Re: [asa] Information and knowledge

On 4/13/07, Bill Hamilton <williamehamiltonjr@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Have any of you read either of Hubedrt Yockey's books:
>
> Information theory and molecular biology
> http://www.amazon.com/Information-Theory-Molecular-Biology-Hubert/dp/0521350050/ref=sr_oe_1_1/104-8541183-0038340?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176512810&sr=1-1
> and
> Information Theory, Evolution, and The Origin of Life
> http://www.amazon.com/Information-Theory-Evolution-Origin-Life/dp/0521802938/ref=sr_1_1/104-8541183-0038340?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176512810&sr=1-1
>
> In these books Yockey purportedly shows the mathematical connections between
> information theory and genetic replication. I'd be interested in what Rich
> and Randy think of these books if they have read them.

I didn't read the book but I read the excerpt on Amazon. The following
is interesting:

<begin quote>
The recent accomplishments in the sequencin of the DNA of the human
genome as well as those of a number of other organisms establishes the
remarks of Darwin [concerning common descent] beyond question. Darwin
was concerned with "missing links" and based much of his "one long
argument" (*Origin of Species*, 1872 edition, Ch. XV) on comparative
morphology. The old arguments based on "missing links" proposed in
opposition of Darwin's theory are no longer relevant. For that reason,
foolish discussions on either side of the debate on Darwinism about
how the giraffe got his long neck are no longer pertinent. Although
the details may be unknowable, there is indeed a phylogenetic
evolutionary message or signal from which all organisms have branched
(Woese, 1998, 200, 2002) (see Section 11.2.3). The e-mail one sends to
colleagues traces its way through the Internet from source to
destination. By the same token, the "code-script," as Schrodinger
(1992) called it, unites all living things on earth.

The transmission of genetic messages for more than 3.85 billion years
since the origin of life (Mojzsis et al. 1999; Woese, 2000), with
modification and diversification by evolution could be done *only*
because the message in the genome is *segregate, linear, and digital*
(Chapter 12). It is impossible to remove the effect of noise in analog
signals. Early analog records of the glorious voice of Enrico Caruso
(1873-1921) do not compare with the modern digital recordings of the
Three Tenors; Placido Domingo, Jose Carreras, and Luciano Pavaroti.
Shannon's Channel Capacity Theorem (Shannon, 1948) showed how to
eliminate the effect of noise as much as we wish by digitizing the
signal. The digital revolution has now provided digital television
eliminating noise almost to the theoretical limit. Even cameras are
now digital. [emphasis in the original]
<end quote>

This book is quoted extensively by ID and creationists: Moreland,
Ross, O'Leary, Geisler, Dembski and even former senator Santorum. Yet,
the quote above shows that according to the author the genetic
structure of life makes evolution work and that evolution as described
by modern science actually happened. Also, no gaps here. So, you would
think given my biases that I would be disposed to agree with him. And
there you would be wrong.

First, he bought the hype of my industry. So-called digital recordings
use lossy compression such as MP3, AAC, and H.264. Analog channels
have bandwidth too and digital encodings need to sample at the Nyquist
frequency which is related to that analog bandwidth. In addition you
have to worry about aliasing if you sample with too few bits. This all
before the digital signal is compressed. It also works in the other
direction where you need sufficient radio frequency bandwidth to
transmit the digital Wi-Fi signals most of you are using right now.
Yockey also confused communication noise with the surface noise of the
Caruso recording.

Second, anything can be made into segregate, linear and digital by
sampling and encoding. In fact, the "code" we are all discussing is
created precisely by that kind of operation. As I also showed above
analog signals can be dealt with in classical information theory. You
can also have error correction in quantum information theory, e.g.
CSS codes. There is really nothing magical about digital information.
In fact, our really high speed serdes (read high bandwidth) are all
analog.

In summary, while the genetic structure of life is sufficient to drive
the common descent with modification we are observing it is by no
means necessary. This wrong conclusion is driven by the popular
misconception that digital is perfect or near perfect but analog is
noisy.

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Received on Sat Apr 14 10:24:23 2007