The value of Gitt information

Studying the tracks in the dirt of a barnyard, one might gather some knowledge about the chickens that made them, and in this sense, the tracks might be said to contain information; it just wouldn't be Shannon information. Studying patterns in chicken tracks might be a legitimate approach to discovering some hitherto unseen aspect of chicken behavior. Studying them in the hope of decoding hidden messages from the chickens (or from God or whatever) would be more meaningfully interpreted as an aspect of the observer's behavior, possibly indicating the need for an adjustment in medication.Since Shannon was concerned with communications signals, his starting point was the tacit assumption that the message originated with an intelligent source; it didn't have to be explicitly stated. Gitt ridiculously tries to turn that around, concluding that what is treated as a coded message IS such, and therefore originates with a mental origin.It's laughable.

Precisely my point.

A likely component of any robust attempt at defining "intelligence" would be the ability to manipulate symbols and to attribute "meaning" to them (and, conversely, defining "meaning" would be tough to do without referring to "intelligence"). Shannon's definition of "message" didn't need to specify an origin, because he was dealing with structures explicitly designed by intelligent beings for the express purpose of exchanging coded messages. See how that works? Absolutely. What's worse is that as it is reasonable to expect anyone clever enough to do so to also be clever enough to know why it's wrong, the very act raises serious questions about such a person's motives. Like the traditional freshman's trick algebra equation which proves that two equals one, or some such thing (impressing only those unable to spot the division by zero), Gitt disguises a trivial bit of sleight-of-hand with a plethora of irrelevance, counting on the eagerness of his intended audience to lead them quickly past it, and directly to his absurd conclusion. Then they all have cookies and punch.

That's true, but in applying it more broadly, it's vitally important to confirm that assumptions valid for a telecommunications channel are equally valid for the structures to which it is being applied. That's the "division by zero". Would it be valid for a non-Chinese-speaking person to use the same assumptions when examining a Chinese newspaper as when examining chicken tracks in the barnyard -- even if they were Chinese chickens? Well, an erupting volcano may seem like a violent demonstration of power on the part of an angry god, but a lot depends on your initial assumptions.My problem is in the circular way "information" is defined:What is a code? That which contains information.
What is information? That which is represented by a code.
What is DNA? Coded information.It's an empty tautology -- hence the division by zero.With some effort, we might analyze the topography of a hillside on the assumption that it represented a coded set of instructions specifying the path a given rock should take while rolling down the hill (we could similarly interpret the rock's topograhpy as the instructions for decoding this message -- or, for that matter, we could do it the other way around). A particular bump might be assigned a value such as "turn left five degrees", etc. We might then take a shovel up on the hill and introduce some "noise" by flattening out that bump. But the only possible basis for regarding the bump in its original form as "signal", and the flat spot as "noise" would be that somebody or something cared what path the rock took.Once were done looking at all the charts and graphs and equations, and considering all the nuances of conflating Shannon entropy with Kolmolgorov complexity, and reviewing Kant and Hume, Gitt's argument emerges as a Sunday-school-simple proposition: DNA is a message from God. I can't prove that false, and I won't waste a lot of energy trying. If your initial assumptions make you happy, who am I to screw with that?

Well, if we want to be really pedantic, the strictest possible interpretation of Gitt might be said to include the implication that information (which cannot exist without a code, transmitter, etc) isn't actually information when it isn't being encoded, transmitted, or decoded. What it is the rest of the time, I can't imagine. Apologies for not finding that very... well, informative. "Wish" seems to be the key word there. I guess the whole metaphor must not have worked for you then. I don't have time to unpack it fully right now; maybe this evening. For now, I'll offer this hint: I'm suggesting that DNA transcription is, ultimately, as deterministic a process as is a rock rolling down a hill. What if someone asserts that they believe that science says it's a message from God?

Agreed. Haste is my excuse. "Transcription and translation" would have been better. Oh, sorry. I guess I let the thread's title lead me astray. There's always going to be a teleological referent, which (again) is precisely my point. Here, it is the word: "selected". "As in natural selection?" (did I hear you say?) Yes, but remember, the term "natural selection" is a metaphor; no entity is required to make the choices, the choices make themselves. I stand by my claim that Shannon -- by the very act of explicitly excluding semantics from his model -- implicitly acknowledges the existence of some entity or entities with the capacity to find "meaning" (hopeless to define anyway) in symbols. If I axed you to relay a message for me, and it contained sum miss pelled words, would you have a reilable way of knowing whether those apparunt errors were kritical to the meaning of the "aksuall message"? Meaning isn't merely irrelevant to Shannon's purpose. It is assumed that among the set of all possible messages exists one which is the most meaningful, but it is not only unnecessary to choose between them on that basis, it is absolutely imperative that no attempt be made to do so; the message must be considered to have been at its maximum fidelity at the signal end.Edited by Cal, : No reason given.