Law of Conservation of Information Part II

_{Denyse O'Leary

December 26, 2014

Darwinism, Informatics, Information, Intelligent Design}

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If Information Theory Is Right, Darwinian Evolution Isn’t Even Possible

Essentially, a targeted search only performs better than a random one if we have independent information that improves our chances of finding what we’re looking for. If we don’t have the long-sought map directing us to where “X Marks the Spot!”, we must dig up the entire island to find the pirates’ treasure.

The cultural impact of Darwin’s theory of evolution (which asserts that new information is created through competition among life forms) is so great that few ever ask whether the evolutionary mode of creating new information is even possible. For one thing, anyone who asks such a question in an educational setting could find himself facing litigation.

Nevertheless, some do ask it, ID theorist Bill Dembski and Baylor professor of engineering Robert Marks being two of them. They started to work on the CoI idea a few years ago. But Marks’s dean at Baylor reacted by actually shutting down the Evolutionary Information Laboratory in 2007, though it later started up again and has performed well. … More.

See also: Law of Conservation of Information Part I Follow UD News at Twitter!

Comments

I am always amazed the the Law of Conservation of Information continues to be talked about seriously - although I guess mostly only in the ID community. It is deeply conceptually confused. 1) It uses the concept of an "intrinsic" target without defining it. 2) It treats a search strategy as a random variable! 3) It allocates probabilities to different search strategies based not on the way the search strategy might have come about (which would have some semblance of logic) but on the results! 4) It uses Bernouilli's principle of indifference despite the well-known and accepted problems with the principle.Mark Frank_{December 28, 2014
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BA77 (and News), yes, S4S exponentiates search spaces as you backtrack. For an initial space W, searches come from the set of subsets of cardinality 2^W, which makes it very plausible that searching for a golden search that serendipitously plunks you down next to an island of function is maximally implausible. However, I point out that all this does is sets the issue of search spaces, accessible resources and the inherent tendency of FSCO/I to come in islands -- as we have organised interaction of many components in proper placement and coupling to achieve specific function -- in large config spaces in an implicit background. And, as the problem with major objectors, consistently is selective hyperskepticism, their objections, predictably, will continue. E.g. they are long since known to be highly dismissive of the idea that beyond a big enough config space search threshold, there is a blind search implausibility. In recent weeks, there was an attempt at UD to pretend that multi-dimensionality worked golden search magic, failed. Where also, actual pointing out of the Abu 6500 C3 as a case in point of the reality of FSCO/I met with refusal to admit that the phenomenon exists, and further refusal in the face of direct citation from Orgel to acknowledge that a Y/N specific chain of Q's suffices to quantify information in an entity exhibiting FSCO/I and associated wiring diagram. And so, the selectively hyperskeptical beat goes on. That is what needs to be exposed, and hammered home until something breaks as there will be an increasingly widespread understanding of entrenched, ideologised unreasonableness driven by self-refuting a priori evolutionary materialism. Hence BTW, the refusal to face the patent import of the well known Lewontin cite I just alluded to and instead to shoot at the messenger by ginning up ill-founded accusations of "quote-mining." The answer to such is resolute exposure that breaks through cynical message dominance tactics, talking point parrotting tactics, empty drumbeat repetition, mulishly willful obtuseness and trollish nastiness. KFkairosfocus_{December 28, 2014
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awstar, I agree, we do live in interesting, even peculiar, times don't we?, Daniel 12:4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Shakespeare Quotes - Context of the Quote http://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quotes/there-more-things-heaven-earth-horatiobornagain77_{December 26, 2014
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BA77 #1
I don’t know about Feynman, but as for myself, being a Christian Theist, I find it rather comforting to know that it takes an ‘infinite amount of logic to figure out what one stinky tiny bit of space-time is going to do’:
Yes it is comforting, until one starts to wonder why in the past 70 years human knowledge and understanding of the creation of and the communication of information has increased so dramatically in every area of science. Just what information "revelation" will be coming next? and where does it all lead?awstar_{December 26, 2014
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Darwinian evolution has never been possible. It posits an effect without a proportionate cause. Even in theory, there is nothing in the cause that could produce the effect. If Darwinists or Christian Darwinists were capable of rational thought, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.StephenB_{December 26, 2014
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All, Here is a recent talk from Dembski that lays it all out in layman's terms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nIj5RpzIn8 The take home message is that when it comes to information the search for the search (S4S)is always at least as costly as the search itself. That is also the point of my "game" The challenge of which remains open. It's simple Start with any complex "real" string then develop an algorithm to approximate it sufficiently enough to fool the observer with out directly referencing the original string. Ive tried everything from DNA sequences to Shakespearean Sonnets and the Hypothesis remains unfalsified !!! I'd be happy to share the game with anyone if they would like to have a go for themselves just tell me how to contact you. Or just post your strings and the algorithm you used and I'll plug them in myself if you like. Peacefifthmonarchyman_{December 26, 2014
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As to:
"Design theorists say that the existing information probably arose originally from an intelligent agent, because that is the only source of information that we know of. As Dembski notes, the defining property of intelligence is its ability to create information. Is the agent God? The Christian God? It's difficult even to address such questions in a public square seemingly dominated by enraged atheists. Anyway, that isn't the kind of question that science can typically answer." per O'Leary
Actually there are good reasons for believing the ultimate source of information is 'The Christian God'. Firstly, due to infinite regress the ultimate source of information must possess infinite information. i.e. Must be omniscient! In the following article, Dr. Dembski states "accounting for the information required for successful search leads to a regress that only intensifies as one backtracks."
Before They've Even Seen Stephen Meyer's New Book, Darwinists Waste No Time in Criticizing Darwin's Doubt - William A. Dembski - April 4, 2013 Excerpt: In the newer approach to conservation of information, the focus is not on drawing design inferences but on understanding search in general and how information facilitates successful search. The focus is therefore not so much on individual probabilities as on probability distributions and how they change as searches incorporate information. My universal probability bound of 1 in 10^150 (a perennial sticking point for Shallit and Felsenstein) therefore becomes irrelevant in the new form of conservation of information whereas in the earlier it was essential because there a certain probability threshold had to be attained before conservation of information could be said to apply. The new form is more powerful and conceptually elegant. Rather than lead to a design inference, it shows that accounting for the information required for successful search leads to a regress that only intensifies as one backtracks. It therefore suggests an ultimate source of information, which it can reasonably be argued is a designer. I explain all this in a nontechnical way in an article I posted at ENV a few months back titled "Conservation of Information Made Simple" (go here). ,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/04/before_theyve_e070821.html
Dr. Werner Gitt, former director and professor of the Department of Information Technology at the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology, starting around the 2:00 minute mark of the following video, touches on how using the infinite regress argument from information confirms Theism:
Dr.Werner Gitt Ph.D."In The Beginning was Information" Part 3 of 3 - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWZpG0ye8KI
But how does the necessity for ominiscient God to avoid the infinite regress of information lead to "The Christian God" instead of just Judaism? To answer that question we need to go a bit deeper and examine not only the information in life but also the information at the basis of reality itself.,,,
"It from bit" symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has a bottom—a very deep bottom, in most instances, an immaterial source and explanation. John Wheeler, 1911–2008 Quantum physics just got less complicated - Dec. 19, 2014 Excerpt: Patrick Coles, Jedrzej Kaniewski, and Stephanie Wehner,,, found that 'wave-particle duality' is simply the quantum 'uncertainty principle' in disguise, reducing two mysteries to one.,,, "The connection between uncertainty and wave-particle duality comes out very naturally when you consider them as questions about what information you can gain about a system. Our result highlights the power of thinking about physics from the perspective of information,",,, Wave-particle duality and uncertainty have been fundamental concepts in quantum physics since the early 1900s.,,, It's possible to write equations that capture how much can be learned about pairs of properties that are affected by the uncertainty principle. Coles, Kaniewski and Wehner,, discovered that all the maths previously used to describe wave-particle duality could be reformulated in terms of these relations. "It was like we had discovered the 'Rosetta Stone' that connected two different languages," says Coles. "The literature on wave-particle duality was like hieroglyphics that we could now translate into our native tongue. We had several eureka moments when we finally understood what people had done," he says. http://phys.org/news/2014-12-quantum-physics-complicated.html
It turns out that, although Judaism uniquely predicted a beginning for the entire universe in Genesis 1:1, Christianity, specifically John 1:1, was far more specific in 'predicting' that the universe would be found to be information theoretic in its basis.
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Moreover, we find that infinite information is necessary to mathematically define the ‘uncollapsed’ photon, in its quantum wave state.:
Wave function Excerpt "wave functions form an abstract vector space",,, This vector space is infinite-dimensional, because there is no finite set of functions which can be added together in various combinations to create every possible function. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_function#Wave_functions_as_an_abstract_vector_space Explaining Information Transfer in Quantum Teleportation: Armond Duwell †‡ University of Pittsburgh Excerpt: In contrast to a classical bit, the description of a (photon) qubit requires an infinite amount of information. The amount of information is infinite because two real numbers are required in the expansion of the state vector of a two state quantum system (Jozsa 1997, 1) http://www.cas.umt.edu/phil/faculty/duwell/DuwellPSA2K.pdf Quantum Computing – Stanford Encyclopedia Excerpt: Theoretically, a single qubit can store an infinite amount of information, yet when measured (and thus collapsing the Quantum Wave state) it yields only the classical result (0 or 1),,, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-quantcomp/#2.1
Thus every time we see (consciously observe) a single photon of ‘material’ reality we are in actuality seeing just a single bit of information that was originally created from a very specific set of infinite information. Infinite information that was known by the consciousness that preceded material reality. i.e. information known only by the infinite Mind of omniscient God!
Job 38:19-20 “What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside? Can you take them to their places? Do you know the paths to their dwellings?”
Thus, while Judaism predicted 'Let There Be Light', Christianity predicted that that Light would be made of ininite information. Which is certainly not too shabby of a prediction to have confirmed by modern science. Of related interest, Feynman achieved unification of quantum mechanics and special relativity within Quantum Electrodynamics by “brushing infinity under the rug.”
Precise measurements test quantum electrodynamics, constrain possible fifth fundamental force - June 04, 2013 Excerpt: Quantum electrodynamics (QED) – the relativistic quantum field theory of electrodynamics – describes how light and matter interact – achieves full agreement between quantum mechanics and special relativity.,, per Physorg THE INFINITY PUZZLE: Quantum Field Theory and the Hunt for an Orderly Universe Excerpt: In quantum electrodynamics, which applies quantum mechanics to the electromagnetic field and its interactions with matter, the equations led to infinite results for the self-energy or mass of the electron. After nearly two decades of effort, this problem was solved after World War II by a procedure called renormalization, in which the infinities are rolled up into the electron’s observed mass and charge, and are thereafter conveniently ignored. Richard Feynman, who shared the 1965 Nobel Prize with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga for this breakthrough, referred to this sleight of hand as “brushing infinity under the rug.” http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/tackling-infinity “It always bothers me that in spite of all this local business, what goes on in a tiny, no matter how tiny, region of space, and no matter how tiny a region of time, according to laws as we understand them today, it takes a computing machine an infinite number of logical operations to figure out. Now how can all that be going on in that tiny space? Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one stinky tiny bit of space-time is going to do?" - Richard Feynman – one of the founding fathers of QED (Quantum Electrodynamics) Quote taken from the 6:45 minute mark of the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obCjODeoLVw
I don’t know about Feynman, but as for myself, being a Christian Theist, I find it rather comforting to know that it takes an ‘infinite amount of logic to figure out what one stinky tiny bit of space-time is going to do’:
John1:1 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." of note: ‘the Word’ in John1:1 is translated from ‘Logos’ in Greek. Logos is also the root word from which we derive our modern word logic per etymonline.com/?term=logic
Music:
John Tesh • We Three Kings • Christmas in Positano, Italy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJbfLcD9O9s
bornagain77_{December 26, 2014
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