The value of Gitt information

In the Role of Mutations thread Scrutinizer has suggested that Gitt information would be the meaningful measure of information content for genetics rather than Shannon information/entropy. Leaving the comparative merits of Shannon and Gitt information I can't actually see how gitt information can possibly be measured without making a whole host of unwarranted assumption.AIG host a paper by Gitt discussing his measure of information.Gitt puts forward a number of empirical principles concerning information which to me look like nothing but complete assumptions based on a preconcieved endpoint. In what way are these empirical principles? In the absence of a way to actually measure Gitt information, something Gitt unaccountably forgets to provide, all we are left with is subjective pontifications and no way to conceivably support these 'priniciples' empirically.I wonder how Gitt would describe all the information we glean daily from the natural world, perhaps he would ascribe that ultimately to an intelligent source as well or come up with an alternative term for it rather than information.Is there any way to actually measure Gitt information?We will never be able to show creationists an increase in genetic information if they will not agree on a quantititative measure of information they are prepared to accept.Is Gitt information useful as anything other than a vague and shifty goalpost for creationists to use?TTFN,WK

I'll take that as a no then.TTFN,WK

Your point was that you were wrong?What Percy wrote gives no indication that Shannon made any implicit assumption that any given message originated with an intelligent source, only meaning.People do apply Shannon entropy analysis to DNA, are you saying that this is a misapplication?TTFN,WK

In what way is he dealing with structures 'explicitly' designed by intelligent beings? By generalising his formulation Shannon allows it to cover any situation in which a signal is being transmitted over a noisy channel, that he may have been thinking specifically in terms of telecommunications as for applicability doesn't stop his work from being generally applicable. I'm not talking about Gitt I'm talking about bioinformaticians who measure shannon entropy in genomes (Chen et al, 2005, Schneider 2000) or use Jensen-Shannon divergence as a metric for identifying genomic features such as CpG islands (Luque-Escamilla, et al., 2005).If people are able to successfuly analyse the genome in terms of shannon information why do you feeel it is inapplicable? The transmission of genetic information from one generation to the next seems ideally suited to Shannon's problem of transmitting a signal over a noisy channel.TTFN,WK

I'm not sure it is transcription that is the relevant point when we are talking about the origin of the information within DNA, if there is any.TTFN,WK

But that isn't what you claimed, you claimed that Shannon made ... which is quite distinct from acknowledging that entities exist which can ascribe meaning to symbols. After all the reciever alone can ascribe meaning to the symbols they receive, and I might suggest that is what is happening in this case. We can find shannon information in DNA but the meaning we attach to it is our own interpretation and understanding of its physico-chemical function. And if we remove the neccessity for intelligence at the source then natural selection is a perfectly valid mechanism for 'selecting' a specific message from all the possible messages.TTFN,WKEdited by Wounded King, : No reason given.

Again I would disagree. Transcription and translation are the appropriate stages if we are looking at the transmission of information from the genome being used to 'inform' the synthesis of proteins but not if we are interested in the origin of the information in the genome itself. For that we surely have to look at mutation and natural selection.TTFN,WK

Oops, sorry Percy.TTFN,WKEdited by Wounded King, : No reason given.

Just to bring this up again since the topic has arisen in Ned's thread.TTFN,WK