Evolution: as immaterial information (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, June 14, 2022, 10:53 (892 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Information in cells can't be used by dead cells, so chichen and egg problem. Information must be present for life to exist and run its information-dependent processes. The source of life is either God or chance. The first appearance of life is with its informaton present.

dhw: All materials contain information. It takes intelligence to perceive, interpret and use the information. Your authors define life as “information that propagates”. Your second sentence therefore means: information must be present for information that propagates to exist and run its information-dependent processes. So information must exist for information to be present. Eureka! What is all this rigmarole meant to prove?

DAVID: All it means is for the start of life the cells had to contain information.

All materials contain information, whether animate or inanimate, so this doesn’t get us anywhere. Once more: it needs a mind to perceive, interpret and use information.

DAVID: In cells, where is that 'mind'? What really exists is the cells ability to interpret the information code which also requires information.

We’re off again! Interpretation is a mental activity! What is the difference between a code and an information code, and what information does an information code require in addition to its information?

dhw: Your authors say life is “information that propagates”, so now you have information that propagates interpreting information and propagating. Yes, a new species contains new information, but it is not information creating new information. The more you use the word, the more confusing it becomes.

DAVID: The disucssion I am having with you does not revert back to the article. You are reverting for no good reason except to complain about it.

You have abandoned the article because clearly you cannot answer any of my criticisms. Now you are presenting your own muddled ideas instead.

DAVID: I am attempting to show you how information is used in life and by life. Your wild discomfort about the information concept is showing.

So far all you have told me is that for the start of life, cells had to contain information. We agree that cells spend their lives interpreting information, but that does not tell us how life started, or HOW they are able to interpret information. Information itself, we agree, is passive. It requires mental activity if it is to be interpreted. This leads you into a plethora of information types, as listed here:

dhw: Now we have propagating information, instructional information, operational information and informational concepts, and life runs on mental activity which proves that God exists. And all this is meant to “unscramble” my brain. I suggest the following: Life runs on mental activity perceiving, interpreting and using information. Life comes from life, and nobody knows how life and mental activity started.

DAVID: Still a constant scramble as I analyze the bold. Life runs on the informaton it contains, which is obvious.

dhw:The bold shows what a confusing mess is created by indiscriminate use of the word “information”, which you agree is PASSIVE! Life itself is not information. What is your objection to my suggestion, now in red?

DAVID: Life does not run on mental activity. Life runs by automatically interpreting the information it contains.

Living organisms respond to information both inside and outside themselves. I agree that many of these responses are automatic, when the information remains unchanged – e.g. no abnormality inside, and no environmental changes outside. But when conditions change, what you call the “information” changes, and that is when the mental activity of interpretation and decision-making is required. Your theory is that 3.8 billion years ago, your God compiled a book of instructions for each new problem, or alternatively he pops in to tell the cells what to do. I find this a little far-fetched, and suggest that instead he may have given cells the autonomous intelligence to work out their own solutions (adaptation) or even to design new ways of exploiting the changes. So we are back to the same straightforward discussion, and we don’t need any of the convoluted categories of information propagating, interpreting, instructing, operating, conceiving etc.

Missing a part doesn’t matter

QUOTE: "Study of EG has proceeded on the assumption that other regions of her brain had taken up the task of processing language. That’s not as unusual as it sounds; the brain is a living organ, not a machine. Given an opportunity, it can shift burdens around (neuroplasticity.)

Doesn’t this suggest to you that the cells of which the brain is composed are able to respond intelligently to new demands by taking on new functions? Or did your God include EG’s brain in his 3.8-billion-year old Book Of Instructions, or simply pop in to make the adjustments to her brain?

Entropy

dhw: […] Incidentally, the far-sighted Lynn Margulis was also a champion of the theory that cells are intelligent.

DAVID: Yes, they appear to be that way.

And what appears to be intelligent might actually be intelligent.