Re: [asa] Information and knowledge

On 4/13/07, D. F. Siemens, Jr. <dfsiemensjr@juno.com> wrote:
>
> It looks to me as though there is a serious problem with ambiguity. Let
> me specify a page with 60 columns and 50 lines. Filling those 3000 locations
> with a random sequence of alphanumeric symbols is essentially to have a
> maximum of Shannon information on the page. However, this has a minimum of
> intellectual information, for it tells us nothing factual, for example. The
> sheet with six-place random numbers arranged in 8 columns and rows of five
> will have less Shannon information and not much intellectual information,
> though such tables have utility. In contrast, such a page from a textbook
> has less Shannon information, for it can be condensed as a ZIP file, but it
> potentially communicates a fair amount of intellectual information--at least
> to those prepared to understand it. A page on nuclear physics will
> communicate nothing to a third grade reader, and little to those in other
> disciplines. Shannon theory applies objectively, but intellectual
> information has a subjective aspect.
>
>

The genome has lots of what is known as copy number variation in it. If you
take the sequences and apply a modified Huffmann encoding you can highly
compress it because of the repetitive sequences. As you noted above this
means the genome with high copy numbers has less "information". Yet, a
number of genetic diseases are caused by different copy numbers, sometimes
more and sometimes less. "Information" as defined by ID is thus unrelated to
how well or how poorly the design works assuming of course that a genetic
disease is considered a defect.

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Received on Fri Apr 13 16:01:33 2007