coded information in DNA

Hey, that sounds familiar... Here's a quote from a 2008 post over on dreamviews.com: Link: http://www.dreamviews.com/community/showpost.php?s=098316...The dreamviews.com post was made by someone using the handle "Ne-yo", who claimed to be posting from "Tagruato" (the fictitious corporation used in part of the viral marketing campaign for the movie Cloverfield). Are you the same person who posted over there as "Ne-yo", or are you merely, um, using his words as your own without attribution?If you are the same person, I'd like to know why you're presenting various arguments here that were discussed at length in the dreamviews.com thread and thoroughly critiqued there. You shouldn't present them again here without having first adjusted your arguments in order to patch up the various flaws, fallacies, and errors identified by those who pointed them out at dreamviews.com.If you're *not* the same person, you shouldn't be presenting arguments/claims that you have simply copy-pasted verbatim from another site, especially without having first verified them on your own, not to mention the aforementioned failure to first patch up the flaws pointed out in the material in the replies at dreamviews.com.Oh look, here's essentially the same passage (with the same Yockey quote) from a 2006 evcforum.com thread: Link: http://EvC Forum: reply to Arachnid Message List -->EvC Forum: reply to Arachnid Message ListThat was posted by someone going by the name "tdcanam". Again this raises the question of whether you're the same person who posted this previously under a different name (without adjusting for earlier critiques of it), or whether you just used someone else's material without vetting it yourself or patching up the errors that poster made which the 2006 thread had already pointed out to the author.How much else from your current posts is recycled? Are they things that you know, or things you've been told? Things you understand, or have found and copied?

That would be nice.However, this first line of your post reveals one of the fundamental errors in your arguments on this thread. If you had read the threads from which you copied your Yockey comment (see my previous post), you'd have seen that this error has already been pointed out by various respondents and perhaps you could have avoided making the same error here.The problem is that when you say "the definition of coded information", you presume that there is only one -- "the" definition. There is not. There are many definitions, depending upon the specific kind(s) of "information" being "coded", the methods used, the functional requirements of the example, the type of analysis being performed (i.e. how the author is looking at the case and why), etc. etc. Plus there are multiple meaningful definitions of "code/coded", and "information", which again vary in significant and meaningful was depending upon the analytical context.There is -- there can't be, and there shouldn't be -- one definition of "coded", nor "information", nor "coded information". Your search for "the" definition of coded information is not only futile, it rests upon a basic misconception about the hows and whys of information science.As the respondents on the earlier threads pointed out, the threads where you (or the person(s) you "borrowed" from) tried this before, having the misconception that something is either "coded information" or it's not (by one allegedly objective, clear criteria) leads to the "fallacy of equivocation" (explicitly pointed out on those threads), wherein you (consciously or unconsciously) use shifting or multiple or slippery definitions of a term in different ways at different points in your argument (or in different posts on a thread). This is especially easy to do when, as is the case here, the layman's meaning of the terms ("code", "information", etc.) have a more vague, less rigorous, and in many ways misleading meaning when compared to the scientific meanings of those words. It's far too easy to read a scientific statement about a narrow, carefully qualified definition of the word, and mistakenly think that it applies to the layman's broad and fuzzy notion of the word.More often than not, it doesn't, and leads to fallacious arguments along the lines, of, "since information (in the scientific sense) has properties X and Y (quote Yockey/Shannon here), and since information (in the layman's sense) has properties A and B (appeal to "common sense" here), then given A, B, X, and Y, we must conclude (insert giant leap here), QED". Um, no. This is the fallacy of equivocation -- of shifting your subject in the middle of the argument while (mis)assuming that you're still talking about the same thing.Not only are the layman's notions of "coded", "information", and "coded information" different from the scientific meaing of those terms, there are also MULTIPLE SCIENTIFIC MEANINGS of those words. Scientists are careful to make clear *which* specific meaning they're employing during a particular paper/book/study. In this thread, you've not carefully done that, and in fact you've shifted all over the map, using multiple scientific definitions at different times as convenient, plus throwing in various layman's notions about what information/coding might or might not be, all while making the fundamental mistake of thinking that you're still talking about the same thing. It's like someone arguing a point in Geometry while shifting between Euclidean geometry, non-Euclidean geometry, topology, and the musical instrument known as a "triangle" (*ding*).It might sound superficially coherent, but it's wrong.[/qs]

Right, you're supposed to be carrying your own conversation here, not serving as a proxy for someone else. If you want to argue pmarshall's thesis, okay, but do it yourself (in your own way in your own words) instead of just posting big chunks of his own site. I've examined them enough to understand his argument just fine. The problem is that his argument is flawed, fallacious, and wrong. No, his argument falls down all on its own, even without you helping. True. And fallacies are fallacies no matter whose they are. Easily. Yes indeed. Others have adequately dealt with him over there, they don't need my help. Nor am I interested in chasing around the internet playing whack-a-mole. If you want to discuss his ideas with us, here, fine. If not, there's little need for us to go somewhere else to tell someone who's never heard of us why his ideas are incorrect.So do you want to have a conversation (and possibly learn something), or not?You asked whether we can refute his argument. Yes. Here's the short form of what's wrong with pmarshall's argument. His argument, stripped of its fancy-sounding sidebars about information and quotes from biologists, is (verbatim from his website): Even granting him step #1 -- and there are several MAJOR caveats in there, but let's give him that one as it's more right than wrong, the rest does not follow.The problem with #2 is that the "codes we know the origin of" are the ones WE (humans) made. The fact that we made some codes and know that we made them doesn't itself tell us squat about the origin of codes we *didn't* make and (allegedly) don't know the origin of (such as DNA). Even the way he words it, he *admits* that we don't know the origin of non-manmade codes (by contrasting them with the codes we *do* know origination stories for).All #2 really says is that we know that men made manmade codes. Big whoop-de-do. That's pretty much a tautology. That really doesn't tell us anything about codes found in nature, the ones we know *we* didn't make, the ones he admits we *don't* know origins for. Actually, he's speaking for himself -- *he* may know nothing about the origin of natural codes, but lots of people *do* know quite a bit about the origins of natural codes, even if we don't yet know every detail.Somehow, he makes an unsupported, fallacious leap from #2 to his #3 which out of nowhere "concludes" that DNA was the result of a mind and that information is "proof of the action of a Superintelligence". Say what? How did he get from #2 to #3? Other than just pulling it out of his ass, I mean, and trying to pass it off as a conclusion by prefixing it with the word "therefore"?He nowhere supports this "conclusion", he just states it. That's not a conclusion, it's a premise. His premise. It doesn't follow from his #1 or his #2. He's just doing circular reasoning, stating his premise as his "conclusion". I'd call that sleight-of-hand, but it's hardly deft enough to qualify -- sleight-of-hand implies a sneaky switch that's done somewhat skillfully. This one is clumsy as hell, as trasparent as a "magician" who visibly stuffs the rabbit into the hat in front of the audience before pulling it back out and going "ta daa!"Yes, manmade codes are made by men, and men are intelligent agents. No, this doesn't allow you to suddenly conclude that non-manmade codes MUST therefore be made by intelligent agents too. Sorry.And no, you can't "conclude" that in other ways either. You can't "conclude" it by saying, "I can't think of any way a code could arise naturally, therefore it couldn't have arisen naturally". That's the fallacy of the argument from ignorance.Nor can you "conclude" this by claiming that no one else can think of a way for codes to arise naturally. First, people actually can and have come up with such scenarios, and found compelling evidence for them. But second, even if no one had a clue, that still wouldn't "prove" it couldn't happen naturally, it would just mean that no one had thought of it yet. The argument from ignorance doesn't get any more correct just because everyone's scratching their heads and not just you.Pmarshall's "argument" isn't even an argument. It's three disconnected assertions, one of which he fails to support and yet attempts to pass off as a "conclusion" when it isn't. It's just a bald-faced assertion. He hasn't "proven" anything, not even remotely, and hasn't presented anything that even rises to the level of "argument" or "proof". It's just hand-waving and special-pleading.

What is the "message" of the DNA sequence CTATAGAGTTAGACC? NO. You're just making this up. We most certainly do not "KNOW" this. Even your own hand-waving attempts to argue by induction (i.e. by analogy to manmade codes), if you were to actually apply them consistently, REFUTES this claim you just made, because in the case of manmade codes, life PRECEDES codes, not vice versa. You've already claimed that the life of the coder must precede the code. Now you're claiming that the code precedes life. Make up your mind, pick one conclusion, and stop trying to argue it both ways. Yet again, you attempt to argue by analogy, by induction. Call this what you will, but it is NOT "proof" (a conclusion by deduction), which pmarshall repeatedly falsely claims it to be.But in any case you've just shot your previous claim ("code precedes life") in the foot, not supported it. If indeed the message/code in a book/DNA (which originates in a living mind) necessarily precedes the implementation of the written message/code on paper-ink/DNA, then you've just shown that LIFE precedes CODE, which contradicts your claim that CODE precedes LIFE. Oops!I didn't mention it earlier but even your original argument has a "turtles all the way down" problem. If mind precedes code, then from whence did the coded information in that mind come from? Another coder? And where did the coded information in *that* coder's mind come from? Clearly another coder I guess. And so on and so on... Where does this start, in your scenario, since human minds come from coded "manufacturing books" (DNA), and the coded books come from minds, which came from codes, which came from minds, which...?This is a problem with almost all of the "intelligent design" arguments, and it's a problem with yours as well.IDGuy: Complex things need a designer. Life and especially the human mind are complex, thus they had to have been designed, thus there is a designer. QED.
GuyWhoActuallyThingsThingsThrough: Oh. So who designed the designer?
IDG: What do you mean?
GWATTT: You just said that complex things need a designer. Clearly the designer himself would be even more brilliant, more capable, than a human, he's even more complex than we are, and since complex things need a designer, then the designer himself had to have been designed by a prior designer, by your own argument. And so on for the designer's designer, and so on -- is it turtles all the way down?
IDG: Oh no, the Designer(tm) wasn't designed, he's Special(tm) and came about (or always existed) without himself being designed.
GWATTT: So your original claim about complexity *needing* a designer in order to exist was false, there are exceptions after all?
IDG: Yes.
GWATTT: So the whole basis for your conclusion about why there *must* be a designer was actually false after all, complex things *don't* always need a designer, complex things (including things with minds) can in fact possibly exist without a prior designer?
IDG: Uh... yeah...
GWATTT: So you've just torpedoed your own argument about the alleged necessity of a designer? You admit that minds *can* exist without the hand of a designer? If so, then why not cut out the extra step in your scenario and just posit that perhaps *we* are the minds that managed to come about without "needing" a prior designer's mind?
IDG: Oh look, I have to go...This is the case for most "ID" arguments, including the "argument from complexity", the "argument from first cause", the "irreducible complexity" argument, and your own "codes need coders" argument. Every one of them results in the necessity of an infinite regress, a "turtles all the way down" problem, unless you admit that at *some* point, your own premise fails to hold and that at some point, there's a code without a coder, a designer who wasn't designed, an actor that wasn't caused, an "irreducible" structure that wasn't built. And once you do, your own argument comes crashing down, as it was originally built on the claim of such a necessity (the necessity of a coder if there is code, etc.)"Intelligent Design" arguments are vacuous. They either don't "resolve" anything (because the designer himself had to have been designed, by their own premise), or they undermine their own arguments (by turning around and admitting that their claims of necessity aren't ironclad after all).And so it is for the "coder" form of this exact same ID argument. It's the same failed argument dressed up in different words.

No no no... You're completely missing the point here, and you need to pay attention, because it's an important one.Manmade codes, such as symbolic language, written language, wartime ciphers, etc., are all about imparting information from one mind to another. Thus, it's not surprising that minds have to precede codes -- there's no point to these codes without a mind on both ends of the message transmission. That's also why the medium doesn't much matter -- as long as the message gets from the originating mind to the receiving mind, it doesn't matter if it travels by vibrations in the air, the internet, smoke signals, words on a page, etc.The mistake you and pmarshall are making is trying to use *those* kind of codes to draw conclusions about very *different* kinds of codes -- you mistakenly use the example of manmade mind-to-mind communication codes in order to FALSELY draw conclusion about how nature-based codes (such as DNA) "must" be.But despite numerous similarities, there are very stark differences, which you and pmarshall are failing to see when you try to make your various conclusions based on a faulty "codes are codes, what's true of one code -- especially manmade codes -- must therefore be true of all other codes" argument that is very much NOT a valid way to reason.Just because manmade codes are (duh) made by man's mind, that does NOT mean that natural codes are necessarily made by a mind.Just because manmade codes are for the purpose of communicating mind-to-mind, that does NOT mean that natural codes are necessarily crafted by or carrying a message from a mind.Just because manmade codes are indepedent of the medium, that does NOT mean that natural codes are necessarily indepedent of their medium.Let's take that last one for example, because it helps underscore how fundamentally UNLIKE human codes they are, and how your attempt to argue from a "all codes are the same, have the same properties/origins" premise fails because they are NOT as uniformly alike as you simplistically think.Manmade codes are used to impart information from one mind to another, and as such the medium is largely irrelevant. I could send this post to you over the internet, via ink and paper, through a messenger who had memorized it and would repeat it back to you, etc.That is NOT the case for DNA. DNA works via direct, physical, molecular interaction. Period. You can't slip a (microscopic) ink-and-paper representation of a DNA sequence into a cell and have it do anything. It *has* to be a molecular of sequence of exactly the right type, because *all* of the interactions in a cell, including the transcription/translation of a DNA sequence is done by the *physical* interaction of molecules literally bumping into each other and affecting each other (or not) due to their molecular shapes and atomic properties. It's how they physically fit together (or not) that determines where a DNA sequence is going to cause certain kinds of changes in other molecules around it and throughout the cell's interior. The medium and the "message" are *intimately* intertwined. The medium *is* the message and vice versa. This is very, very different from human codes.The first thing to realize from this observation is that it's likely to be a mistake to try to draw too many conclusions about natural codes by trying to assume that they're "just like" human codes in every way (which is what you're attempting to do). They have fundamental differences, which are very likely to make such analogies eventually break down if you try to take them too far, apply them too universally.It also provides a gigantic hint that natural codes may have originated differently than manmade codes. They're fundamentally different in many ways, which hints at a different origin -- if minds (ours) make humanlike codes, and if natural codes are different than humanlike codes, perhaps that's because natural codes aren't mind-made codes (because minds make *our* kinds of codes, not the kinds of codes found in nature).Finally, it shows a way out of your and pmarshall's "codes need coders" conundrum. While a "medium-independent" code might arguably need the mind of a coder to craft it, medium-dependent codes have obvious methods by which they can conceivably arise naturally. When the medium is an intimate part of the message, as it is in molecular codes like DNA, then natural variations in the medium (molecular configurations) can directly produce new "messages" and new "coding machines" (including variant coding schemes) without a Cosmic Coder typing them out on his Typewriter In The Sky(tm).Modern life's system of DNA -> RNA -> ribosome-mediated production of proteins may seem too baroque, too "code-based" to have arisen naturally through variation and selection, but thanks to the molecular medium-is-the-message nature of the cell's molecular machinery, there are numerous conceivable pathways by which it could have arisen from simpler beginnings in a series of evolutionary refinements. See for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtmbcfb_rdc
Just a moment...
Phylogeny from Function: The Origin of tRNA Is in Replication, not Translation | Tempo and Mode in Evolution: Genetics and Paleontology 50 Years After Simpson |The National Academies Press
Codon size reduction as the origin of the triplet genetic code - PubMed
On the origin of the translation system and the genetic code in the RNA world by means of natural selection, exaptation, and subfunctionalization - PubMed
And many, many, many more. Do a Google or a PubMed.com search for "origin genetic code"Which of these was "the" actual manner in which it happened, or whether we can eventually "prove" it after so much time has passed and so much evidence of the early stages of life have been lost, remains to be seen, but the point is pmarshall is basing his "proof" on the alleged *impossibility* of natural origins. However, not only has he *failed* to demonstrate the impossibility of natural origins, he is falsely pretending that there *aren't* plausible scenarios for such origins, when in fact there are many. And as long as there are, *we* don't have to prove that they *did* happen, *he* has to prove that they *didn't*, they *couldn't* -- ALL OF THEM -- or else his entire argument utterly deflates, because his argument is based on his (false) premise that there are no other possibilities for the origin of the genetic code other than The Big Coder In The Sky.He's wrong. There are other possibilities. Deal with it.This, by the way, is why science properly relies on finding *positive* evidence *for* a hypothesis, not bogus arguments of the type pmarshall (and far too many creationists/Intelligent Design-ists) attempt, of the form "if I can argue against opposing theories, then mine *must* be correct!" Um, no. Yours could be wrong too; the real answer might be something that no one has yet thought of, or one of the ones you too hastily discarded because you didn't understand it fully or didn't want it to be the actual answer...You can't "prove" God by trying to eliminate every other possibility and win by "default". That's not how epistemology works, because there are an infinite number of alternative possibilities (including vast numbers we may not have even thought of yet, but may be the actual answer), you can't possibly eliminate all of them and leave yourself with just "one" answer by elimination. You *must* find *positive* evidence *for* your own hypothesis. And no, "I can't think of any other options" doesn't count as positive evidence. Nor does "this is the one I already believe". Nor does "this is the one I want to be true". Positive evidence for a designer would be something along the lines of a copyright notice found in the genome, or specific features of the genome that are distinctly of the kind produced by design teams and not by evolutionary processes, etc. To date, however, every feature of the genome has been distinctly of the kind produced by evolutionary processes, not by design. Sorry.Edited by Ichneumon, : No reason given.

Does it code for whether an alligator egg produces a male or female? Oh, wait, no it doesn't... Care to try again?Genetics is not nearly so simplistic as you falsely presume. No, actually, they don't. Your analogy is stretched to the point of invalidity. DNA is a molecule, actually. I would. He's right, you're wrong. But the reasons why are somewhat esoteric and not worth wasting much time on, unless you're *really* curious and want to start a new thread. Suffice to say that it's because the meaning of "code" (even your own attempted definition) is loose enough that it can encompass many things that one wouldn't intuitively think of as codes. In the case of gravity, it's because a gravity field uniquely maps points of a given position/velocity at time T to unique points at time T+n. You could for example set up a pattern of objects in space at noon today, scattered throughout the solar system in non-obvious positions and with varying velocities, which gravity-encode a message. That message would appear on July 4th at midnight, at which time they would all impact the surface of the Moon simultaneously in a way that would spell out, in giant letters visible from the Earth as glowing impact points, "WordBeLogos doesn't fully understand codes". As contained in DNA? Well, no, but therein lies the source of your error. You mistakenly assume that a code is a code is a code. That all codes have the same properties, the same functionality, operate in the same way. They don't. The gravity-field-code is indeed a code, but not exactly the same kind of code "as contained in DNA". It has significant differences.But therein lies the rub. You and pmarshall are fallaciously basing your arguments (if they can even be called "arguments") on the incorrect assumption that all codes are equivalent, that what's true of one kind of code (manmade codes) must necessarily be true of other kinds of codes (natural codes such as in DNA). You're wrong -- different codes have different properties, different behavior, different abilities, different requirements, different origins. You can't conclude some kind of universal origin for all codes just because the particular codes *we* make are crafted by our minds.