Is there really information being conveyed within a cell?

No.

2 Likes

there is a precise definition of information given by Shannon in his foundational paper in 1948. It applies to everything in the universe including the processes happening in living cells. Information, entropy, and the second law of thermodynamics are forever linked by Shannon’s foundational work.

No, that’s a creationist myth.

2 Likes

I foresee another thread split coming soon, probably at comment #174/175.

A few thoughts. Hopefully I can criticize the evidence without criticizing the belief.

Presence of functional information (sequential)

“Functional Information” (hence FI) is hard to pin down. If we use the definition of Hazen (2007) then it’s a measure the Information needed to allow a given degree of function, and it has to be defined separately for each function. For example, a handmade Swiss watch would have a high degree of FI as a timepiece. It would also have high FI for the function of being a paperweight, but we don’t need all that information to define the function of a paperweight. Any given object will have many possible amounts of FI, depending on the function considered.

  • The functional information is coded (Genetic code)

ALL information is coded, even non-functional Information (for however we define it) so I don’t think that means anything.

  • The machines of life (proteins and functional RNA) are produced according to the coded information.

From the perspective of Intelligent Design, which contends that the machinery of life is too complex to have evolved, it would be far more impressive if the machines of life assembled themselves randomly - not from any code at all. This would allow us to see the Designer in action, rather than seeing biological machines doing biological stuff.

It’s is still possible to assert that biological machinery was the intent of the Designer all along. That’s not science (it’s not falsifiable), but is how most people accommodate science and religious understanding.

7 Likes

There is no linkage between what so-called functional information is and how it relates to information as defined by Shannon. Information Theory is well defined and is very precise on its definitions. Information theory has been shown to applied to black holes, the beginnings of the universe, steam engines, the cell, and laws of thermodynamics. S = log W is fundamental to an expanding universe. Everything you said about functional information sounds like pure rubbish.

1 Like

What constitutes a large or small change is presumably in the eye of the beholder. But I learned about what I would consider to be more than a small change that has occurred in a lizard population in a few decades. After introduction to a new island habitat and in conjunction with a shift in diet, the P. sicula lizards have exhibited morphological changes in their head associated with greater bite strength and, most notably, developed intestinal valves where previously they had none.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0711998105

1 Like

Contrary to what you may think, functional information is a well defined concept.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0701744104

1 Like

And the corrolary, “Can one define ‘functional’ information in a way that distinguishes from ‘non-functional’ information?”

That’s compatible with Howard VanTill’s concept of a ‘fully gifted creation’ and Michael Denton’s version of fine tuning.

1 Like

To add, the environment is a source of information ‘captured’ by organisms over the course of evolution.

1 Like

Issues with the applicability of that particular definition discussed previously in multiple threads.

For example: Functional Information (again)

3 Likes

I don’t see why, in principle, that is not scientific. There are many situations in which intent can be inferred thru empirical evidence. An archeologist, for instance, will try determine the purpose for which a structure or tool was built. A forensic scientist will try decide whether a fatal wound was caused by accident or intent. Etc.

The problem with ID is not so much that it is not scientific in the broad sense. Rather, it is that its proponents practice science incompetently and unethically.

1 Like

Well defined, but often misunderstood. It’s a measure of the information in something (generally a protein) that allows a given degree of function relative to the information in all the other somethings that provide any degree of the same function. It is a way of ranking function by a certain measure of complexity (Kolmogorov Information).

It doesn’t really make sense to talk about creating FI, because it’s not defined until you have a “population of function” to measure it.

I’d say they are related concepts, in that KI theory and SI theory are roughly parallel, with similar theorems in each. There is definitely no linkage - no one-to-one mapping between the two except in trivial cases.

@theaz101 Functional Information (the Hazen/Sozstak definition) should be familiar to you - it is directly related to the lossless compression of data. If you had a a collection of programs that all perform the same function (a population) but different levels of performance (maybe clock cycles?), compressed each of those in a self-extracting ZIP file, then ranked them by file size, you could use that to approximate the FI for each of those programs.

If I had to guess, your usage of “Functional Information” probably isn’t the same as this formal definition. I don’t mean that as criticism of your belief, it’s just that sort of argument for ID tends to break down when hard definitions are applied.

Edit for correction/addition: Re-reading the source material, data compression isn’t absolutely necessary, but is useful for removing redundancy. In my programs example, the executable files should be used to remove difference between programming languages and compliers.

2 Likes

You are right that it’s well defined, in the sense that the PNAS paper you cite seems to formalize it and at least attempt to make it clear and useful. I’m not sure that it’s been influential in analysis of evolution or of biological function. The PNAS paper has not been extensively cited (112 citations on Dimensions, many of them preprints, in almost 18 years). Consider this quote from a more recent paper on a related topic:

In particular, given a global epistasis model one can readily approximate important descriptive statistics such as the fraction of random sequences that achieve at least a given level of functionality [a quantity known in the literature as the “functional information” (56, 57)], as well as more detailed predictions such as the site-specific amino acid use among highly functional sequences (55).

It seems that the initial “formalism” of “functional information” dates to 2003 in this Nature paper, which includes a quote that @Dan_Eastwood might be nice enough to comment on (re how Szostak is referencing “classical information”):

By analogy with classical information, functional information is simply −log2 of the probability that a random sequence will encode a molecule with greater than any given degree of function.

It does seem wise to ignore Patrick, who seems to know next to nothing about the topics he addresses on the forum.

1 Like

An archeologist or forensic scientist starts with an assumption (prior knowledge) of human designers. If for example, a mischievous alien made identical structures or tools, the archeologists would not be able to distinguish between human and alien design. The hypothesis of alien design is not falsifiable in this case, and without independent evidence for the existence of the mischievous alien there is no justification to assume that alien exists.

For the archeologist to have a falsifiable hypothesis about the alien design it is necessary for the alien design to have some property that human design does not, or (possibly) for the alien to be incapable of some design where humans are able. The alien could also cooperate, revealing themselves in some unambiguous way.

Michael Behe makes a related claim for ID; that ID can be falsified by demonstrating a stepwise pathway for the evolution of the flagella. This fails for the same reason, because the Designer could choose to Design in the same stepwise manner as evolution.

1 Like

Good comments about following the citations for how FI is actually used. To paraphrase an old saw, “A few minutes on Google Scholar, will save a few hours arguing on an Internet forum.” :wink:

I didn’t mention the highlighted part about random sequences. That step would follow the ranking I described, and the probability is a function of the ranking (with or without data compression). This reveals a flaw in what I wrote above (edit accomplished).
It’s worth tacking on the last sentence of the same paragraph:

It is important to note that functional information is not a property of any one molecule, but of the ensemble of all possible sequences, ranked by activity.

It’s not clear to me it that is all possible sequences, or if it should exclude sequences that do not show the activity? The latter I think, since we probably don’t care about all the sequences that have zero function for the activity.

1 Like

Exactly. And there is no reason, in theory, that such an artifact could not exist. For instance, if we were to discover some prehistoric device that uses technology more advanced than anything we have even today, visitation by extraterrestrials would be a reasonable hypothesis.

By that argument ID in general is not falsifiable, sure. But that says little. The claim that the pyramids of Giza could have been created by aliens is also not falsifiable if we include the possibility aliens could have created them using the exact techniques ancient Egyptians were using at the time. However, it is often claimed by believers in Ancient Aliens that the pyramids bear features that could not have been created by humans of that time. Such a claim is clearly falsifiable.

Similarly, when Behe claims that a biological structure must have been designed because it cannot have been created by evolution in a step-wise manner, that is also falsifiable. Behe is not being an incompetent/dishonest scientist when he makes that argument. Rather, he reveals his incompetence/dishonesty when, after his claim has been falsified, he refuses to accept it.

1 Like

Agree, more or less. I would like some constraints on the nature of the extraterrestrials. :slight_smile:

It says that ID is not (in general not science.

The claim that the pyramids of Giza could have been created by aliens is also not falsifiable if we include the possibility aliens could have created them using the exact techniques ancient Egyptians were using at the time. However, it is often claimed by believers in Ancient Aliens that the pyramids bear features that could not have been created by humans of that time. Such a claim is clearly falsifiable.

Agree!

It is a bait and switch argument (and therefore dishonest). We can falsify the claim “it cannot have been created by evolution”, but not that it was created by some unknown and unknowable Designer.

1 Like

That seems obviously wrong to me. What we would typically want to do is to divide the number of sequences that exceed the chosen level of functionality by the total number of sequences.

1 Like