Re: Where does information come from?

dkomo wrote:
r norman wrote:

On Thu, 01 Jun 2006 04:18:28 GMT, John Harshman
<jharshman.diespamdie@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


r norman wrote:

[snip]


I am trying to use "information" in a way that makes some sense
without formally defining exactly what it is. Just counting
nucleotides (two bits per) obviously doesn't do it. Obviously genome
sequences have something in their arrangement of nucleotides that is
used for something. And, yes, the "informational" content of the
single genome is somehow related to evolution -- mutation and
selection -- which is a population concept. And, yes, the
information content does involve adaptation. If there is anything at
all to an 'increase in information' it is as organisms become more
complex, more specialized, yes more adapted.

That's the problem. I'm not sure there is a purpose to this. Look how
easily you fall into fallacy when you try to do it, equating complexity,
specialization, and adaptation. That's creationist talk. Is there a
useful way to approximate what creationists mean by "information" in a
way that really lets us talk about it increasing or decreasing through
evolution? I have my doubts.


That really is the problem. I don't know how to define information
but, as Justice Stewart said, I know it when I see it. More than
fifty years ago as an undergraduate I started working on the problem
of how to define information content of structure or organization,
especially as it applies to highly organized biological systems. Even
as the discipline of "complex system studies" grew, nobody has been
able to really describe that elusive concept properly. Still, it is
more than just creationist talk -- there really has to be something
there. Clearly living things are highly organized, as exemplified in
the words 'organ' and 'organism'. Non-living things may have
crystalline or fractal type of structure, but those pale in
significance compared to the rich hierarchy of structures found in
biology. That rich structure is the product of evolution. But how
to express it properly???



Take a look at the book _The Touchstone of Life_ by Werner Loewenstein. Loewenstein is a distinguished biophysicist who has made important discoveries in cell communication and biological information transfer.

He writes,

"Information, in its connotation in physics, is a measure of order -- a universal measure applicable to any structure, any system. It quantifies the instructions that are needed to produce a certain organization. This sense of the word is not too far from the one it once had in old Latin. Informare meant "to form," "to shape," "to organize." There are several ways one could quantify here, but a specially convenient one is in terms of binary choices. So, in the case of Maxwell's demon we would ask, how many "yes" and "no" choices he makes to achieve a particular molecular organization, and we would get the answer here directly in *bits*. In general, then, we compute the information inherent in any given arrangement of matter (or energy) from the number of choices we must make to arrive at that particular arrangement among all equally possible ones. We see intuitively that the more arrangements are possible, the more information is needed to get to that particular arrangement."

--Lowenstein, p. 7

"Thus, defined, information is universal measure that can be applied equally well to a row of cards, a sequence of amino acids, a score of music, an arrangement of flowers, a cluster of cells, or a configuration of stars."

--Lowenstein, p. 8

"Information thus becomes a concept equivalent to entropy, and any system can be described in terms of one or the other. An increase in entropy implies a decrease of information, and vice versa. In this sense, we may regard the two entities as related by simple conservation law: *the sum of (macroscopic) information change and entropy change in a given system is zero.*"

--Lowenstein, p. 10

"In principle, then, the production of macromolecular information can be as large as you wish, so long as the gain of molecular information (delta Im) and the sum of the production of entropy in the macromolecule (delta Sm) and of the entropy in the environment (delta Sc) balance out:

(delta Im) = (delta Sc) + (delta Sm)

-- Lowenstein, p. 55


We see that a number of cherised ideas in talk.origins' received view (some of which have appeared in this thread) have been demolished by Lowenstein:

(1) that information must involve the transmission of messages between source and receiver

(2) that information in biology doesn't have an objective definition

(3) that information depends upon interpretation by an intelligent oberver

(4) that there is no relationship between entropy, order and information

(5) that DNA carries no information.

Personally, I find the demolition job satisfying. All this (mis)information has been floating around for far too long.

Sorry, but this fails to do any work. At *what level* do we make choices that give us the bits? A house of cards has the entropy of the arrangement of the card, of the faces, of the suits, of the materials from which it is made, of the location in which it is placed, the entropy of the ambient temperature and air...

The problem is not that you can't objectively quantify order - it's that you can quantify *any amount* of order you like depending on the description. The "entropy" is in the description.



--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
University of Queensland - Blog: evolvethought.blogspot.com
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Where does information come from?
    ... information inherent in any given arrangement of matter from ... "Information thus becomes a concept equivalent to entropy, ... that information in biology doesn't have an objective definition ... the problem is that creationists ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Where does information come from?
    ... sequences have something in their arrangement of nucleotides that is ... In general, then, we compute the information inherent in any given arrangement of matter from the number of choices we must make to arrive at that particular arrangement among all equally possible ones. ... "Information thus becomes a concept equivalent to entropy, and any system can be described in terms of one or the other. ... that information in biology doesn't have an objective definition ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Where does information come from?
    ... In general, then, we compute the information inherent in any given arrangement of matter from the number of choices we must make to arrive at that particular arrangement among all equally possible ones. ... "Information thus becomes a concept equivalent to entropy, and any system can be described in terms of one or the other. ... that information in biology doesn't have an objective definition ... based entirely on the number of "configurations" or possible messages ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Where does information come from?
    ... information inherent in any given arrangement of matter from ... "Information thus becomes a concept equivalent to entropy, ... that information in biology doesn't have an objective definition ... based entirely on the number of "configurations" or possible messages ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Dawkins gives incorrect answer
    ... > I do not claim "that Biology involves metaphysics ... > in heritable noise validly constitutes evolution. ... >> structure is information (the opposite of entropy, which is pure noise in the ... because it represents a universality. ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)