scientia
New Member
tigert,
I don't mind discussing Information Theory but it seems pointless to go around in circles on it. I can tell you what the theory says and then we can see if there is any point that can be made from it.
A long time ago people understood that a free energy machine or perpetual motion machine was not possible. However, someone then proposed question. What if you made a detector that could tell the difference between an air molecule moving with higher than average velocity and one with lower than average velocity. That sounds possible. Then what if you had some kind of door that you could open and close very quickly. Then what if you used these together so that each time a high speed molecule was heading towards the door, you opened it; but if a low speed molecule was heading that way, you closed it. The container would then get warmer than room temperature and theoretically you would have a free energy device. At the time, no one could think of a counter argument even though this seems to violate the laws of thermodynamics. Eventually, someone came up with the Information corollary which says that any energy advantage you gain by information will cost at least as much in terms of energy to obtain it. In other words, information is not free; it requires energy to obtain. Therefore, you can't build a free energy machine by using information.
The second part (your reference to Shannon) is a different topic; it has to do with the nature of communication and information in this context is not exactly the same thing. When the word encode is used, it refers to abstraction. This is important because communication is impossible without abstraction. Any communicated information must be abstracted. This can actually be multiple levels of abstraction. For example, the letters in this sentence are an abstract representation of vocal sounds. The letters form words which are abstract representations of actions, objects, descriptions, and concepts. However, you can't make these symbols on a computer so letters are abstracted as bits represented by energy states of gates. If these are transmitted as they are right now over my wireless LAN connection, they have to be modulated as radio frequencies. The particular type of abstraction is not really important as long as you understand what the abstraction is. This is where you refer to an encoder and a decoder. Keep in mind that these can include your speech and someone's hearing or hand gestures and someone's eyes. These can also include things like emotional expressions. Of course, this area is a little different because it seems that emotions are innate to our species. All humans seem to understand what sadness, happiness, and anger look like in terms of facial expression whereas an alien would not. This does not remove the abstraction; it just makes the abstraction innate.
Still on the topic of communication, there are limits to compression. This basically means that you cannot summarize the unabridged Oxford English dictionary with one vocal sound, while others think of this in terms of data compression using various algorithms. But, they are basically the same. Continuing, there are limits based on signal to noise ratio. You can approach this topic from many different angles. For example, what would be the smallest planet that could be detected in a nearby solar system? How far away from Earth could a space probe get and still be within communication range if it had a ten watt transmitter and ten meter diameter parabolic dish antenna? What would be the minimum volume difference between someone standing next to you speaking and surrounding conversation so that it could be understood? If you are familiar with computers then this gets into things like parity bits, checksums, gray code, GCR, MFM, RLL, EFM. If you prefer music, we could talk about Dolby noise reduction. Essentially, there are limits as to how much information can be maintained and recovered based on these things. There are limits to the bandwidth of USB and ethernet or the bandwidth of a hard drive controller.
So, how does all this relate to DNA? Well, DNA is a process code. I recall a number of science fiction stories that were based on the idea that RNA could be used to directly store abstract information such as memories. None of those are actually true, however, neurons do have special provisions to move mRNA the longer distances. Is DNA information? Yes, it is indeed. Is it true that only intelligent things can create information? No, that would not be true. A simple example of this would be the machines that create random power ball numbers. There is no intellect used in this process; these machines are as random as possible. Yet, the exact number that is generated is a piece of information.
I assume the point you are trying to bring up is whether or not DNA is a functional abstraction and whether or not abstraction requires intelligence. DNA is a functional abstraction. That is fairly easy to see since DNA gets converted to transfer RNA which is then used to create messenger RNA which is used to create proteins (process simplified). Also, there are control sequences in the DNA which determine how the sequences are acted upon. That is, to the best of my knowledge, there is no direct, necessary correlation between the sequences of three base pairs that make up one piece of tRNA (codon/anticodon) and the specific amino acid that it relates to. As far as I know, the codon sequences are arbitrary, although I could certainly be wrong and this could be corrected by someone who knows more about organic chemistry. So, again, to the best of my knowledge, this is functional abstraction. To explain the difference, there is a toy that consists of a tube with disks inside of it that divides it into sections. And these disks have holes in them that are in order by size from one end to the other. So, if you hold it with the smallest holes on top, the holes get larger and larger toward the bottom. And, it contains balls of varying sizes. If you put the small holes up and shake it, all the balls will go to the bottom. Then if you turn it over and shake it, the balls will fall through each section until they won't fit through the holes and you'll end up with the balls sorted by size. Is this information? Yes, it's not really any different than if you used a sort algorithm (such as bubble sort, shell sort, heap sort, or quick sort) to put data into order. Is it abstraction? No, because each ball is a necessary correlation to the size of the hole. It's just a physical property. It's the same as a key fitting in a lock is not an abstraction. Abstractions are arbitrary.
So, this is where we come to the crux of the discussion. BTW, when others have said that crystal patterns or other inanimate patterns are information, they were correct. You can create information just by rolling dice. The specific pattern is information. However, a snowflake pattern is not abstracted information -- and perhaps this is where the confusion comes in. This is a natural result of trying to combine two different theories where the term "information" is used in different ways.
So, are you saying that abstraction requires intelligence? Can you create an argument for this?
I don't mind discussing Information Theory but it seems pointless to go around in circles on it. I can tell you what the theory says and then we can see if there is any point that can be made from it.
A long time ago people understood that a free energy machine or perpetual motion machine was not possible. However, someone then proposed question. What if you made a detector that could tell the difference between an air molecule moving with higher than average velocity and one with lower than average velocity. That sounds possible. Then what if you had some kind of door that you could open and close very quickly. Then what if you used these together so that each time a high speed molecule was heading towards the door, you opened it; but if a low speed molecule was heading that way, you closed it. The container would then get warmer than room temperature and theoretically you would have a free energy device. At the time, no one could think of a counter argument even though this seems to violate the laws of thermodynamics. Eventually, someone came up with the Information corollary which says that any energy advantage you gain by information will cost at least as much in terms of energy to obtain it. In other words, information is not free; it requires energy to obtain. Therefore, you can't build a free energy machine by using information.
The second part (your reference to Shannon) is a different topic; it has to do with the nature of communication and information in this context is not exactly the same thing. When the word encode is used, it refers to abstraction. This is important because communication is impossible without abstraction. Any communicated information must be abstracted. This can actually be multiple levels of abstraction. For example, the letters in this sentence are an abstract representation of vocal sounds. The letters form words which are abstract representations of actions, objects, descriptions, and concepts. However, you can't make these symbols on a computer so letters are abstracted as bits represented by energy states of gates. If these are transmitted as they are right now over my wireless LAN connection, they have to be modulated as radio frequencies. The particular type of abstraction is not really important as long as you understand what the abstraction is. This is where you refer to an encoder and a decoder. Keep in mind that these can include your speech and someone's hearing or hand gestures and someone's eyes. These can also include things like emotional expressions. Of course, this area is a little different because it seems that emotions are innate to our species. All humans seem to understand what sadness, happiness, and anger look like in terms of facial expression whereas an alien would not. This does not remove the abstraction; it just makes the abstraction innate.
Still on the topic of communication, there are limits to compression. This basically means that you cannot summarize the unabridged Oxford English dictionary with one vocal sound, while others think of this in terms of data compression using various algorithms. But, they are basically the same. Continuing, there are limits based on signal to noise ratio. You can approach this topic from many different angles. For example, what would be the smallest planet that could be detected in a nearby solar system? How far away from Earth could a space probe get and still be within communication range if it had a ten watt transmitter and ten meter diameter parabolic dish antenna? What would be the minimum volume difference between someone standing next to you speaking and surrounding conversation so that it could be understood? If you are familiar with computers then this gets into things like parity bits, checksums, gray code, GCR, MFM, RLL, EFM. If you prefer music, we could talk about Dolby noise reduction. Essentially, there are limits as to how much information can be maintained and recovered based on these things. There are limits to the bandwidth of USB and ethernet or the bandwidth of a hard drive controller.
So, how does all this relate to DNA? Well, DNA is a process code. I recall a number of science fiction stories that were based on the idea that RNA could be used to directly store abstract information such as memories. None of those are actually true, however, neurons do have special provisions to move mRNA the longer distances. Is DNA information? Yes, it is indeed. Is it true that only intelligent things can create information? No, that would not be true. A simple example of this would be the machines that create random power ball numbers. There is no intellect used in this process; these machines are as random as possible. Yet, the exact number that is generated is a piece of information.
I assume the point you are trying to bring up is whether or not DNA is a functional abstraction and whether or not abstraction requires intelligence. DNA is a functional abstraction. That is fairly easy to see since DNA gets converted to transfer RNA which is then used to create messenger RNA which is used to create proteins (process simplified). Also, there are control sequences in the DNA which determine how the sequences are acted upon. That is, to the best of my knowledge, there is no direct, necessary correlation between the sequences of three base pairs that make up one piece of tRNA (codon/anticodon) and the specific amino acid that it relates to. As far as I know, the codon sequences are arbitrary, although I could certainly be wrong and this could be corrected by someone who knows more about organic chemistry. So, again, to the best of my knowledge, this is functional abstraction. To explain the difference, there is a toy that consists of a tube with disks inside of it that divides it into sections. And these disks have holes in them that are in order by size from one end to the other. So, if you hold it with the smallest holes on top, the holes get larger and larger toward the bottom. And, it contains balls of varying sizes. If you put the small holes up and shake it, all the balls will go to the bottom. Then if you turn it over and shake it, the balls will fall through each section until they won't fit through the holes and you'll end up with the balls sorted by size. Is this information? Yes, it's not really any different than if you used a sort algorithm (such as bubble sort, shell sort, heap sort, or quick sort) to put data into order. Is it abstraction? No, because each ball is a necessary correlation to the size of the hole. It's just a physical property. It's the same as a key fitting in a lock is not an abstraction. Abstractions are arbitrary.
So, this is where we come to the crux of the discussion. BTW, when others have said that crystal patterns or other inanimate patterns are information, they were correct. You can create information just by rolling dice. The specific pattern is information. However, a snowflake pattern is not abstracted information -- and perhaps this is where the confusion comes in. This is a natural result of trying to combine two different theories where the term "information" is used in different ways.
So, are you saying that abstraction requires intelligence? Can you create an argument for this?