Evolution: as immaterial information (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, June 08, 2022, 11:44 (687 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Of course information exists without interpretation. I was replying to your own comment: “The only way life can work is that it must interpret the information that guides its processes.” But if life is “information that propagates”, you are telling us that the only way information that propagates can work, is that information that propagates must interpret the information that guides its processes. (And we mustn’t forget that information only exists when it has a material form.) Don’t you find all this a little confusing?

DAVID: You are confused not me. If I have a newly developed concept in my brain, that is immaterial information that I can propagate. Why? I'm alive!! I can put it into sound or writing for others to interpret. That is all living cells do in their small way.

The above makes perfect sense, but again you have ignored the article! Yes, you are you, and you are alive. But the authors define life as “information that propagates”. And so your bolded comment means information that propagates can only work if it interprets the information that guides its processes. Not confusing?

dhw: So now we have information migrating independently of (unrestricted by) the materials without which it can’t exist. So hey ho, evolution takes place independently of the genome, and this offers us “explanatory dimensions”. Again: where have you found the dismissal of chance and the inevitability of a designer?

DAVID: This is from an ID propagated article: designer required as tranlated by me.

Nothing whatsoever to do with the article.

dhw: This discussion has become an "absurdity". Instead of dealing with my criticisms of an article about “information” which in my view creates confusion and explains nothing, you preach ID [...]

DAVID: The absurdity is your misunderstanding of information and its use by living matter. DNA contains coded information. Acting upon it is what living things do.

Same problem as before. DNA in a dead body is still coded information. According to the article, life is information that propagates, and so you have information that propagates “acting upon” coded information. I find this confusing.

DAVID: Speciation requires the deveopment of new infomation to form a new species. In design theory God adds new informtion to speciate. New informaatkon must be added!! Can your cell committees do that? Creating a new species requires a mental concept of what new form/s are desired. Where did the information come from to design and have formed all the new organ systems required? Especaily in the 410,000 time period shown in the new history I've presented. Darwin's worry, the Salurian gap throws his theory out the window.

You have now abandoned the article completely! Cellular intelligence and the Cambrian are dealt with elsewhere. However, for the sake of clarity: information doesn’t design anything. New information (e.g. changing conditions) requires new responses from live organisms, and these responses will entail changes to the existing materials of which the organism is made. The responses are not made by information (which is passive), let alone by “migrating” or “propagating” information, but by intelligence, whether that of God or that of the cells. Intelligence is what perceives, interprets and uses information. But you won't find this even mentioned in the article, By all means, use it as evidence for ID if you like, but now please reread your bolded statement at the top of this post, in which you have life (= information that propagates) interpreting information that makes information work. Then perhaps you will recognize the confusion.

DAVID: Note, we have had this same information discussion for many years, simply because of your constant misuderstanding of the ID concept of how information theory impinges on evolutionary theory.

I see nothing in this article that supports ID or chance. What bothers me is the fact that here and elsewhere the arguments are unnecessarily confusing, often because of a failure to provide precise definitions of their terminology, and on each occasion I try to explain my objections. Instead of answering these, you simply repeat your ID theory, and shove in the word “information” wherever you think it makes sense.

DAVID: Note all of the OOL reaseach I've shown, is based on intelligent design in the labratory. What is done is always following informative immaterial guesses in the scientists' brains.

Since you are determined to digress from the article, note that in my balanced summary of different types of “madness” at the end of the brief guide, one example was the possible madness of humans worshipping something that might not even exist, and the other was a gibe at the Dawkins “species” of scientist:
2) the designer’s creations are just beginning to understand, after centuries of conscious endeavour, how life functions, but they are still unable to design an organism like themselves that can spring from inanimate matter into living existence, reproduce itself, adapt to a changing environment, invent new mechanisms, and pass on its adaptations and innovations to the organisms it engenders. They believe, however, that if they ever can consciously and deliberately design such an organism, it will prove that they themselves were not designed.