Evolution: as immaterial information (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, June 09, 2022, 08:11 (687 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

dhw: 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: They use inferences you refuse to follow. Life propagates information using information it has to translate.

They define life as “information that propagates”, and so now you are telling us that according to information theory, “information that propagates propagates information using information it has to translate.” If you think that clarifies how evolution is immaterial information, then good for you. (See my closing comment re the bolds.)

DAVID: Speciation requires the development 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.

dhw: 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: I didn't abandon the article. The key to ID is understanding information theory as it is applied to living organisms.

The article has nothing to do with cellular intelligence or the Cambrian, doesn’t mention chance or ID or the 410,000 years, or the Silurian gap. Nor does it set out to provide the key to ID, and I am simply analysing some of its statements to explain why I find them confusing. But you don’t even consider the way those statements turn your own into gibberish, even if I bold them. All you are interested in is ID!

DAVID: Of course intelligence translates code. But in a designer theory the translation mechanism is part of the instructions cells automatically follow.

I don't know why you introduced the term “translate” here and above. Translates what into what? Intelligence interprets and uses information. Do you or do you not agree? And the article is not about designer theory! It is about “Evolution; as immaterial information”, and I have explained why I find it confusing. It is clear from your various statements about life that you have not cottoned onto the authors’ definition of life, which turns your statements into nonsense, as bolded above.