Friday, June 11, 2010

ID: What is Information?

The appearance of life constitutes a revolution in the history of matter. A vast gulf separates the organic from the inorganic world, and that gulf is properly characterized in terms of information. The matter in the directly under your feet and the matter that makes up you body is the same. Nevertheless, the arrangement of that matter- the information-vastly differs in these two cases. Biology’s information problem is therefore to determine whether (and if so, how) purely natural forces are able to bridge the gulf between the organic and the inorganic worlds as well as the gulf between different levels of complexity within the organic world.


William Dembski, pg 139 Chapter Biology’s information problem, the Design Revolution


Dee Hock (Early founder of the Visa Banking and Credit Card system)
If you go back to the first single-cell form of life, it clearly possessed the capacity to receive, to utilize, to store, to transform, and to transmit information.  




For anyone who wants to take a mind ride (albeit a sometimes scattered one) through the larger realms of Information Theory, I highly recommend this lecture by Perry Marshall:  (I could wish for a tighter presentation, but there is a whole bunch of brain-food in this 70 minute presentation.)

http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/ifyoucanreadthis.htm


What is Information, or what is information theory?


The appearance of life constitutes a revolution in the history of matter. A vast gulf separates the organic from the inorganic world, and that gulf is properly characterized in terms of information. The matter in the directly under your feet and the matter that makes up you body is the same. Nevertheless, the arrangement of that matter- the information-vastly differs in these two cases. Biology’s information problem is therefore to determine whether (and if so, how) purely natural forces are able to bridge the gulf between the organic and the inorganic worlds as well as the gulf between different levels of complexity within the organic world.



William Dembski, pg 139 Chapter Biology’s Information Problem, the Design Revolution



Basics

Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information. (Wikipedia, Information Theory)


Information is immaterial (yet, apparently requires a material/energy substrate as far as anyone knows).
In other words, information is not in the matter, nor is it the product of the matter. It is about the matter instead – and requires perception in order to exist. 

          http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/why-secular-and-theistic-darwinists-fear-id/




Information is thought of in terms of character strings, The specific arrangement of which constitute information.


Information can be evaluated without respect to content of that information. (Example, your internet provider is concerned not with the content of your email, but how that that information is coded, delivered, stored, etc. Information theorist are often more concerned with what constitutes information, than the specific content of that information

Information is said to be more valuable (or is thought to be more complex) the more improbable the content.

It is either raining or it is not raining. (A true statement, but with no information value.)

It is raing in Seattle in the Spring. (Contains more information)

It is raining in the Sierra Desert (Contians yet more information.)

(examples, Dembski)

The sunset is colorful.

The sunset is red

The sunset is a deep methyalte red with



The importance of information is not directly tied to its complexity.

Hey Have a nice day.

I need an ambuance.


Notes:

The amount of information in a bacterium is about the same as in 2 large books. And then this original life form changed into all the life forms on earth, including him, all by itself, without a Creator’s involvement. The astronomer has about 1,000 books of complex information in each of his cells. All this information just happened; no intelligent source was necessary, in his way of thinking. No Creator was necessary. All that meaningful coded information just made itself.  http://creation.com/reading-between-the-lines

No comments:

Post a Comment