To: FMAJ1019@aol.com:
You're just throwing a stew of precooked (or uncooked?) abstracts and
other quoted paragraphs at me, none of which directly addresses what I
said.
The only reference to a scientific paper you give explicitely (for good
measure in duplicate) is:
>>> Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 97, Issue 9, 4463-4468, April 25, 2000
Vol. 97, Issue 9, 4463-4468, April 25, 2000 Evolution of biological
complexity
Christoph Adami*,, Charles Ofria,§, and Travis C. Collier <<<
Adami et al. describe a simulation of evolution using short assembler
programs as "organisms" and measuring their "increase in complexity" by
means of Shannon entropy. Although this system appears to be
interesting, its relevance for biological evolution is questionable,
since the function of such a program is very far from the function of a
living organism - or even the presumed function of an RNA world
replicator. Their definition of genomic complexity as the amount of
information stored about the environment, as well as the claim that
"complexity" necessarily increases in a fixed environment sounds dubious
if we think of biology. Despite their definition, they haven't clarified
what biological information is.
You may wish to check what I answered Glenn, who at least dealt directly
with some of what I said.
Peter Rüst
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