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

by David Turell , Monday, March 04, 2019, 14:47 (1881 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: So if Davies believes that a hierarchy of information can pack more information in, and possibly explain the incredible information content of biology, then there must be something “outside” or “above” the biology that is responsible for the compression algorithm. That information cannot arise from inside the cell any more than a self-extracting program can exist without the operating system/hardware outside it.
"The only thing Davies hasn’t done is name this attribute.
"Should we suggest a name? How about … intelligent design?

DAVID: Material Life runs an immaterial information.

dhw; I find the whole argument unnecessarily complex and irritatingly nebulous, but perhaps Davies defines “information” elsewhere in a manner that would make more sense to me. My response to the above response to Davies is that information on its own is useless. It does indeed need require something “outside” or “above” itself to absorb it, process it, and decide how to use it. But intelligent design is the product, not the user. We are talking here about how life operates, so in life what might the user or “operating system” be? In the biological world, I propose that the answer is intelligent minds. And so I would suggest that material life runs on intelligent minds using information – all the way from single-celled bacteria through to the vast cell communities that combine to form humans. Information comes from both inside and outside the cell(s), but the absorbing, processing, decision-making “mind” is inside it (them). The source of these intelligent minds may be your God, or may be a chance combination of materials that evolved into increasingly complex intelligences, or may be a form of panpsychism inherent in materials and again evolving. I find all three explanations equally difficult to believe.

DAVID: I believe Davies recognizes life's processes run under a complex set of instructions/information which are the ghost in the machine, as in the above quote. It is equivalent to ID without the designer. You are correct. Information does nothing. It must acted upon. Only then can living organisms appear.

dhw: And only then can living organisms function. I don't see information as the ghost in the machine. The ghost in the machine is whatever uses the information. You say it’s a 3.8-billion-year old computer programme (which your God installed in the first living cells) with instructions for every single undabbled life form, econiche, lifestyle and natural wonder in the history of life. I suggest it’s intelligence, and in my post I offered three alternative and, for me, equally mysterious sources of that intelligence, one of which is your God.

You are right. Intelligent information/instructions and intelligent instructions as to how to interpret and use the instructions are all part of the ghost with all processes acting together like a giant symphony orchestra. All dssigned.