LsOL: Entropy is NOT from the 2nd Law, but vice versa
- Thread starter Bob Enyart
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Johnny, how about you, would you do a one-on-one on this?
Johnny, how about you, would you do a one-on-one on this?
Jugulum hasn't responded, and I'd offer this to whoever accepts first Johnny, you or Jugulum. Here's my offer to Jugulum, modified for you:
Johnny, I'm making you an offer, a One on One in the Coliseum, between you and me, on the topic in this thread.
If you accept this offer, here's what we would do. We would copy the opening post into the One on One forum to create a new thread. Only you Johnny, and I will be able to post in that thread. One on One rules are virtually non-existent other than there is a commitment by two people to discuss a topic, and the thread will be closed by Knight within two weeks of the start.
If you accept this offer, to get us started, after copying the opening post, we will then "Post Reply" i.e., copy your post to me ("I don't think many people would disagree...") into that same thread in the One on One section of the Coliseum forum.
From there, we would begin posting back and forth to present our positions.
Thanks for your consideration!
-Bob Enyart
KGOV.com
p.s. I'm rather hard to reach, even at Bob@KGOV.com so if you want to accept, please Reply here in this thread and email me and Knight@TheologyOnline.com. Again, thanks!
Johnny, how about you, would you do a one-on-one on this?
Jugulum hasn't responded, and I'd offer this to whoever accepts first Johnny, you or Jugulum. Here's my offer to Jugulum, modified for you:
Johnny, I'm making you an offer, a One on One in the Coliseum, between you and me, on the topic in this thread.
If you accept this offer, here's what we would do. We would copy the opening post into the One on One forum to create a new thread. Only you Johnny, and I will be able to post in that thread. One on One rules are virtually non-existent other than there is a commitment by two people to discuss a topic, and the thread will be closed by Knight within two weeks of the start.
If you accept this offer, to get us started, after copying the opening post, we will then "Post Reply" i.e., copy your post to me ("I don't think many people would disagree...") into that same thread in the One on One section of the Coliseum forum.
From there, we would begin posting back and forth to present our positions.
Thanks for your consideration!
-Bob Enyart
KGOV.com
p.s. I'm rather hard to reach, even at Bob@KGOV.com so if you want to accept, please Reply here in this thread and email me and Knight@TheologyOnline.com. Again, thanks!
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I accept your offer (even though you spelled my name wrong)
There's a lot more information in sunlight than in any genome. The more order something contains, the less information.
Really? What is the sun saying?
Statistically speaking you are correct (assuming a similar sample size). But statistical models applied to information cannot describe the qualitative differences between a single celled organism and a person.
HOT! HOT! HOT! HOT! HOT! HOT! HOT! HOT!.............
More than I could ever tell you.
It's not as if it's some sort of technicality; it completely changes how information theory might be applied. The question "where did the information come from?" is easily answered, by recognizing that the relationship between order and information is inverse, or put another way, the more random the sample, the more information it contains. The question that might be more interesting is "where did the order come from?"
As long as we can stop restricting our application of science to statistical models. A fish turning into a person represents a vast increase in order, but when one applies statistical analysis to the qualitative features of both fish and people one might come up with a similar level of "order".
Sorry, I don't really see what you're trying to say. Can you clarify?
He's saying you are a joker. Weaver (of Shannon and Weaver fame) says you are a joker too: "Uncertainty which arises by virtue of freedom of choice on the part of the sender is desirable uncertainty. Uncertainty which arises because of errors or because of the influence of noise is undesirable uncertainty. It is thus clear where the joker is in saying that the received signal has more information."
:think: I think you nailed it.
Intelligently informed data can only be verified by another intelligent actor. Statistical models cannot do it.
That's a very skillful quote-out-of-context. I like the way that the final two sentences of what would have been the second paragraph was cut because it specifically acknowledges what stripe is denying, i.e. that the noise adds to the information content.
For context, lets look at a little more of what Weaver actually said:
(As quoted here.)
As we can see, he acknowledges that the noise has added information to the message, although he describes it as spurious, and earlier as undesirable. The next question should be, 'Undesirable for what purpose?'
If you read the larger context, it is clear that he is discussing the accurate communication of information, where a message is defined by the sender, and the sender is authoritative in deciding how correct what the receiver receives is. The engineering goal of sending messages with a low rate of error is antithetical to evolution, and that is the goal he has in mind when he describes the information added by noise as undesirable.
Evolution, does not name the sender authoritative. The success of the hereditary transmission is determined by the fitness of the receiver, not by the "intent" of the sender, and so the "message" received by the receiver with noise added might well be better than the one that was sent. His "undesirable", divorced of the original engineering goal, becomes positively necessary.
You are trying to use a flashlight to tighten a bolt. Find a model that actually fits the problem before you start mining for quotes.
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It would be quote mining if the meaning in context changes. And lo; the meaning does not change. As you admit yourself:
In fact, in a larger context, Weaver's quote only bolsters my position. Only someone who removes "Some of this information..." from the context the very previous sentence can say that Weaver said noise was information.
You've made a mistake, rexlunae, and you are fooling yourself.
You're fooling yourself, and you admit I'm right, when you say that Weaver is authoritative on this subject, but only if we don't follow his model! If you want to say that is no intended message, then don't look to Shannon for answers about the information content in DNA.
That being said, you can still tell us the mechanism whereupon the sun provides the information content to get the first cell going? Unless you don't want to say it is the sun that created the information content in abiogenesis; which would be the only way to avoid conflating heat with informational entropy as ThePhy is trying desperately to keep you from doing.
And then you can tell us the mechanism whereupon noise added to a classic sender-receiver system (a working cell) does not go outside of Weavers call that you would be a joker?
My, what selective reading skills you have.
You took the last sentence of one paragraph, and the first sentence of the next paragraph, and ran them together, discarding the adjacent part which contradicts stripe in saying that noise adds information, and you did not include enough information to know what problem he was discussing. You also didn't provide a useful citation with which I could go find more context. You are obfuscating.
In fact, I quoted it in context, and I provided a link to my source so that you could go find the entire document that I was looking at if you felt that more context was necessary.
The important distinction that I am making is that he didn't say that the added noise is not information. He just said that it is spurious. He also acknowledged that he is using a special meaning of information that can be "good" or "bad", a concept that doesn't transfer to evolution in the same way.
What you have to understand is what problem he is describing when he says that the information introduced by noise is undesirable, and how that problem differs from evolution by natural selection.
You seem to be able to read me as selectively as you read Weaver, and perhaps more imaginatively. First, I never said anything one way or the other about Weaver being an authority. I said that your application of his model is incorrect by the model's own terms. Second, the point of my post was that Weaver's model does not--, and was not intended by Weaver himself, to model something that is analogous to evolution by natural selection. He was modelling a situation in which you want the original message to be received with complete fidelity by definition, and it is in these terms which he describes the noise information as undesirable. This model does not address situations where the noise is considered potentially desirable.
Lets try an example. Imagine I'm sending you an email. I write some text, click send, and away it goes. The goal of the underlying technology would be for you to receive the email exactly as I wrote it, and it employs various codings to try to ensure this. Say that I made a typo in my email, a misspelling. And say that, as unlikely as it is, the noise from the communication channel coincidentally fixes my mistake. Within the model that Weaver is describing, this change is undesirable, and spurious, even if in a more objective sense it is more desirable or correct. However, evolution, in contrast, uses the more objective standard of fitness, rather than assuming that the original message is correct by definition. This is the important difference.
Not so far, and I haven't set out to do so. I've just set out to refute the assertion that such a thing would be precluded by information theory.
I don't know where the information content came from, or what the process was, but I do know that it is quite easy to find information on Earth, from the Sun or not.
Are you going to tell me what you're talking about, or are you going to make me guess?
You took the last sentence of one paragraph, and the first sentence of the next paragraph, and ran them together, discarding the adjacent part which contradicts stripe in saying that noise adds information, and you did not include enough information to know what problem he was discussing. You also didn't provide a useful citation with which I could go find more context. You are obfuscating.
In fact, I quoted it in context, and I provided a link to my source so that you could go find the entire document that I was looking at if you felt that more context was necessary.
The important distinction that I am making is that he didn't say that the added noise is not information. He just said that it is spurious. He also acknowledged that he is using a special meaning of information that can be "good" or "bad", a concept that doesn't transfer to evolution in the same way.
What you have to understand is what problem he is describing when he says that the information introduced by noise is undesirable, and how that problem differs from evolution by natural selection.
You seem to be able to read me as selectively as you read Weaver, and perhaps more imaginatively. First, I never said anything one way or the other about Weaver being an authority. I said that your application of his model is incorrect by the model's own terms. Second, the point of my post was that Weaver's model does not--, and was not intended by Weaver himself, to model something that is analogous to evolution by natural selection. He was modelling a situation in which you want the original message to be received with complete fidelity by definition, and it is in these terms which he describes the noise information as undesirable. This model does not address situations where the noise is considered potentially desirable.
Lets try an example. Imagine I'm sending you an email. I write some text, click send, and away it goes. The goal of the underlying technology would be for you to receive the email exactly as I wrote it, and it employs various codings to try to ensure this. Say that I made a typo in my email, a misspelling. And say that, as unlikely as it is, the noise from the communication channel coincidentally fixes my mistake. Within the model that Weaver is describing, this change is undesirable, and spurious, even if in a more objective sense it is more desirable or correct. However, evolution, in contrast, uses the more objective standard of fitness, rather than assuming that the original message is correct by definition. This is the important difference.
Not so far, and I haven't set out to do so. I've just set out to refute the assertion that such a thing would be precluded by information theory.
I don't know where the information content came from, or what the process was, but I do know that it is quite easy to find information on Earth, from the Sun or not.
Are you going to tell me what you're talking about, or are you going to make me guess?
Noise does not decrease entropy either statistically or to an intelligent observer. Adding noise to a signal always raises its entropy just like adding noise to a television signal decreases its quality.
Weaver's contribution only shows very clearly the distinction necessary between a statistical analysis and an intelligent observation.
Anytime I use the word information I will never be referring to something that might be generated by noise. Thus Rex and Weaver might have a problem with my common use of the word rather than adhering to what is a rather weird technical usage.
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