Comments on Gpuccio: Functional Information Methodology

[Giltil (Gilbert Thill)]

@glipsnort

Fine. Accepting your calculation, that’s 12 bits for one antibody. And another 12 bits for an antibody protecting against the next pathogen. And another 12 for the pathogen after that. Or, if you happen to live in a malaria endemic region, 12 bits for the first var gene that a parasite strain expresses, 12 bits for the next, 12 bits for the one after that, until you cycle through a few dozen var genes possessed by that particular strain. And then start over when you get reinfected. As the process repeats, you very quickly exceed 500 bits of FI.

With all due respect, you are completely wrong here, as explained by @gpuccio below.

Gpuccio: Functional Information Methodology

Wow, you guys in the anti-ID field seem to be really fond of this error. Let’s state things clearly: 10 objects with 50 bits of FI each are not, in any way, 500 bits of FI. Which is what Rumracket (and maybe you) seems to believe when he says: If natural selection can add 60 bits of FI in a few weeks, why can’t it add 500 bits of FI over the course of (say) 20 million years? To make things more clear, I will briefly propose again here my example of the thief and the safes, that I used some time ago to make the same point with Joe Felsenstein. It goes this way. A thief enters a building, where he finds the following objects: a) One set of 100 small safes. b) One big safe. The 100 small safes contain, each, 1/100 of the sum in the big safe. Each small safe is protected by one electronic key of one bit: it opens either with 0 or with 1. The big safe is protected by a 100 bit long electronic key. The thief does not know the keys, any of them. He can do two different things…