From: Glenn Morton (glennmorton@entouch.net)
Date: Sun Oct 12 2003 - 15:36:51 EDT
>-----Original Message-----
>From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
>Behalf Of Ted Davis
>Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2003 1:40 PM
>To: asa@calvin.edu; haas.john@comcast.net
>Subject: Re: Dembski's Challenge to Baylor biology faculty
>
>
>I'm glad Bill is doing this. He is IMO the most original and thoughtful
>advocate of ID. His educational background is broad and deep, his
>ideas are
>interesting, and he knows as much about "information" as anyone I could
>name.
I simply disagree with this last statement. I have pointed this out before
on this list. In Dembski's ASA article he writes:
""It is CSI [complex specified information] that within the
Kolmogorov-Chaitin
theory of algorithmic information takes the form of a highly compressible,
nonrandom strings of digits.""Dembski, Sept. 1997 PSCF. p 186
In a call to Stephen Meyer, I pointed this statement out to him. Even he
agreed that this was absolutely backwards. I have tried on two occasions to
get Dembski to address that point and he has been unresponsive.
The more compressible a string is, the LESS information it contains. Ted, if
you think he knows more about information theory than anyone else, you
should pass this statement by several information theorists.
The string 11111111111111111111....
Is highly compressible but has ZERO information specified or otherwise. Why?
Because the probability of the next character is 100%, a 1 is the only
character. And information is measured by the log of the probability, which
means the log(1)=0
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