From: Glenn Morton (glennmorton@entouch.net)
Date: Mon Aug 04 2003 - 21:30:59 EDT
>-----Original Message-----
>From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
>Behalf Of richard@biblewheel.com
>Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 7:36 PM
>To: asa@calvin.edu
>Subject: Information Theory 101 and the Error in Glen's Test
>
>
>The information in a sequence of symbols is measured by the theoretical
>lower limit of the number of bits required to specify each element of the
>sequence. A sequence such as ABAB...ABAB consisting of n repetitions of AB
>can be specified by writing "repeat AB n times" which is much shorter than
>the resulting string if n is large, so it contains little information. A
>random string of digits contains maximal information because each
>digit must
>be individually specified.
You are absolutely correct here on this important point that most people
don't understand. A random sequence has more information than most
sentences. However, that isn't true in the case of semantical sentences.
They lie in the same part of the spectrum as do the random sequences. If
you encode a meaningful sentence, it looks very random.
>
>It is *extremely* important to note that information in strings is not the
>same as semantic meaning. Strings do not contain semantic meaning. The
>meaning emerges only when a string is "run" through an interpretive scheme.
We agree here. Semantic meaning is a private agreement that particular
symbols mean something. The private agreement may be between 2 people or an
entire language speaking nation. But it is still a private agreement.
>This exposes the error in Glen Morton's test where he challenged people to
>determine if certain strings were designed (I refer to post
>http://www.calvin.edu/archive/asa/200308/0020.html). For example:
>
>METHINKSITISAWEASEL is meaningful when interpreted according to
>the rules of
>English, but not French.
>0010010011101010010 is meaningful when interepreted as code by machine
>(computer) designed to run it.
>ENARXHIHNOLOGOS is meaningful when interpteted according to the rules of
>Greek
>AGGTTCCCTGCCGTGTACC is meaningful when interpreted by the DNA replication
>machine.
As you might expect, I don't agree that this exposes a weakness. More below
>
>Each of these sequences is "random" in the sense of information theory,
>which means they contain maximal information because they require maximal
>specification. They are algorythmically complex, unlike ABAB...ABAB which
>can be specified by "repeat AB n times." But not one of them is
>semantically
>*meaningful* in and of itself.
>
>In every case, we recognize that the sequence was designed the moment we
>discover the interpretive scheme the sequence was *designed for*.
But, Richard, you missed this point. There are coding systems in which
letters of keywords are used to find the replacement letter. It works like
this (for a very short matrix.
l i letter in the key
e n Z abcdef....
t A bcdefg....
t m B cdefgh....
e e C defghi....
r s D efghij....
s E fghijk....
a F .
g G .
e H .
Say the key is 'bade' and the message is 'deed' for the d, you go to the 5th
line under the b and write the letter at the intersection which is 'f' for
the second letter 'e' you go to the E line and look under a and write 'f'
for the next letter 'e' you go to the E line and look under d and write 'i'
and for the last d you go to the D line and look under e and write 'i'
So now you have encoded 'deed' as 'ffii'
These types of codes are one way. One must know the keyword. Without it, any
sequence of numbers can be back converted into any meaningful sentence
whatsoever. Thus, my point is, Dembski's claim that ID is a means of
detecting design, simply fails for fundamental reasons. You can't ever rule
out that a sequence before you wasn't encoded in this fashion and actually
contains a meaningful sentence. There is no requirement that the keyword
have semantical meaning which gives ultimate control to a backwards mapping
through this file.
This is
>because we can see that each element in a seemingly random sequence had to
>be precisely specified to work in the interpretive scheme. I think that the
>"interpretive scheme" corresponds to Dembski's idea of
>specification, though
>I could be wrong since I am not an expert in Dembskian ID Theory. But
>regardless of its relation to Dembski's ideas, is it not obvous that we
>*recognise* design when we discover the interpretive scheme the
>sequence was
>designed for?
I absolutely agree that if i see the sentence, 'me thinks it is like a duck'
(I am tired of weasels) I will grant design. But that situation isn't
analogous at all to DNA because I know no one who writes DNA or in DNAese.
Do you? Since the very issue is whether or not God writes in DNA it is
begging the question to claim that DNA means design. It is assuming what we
are supposed to be trying to prove.
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