Scordova at UD asks a question that I find interesting.
By way of contrast, intelligent agencies, particularly those intelligent agencies which we presume have free will, cannot be counted upon to behave in predictable manners in certain domains. Even presuming some intelligent agencies (say machine “intelligence”) are deterministic, they can be an unpredictable black box to outside observers. This makes it difficult to make direct experimental confirmation of certain ID inferences.
It has long been my contention that the defining behavior of science is the search for regularity.
Some regularities can be refined into mathematical equations, which we generally call laws of nature.
Other processes are complex or chaotic, making long range predictions impossible. But chaotic systems can be seen, at small scale, to be following regular rules. Weather develops. It doesn’t simply appear. We can find regularities in its past.
Evolution is a bit like weather. we cannot predict where change is going, but we can find regularities in its past. And these regularities are what distinguishes evolution from intelligent design. They are what allows us to look in a certain place for Tiktaalik. Or hominid fossils. Or predict that genomes will form a nested hierarchy.
So I would answer Scordova that science never looks for capriciousness and always looks for regularity. That is the definition of science.
The reasons are partly historical and partly practical.
Historically, it has been a successful approach. And in practical terms, the search for capriciousness cannot fail. It is the default finding.
There are so many chaotic phenomena in our midst that the world seems to be governed by mysterious forces. The notion that one could find and potentially control these forces is a very new idea. It has little support in art and fiction, and is actively opposed by most religions. So when science started being successful and began to produce practical results, it also found itself in opposition to much of human culture. I do not find it surprising that animosity has developed.
Over to you guys…
Not quite Blas. Once again you are insisting that maps are the same thing as the landscape. You’re still wrong about that.
Oleg,
Is not that the point? We can understand many phenomena by their effects. Whether or not they are material is irrelevant.
Therefore, there should be no objection to the understanding of information as a real entity, not just as a mere label.
So you have no objection to the understanding of information as real, even though you can’t see it, it has no mass or charge, and the only way you can understand it is through its effects.
It makes no difference to me if you label information as material or immaterial. For the record though, i am in the immaterial camp for logical reasons. Once you get to the quantum level, material-ness loses meaning.
That information is real and has an effect on material objects is what really counts.
So, great. We are on the same page.
Steve, you forgot to give us your definition of information, particularly as it applies to biological life.
Is it that hard for you to commit to a definition?
Professor Felsenstein,
The objection is to the understanding of NS in a non-goal oriented, non-targeted, non-purposeful manner.
We know organisms do cause their own mutations. And we do know where mutations that happen do to environmental reasons are actively repaired by organisms to the best of their ability.
We can understand organism’s use of genetic algorithms in conjunction with their reproductive rates and quantities as fundamental to the their continuity.
And that is no thanks to the sterile notion of no goals, no targets, no purpose.
That is the objection on observational, rational, and logical grounds.
Steve, you also are ducking OMagain’s question:
Where and how is your immaterial “information” stored before it is “imprinted upon matter” to use your phrase.
Still waiting for your definition of information as it applies to biological life too.
lol, thorton!!
You havent heard of the scientists that have succeeded in storing information on a DNA molecule???
I find it extraordinary that you are oblivious to current scientific discoveries!!!
Tell you what , those guys are in a much better position to explain to you what information is and how they have succeeded in imprinting it on a DNA molecule. Go ahead and contact them directly. Dont take it from me.
At least this way, you wont have to bother wailing on about how these guys are ignorant creationists and all.
Steve,
You can store information in any way you like. The fact that it was a DNA molecule is irrelevant. Is DNA a more significant medium than walking on snow?
Steve,
I think you need to reference some work that distinguishes ‘the mutations organisms cause’ from ‘the mutations organisms would like to fix but can’t’.
If you consider that responsive to my question them I’m afraid you have some serious disappointments ahead of you as you wonder why, year after year, your ideas fail to gain traction.
Allen,
That comment was in reply to Thorton’s assertion that information is a mere label used by biologists.
The fact that information has been demonstrated to be imprinted on a DNA molecule is strong supporting evidence that information is not merely a label but is in fact a real entity.
Second, the fact that information was stored on a DNA molecule is not irrelevant in the least. It strongly suggest that DNA as an information storage medium is not merely a product of physics and chemistry only but has the additional property of being the product of a mind that had information storage as a design goal.
Dont get me wrong. Im not suggesting that that mind is the God of Abraham. I would never do that. 🙂
What I am suggesting is that we call it like it is. If we want to make revolutionary discoveries that have been lacking in the last few decade, this approach has more going for it that the no-gods need apply, purposeless, goal-less evolutionary narrative biology is currently wedded to.
Omagain,
Whether or not ID concepts are gaining traction, you can rest assured the idea of putting information on a DNA molecule was not something scientists got from Jerry Coyne, P.Z. Myers or Richard Dawkins.
But I am willing to go out on a limb and say run-of-the-mill scientists know intelligence is written all over life. They just dont see the need to ponder the origin of that intelligence as it would not affect their approach to their research and development work.
So why bother. Let the gnus (and fundies to be fair) have their moment in the (head)lights.
To the surprise of absolutely no one Steve avoids the questions again, squirts out his usual squid ink.
You were asked for your definition of information and where this immaterial information existed before it was imprinted on matter. The fact that humans can physically manipulate nucleotides and use them as symbols to carry human produced messages is completely irrelevant to the questions you were asked about the previous claims you made.
It’s glaringly obvious you have no answers and are just regurgitating your usual ID Creationist empty bluster. That is exactly why ID will go nowhere in science, ever.
You don’t have any idea how dumb that claim is, do you?
A castaway on a desert island spelled “SOS” on the beach with coconuts.
That must mean to Steve the fact that information was stored on coconuts is not irrelevant in the least. It strongly suggest that coconuts as an information storage medium is not merely a product of physics and chemistry only but coconuts have the additional property of being the product of a mind that had information storage as a design goal. Right Steve?
Thorton blurts “blah, blah, blah’.
What was that Thorton??? You said you concede information is more than a mere label???
Attaboy!
If they are storing information on a DNA molecule, then that is not immaterial.
The real problem here, is that there are multiple meanings for “information”, and you are mixing them up.
From my perspective, saying that information is stored on DNA, or in a computer, is mostly a convenient metaphor. As I look at it, information is abstract, so cannot be stored anywhere. What we store in a computer, is a representation of that information. And that representation is material.
In our talk of computers and information, we think of information in terms of binary digits. But there are no binary digits in a computer. There are only electrical charges, magnetic fields, and the like.
Steve squirts more squid ink, continues to run away from the questions.
I provide my definition of information. Where is yours Steve?
Steve,
I can pick up rocks and use them to store information. That does not lead to the conclusion that the rocks themselves were laid out by an intelligent entity pror to me coming along and using them for that purpose.
There is no ‘no-gods-need-apply’ barrier. It has simply yet to prove to have any practical value. Do science in any way you fancy. Rather than blethering on blogs, and telling other people how they should be doing science, IDists could profitably do some – you know – actual science using their insights.
ID Creationists like Steve will never commit to a definition of information because it would expose the equivocation games they play. Information in the technical sense is just the physical substrate that comprises a message. In the common vernacular however information is often used to mean not just the physical substrate of the message but the encoded meaning of a message. When people speak of the information recorded on a CD it’s the second definition being used.
The other point the ID Creationists will never discuss is that there are lots of known natural processes that can encode additional knowledge in the physical information ‘message’. Tree ring widths are information and we as humans can extract additional knowledge of the previous climate conditions the tree experienced, but no Intelligent Tree Ring Designer put the meaning there. The spectral absorption lines in starlight is information and we as humans can extract additional knowledge of the stars’ chemical composition but no Intelligent Starlight Designer put the meaning there. It’s the same with DNA. The “information” in DNA is provided by the natural processes of genetic variations filtered by feedback selection from the environment. We as humans can extract additional knowledge about the creatures’ past history from the genetic sequences but no Intelligent DNA Designer put the meaning there.
If learning is the acquisition of information, then evolution accumulates information.
Yawn. Simply saying things is easy. You can write anything you want in the comment box at all!
Evolution is intelligent. It keeps what works and discards what does not. Apparently it’s more intelligent then ID supporters in that regard.
Evolution is smarter than we are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orgel's_rule
IMO, materialist atheists have an extremely over-inflated, over-hyped view of their place in the historical scientific continuum. Virtually every accomplishment of theirs – including Darwinism – is plagiarized from prior creationist work and theory, repackaged in vague and unsupportable materialist ideological terms – or, as with Hawkings “something from nothing infinite universes theory”, it’s ideological nonsense masquerading as science hyped up to avoid the obvious.
LOL! What Creationist work and theory would that be? *POOF* 6000 years ago?
You’re making up stuff whole cloth again William. That’s very unbecoming.
It’s like the world stopped for you in the early 19th Century.
As for whether any theory of Hawking’s is science or not: You wouldn’t know. You are not qualified to judge its merits.
In what sense “plagiarized”, William? All scientific accomplishment rests on the shoulders of previous giants. It’s not plagiarism.
Precisely not. Packaged in well defined and testable hypotheses.
No, it isn’t. Hawking’s models, and that of all cosmologists, are only as good as their fit to the data.
This idea that physicists just sit around throwing greek symbols at a blackboard is a myth, and it’s a myth that needs busting.
Evolution is not only ‘intelligent,’ it is brilliant, it is genius, it is the most ‘conscious’ process ever to have been imagined by human beings. The word ‘smart’ wouldn’t even exist without evolution. It is so smart, it even invented human beings to think that it is an ‘agent/Agent’ (even though Charles Robert Darwin expressed his reservations about this). Agents are, of course, only evolutionarily relevant. Nature ‘selects’ like an agent/Agent, right? And evolution is like a super-agent, a heroic process; it is super-organic, organic and even sub-organic. It is a ‘self-tinkering’ deITy cum scientific theory tailor-made for naturalists, atheists and agnostics. Indeed, it is almost-Nirvana, suitable surely for Lizzie’s quasi-Buddhist, anti-CoE proclivities and current mental state.
WTF was that all about. I presume it is intended as sarcasm. But, if it is sarcasm, then it would seem to be sarcasm that is attacking a view that nobody holds (as far as I can tell).
Gregory,
Or you could think of it as a sieve.
William J. Murray,
I don’t think that most people are even aware of the religious inclinations of a particular collection of scientific greats. I had to look to see if your claim re: quantum theorists was true (it wasn’t). But they could all be theists for all I care. Doesn’t affect the way science is done. Claim them all if you like. Darwin studied divinity.
I see you are quoting Hawking again. What is your source?
Neil,
Saying information is abstract is a convenient method of avoiding using the term immaterial. The fact that information is substantiated in matter does not make information material. That was explained and dealt with several times on this very site. The fact that no one here will own up to it does not negate the reality.
Just please reread your own words: “What we store in a computer, is a representation of that information. And that representation is material”.
In other words, the representation is material, the information is not.
UPB has said nothing different. For months and months. Will you own up to the reality that information is not material, but its representation is???
It seems the only thing keeping the ‘ information is not immaterial’ meme alive is partisan wrangling.
Our point exactly!!!
No digits in a computer. You’ll never find them. No digits in your body, you’ll never find them!!!
Ah-hah!!!!
Just wondering about what you mean by information. When the last copy of a work is lost and the information contained in that work is immaterial, where can it be found?
*Moves some posts to guano*
Steve, can you please answer the questions? What is your definition of “information” as you are using the term? Where does your “information” reside without a physical substrate as a carrier?
Thanks in advance.
Nonsense. I have no problems with saying that something is immaterial. It is simply more informative to say that information is abstract, than to say that it is immaterial.
If I say that information is immaterial, that will confuse people into thinking that I am saying that it is mysterious, perhaps spooky. By saying that it is abstract, I am clearer that I consider it to either be a Platonist entity or a useful fiction. For myself, I’m a fictionalist. So I take information to be a useful fiction.
What am I supposed to be owning up to?
Information is a fiction that we invent, so as to make it easier to talk about computers and how they work. Yes, for sure, fictions are immaterial. So what?
If information is immaterial, how are ID proponents looking at DNA (which is material), and concluding that it is information? The entire information story from ID proponents is nonsense.
The concept of information, as used by physicists, is different from what I am using. And my best understanding is that information, as used by physicists, is material.
In that case I’ve never met a “materialist”.
Of course there is more to things than the matter they are composed of – the pattern matters. That’s the entire principle of emergent properties!
Spoken like a true academic. And round and round we go.
But then I wonder what it is that software engineers are etching on little sticks? Oh, right nano scratch marks.
“Hey, don’t look now. Over your right shoulder. Yep, it’s information alright. Ha, crashing the party. What gall!!! No, no! Don’t look at it. Don’t acknowledge it. Otherwise, you’ll never here the end of it. ”
“Whaddaya mean? Didn’t you just say its a figment of my imagination? Isn’t it just a mere label, a convenient fiction???”
“I know, I know. That’s what I said before. But yadunwannatakeachance, see! Ya never know. Shit, here it comes now! Quick, into the bathroom!!!!”
Selfie face palm.
I guess the same way we look at scratch marks on little sticks and say:
“Hey, those aren’t ordinary scratch marks, Neil. Look here, see how they connect here and here. See those tiny little dots there. We better have a second look. Hey, lets break out the big guns. Betcha something’s going on here.”
“See, whaditellya?! I knew it was more than mere scratches. Lookatthatstuff!! Amazing. All that work in such a small space.”
“But what is it?”
“Information, man!”
“information??? Impossible. Thought that was creationist BS!”
“Shhhhhhhh. Not so loud, K?!”
“Wonder if our bodies are like that?”
“You don’t know the half of it!!”
Scratch marks are material.
Alan,
In the head of the one that wrote the work. And if the one is gone, then you’re shitouttaluck.
I mean sure, you could make a request via spirit-link and ask if an ether copy is available. But then………..never mind.
That’s why its important for ones to not keep stuff in their heads but write it down, dammit.
Imagine all the information in ones heads not being shared because the ones couldn’t be bothered to substantiate it in matter; just letting it slowly flicker out from synaptic convulsions.
But its not the scratch marks we are interested in”
I get it. Selon Steve, thoughts are imaginary, not real.
Alan,
Well, sure they are imaginary. What else could they be? It all starts from imagination. What is strange is that you would think imagination is somehow unreal. Its what separates the extraordinary from the mundane.
What did Einstein do but imagine? He did nothing else. His thoughts did not evolve. It was punctuated brilliance. Inspiration seeded in imagination.
As I alluded to before, if you went back in time and heard some guy babbling on about flying pieces of metal we could ride on, you’d think he was nuts and would go out of your way to have him committed.
Such is the bane of ones that dare.
Why would you think it is any different for us in 2014???
Steve, can you please answer the questions? What is your definition of “information” as you are using the term? Where does your “information” reside without a physical substrate as a carrier?
You’ll never convince anyone when you continue to use your own custom definition of words like information without providing that definition to others.
If you can’t provide one and are just mindlessly parroting ID nonsense then say so and we’ll move on.
Sorry to be the one to bring you the bad news but the information in your head *is* substantiated in matter – the neurons, synapses, other cells in your brain. With no gray matter there are no thoughts, no information.
Nice to see you finally admit you can’t have information without a physical substrate to carry it on, as everyone has been telling you from the get go.
Of course that inconvenient fact completely guts the ID nonsense you’ve been regurgitating here. Oh well.
What’s even stranger is how ID pushers think they can win over the scientific community based solely on what the pushers can imagine about an incorporeal Magic Designer.
It’s no different. When the ID camp finally gets around to demonstrating some “flying metal” in the form of positive physical evidence of their Magic Designer claims instead of just blabbing about it let us know. In the arena of life the benches are full of losers who bluster about daring but who never muster the courage to enter the game.
thorton, you are skating close to the rule boundary, and probably over it. Please re-read the rules and try to stick to them! They are more restrictive than you seem to think 🙂
You know, that definition struck me as fishy because it has nothing to do with science. But checking it slipped my mind.
Alas, it’s a particularly egregious quote mine..
Merriam Webster dictionary online does not have an entry for “scientific creationist”. It redirects to “scientific creationism”:
However, Google Books has Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of World Religions which states:
The passage is briefly describing (and not very accurately) the difference between “scientific” creationists and “Biblical” creationists. The sentence Willy quoted is not a definition. He did not claim it was a definition in his original post, but he certainly implied it. And he made no attempt to correct the inference I and others made that it was a definition.