Re: An Inflationary Account - #5 - Some problems

On Tue, 24 Jul 2007 10:55:17 -0000, Raving <raving.loonie@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On Jul 18, 9:03 pm, r norman <r_s_norman@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, 18 Jul 2007 20:42:45 -0400, "Perplexed in Peoria"



<jimmene...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"r norman" <r_s_norman@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in messagenews:9bts939ao2t8te4sge47jjp7miegcg0oqf@xxxxxxxxxx
[snip OP]

You might as well throw into the mystical hand-waving the incredible
mathematical result that (p+q)^2 = p^2 + 2*p*q + q^2 which underlies
all your examples.

Well, I did write "that part of the parallelism arises from simple
algebra in multiplying binomials, rather than from anything deep in
information theory."

I already posted quotations from Shannon's 1948 Bell System paper
where he argues that his 'entropy' is merely a shorthand notation for
a measure over probability space. He demonstrates that his measure is
the only one that satisfies certain simple properties, one of them
being " If a choice be broken down into two successive choices, the
original H should be the weighted sum of the individual values of H."
That is all you are arguing: the probability of two independent
trials is the product of the probabilities or, since the so-called
entropy measure is logarithmic, the measure of the result of two
independent trials is the sum of the measures of the separate trials.
All you have said so far is that certain problems in population
dynamics, like certain problems in chemical thermodynamics, obey the
laws of probability. There is a formal similarity to a particular
formula used in thermodynamics because statistical thermodynamics is
based on probability theory.

Well, I did write "But what do [the examples] really prove? Not much,
I have to admit." I am in full agreement with what you wrote so far.

But there ends the connection between
information (or informational entropy) and thermodynamic entropy. And
there ends the connection between chemical thermodynamics and
population genetics.

That's where it ends, huh? Or as Peggy Lee would put it, "That's all there
is." Well, we shall see. But I am not claiming anything mystical here.
I don't even know what 'mystical' means. All I am saying is that ideas
from one field can illuminate another. A 'mystical power' of analogy,
if you will. All I can tell you is to keep reading, and to contain
your impatience that it is going so slow. Not every one of my readers
has spent as much time thinking about this stuff as you have.

You do have to realize that I am a professional critic and grouch. My
family can't take it anymore and just yell at me to stop and my
students eventually graduate (those that I let pass, anyway) but in
any event they all go away after a few years. I like to think my
carping helps others sharpen their wits and clean their prose. So as
long as you continue writing, I will continue reading and criticizing.
You should notice carefully that I only pick very specific points to
comment about -- that means I really like the rest. And you may
notice that I select only a few threads on this group as worth
following -- I don't even bother downloading the bodies of most
posts. But yours are carefully marked for retrieval.

I shudder to think of the number of times that I have been reminded
that these processes present the same pattern of distributional
evolution but that is where the similarity begins and ends.

Why not just call it a 'Dynamical system' ( or whatever other
formalism happens to fit the beast) and be done with it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamical_system_%28definition%29

From the biological perspective, the abstracted 'generalization' is
the 'value-added' informational product. It pertains equivalently to
many, diverse situations.

Whereas 'Biological Information' usage favors glossing over and
forgetting the extracted contextual component ... ... Physical
scientists are very careful to maintain and carry oversight of
external, embedding context. Great care is taken to properly set up
the description at the outset.

It suddenly occurs to me. Perhaps it is mainly because of the very
large quantity of repetitions of instances, I.E. the Law of large
numbers, that the advantages provided by 'conservation' and 'closure'
can be fully exploited.

The much smaller number of interactions that seem to be characteristic
of 'Biological Information' *might* imply that closure and
conservation do not govern the evolution of the dynamic. Perhaps, it
is a local symmetry breaking situation (?)

Although it bothers me that I have casually abandoned 'closed
formulation', 'conservation', careful construction, etc ... These
discarded properties *really are* those that we associate to steady
state, globally distributed, asymptotic (?), converged (?), end-
states (?). .. Dare I think, 'global symmetry breaking' bifurcation
(?)

My suggestion-exploration is that 'context free' descriptions,
formulations, methodology have a specific meaning ...
..The 'context' is partitioned out globally and equally (?) across
all instances of the ensemble of possibilities.

Would it be reasonable to suggest that the 'context' is uniformly
distributed throughout a 'physical description' as an anisotropic
quality?

You seem to be losing your touch -- parts of this almost seem to make
sense.

You should know that I have long been a fan of the dynamic systems
approach to biological issues, claiming that all interesting biology
is built out of the 'emergent properties' that dynamic systems people
love to discuss. Your claim that 'biological information' glosses
over and forgets important issues mirrors that of our resident
philosopher of science who argues that 'biological information' has
not (and possibly can not) be properly defined and that trying to
force thinking along those lines does not contribute to our
understanding of biology. He also doesn't care for 'emergence'. And
your argument about the much smaller number of interactions in biology
suggests Laughlin and Pine's "middle way", this being the Laughlin of
"physics from the bottom down", an exposition of emergent principles.
And, finally, anisotropy is a critically important part of biology as
evidenced by the Curie Prigogine principle where fluxes if different
tensorial dimension cannot be coupled in isotropic systems.

But it is really difficult reaching out for some semblance of
rationality in your write.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: An Inflationary Account - #5 - Some problems
    ... That is all you are arguing: the probability of two independent ... entropy measure is logarithmic, the measure of the result of two ... dynamics, like certain problems in chemical thermodynamics, obey the ... My suggestion-exploration is that 'context free' descriptions, ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Policy asked to investigate entropy-claim in website of Turku University in Finland
    ... universe is gravity. ... into a state of lower entropy from the point of view of the ... Thermodynamics " argument. ... within an EM context" doesn't sound right. ...
    (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)
  • Re: Dawkins gives incorrect answer
    ... > to be contradictions in this context. ... > not appropriate for the science of biology. ... > information massively reducing fitness. ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: Dawkins gives incorrect answer
    ... it is deductive from their entropy ... Darwinian maximand does *NOT* ... regarded as information within physics. ... >> all physics is biology. ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)