Genome complexity: what genes do and don't do (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, January 26, 2019, 13:29 (2128 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Information is instructions as to how to respond. Information is not active in and of itself, but is reference material which can be used to create actions.

dhw: Your second sentence is precisely what I keep saying, so we can now dismiss your earlier statement that information is a “central active component”. The article you agreed with states that “the information in the DNA code “cannot possibly serve as instructions” for creating a “fully functioning being”, and that “cells “learn” and “create instructions on the hoof” and create them “de novo”. It also tells us that information (= passive “reference material”) is used by the organism, and organisms are communities of cells. We are left, then, with the hypothesis that cells use passive information to create actions.

DAVID: See my entry today about Davies' news book on information and life. "Comment: Information is either descriptive or provide instructions for functions. ID has always pointed to the latter as very important. Davies is joining in." The information just lying there is inactive, of course, but the cells are totally aware of it and use it in various required actions.

There is no mention of instructions in Davies’s article, and you have already agreed with the previous article that passive information cannot serve as instructions, and cells create instructions “on the hoof”. Your last sentence sums up the hypothesis I have been trying to put to you for the last few years. Cells are aware and they actively use passive information to decide what actions to perform. Thank you for putting it so succinctly.

QUOTE from Davies: The resolution to this paradox seems to lie in the fact that the demon must gather information about the properties of each molecule, and for this it requires a recording device, such as a brain or a miniature notebook.

In our context, the “demon” would therefore be that part of the cell which is the equivalent of a brain.