Fred writes:
Precisely analogous? Come on now, that is quite a stretch. Is this integer sequence a sequence of instructions? If not, then why do you keep claiming it’s an algorithm?
You still misunderstand the model. The bits are the organism, the sequence of states within those bits is the expression of the organism within the environment, the coefficients are the genes which control the sequence of states, and the source of mutation of the coefficients is a random number generator.
The coefficients, ie, the genes, control the next state of each bit, which is the expression of the organism within the environment, just as our own genes control the expression of ourselves in our own environments. The algorithm to determine the next state of each bit is simply a sum of terms where the terms are a function of the values of the coefficients. As I told you originally, it's basically a PLA with states, ie, a state machine.
In case it helps, here's the link to the C++ program again:
Ring Counter Evolution
Regardless, my point earlier was that even if your simulation was producing an algorithm, Terra already attempts this. But evolutionists themselves question the claims made by the Terra crowd and they will question yours. It’s just not what you think it is, Percy. If it was as you boldy claim, you would have a serious shot at the Nobel Prize!
You seem to be operating under some strange illusion that the scientific world is in alarm hoping for a solution to the seemingly intractable problem of how evolution could possibly happen when information theory says it's impossible. The reality is that the only people who think there's a problem are a few Christian evangelicals. One doesn't win a Nobel Prize for demonstrating the obvious.
Percy, I’m sorry but I find it amazing and ironic that you would call ridiculous the undeniable fact that Shannon information requires an intelligent sender.
You're still way out in left field with this intelligence business.
First, to answer a related point you make, no, computers and spacecraft are not intelligent.
Second, the transmission of information does not require an intelligent sender. When you look up at the stars there are no intelligent aliens out there sending the starlight, yet there's so much information in that light that we've been able to deduce the processes of the stellar furnace and the age of the universe. While it took intelligence to make sense of the information, it took no intelligence at all to either send or receive it.
Shannon's model of transmitting information only requires a sender, a communications channel and a receiver, and as expressed in his paper these were automated, not intelligent, devices.
You're only confusing yourself when you attempt to add value laden judgments like "utility" to information theory. A telegraph clerk during WWII receives a coded cipher from the underground, "The pebbles fall lightly," and he has no idea what it means. It is useless to him. Does that mean no information was transmitted? He brings the message to his superiors, who check their cipher books and learn that the message means to schedule a parachute drop of supplies that night. In your view no information was transmitted from the underground to the clerk, and not even from the clerk to his superiors since the clerk didn't understand the message, but only from the codebook to the clerk's superiors? Is this like the immaculate conception of information, where it suddenly springs forth from no source? Or is it the quantum uncertainty theory of information, where information isn't really information until someone who understands it examines it? I don't think so.
You'll only be able to start making sense of information theory by removing from your perspective those elements which are value judgments, such as what is useful and what is intelligence. They play no role in information theory.
Percy writes
About information loss, I don't understand why you're pressing me about it as if I thought it couldn't happen.
Fred replies:
Ah, but I think it gets to the very core of your confusion, and I believe dismantles your logic. Why can’t you provide me one example of genetic loss of information at the genetic level that would satisfy you?
Fred, I don't know where you're picking up this strange interpretation, but of course I think information can be lost. Either you're trying to make some non-obvious point known only to yourself, or you're not paying attention. If it helps to get through this particular red herring of a point, simply eliminate a nucleotide, a gene, a chromosome, an organism which possesses the last existing copy of a particular allele.
But this is irrelevant. The point being challenged is your assertion that information theory rules out the possibility of random mutation creating new genetic information. Of course mutation can create new information. What could possibly prevent it?
--Percy
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