Information as the source of life; not by chance (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, January 06, 2020, 10:01 (1782 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "Talking about information detached from the translation system which defines it as information doesn’t make sense. (David’s bold)

dhw: What does this mean? Do you and he think information doesn’t exist without a system and someone to define it? This is similar to the idea that nothing exists unless we observe it. And I’m sorry, but neither concept makes sense to me.

DAVID: It does make sense!! Life uses information with a translating system. It does demand there must exist the two parts, both of which have to be invented from scratch on a rocky Earth at the same time for life to start!!! He is asking where all this came from. Your gobbledygook answer below is the usual nebulous discussion of something from nothing.

Of course living organisms use information, but that does not mean that information did not exist before there was life (i.e. that it does not exist "detached from" any translation system)! It takes living intelligence to extrapolate and use information from materials, but those materials already contained the information before it was extrapolated and used.

"Conclusion
I think my argument shows that idealism is true and materialism is false, that random processes do not produce information, and that a mind with an idea is the primary means by which everything comes into existence. One can use it to argue for ID and for teleology in nature. I would also not hesitate to use it as argument in a theological debate." (dhw's bold)

DAVID: Designed information is the source of life. There is no argument against that concept.

dhw: I thought we’d dealt with this argument long ago. Information is facts or details about something. It is present in everything but cannot produce anything. Of course random processes can produce information, but it needs an intelligent mind to extrapolate that information and to use it.(dhw’s bold) What mind and what idea causes a gust of wind to blow a stone off a cliff and kill the person walking on the beach below? You can write a book full of information produced by this random event, including scientific laws, but this has all been extrapolated and named by intelligent minds. Which came first – the information contained in the wind, the stone, the person, or the author’s extraction of information from them in order to explain the event? “Ah!” say your ID-ers, but where did the intelligence come from to create the information and the laws in the first place? That is the unanswerable question: did materials produce intelligence, or did intelligence produce materials? (David’s bold)

DAVID: The bold is where you join the stone off the cliff. Materials offer information about about their composition, nothing more, ever! Only minds can create instructions and and them ability to act upon them.

You have repeated exactly what I said above, now bolded by me. You have completely misunderstood all of the above. According to our author, random processes do not produce information, and there has to be a mind with an idea before anything comes into existence. I disagree and have given an example. But it takes an intelligent mind to extrapolate and use that information. What you have bolded is the next stage of the argument: namely what started it all (“where did the intelligence come from [...] in the first place?”). In other words, what is the unique "first cause"? Our author thinks he’s proved that idealism is true, and he can use the same argument in a theological debate, but (a) he hasn’t proved it, and (b) I present both sides of the "theological" argument:

dhw: Your comment puts the argument for idealism in a nutshell, without all the pseudo-scientific gobbledygook: in order to produce life (the subject of this thread) an intelligent designer used the information he had created. The materialist can respond by asking where the intelligent designer came from, and by arguing that since we do not know of any intelligence beyond that generated by materials, it is perfectly reasonable to assume that an infinite number of material combinations will eventually produce the intelligence that is able to extrapolate and use information from materials (the basis of science). Needless to say, I sit on the fence between the two explanations. (David's bold)

DAVID: This bold is pure pipe-dream. It is not reasonable, only wishful, as a way of staying on the fence. The universe is not infinite in time, so the materials only got to a rocky planet after 3.8 byo when life with the onboard info and the interpretation systems appeared all together at the same time without any evidence of infinity. Dream on!!!

How the heck do you know that the universe is not infinite in time? What came before the big bang, if the big bang ever happened? You believe in some form of conscious energy that never had a beginning, so it must be infinite in time, but you can’t imagine unconscious energy (plus materials) being infinite in time. All this gobbledygook about information is irrelevant to the subject of "first cause", and as always you ignore the fact that I find BOTH "pipe-dreams" equally difficult to believe.