User:Sterile/ASKSteriletalk

original TE
Suppose that there were 15000 species on the ark, and that in 4300 years evolution is to account for at least 2 million total species (a low estimate as to the number of species on earth). That amounts an average rate of 460 new species per year, or greater than one per day. (And the rate was higher in the past, and does not account for the current loss of species.) This would imply that the population of each species would have to accumulate mutations at an enormously high rate, certainly higher than the rate today, and at a rate that would destroy the fitness of any species involved. Hence, if the mutation rate is correct, the change in time must be incorrect. So one year is not one year, time is not uniform. Then can we trust the assertion that it's been 4300 since a global flood?

Consequent discussion
Quick note, typo: "460 new species per day" should be "460 new species per year", right? And, yeah, the mutation rate required is enormous. Is the "initial" condition of 5000 close to what is claimed? 20:09, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I thought I fixed the year thing--let's do that. I made up 5000.  I guess this source says 15000 animals. (I can't figure out the "clean birds" part--I'll have to look for the original reference.)  I will fix.  Sterile 21:32, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Maybe you could find a YEC source for the starting number? 02:24, 3 April 2009 (UTC)


 * From memory, Woodmorappe puts the figure at about 16,000, so 15,000 is pretty close.
 * Your main problem, however, is that your argument assumes that speciation is due solely to mutations. Creationists would instead argue that it is mostly due to a "sorting out" of the existing genetic information (see Adaptation and natural selection) which can happen quite rapidly.
 * Philip J. Raymentdiscuss 02:49, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It can't be. There genetic difference between species as indicated by genomic studies is too great.  If there are 2000000 species that all came from 16000 animals, that means 125 species have to be related to each of the original species on the ark.  I challenge you to provide me the genetic sequences of the 125 species that are close enough together to be explained by genetic variation.  Sterile 13:28, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * First, demonstate that there are two million species that came from the creatures on the ark. Some estimates put the total number of all species as low as two million, and you have to exclude marine creatures, plants, bacteria, and insects, which need not have been on the ark.  And those groups make up the vast majority of all species.  Second, I've no intention of listing genetic sequences which, in many cases, have not even been sequenced yet anyway.  Philip J. Raymentdiscuss 14:27, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Show me evidence that there aren't two million species from the creatures that come from the ark. And two million is an exremely low number of species--most are at least 10 times that, and two million is probably conservative.  As for not wishing to provide genetic evidence, your case would be more powerful if you or the creationist literature could.  It does, after, fit with an evolutionary model quite well.   Sterile 15:57, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * You made the claim of two million species, so the onus is on you to justify that. If the genomes haven't been sequenced yet, how can you say that the evidence fits the evolutionary idea?  Philip J. Raymentdiscuss 23:59, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

No, I disagree. My argument might be bad, but the onus is clearly on you, but if it is, it is because I have to extrapolate numbers of species from a text that is vague and must be extrapolated. What genomic data has ANY relevance to your creationism? Genomic data all fits the science. How is it relevant to creationism? Sterile 02:09, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
 * How is the onus "clearly" on me? You made the claim, so it is on you, as I've already pointed out.  And the number in question is from modern science, not the Bible.
 * Yes, genomic data fits the science, but the question is whether it fits evolution or creation better. Science <> evolution.
 * Philip J. Raymentdiscuss 02:35, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Let's back up. I don't get your sense of evolution. At one point you say the evolution does happen, that there is speciation and that there is nothing "wrong" with evolution (assumably "micro"-evolution--yet is not specitation a case of macroevolution?) And at another point you say evolution doesn't happen, that it's just changing variation within a kind. You seem to keep fine tuning evolution to fit your needs. To use creationist terms, do your think microevolution occurs and do your this macroevolution occurs? It not macroevolution, then what do you mean by speciation? I need to know what your talking about, because if there is no common ground, this is an utter waste of time. To be honest, I was trying to put what I thought your sense of evolutionary theory into creationism. Such a high mutation rate would force a population to not have a fitness to survive. I was trying for middle ground. Sterile 02:49, 4 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Seems like backing up is a good idea. (And ironic, given the point of the article I mention.)
 * I haven't said that evolution does happen. Rather, I've probably said something that you interpret as me meaning that.  Yes, speciation does happen, but I don't consider that to be evolution.  See further below.
 * Per leading creationists, I don't use the terms micro- and macro-evolution, as they misleading imply that the issue is the amount of evolution. It's not.  The issue is whether the change involves an increase or decrease in the amount of genetic information.  Most if not all changes we observe, including speciation, are due to a decrease in information.  Evolution requires an increase, which we don't observe.
 * That is, the types of changes that we observe and which are "variations within a kind" or speciation are not the sorts of changes that could result in microbe-to-microbiologist evolution. See The evolution train’s a-comin’ (Sorry, a-goin’—in the wrong direction) for a good explanation of this.
 * Philip J. Raymentdiscuss 09:19, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
 * You can't be serious. Please tell me you're not serious.  This is the argument my sheltered friends provided when I was 12 years old (and was too ignorant to refute).  "Evolution requires an increase, which we don't observe."  Of course we observe it.  Every child born is a unique combination of genes, and thus a net addition to the species' genetic information pool.  Likewise various random mutation increases the species' net information.  Insertions and duplications virtually always increase the quantity of information within the individual's genetic code.  I mean, come on, this is basic, basic information theory.


 * As for speciation, you mean that creationists have actually given up the goat and accepted that it occurs? Wonderful! Now, given that all of that "degeneration" has occurred in a mere 6000 years, should we not see thousands of new species diverge from those extant every year? And how on earth would anything survive? Given that would require an enormous mutation rate, thousands of times higher than evolution at the least, most of which would cause rapid death, why do we not see an incredibly high mutation-caused death rate in man and nature? Publius 16:16, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
 * So this offends you? Sterile 19:50, 4 April 2009 (UTC)


 * To Publius, yes, I'm serious, and you've totally failed to even address the argument. That is, I say that we don't observe the increase in genetic information that evolution resuires, and you give me an example that has nothing to do with evolution!  And not a valid example at that.  A child has a unique combination of genetic information, but no new genetic information.  All the information he has was inherted from the existing information his parents had.  What does it mean for you if your "sheltered" friends knew more than you? :o
 * Furthermore, your claim that random mutations increase the information is nothing more than a bald claim, and one which is contrary to the evidence. Can you make a random change in this sentence and increase the information content of it?  Duplications duplicate existing information, they don't generation new information.
 * Creationists have long acknowledged that speciation occurs. Are you just now catching up?  Boy, you obviously know very little about the idea that you criticise!  Is it really fair to criticise an idea you know so little about?
 * Did you read the link I posted for Sterile? Perhaps you should, because the rest of your argument is also based on ignorance of the creationary view.
 * Sterile, fiction masquerading as truth always offends me.
 * Philip J. Raymentdiscuss 12:46, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
 * PJR, I cannot continue a discussion when you claim I'm ignorant when you clearly know absolutely jack-all about information theory, and just throw around the word "information" to mean whatever you please without any knowledge of its scientific use. "Can you make a random change in this sentence and increase the information content of it?"  Yes.  If I double it, information is added, as a slightly longer algorithm is required to generate it.  I can change "to" to "tz," which increases the Kolmogorov complexity, thus adding information to the string.  Combinations are mere inheritances of existing information?  What patent drivel.  The very nature of information itself is the combination, the (dis)order of information (information content is highest the content is most chaotic: A#h@88nb vs 00000000).  If two parents (AAAA) and (BBBB) had a child (ABAB), the information within the system has increased. The most astounding question is how you think "information" (whatever you decide it to mean this minute) can only be "deleted." Any change mutation effects can be effected opposite. Publius 15:44, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
 * (I at some point do want to go back to the related speciation question, but I will add that there are genetic processes that lengthen a DNA sequence, such as duplication and translocation.) Sterile 16:14, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

On the contrary, Publius, it appears that I know more about information theory than you. What you are talking about is Shannon information, which is not what is relevant here. Shannon studied how much space was needed for a given amount of data. So as far as Shannon information is concerned, A#h@88nb is indeed more "information" than 00000000. But neither of those sequences of characters have any meaning. As far as meaning is concerned, they both have no information. That the differences between these two sentences: "My wife has a dog" and "Mia doe hy wa gfs". They both have the same number of characters (and the same actual characters). They probably both have the same amount of Shannon information, as there is little if any redundancy there. But the first sentence means something, whilst the second is gibberish (it has no meaning).

Genetic information is data with meaning. That is, it conveys instructions on how the body is to be built. A random change to this does not increase information content. That would be like saying that a random change to a computer-construction manual will result in a computer with an additional feature.

If you have two different recipe books, and then publish a third recipe book that has a selection of recipes from each of the original two books, how many new recipes do you have? None. A child is not adding to the information content; it only has a new combination of existing genes, just as the new recipe book has a new combination of existing recipes.

Philip J. Raymentdiscuss 02:49, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * By this recipy argument, the phrase "a dog has my wife" contains no new information compared to "my wife has a dog", because they are composed of exactly the same, existing words. Correct? HermanH 15:07, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The hypothesis proposed is that shortening a genetic code is the the only way speciation can occur. (Or replace "shortening the genetic code" with "decreasing the genetic information" and a description or reference as to how this is mathematically defined.)  What is the evidence that supports this hypothesis?    Sterile 16:47, 6 April 2009 (UTC)  (I anticipate a similar discussion to here.  There is no data in the citation provided.  There is an explanation, but no data.)


 * HermanH, no, you are not correct. The meaning of a a sentence relies to a fair extent on the order of the words.  Changing the order changes the meaning.  Changing the order of recipes in a recipe book does not have the same effect.
 * It's the reduced amount of information, not the length of the genetic code which is relevant. The evidence lies in genetics; I'll write an article about it when I get around to it, but for now see cp:Information.  Speciation could, hypothetically, also occur with increased genetic information, but the problem with that is that there is no known mechanism for providing new genetic information.
 * Philip J. Raymentdiscuss 03:14, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Five words: Gene duplication followed by mutation. (Bedtime!)Sterile 03:18, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Three words: Mutations destroy information.  Mutations are copying mistakes, not editorial improvements.  Philip J. Raymentdiscuss 06:58, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) A meal consist of one or more recipes (starters, main courses, desserts, etc), so several recipes, in a specific order, make a meal. Taking some recipes and changing their order gives me a new meal. In fact, a "child" book of recipes, receiving only recipes from its "parent" books, can easily put together meals that neither of its parents could (eg: taking a starter that its "father" didn't know about and a dessert that its "mother" didn't know about). So obviously, new information has become available, has it not? HermanH 07:58, 7 April 2009 (UTC)


 * No analogy is perfect, and my recipe book analogy wasn't either. Just presume that in my example I'm talking about books of cake recipes, in which they are all independent of each other.  Philip J. Raymentdiscuss 10:59, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Then let's stop talking in analogies, and come up with a citation that actually quantifies things. Abstractions lead to longer arguments. So provide a source that deals with a speciation/genetic information transfer model in a reasonably accurate way that quantifies information and indicates that mutation can only lose information.  After a discussion of "more" and "less" implies a number.
 * (I must confess, my request for evidence for the hypothesis above is probably unfair. The biological literature is vast, and there are multiple lines of evidence that support how speciation work, not all of which are genetic or based on information theory. Nonetheless, your explanation is a hypothesis, and I am not aware of any evidence for it, so the best we can say is that it is really, really tentative with an extremely low inductive probability of being valid.  Not at all inspiring, especially since "extraordinary claims require....")  Sterile 11:36, 7 April 2009 (UTC)


 * If you haven't already read it (I linked it above), see cp:Information, and in particular the section titled "measuring information". In the beginning was information, referenced in that article, is actually available online, although I'd have to track it down if you are interested.
 * Could you explain the line "your explanation is a hypothesis, and I'm not aware of any evidence for it"? I understand the sentence, but not what particular issue you have with it.  I've also explained it more at genetic information.  Philip J. Raymentdiscuss 14:41, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

edit stop
How are you measuring anything? Your car/vehicle is an interesting example that in some way correlate number of letters to socially constructed meanings of word, but it's not clear how that example relates to how a genetic sequence correlates to the development of morphology of an organism. Mostly development occurs mostly as the result of turning on and off genes. Genes do not say "build an arm here" and "build a leg there." Saying that there is a one-to-one correlation between a genetic sequence and morphology is a gross oversimplification. I suggest you read about Hox genes.

Numbers are a usual way of measuring things, and I see none anywhere. How can we test your hypotheses that mutations always lead to the loss of information and that speciation only occurs due to the loss of information is there's no way to measure information or at least change in information? Especially if this is to be applied on a practical level, your explanation is worthless at assessing its validity because it is untestable.

By your dog example, in fact, speciation only occurs as the accumulation of genes that are expressed as pairs of recessive genes. That's a bold prediction! Can you test it? What were the recessive characteristics that the poodle lost from the wolves? And what information was actually lost? There is no way to tell. Furthermore, I get the impression that you mean that recessive = no information (or "lost" information) and dominant = information, which is clearly not the case. The genes haven't gone anywhere, and they still aid can in development. How is that going to lead to a new species?

The In The Beginning reference is an interesting model, but how can we be sure that the model works? Has it been tested?

And despite that I don't want to convolute analogies with analogies, your own analogy would indicate that your analysis is wrong. You say that "car" has more meaning than "vehicle" despite having fewer letters. Could not a shorter genetic sequence lead to a genetic sequence that leads a higher probability of survival by your own analogy? Sterile 16:17, 7 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Do genes really not say "build an arm here" and "build a leg there"? Sure, they don't say it using English words, or even perhaps in a way directly parallel to those English phrases, but effectively, that exactly what they must in fact say, else why are arms and legs built where they are (unless you are proposing something other than genes controlling that).  In fact a defective gene has (from memory; details are a bit hazy) resulted in an insect growing a leg where there should have been an antenna, because the "build a leg here" (or "build an antenna here") instruction got corrupted so that a leg was grown where an antenna should have been.
 * And sure, the method of encoding those instructions is often via turning genes on and off, but that doesn't change that the instructions are there in some form.
 * And true, this is all a gross simplification, as in reality the process is so complex that we are still not close to fully understanding it. Of course this very complexity working so well just shouts "DESIGN!".
 * Numbers are very often used to measure things, but what of, for example, smiles? Do we say that Fred has a 0.6 smile whilst Freda has a 0.8 smile?  Or do we just say that Freda's smile is bigger?  Does lack of numerical measurement mean that we can't determine which is bigger?  Sure we could measure smiles with a ruler, but we don't have to.  As far as information goes, it's easy to see that information is lost.  See the beetle example below.
 * I think you've misunderstood the dog example, if for no other reason than it was not using recessive genes at all, but co-dominant genes. As for wolves, I don't have the particular details that you ask for, but this sort of information (no pun intended) is common knowledge among breeders.  They know that you can breed from the wild kind to the selected kind, but not the other way.  If, in your selective breeding, you inadvertently "breed out" a characteristic that you desire, you can't reintroduce it by further selective breeding from that population.  You have to reintroduce that characteristic from something closer to the wild kind (or from another line) that still has that characteristic.  So (and again this is something that I'm sure all geneticists would agree with), you could, in theory, selectively re-breed poodles from wolves, but you could never re-breed wolves from poodles.
 * No, I'm not equating recessive/dominant with no information/information. Both are information.
 * Yes, a shorter genetic sequence could result in a higher probability of survival in specific circumstances. But probability of survival is not the criterion; information is.  An example is beetles on a windy island.  A loss of information, in the form of a defect that prevents wing growth, has a higher probability of survival as they won't get blown off the island.  But this loss of information is not what evolution needs.  And note that, without knowing numbers of genes, we can (in principle) readily determine that there is a loss of information, as the information for wings is gone.  (In fact, the enormous amount of detailed information for the construction of wings is probably still there, and all that is gone is the switch to turn on that set of instructions.)
 * Philip J. Raymentdiscuss 03:45, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh, good. Now we have five possible variables to look at!
 * 1) Mutations, as "on" or "off" (or, alternately, as a rate)
 * 2) Speciation
 * 3) Degree of information
 * 4) Complexity
 * 5) Designed

Lots of experiments to try!

The problem with your definition of information is that it is conceptual. It is not operational.  (Or, at least I should say, I'm not aware of any creationist literature that you have provided that operationalizes information.)  Again there is no measurement, absolute or relative, of information. There is no way that two people could measure the information and get the same answer. There is no process to measure information. It's all an increasingly complex conceptual definition.

Ironically, your degree of smiling can be operationalized. We can define the degree of smiling as to the amount of curvature in the smile or the ratio of the ends of the mouth between emotionless and smiling. We may differ on how good the definition is and how repeatable it is, but at least it can be measured or operationalized. It is not just conceptual, a hunch or notion, or based on intuition.

You must have a definition that is separate from mutations. There is no way to measure the correlation between the two variables if the two concepts are synonomous.

There are operational definitions of information in the literature. The Wikipedia page on information theory has multiple ways of measuring information, and there is a separate page on quantities of information. I'm sure there are other ways of measuring information as well. Does the creationist literature use any of these definitions?

The other quibble I have is that you have provided countless explanations, but no data from the creationist literature that serves to verify proposed hypothesis. You have hypotheses that can be tested. You can use science to test this hypotheses, but you fail to do so (or provide a reference that does), or even propose an experiment that could be performed to test it.

And, take into account the following argument from a website:


 * Creationism itself, of course, proves this notion to be wrong. After all, according to creationists, every human being alive today is descended from the eight people that got off Noah’s Ark. Since I assume those eight people were diploid like all of us, that means they had a maximum possible of 16 different alleles for every genetic locus (actually they must have had fewer, since some of them were descendents of others and therefore must have shared alleles, but I will give the creationists the maximum possible benefit of the doubt.) If the creationists are right and "genetic information cannot increase" and there are "no beneficial mutations", then this means there can be no human locus -- none at all -- that have more than 16 different alleles.


 * Yet there are over 200 known alleles for some of the hemoglobin genes, and over 400 alleles for some of the HLA genes.


 * Since there couldn’t have been more than 16 on the boat, and since there are well over 200 now, that means that genetic information has increased (after all, 200 is more than 16).

Sterile 15:02, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Here are some related blog articles from Pharyngula, if you can stomach an evolutionist's blog. The first is probably the most rapidly relevant. Here's another scientific paper that seems relevant: Evolution by gene duplication: an update. More like a review article and probably more accessible than the paper hyperlinked above. Sterile 21:32, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
 * A moderate post on gene duplication. Includes information on the PubMed search (that'd be a medical database) for "gene duplication evolution," and features references to scientific articles named, "Independent Duplications of the Acetylcholinesterase Gene Conferring Insecticide Resistance in the Mosquito Culex pipiens" and "Evolution from fish to mammals by gene duplication."  Interesting that duplication conferred resistance.
 * A post about how the number of chromosomes can become less as evolution proceeds.
 * Gene duplication with lots of links to other blogposts.

Oh, and here's a beautiful paper by a information theorist, Thomas Schneider entitled "Evolution of biological evolution". It even talks about irreducible complexity and creationism, and the "mutation is deletion" claim: "The ev model shows explicitly how this information gain comes from mutation and selection, without any other external influence, thereby completely answering the creationists." Sterile 22:55, 10 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Please explain what you mean by information not being "operational".
 * I linked to an article which gave an example of relative measurement, so your claim that there is no relative measurement is incorrect. And two people would both get the same answer.
 * Yes, I said that the degree of smiling could be measured (operationalized?). My point was that it doesn't need to be in order to determine which is the bigger one.  Are you seriously saying that two  different people aren't going to agree on which is the bigger smile?  You're right, a smile "is not just conceptual, a hunch or notion, or based on intuition".  And neither is information.
 * The definition of information is separate from mutations.
 * From a quick look, the Wikipedia articles are talking about Shannon information, which is a different concept which does not take into account the meaning. I've already pointed that out on this very page.
 * I don't think there's much point in providing data when you can't even get your head around the concept.
 * The author of your link doesn't know what he is talking about, so has little credibility. For one thing, creationists do not say that there are "no beneficial mutations".  He's talking nonsense.  For another, he seems to be assuming that any change is an increase in information, something that is also denied by creationists.  Thirdly, I heard recently from a biologist studying the human genome that the number of alleles for a given locus is actually very consistent with the creationary view.  I don't recall all the details perfectly, but it was something like this.  Adam and Eve between them could have had a maximum of four alleles for any given locus.  And there are very few places where there are more than four!  (And information-neutral or information-destroying mutations could account for the rest.)  Further, there are very few places in the mitochondrial DNA (i.e. only passed down from females) where there are more than two alleles.  Given the possibility of a few exceptions due to mutations, this is exactly what creationism would predict, but there's no evolutionary reason for expecting these particular figures.
 * I've stomached Pharyngula before, getting into a long debate with someone who wanted to throw every off-topic anti-Christian myth at me that he could think of, getting complimented for my civility in debating, and being described by PZ Myers as a troll, apparently simply because I was a creationist (great objectivity there). But I'm sick of reading evolutionists' "just-so" stories about how they think evolution might have happened, but with no testable data because it was all in the past, and they are just comparing similar things today and concluding that they are probably related (because, of course, they presuppose evolution).
 * However, I did take a quick look at your last link. I noticed two things.  First, Schneider appears to be using Shannon information!  Oops.  Second, I note that he said, that his model "quantitatively addresses the question of how life gains information, a valid issue recently raised by creationists" (emphasis added).  (That was in the same paragraph you quoted me; you did see that, didn't you???)  Third, Schneider was replying, in part at least, to Royal Truman, who has replied to his paper here.
 * Philip J. Raymentdiscuss 13:46, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

If you can't or are unwilling to look up operational definition, then we are truly at an impasse. I think I learned that in a science class when I was about 14 years old. It's frustrating that you are insistent that we evolutionists be "open-minded" enough to look at your literature, but you aren't willing to look at ours except the selected ones you feel relevant to rebut. A refusal to look at evidence means we're not having a discussion. After all, I've been stomaching your discussion about how creationists think speciation might have happened, why not look at another model? Notably, I have data to real-life organisms and genetic sequences that are referenced, and you have a dog example, which is an explanation, still with no data.

Which article defines the relative sense of information differently than mutations are correlated with "meaningful" information loss? I think I missed that, especially if now it's "meaningful information" that is relevant. (Meaning. Conceptualized, nonoperational variable #6.  It must be another variable because you make some sort of differentiation between the two.)  What do you mean by meaningful? Isn't "beneficial" and "harmful" the meaning you need? (I also realize you refuse to look at natural selection, and differential probability of survival, which is "meaningful," which will make this discussion hard. You can't decouple the two truly and discuss genetics.)

No one in the scientific community denies that this issue is important—hence why they are studying it!

Some of Truman's response is valid—it is difficult to model any genetic process by computer—but I still see no valid modeling by creationists that supports their hypothesis. It also may well be that computing power wasn't great enough in 2000 to give a better model. And it's also not like scientists have stopped looking at these issues. (The Gitt model that Truman references builds on Shannon's model and then says it's wrong, a rather bizarre contradiction.) Sterile 15:20, 11 April 2009 (UTC) PS I won't pretend to understand Kolmogorov complexity, but is that "meaningful" information? Sterile 22:19, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

---

OK, so I spent some time reading about Shannon information and about Kolmogorov complexity. It's likely that your understanding of information transfer and loss is based on both of these two quantifications--operationalizations, really--of information. It's also pretty clear to me that if you mix them up, you will lead to a false conclusion. (Inspiration is at talkorigins.)

Shannon information is about the ability to transfer a signal through a noisy channel or with static added. The whole point of Shannon's work is that added noise cannot add information into a channel. By analogy with genetics, mutations cannot add information to a to a genetic signal. This also can be stated in terms of probability. The less options you have for a bit of information (A specified instead of A, T, G or U) the lower the information entropy and the "more" information. This is largely the basis of creationists' source of "mutations are loss of information claim." One can also think of information as probability in this sense.

Most creationists now reject this claim. (Shout out to Kels at RW for that ref.) In particular, the whole point of Schneider's work was that natural selection mediates the loss of information and, in fact, can lead to the addition of information as defined by Shannon (or lead to a less statistically random sequence of DNA bases). You cannot and should not divorce the two. Hence, while technically you are correct that a mutation decreases the information as defined by Shannon, it would be incorrect to say that mutation with natural selection decreases information in this sense. (And, I might add, the longer the genetic sequence--as would happen with gene duplication--the more opportunity that natural selection could add information over time by making certain DNA bases more specific and less statistically distributed.)

The Kolmogorov complexity is a different inssue, dealing with the compression of information that is largely studied by computer scientists. Here, it deals with the number of operations a computer must do to regenerate a sequence. In this sense "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" has a small Kolmogorov complexity because it could be replaced by a computer program that stated "20 As." "AAAAAAABAAAAAAAAAAAA" could be considered to have a higher Kolmogorov complexity because now the computer program would state "7A 1B 12A." This "mutation" required more programming steps, is less compressible, and hence has a higher Kolmogorov complexity. By this definition, deletions, additions, etc. all can change the Kolmogorov complexity, making it more or less "information" rich (i.e., less compressible). Even taking one version of Hamlet to two versions of Hamlet is more information because of the single instruction "repeat." (And hence gene duplication has more information by this definition, just by its doubling, even if it is trivial.) This is largely the basis of Shallit's challenge. (Shallit is one of Dembski's biggest critics.)

One cannot mix up the two, as they are different from each other. Nonetheless, Shannon's model would indicate mutations can lose information, but natural selection can counter and result in added information over time. The Kolmogorov complexity model would indicate mutations can add, remove, or maintain information.

Happy Easter, Philip! Sterile 11:13, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Back to basics

 * Oh dear. Sterile, let me give you a tip.  Don't rely too much on what anti-creationists say: they very often don't have a clue what they are talking about.  And that includes Kels.
 * I never said that I was unwilling or unable to look up your sources. I said that the ones you pointed me to were off-topic, because they were talking about Shannon information, which is not what I was talking about.  So what do you do?  You point me to a TalkOrigins site that wrongly claims that Shannon information is what we are talking about.  Note the following:
 * " Dawkins ... has failed to distinguish semantic information from Shannon information... [in footnote] Shannon himself wrote of the difference between Shannon information and semantic information"
 * "...information according to Shannon does not relate to the qualitative nature of the data, ... Shannon completely ignores whether a text is meaningful, comprehensible, correct, incorrect or meaningless."
 * "Many evolutionists err by restricting information measurement to the statistical level, or to ‘Shannon information’. So-called ‘Shannon information’ is not a measure of information per se, but merely a measure of the minimum number of characters/units needed to represent a sequence, regardless of whether the sequence is meaningful or not. Gobbledygook can have more ‘Shannon information’ than a sentence in English.":
 * "However, information theorist Professor Dr Werner Gitt shows that Shannon’s purely statistical approach is inadequate..."
 * Got the point yet? Creationists: "We are not talking about Shannon information".  Anti-creationists:  "Where the creationists go wrong is in basing their argument on Shannon information".  Understand why I say that anticreationists often don't know what they are talking about?
 * No, beneficial and harmful are not what I mean by "meaningful". I have already pointed out on this page that I'm not talking about beneficial mutations.  I'll get back to "meaning" later, but this is as good a point as any to point out that the link Kels gave you had to do with beneficial mutations, not information-gaining mutations.  As that link says, creationists such as those at Answers in Genesis (and Creation Ministries International, which is actually the originator of his reference) accept the existence of beneficial mutations (but the author puts a "spin" on it in implying that this is a change in their thinking, yet fails to document where or when this change occurred.  This has been creationist thinking for as long as I can remember.  So this is my second example in this post of anti-creationists not knowing what they are talking about.  Although, I will admit, that author does go on to argue that many other creationists still claim that there are no beneficial mutations, and, unfortunately, that is true, but is generally confined to the "less notable" creationists, for lack of a better term.  But that excuse doesn't apply to Kels who apparently thought that article relevant to this discussion.  That is, the claim that "most creationists now reject" is not the one we are talking about.
 * As for Gitt's alleged contradiction, again, that is anti-creationist spin. Gitt acknowledged that Shannon was correct for as far as he went, but that Shannon's idea is not about "information" in the sense that Gitt is talking about.


 * Let's put all that aside for now, and go back to basics. If we can't agree on the following, we're going to struggle to go any further.
 * I'm going to outline two hypothetical scenarios.  In these, you are married to Mrs. Sterile, and have a young son, Tommy Sterile.
 * Scenario 1
 * You arrive home from work, and your wife says to you:
 * (1A) "Tommy and I visited your parents this morning"
 * Tommy, eager to be informative, adds:
 * (1B) "We visited grandma and grandpa today".
 * Question: What additional information did you learn from your son (1B) that had not already been conveyed to you by your wife (!A)?  (Exclude information that you already knew, such as your son knowing your parents as "grandma and grandpa".)
 * Scenario 2
 * You arrive home from work, and your wife says to you:
 * (2A) "Tommy an I visited your parents today"
 * Tommy, eager to be informative, adds:
 * (2B) "We visited grandma and grandpa this morning"
 * Question: What additional information did you learn from your son (2B) that had not already been conveyed to you by your wife (2A)?  (The same caveat as before applies here also.)
 * Philip J. Raymentdiscuss 12:08, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

(Yet again: No data, no operationalization, no correlation, no test of a hypothesis, abstraction.)

What you're trying to get me to say is today is less information than this morning. Which shows that there is an extra "bit" of information in 1A and 2B than in 1B and 2A, hence the Kolmogorov complexity is higher for 1A and 2B despite that they have different lengths. Basically, you are saying that by truncating a gene you can have more information than a longer gene, or by mutating a DNA base to "junk" (decreasing Shannon information) you can make the gene more useful toward natural selection, or more complex (less compressible, more Kolmogorov complexity, more "information"). It of course depends on the exact algorithm with which compression and decompression occurs which neither one of us knows. Thanks for proving my point. Sterile 15:17, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

PS You still didn't tell me which article I'm supposed to look at for your sense of information. Sterile 15:19, 13 April 2009 (UTC)


 * As I said, we're not going to get far if we can't agree on the basics. I asked two simple questions, and instead of giving me direct answers, you tried to pre-empt my response but actually said a whole lot of things that I wasn't planning on saying.  Your unwillingness to discuss what I'm actually saying rather than what you think I'm saying or going to say is what's killed this.  Philip J. Raymentdiscuss 02:40, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

The End
Philip--

I'm not going to continue with this discussion, as it is no longer worth my time. I simply will not proceed without a definition of information that indicates a relative sense of "more" or "less," with a number or not. I understand that you have an aversion to Shannon information (although I'm not convinced you know what it is, really, or why you shun it) and that you seem to be interested with information "in the sequence," but as the information in a sequence depends entirely on the algorithm or method to decode it, this discussion is going no where.

Before I end this, I do owe you a better explanation as to why I insist on an operational definition. You have a hypothesis, and you can use either an experiment or a simulation to verify it. That's what science is really all about--not just "determining facts" such as the elemental composition of a compound. (Even that relies on the evidence that atoms are valid entities, and that they are of different elements--do you know what the evidence of that is?) Science is being skeptical of claims and demanding evidence. Some of that could be hard data, numbers, and some could be more qualitative. The creationist and ID movements would be far better off if they did experiments and the like rather than just giving explanations without real evidence. (My biggest gripe with Behe, for example, is that irreducibly complexity is more a definition. That something is irreducibly complex doesn't give you a link to a designer, or a mechanism by which the designer designed.  There is no when or how.)  In particular, the Bible does not presuppose anything about the relationship between genetics and information; I get the sense it's the mere refutation of evolution (or, at the least, avoiding the cognitive dissonance between science and faith). You could use science to validate that mutations are loss of information, or that animals speciated from baramins. They are testable hypotheses. You could generate (or, in reality, look up) the data. You could beat scientist at their own game--if it worked!

I am grateful for the opportunity to learn about information theory, something I know little about. Now I know a little more gained from this discussion; I'm an informed amateur. (I wonder now how information theory relates to chemistry outside of genetics--Have people studied that? Could it be used to develop drugs or predict binding constants?  How interesting!)  Information theory was not developed for evolution, but it certainly can be used through genetic evolution to test how genetic algorithms change, delete or add information. The answer just comes out of the math--there is no need to preconceive an answer. The data are. ''The scientists aren't looking for a "right answer" that mutations can add information. They are just trying to figure out what happens and to describe our world better.'' Schneider's comments about creationists are very unusual in a scientific paper. Most scientists do not try to tear down others' religions, despite what you think. (Dawkins and PZ Meyers prefer to keep themselves in the middle of the debate. Most biologists do not spend their time debating creationists.)  I've known some religious scientists, mostly chemists because of my background, but why should that matter?

The fringes of different disciplines of science all overlap. Physics meshes with chemistry, and chemistry meshes with biology. No biological system violates the laws of chemistry or physics--the molecules follow the same rules of acidity, electron transport, thermodynamics, bonding, stiochiometry, etc. (There is no need for time dilation fields, changing physical constants, or awkwardly decaying isotopes.) Does that make life any less wondrous that scientists try to understand it without religion, but with science instead? I think both perspectives find learning about life fascinating and wondrous: I suggest you read Carl Sagan's "Wonder and Skepticism." (I also recommend a layman's book on evolution such as Carl Zimmer's. I'll even send you a copy.)

Anyway, best of luck, I guess. I'm sure I'll be around--although not for a bit. Sterile 01:33, 14 April 2009 (UTC)


 * The problem is that you are insisting that I explain information in a particular way that you specify, rather than allow me to explain it my way.
 * The creationist and ID movements do perform experiments, but without all the government (and other) grant money that evolutionists get, there is only a very little that they are able to do.
 * There is no cognitive dissonance between science and the Bible. That's in your imagination.  Creationary scientists do beat evolutionary scientists (note that it's not creationists vs. scientists) at their own game.
 * Contrary to your claim, evolutionary scientists do try and tear down others' religions. I've heard many stories of professors starting their course, if not every class in some cases, with ridiculing the Christians or creationists.  No, most evolutionary biologists don't spend their time debating creationists.  They know that they will probably lose.
 * Philip J. Raymentdiscuss 02:42, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Interesting. Since "information" is important to you, I threw some brackets around the word in your comment above, and then followed the link.  All I got was "Category: Things to delete already".  Since it's your wiki, surely a word/concept that you use to debate your interlocutors would be well-explained - on your terms, of course.  06:21, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Exactly who is being disengenuous? Look at the history of that article, it would qualify as vandalism on most wikis.  Apparently you think that founding a wiki gives one copious amounts of time to create and maintain articles on everything that one considers important, as well as to repeat oneself ad nauseum to those who apparently would prefer to decide for themselves what one has just said rather than actually read it in any case.  BradleyF (LowKey) 06:40, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Human has a good point. I understand the Philip is very busy with the wiki.  However, it seems that what is keeping him busy is replies on Talk pages.  And, a lot of those replies often center around the hot-button topics.  And, those seem to involve this notion of information.  Wouldn't Philip help himself out greatly, and save a lot of time in the long run, if he were to write the information article rather than it being left to "vandals"? -- Edgerunner76 11:21, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd like to copy over the article on the topic that I wrote on Conservapedia, but I don't want to appear to be above the rules that I've set, given that I am currently the person who approves such requests. However, I have several times linked to that article.  Copying it here doesn't actually provide more information, if you'll excuse the pun.  Philip J. Raymentdiscuss 11:39, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I hereby briefly appoint myself to the "article copying approval committee" and give PJR permission to copy over his article. I now resign from the committee.  Go ahead, Philip, bring it over and tweak if necessary if it says what you want to say.  22:35, 14 April 2009 (UTC)