But of course it adds up.
If you don’t know what will work, then try lots of different things, and see which works. It seems to be an intelligent way of proceeding.
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As amazing as the night sky is… after a while a scientist becomes numb to the psychological impact. It’s human nature.
Sure… provided there is a You… and an intelligence involved…
Trial and error needs someone to try and then choose.
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Biological populations are doing that. You might not count a population as a “someone” but it still works just as well.
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In a limited sense it does. Biological populations optimise existing information according to the fitness environment.
We don’t know definitively about any system that can achieve open ended evolution. From a single cell to all the diversity on earth.
There is speculation. But no detailed models beyond the species level.There might never be.
So why so confident when talking about areas where the concept itself is untestable?
Having only one untestable model should not be a source of confidence.
Unless there is ZERO other models suggested by the data.
It is the proximity of other models that induce anxiety… not 100% lack of a competing model.
Precisely. From all appearances, functional information can be whatever someone wants at any time. I could claim that any change to a software program lowers FI. That’s the problem. When something can’t be quantified and can take on any definition the user sees fit it simply isn’t scientific.
We can’t say that there is an increase in FI because there is no way to measure it in the form it is currently being used.
The challenge from previous posts still stand. Go to the following random DNA sequence generator and create a 5k base pair sequence:
http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~mmaduro/random.htm
Measure the functional information in that random sequence. Next, randomly change 10 of the bases in that sequence. Remeasure the functional information in that sequence. Compare your measure of functional information from before and after and see if there is an increase, decrease, or lack of change in functional information.
My main point is that there is a possible evolutionary pathway from a light sensitive spot to the vertebrate eye (and other eyes as well). Each step is along the way offers known advantages so it is possible for natural selection to build the vertebrate eye step by step.
It is also interesting that Darwin had the same conversation with himself in Origin of Species:
I tend to find that most biologists, regardless of religious worldview, are in awe of how nature works, and this awe is what drew them to the field in the first place.
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In this case, it’s a matter of our not being able to adequately define “information” of this sort mathematically. Perhaps it will happen in the future.
Otherwise, it will be increasingly be seen as a deficiency in science. Especially as programming dominates the world more and more.
I am more optimistic that someone will work it out in the future.
Recently I came across a definition of life based on information by a scientist called Gerald Joyce. His definition is as below-
“In contrast, Joyce’s desire for his molecules to surprise him suggests that the capacity for open-ended evolution – ‘inventiveness, pluripotentiality, open-endedness’ – is the critical criteria of life. In accordance with this idea, Joyce now defines life as ‘a genetic system that contains more bits [of information] than the number that were required to initiate its operation’. But according to this definition, given two identical systems with different histories – one designed and the other evolved – only the latter would be considered alive; the rationally designed system, no matter how complex, would be just a ‘technological artifact’.”
Information in life is only going to get more and more important.
Molecular biology, population genetics, and developmental biology are getting along just fine without a definition for functional information. There are already numerous tools that biologists have to measure function in a genome, and I don’t see how FI adds anything useful. People who don’t accept evolution seem to use FI more as a platitude, a false veneer to make it look as though they have a reason for rejecting evolution. I have found that those who claim evolution can’t increase information really have no interest in trying to make a meaningful measure of information in genomes.
What you are ignoring is if there are the probabilistic resources available to walk down the path you observed.
Why then did Jack Szostak (nobel prize winner) write several papers on the subject?
Functional information can be indirectly measured using sequence length and deep preservation over time. The more the preservation of sequences the higher the FI. The importance to evolutionary biology is to observe the large additions that occurred during evolutionary history.
ID guys are not the only guys looking into it.
Take these guys for example:
http://www.alife.org/workshops/oee3/
There is a lot of money in this. People will not let it lie. These guys desperately want evolution to create information.
Thanks very much for your reply. I have regretted getting upset over the conversation. I’m learning that many of us think differently, process differently, and even use the same terms differently. This conversation was good for me in terms of learning to be more patient and to be a better listener.
I appreciate knowing this. I live in an incredibly beautiful place. With some who have lived here all of their lives, I see a tendency to lose the sense of awe over the beauty that is everywhere. I try to maintain that sense so that I never lose appreciation for it. Sometimes I worry that biologists will depreciate what they are studying to “only cells” and lose sight (pun intended) of the incredible beauty and complexity.
With Darwin, he honestly mentions that his facts are too briefly and imperfectly given. There has been much discovery in the decades since, and I do fear that the evolutionary pathway of the eye itself, from light sensing spot to eye, is a gross oversimplification. Not because it cannot be envisioned or even followed from A to Z, but rather because of all of the other physiological aspects that must also have evolved simultaneously. Add to that the fact that we can envision a stepwise progression, we must at the same time realize that evolution cannot envision a stepwise progression. It must only meander. This is my “feeling” because, for me, it is intuitive. That said, I’m open to learning more and would like to see over the many complex layers that are in place, how such a process could occur. As you might say, did occur.
When Ashwin mentioned “just so stories”… that REALLY resonated with me, because the description seemed to be just that. In reevaluating the conversation, though (as Joshua properly mentioned), there was a ton of information being articulated very quickly, with no real opportunity to go in depth. Hopefully there will be more time to do so in the future so that those of us who process differently are able to better appreciate the nuances that make this kind of process possible.
I do, really, appreciate the discussion and the time you’ve taken to explain.
No insult was given, so there’s no problem.
Perhaps one of the problems is in how different people view biology. Those who are most familiar with the science tend to see it as a bottom up process where there are nearly an infinite number of possible routes to take and evolution takes one of those routes because it gets a mutation early on that pushes it in that direction.
Other people tend to look at the end product and calculate the probability of that solution occurring in hindsight. This approach is the “wrong” way to do probabilities, and it is easy to show why this is. For example, we could calculate the probability of the last 10 lottery winners being the winners. This probability is extremely low, and yet it happened. Why? How can events with such low probability occur with ease? Because there are a nearly infinite number of highly improbable events that can occur, so it is nearly guaranteed that one of them will occur.
This is also known as the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy. This is where a sharpshooter stands 1 mile away and fires into a dense forest. The sharpshooter searches around in the forest and finds the tree where the bullet struck. He then draws a tiny bulls eye around the bullet hole and declares himself the best sharpshooter in the land because he can hit a quarter size bulls eye from 1 mile away on the first shot.
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The old argument was that the eye had to appear in its current configuration all at once, and that is the argument Darwin was addressing. The very fact that we can find viable eyes that are simpler than the vertebrate eye demonstrates that it didn’t have to appear all at once.
As to mutations, that discussion seems to miss the point. We don’t have to know the shoe size of every Confederate soldier in order to know that the Civil War happened. We know that the genetic differences between species are responsible for the differences in anatomy between them, and we also know that the pattern of both similarities and differences between those genomes are consistent with the known and observed mechanisms of mutation and selection. Refusing to accept this evidence because we don’t have a mutation by mutation record of every change over the last 1 billion years doesn’t seem valid to me.
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Then show me the math.