RE: [asa] dawkins and collins on "Fresh Air" interview program

Thanks Dave for making a distinction between information and knowledge. However, there must be information first before there is knowledge. For instance, there is information content in a book, which leads to knowledge only for conscious, human minds. Surely, we can have two books with precisely the same amount of Shannon information but totally different knowledge content.

Moorad

________________________________

From: D. F. Siemens, Jr. [mailto:dfsiemensjr@juno.com]
Sent: Sun 4/1/2007 6:38 PM
To: Alexanian, Moorad
Cc: pvm.pandas@gmail.com; rich.blinne@gmail.com; igd.strachan@gmail.com; dopderbeck@gmail.com; jhofmann@exchange.fullerton.edu; TDavis@messiah.edu; asa@lists.calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] dawkins and collins on "Fresh Air" interview program

On Sun, 1 Apr 2007 16:11:49 -0400 "Alexanian, Moorad"
<alexanian@uncw.edu> writes:
> If evolution is science, say as physics and chemistry are science,
> then how can evolutionary theory explain information? Consciousness
> is needed to make sense of a book, which is both physical and
> nonphysical. The physical part is the subject matter of science and
> the nonphysical, the informational content of the book, although
> uses elements of the physical, its true content is nonphysical and
> accessed by nonphysical consciousness.
>
>
> Moorad
>
Looks to me as though you're confusing information with knowledge. Only
the latter involves consciousness. The Shannon information was in the
many genomes before anyone could read it. And we do not understand much
of it even yet. Note that handing a book on quantum physics to a
kindergartner does not reduce its information content. On the other hand,
I recall reading that, to decipher either speech or writing requires the
addition of at least 50% more content, and may require adding 90%.
Unfortunately, the hearer or reader may add the wrong content and come up
with something far different than intended.

Once we have a genome, we have information beyond the Shannon measure,
for it does something. We know ways in which that information may be
altered or expanded: duplication, insertion, misreading, base
modification, etc. We do not yet know how the genomic information first
arose, although there are guesses that it began with RNA randomly
assembled. The best support for this guess that I recall encountering is
the claim that RNA can be self-catalyzing. But much more is needed.
Dave

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Received on Sun Apr 1 20:08:57 2007