the interactions within it, and the ability to detect and respond to changes within the environment increases the complexity greatly. Evolution can not explain the specificity, the complexity, nor the utter lack of signal noise in something generated from supposedly random mutations.

My hypothesis differs because it starts by positing: The information contained within any genome is, and must be, too complex, too specific, and too ubiquitous to be produced by random chance and natural selection. DNA is a designed language that transcends species, environments, and phenotype, universally found in every living creature. Each gene is programmed in this language for a purpose, behaving as a Function (an algorithm that takes an input and returns an output). It is a language written in chemistry. Physically, it is subject to the laws of chemistry, and by extension the laws of physics. Informationally, it follows what few laws we understand from Information Theory.

A wonderful summary of of the meaning of 'information' without getting into the density of information theory.