[asa] Re: information, complexity, environment -- was ]Biologic Institute

Think of "complexity" as the entropy of the system which, in a very
oversimplified way, can be roughly estimated as the number of nucleotides,
both in the nuclear and in the mitochondrial DNA. This does get increased by
factors such as protein folding and all sorts of 3-D phenomena. One way in
which this type of "information" is increased is by an increase in total DNA
content--gene duplication or other gene modification that leads to
additional DNA.

As I mentioned the last time we addressed this topic, the DNA "information"
is dissimilar from information generated by "intelligent agents." One
difference is that information generated by intelligent agents is
represented by a physical configuration, but is independent of that
configuration, whereas DNA complexity is equivalent to the physical
configuration and is not independent of it. Ergo, DNA "information" is not
of the type generated by intelligent agents.

Randy

----- Original Message -----
From: "Don Nield" <d.nield@auckland.ac.nz>
To: "Randy Isaac" <randyisaac@comcast.net>
Cc: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 9:03 PM
Subject: information, complexity, environment -- was ]Biologic Institute

>A speculative thought --- ID proponents dating back to Thaxton have
>pointed to what they call the "information" in the genetic code itself. Is
>it sensible to say that this is "complexity" associated with the
>"environment" provided by the way in which proteins fold?
> Don
>
> Randy Isaac wrote:
>> David Campbell wrote:
>>
>> "There are some people on the list with strong backgounds in
>> cybernetics. As for me, I note that this reflects an incorrect
>> concept of information as it applies to biological evolution. The
>> information for biological evolution is the environment. Organisms
>> succeed if their genetic information adequately matches this existing
>> information. Mutation, recombination, etc. continually provides new
>> genetic information to test against the environmental information.
>> There's no mystery about where information could come from."
>>
>>
>> Agreed. And as I think I've noted before, the more appropriate technical
>> term that information theorists use in describing DNA in a cell is
>> "complexity" rather than "information."
>>
>> Randy
>>
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>
>
>

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Received on Tue May 13 22:14:23 2008