As I said at the last part of my note, this was the only thing I would
respond to and it will be. What this proves is that during a discussion of
information theory you can't use the word information as a synonym with the
commonly accepted definition of the word 'meaning'. Because within
information theory you can't tell a meaningful sentence from a meaningless
sentence in Mandarin or whether the the above sequence of characters has
or doesn't have meaning, it demonstrates from a practical point of view
that information theory doesn't use information in the colloquial sense.
If information was destroyed by random mutations then information theory
should be able to measure that destruction. But in fact it can't tell the
difference.
The above seqeunce
>> @85y975 w53008ht 975w8e3 9r 8hr94jq589h 5y3946 53oo j3 8r 5y8w
>> yqw j3qh8ht'
is an example of the earliest type of spy-codes. It does have meaning and
is merely a replacement code. I re-located my fingers on the keyboard and
typed,
>> Without stepping outside of information theory tell me if this
>> has meaning?
Meaning is in the MIND of the beholder! And information theory can not read
minds. In biology the equivalent of meaning is specificity. With this I bid
you good day. The quote from you below shows that you still haven't
grasped the above puzzle or the mathematical definition of information
within information theory. If you want to talk about meaning, you can't use
information theory for that. You are trying to use the wrong tool for your
purpose. Information theory defines information without regard to meaning.
You will have to develop an entirely new mathematical theory which deals
with meaning and there is NO theory of meaning available today! Nor are
there any articles on such a theory either. Meaning cannot be determined
mathematically as of today. If you can come up with a theory or meaning,
then you will become famouse.
I am out of this discussion for the time being.
>You consistantly ignore the fact that the information contained in DNA has
>specific meaning to the contruction of a cell and that any random changes
>will destroy this information. That is proveable by info theory and also
>pretty damn obvious if you ask me.
>
>Information considered by itself without reference to meaning may be a
>useful tool or a learning aid but we are talking about a REAL system that
>has meaning. Therefore any engineer will see that the meaning is important
>and cannot be ignored.
>
>How would you like it if your computer suddenly decided that random noise is
>a more efficient source of information than your writings. In fact if you
>posted random gibberish to this mailing list you would be (by your argument)
>be providing us with more information. Do you see the fallacy yet of
>applying this narrow and simplistic viewpoint to a real system?
>
>The argument was never about whether DNA could potentially store more
>information if it was random. It is about whether or not random information
>would have more meaning in the construction of cells. That is why
>information theory must consider meaning (not necessarly know it, just
>consider it) when dealing with real systems.
glenn
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
Foundation, Fall and Flood
& lots of creation/evolution information
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm