Re: Where does information come from?

On Wed, 31 May 2006 18:36:13 +0200, SRNissen <soren.nissen@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

r norman wrote:
On 31 May 2006 08:52:34 -0700, TomS <TomS_member@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"On Wed, 31 May 2006 15:05:12 -0000, in article
<127rc584923lj6a@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Robert Grumbine stated..."
In article <1jgfg.216593$WI1.173527@pd7tw2no>,
R Brown <brown@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
This question is asked of me repeatedly by a creationist promoter of ID who
had a booth at our teacher convention last February. Specifically, he asks:
Richard
You nor your truth talk buddies still haven't been able to answer my
question ? Where does information come from? If not from a designer then
where? Waiting for an answer from the scientific community.
Will
What does he mean or imply (or does he even know what he means?) when he
uses the word "information"?
Is DNA information? Is he asking for the origin of DNA? Is the question
disingenuous? If so, how do we respond?
Your first question to us should be your first question to him. As
he's an ID promoter 'surely' he knows what 'information' it is that the
ID is inserting.

But no, he's very likely simply being disingenuous. My vote for dealing
with that is to (attempt to) get some specificity about what he means.
Perhaps, rather than just asking "what do you mean?" it might be
a good idea to come up with some questions to help him realize that
he needs to clarify for himself what he means. For example:

Is information an "intenstive" or "extensive" property? If you
have two objects, each of which have X amount of information, how
much does the combination have - X (intensive), or 2X (extensive)?
If DNA duplicates, does it duplicate the amount of information?
Anybody who has taken freshman chemistry should have heard about
this.

If "information" is related to entropy then it must be extensive. The
problem, of course, is that it becomes extremely difficult to pin down
exactly what is meant by "information" in a biological context,
especially as raised by some creationist demanding to know where it
comes from.

Genetic information isn't subject to entropy in the classic,
thermodynamic sense.

If genetic information truly is a form of "negative entropy" (using
the word "entropy" in the configurational sense, not the steam-engine
thermodynamics sense), then it is subject to thermodynamic laws and
"creating" it requires a source of energy. However there is no
shortage of energy flows through cells, organisms, and ecosystems that
provide far in excess of that needed to generate "new information".

Still, nobody has ever really defined what genetic information is in a
technical information-theoretic sense.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Where does information come from?
    ... Is he asking for the origin of DNA? ... Genetic information isn't subject to entropy in the classic, thermodynamic sense. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Where does information come from?
    ... If genetic information truly is a form of "negative entropy" (using ... and is so _both_ a net gain of entropy. ... lowered entropy in every classical thermodynamic sense and is ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Where does information come from?
    ... Genetic information isn't subject to entropy in the classic, thermodynamic sense. ... Both gain and loss of information is done via chemical reactions, and is so _both_ a net gain of entropy. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: The Heresy of Scientists
    ... >>> interfering with an enzyme in a critical pathway. ... > managed to confuse himself with his treatment of information and entropy. ... substrates that it acts upon. ... the organism's DNA would have a low ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: A List of 10
    ... Snowflakes each have unique complexity, but would you say that each ... ccould be replaced with different DNA without affecting the identity ... the face of entropy". ... the jaw in your ancestors by evolution. ...
    (talk.origins)