@evograd is. I know more than I should about this too. Transcription factor guided control is a big part of how development is encoded. It is not everything, but it certainly is a lot.
It was a “simple thought experiment”, people, to show the combinatorial possibilities. These obviously include all manner of regulatory mechanisms.
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It was clear to me.
In case it’s still not clear to others, all of those other regulatory mechanisms generate–or have the potential to generate–combinatorial complexity as well.
@Agauger You are writing to a diverse group of scientists and non-scientists. There is PhD level understanding of Information Theory AND evolutionary science. Peaceful Science has Physicists, Biologist, Geologists, Engineers, Philosophers, Theological, Students, and interested lay people. We drill down into the scientific (and theological) claims.
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I am, although I came into the field from an evolutionary biology background instead of from a developmental biology track, and I currently work exclusively with jawed vertebrates so I’m not an expert when it comes to more general phyla-level questions.
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I hope the new thread with Dr. Mercer won’t distract Dr. Gauger for providing that precise definition of information as it applies to biological entities. I’m interested to hear about the different “kinds” of information and how the different “kinds” were injected into a genome. Hopefully this won’t be like the YEC definition of “kinds”, changing every day depending on the circumstances. 
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I am also very interested in the precise definition of information as I am coming at it from the Information Theory side.
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@Patrick
Thanks. Just a comment. I am in the middle of a move and have a big project for work so my responses will be delayed. For example most of the time I have no access to internet except my phone.
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@Patrick Would you be amenable to creating an OP setting forth the many different precise definitions of information that are used within information theory if I promise to stay out of it?
Or, might I be allowed to participate on a very limited basis to request references? IOW, I won’t debate anything.
While Dr. Gauger is busy, anyone else from the ID camp want to offer up a precise definition of information as it pertains to biological entities? It would be great if you could also provide ID’s method of quantifying the biological information so we can tell if / how much it changes over time.
@Agauger doesn’t do information theory. I expect she means it in more general sense. I’ve never heard her make an information theory argument before.
We start with fish and then have transitional fossils leading to tetrapods. We have transitional fossils between early mammals and earlier tetrapods. We have transitional fossils throughout the mammal clade, including whale transitional fossils and hominid transitional fossils. All of these transitional fossils and precursors yet creationists claim there is no fossil evidence for vertebrate evolution. I don’t see how finding more transitional fossils would change their mind.
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.I take credit for coining Gish’s Law:
G=T+1
G=Gaps
T=number of transitional fossils
Gaps is a measure of uncertainty in evolution. Therefore, the more transitional fossils we have the less certain we are of evolution.
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I’ll help you with the work project. 
I am sure I can write an perfectly acceptable ID argument for just about anything. Gravitation waves - ID, OOL - ID, new human fossil - ID, Let me know what you need.
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@Patrick
How about a sure fire way to convince amusing freethinking atheists that ID is true (when there is a formalized description of testable ID ideas work with)? 
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Speaking as an atheist, ID would be more convincing if it wasn’t just an argument against evolution. When scientists discuss evolutionary pathways they don’t spend 99% of their time trying to disprove ID/creationism, and then at the end of the talk say “Therefore, it had to evolve”. A positive argument for ID/creationism would certainly be helpful.
Application to real world biology would also be helpful. For example, a methodology that can distinguish between mutations produced through design instead of natural processes would be most useful. You could then apply this method to something like the human and chimp genomes and demonstrate which differences are due to natural mutagenesis and which were caused by an intelligent designer.
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Yes!! I agree. Working on it.
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