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ID friendly tech guru George Gilder on his “information theory of capitalism”

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Tech guru and futurist George Gilder, who is sympathetic to intelligent design theory, has a new book out, on wealth as the accumulation of knowledge. From an interview with Ed Driscoll at PJ Media :

MR. DRISCOLL: George, we should probably start with the title of the book. What is the information theory of capitalism and who pioneered it?

MR. GILDER: Well, I — I pioneered it. But information theory was developed by Claude Shannon to explain networks, to define information, so it was possible to gauge the capacity of infor — of channels or networks or telecommunications systems to bear information. And Shannon defined information as unexpected bits, as surprise, essentially.

And ever since I wrote Wealth and Poverty, years ago, I’ve been looking for a way to incorporate entrepreneurial creativity, which always comes as a surprise to us, into economic models. And writing about telecommunications technology and about the Internet, I discovered Claude Shannon’s works and saw that he defined information as surprise. And so what we have is this vast theory that underlies all the most productive industries in our economy, all the information tools that enrich our lives in so many ways, that that very same theory also is perfectly aligned with a capitalist economy.

MR. DRISCOLL: For those who haven’t heard of him, can you talk a little bit about who Claude Shannon was?

MR. GILDER: Well, Claude Shannon is one of the great figures of our history. He was an engineer at MIT and Bell Labs. And his job was to explain how you can build vast networks to transmit information around the globe in the face of noise and interference and other obstacles to communication.

And essentially what I do is take Claude Shannon’s theory and apply it not to transmission of information across wires and across the electromagnetic spectrum and wireless devices, but across the world, entrepreneurial ideas… More.

Comments
I just read this Gilder guy's stuff. Forget him. He is a traitor to America, Christiandom, and mankind. He says women are innately inferior to men and so failures in comparison. Thats not true. Motivation explains all differences . He's hinting at biological evolution in this. Reagan read his capitalistic stuff long ago and its just ordinary defence against a then oppressive left wing culture. Reagan was great but this gilder don't get his credit. His iD stuff is stupid like the rest of it. Foraske him and get better people. The people who write for this forum are truly better thinkers and better people then this oh so foolish and detestable enemy of all things bright and beautiful.Robert Byers
July 10, 2013
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its a little off key concerning origins. Yet it does make the point that intelligence is behind wealth whether in nations or individuals. So biology's complexity or wealth of information is evidence of a creator being behind it.Robert Byers
July 9, 2013
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'It is deeply ironic that information should be found bursting at the seams in the DNA of life, and even in the proteins of life, for neo-Darwinian atheists have insisted for many years that life on earth has no ultimate meaning or purpose, yet to find information in life is equivalent to finding meaning in life, for information itself requires meaning to exist, and even purpose to exist, before information can exist.' Don't confuse them BA, there's a good chap.Axel
July 9, 2013
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Related notes: Because of Shannon channel capacity the first DNA code of life on earth had to be at least as complex as the current DNA code found in life: Shannon Information - Channel Capacity - Perry Marshall - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5457552/ “Because of Shannon channel capacity that previous (first) codon alphabet had to be at least as complex as the current codon alphabet (DNA code), otherwise transferring the information from the simpler alphabet into the current alphabet would have been mathematically impossible” Donald E. Johnson – Bioinformatics: The Information in Life Biophysicist Hubert Yockey determined that natural selection would have to explore 1.40 x 10^70 different genetic codes to discover the optimal universal genetic code that is found in nature. The maximum amount of time available for it to originate is 6.3 x 10^15 seconds. Natural selection would have to evaluate roughly 10^55 codes per second to find the one that is optimal. Put simply, natural selection lacks the time necessary to find the optimal universal genetic code we find in nature. (Fazale Rana, -The Cell's Design - 2008 - page 177) "A code system is always the result of a mental process (it requires an intelligent origin or inventor). It should be emphasized that matter as such is unable to generate any code. All experiences indicate that a thinking being voluntarily exercising his own free will, cognition, and creativity, is required. ,,,there is no known law of nature and no known sequence of events which can cause information to originate by itself in matter. Werner Gitt 1997 In The Beginning Was Information pp. 64-67, 79, 107." (The retired Dr Gitt was a director and professor at the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology (Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Braunschweig), the Head of the Department of Information Technology.) Algorithmic Information Theory, Free Will and the Turing Test - Douglas S. Robertson Chaitin’s Algorithmic Information Theory shows that information is conserved under formal mathematical operations and, equivalently, under computer operations. This conservation law puts a new perspective on many familiar problems related to artificial intelligence. For example, the famous “Turing test” for artificial intelligence could be defeated by simply asking for a new axiom in mathematics. Human mathematicians are able to create axioms, but a computer program cannot do this without violating information conservation. Creating new axioms and free will are shown to be different aspects of the same phenomena: the creation of new information. http://cires.colorado.edu/~doug/philosophy/info8.pdf It is deeply ironic that information should be found bursting at the seams in the DNA of life, and even in the proteins of life, for neo-Darwinian atheists have insisted for many years that life on earth has no ultimate meaning or purpose, yet to find information in life is equivalent to finding meaning in life, for information itself requires meaning to exist, and even purpose to exist, before information can exist.bornagain77
July 8, 2013
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