What is an ID proponent's basis of comparison? (edited)

Because that is how our legal system operates. To question this is to question the integrity of our legal system not just one trial. I am not saying this is not a legitimet question just that it is broader in scope than this one specific trial.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

We don't often see this from creationists/ID-proponents. Well done.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Smooth Operator responds to me:

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No, that's simply not the case. There are billions of ways a genome can mutate.

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So? If you were to sequence every single bacterium in the lawn, you'd find mutations all over the place. That's the entire point: New "information" is being created. Despite the fact that all of the bacteria are descended from a single ancestor, the genetic sequence of the descendants is not the same as that of the ancestor.At least one of those bits of new "information" provides resistance to T4 phage. That's why most of the lawn dies but some colonies survive. If we go with your claim that "no new information" is created, then either every single bacterium is capable of fending off T4 phage or none of them are capable of doing so and thus the entire lawn necessarily reacts as one.Since the lawn does not react as a single unit, since some bacteria die while others live, your premise of "no new information" is necessarily proven untrue.

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Didn't I already respond to this?

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No. If there is this continual "loss of information," how on earth is anything still alive?

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Yes, it is a loss of information, since the pathway has become non functional.

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That isn't a loss of "information," though. At the very least, it is a neutral shift in the genetic sequence.There is an experiment you can run with removing the lactose operon from E. coli. This is the gene that allows them to be able to digest lactose. Under similar processes as the T4 phage experiment (take one, let it grow to a lawn, letting the generations pile up the mutations in the genome), they eventually regain the ability to digest lactose.How is that not "new information"? They literally did not have any ability to digest lactose. If you had fed them only lactose, they would have died. So why is it that the descendants of these bacteria are able to do something that their ancestors can't? If your claim of "no new information" is true, then the lactose operon is always and forever gone because it was specifically and deliberately removed from the genome.So where did this new operon that can digest lactose come from? A miracle?

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Which has more information: A or AB?
Which has more information: A or B?
Which has more information: A or AA?

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1.) In Shannons case AB, in Gitt's case AB
2.) Both the same in any case.
3.) In Shannon's case AA, in Gitt's case both the same.

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So if I start with a genetic sequence of A and we see a duplication event so that we have AA and then we see a mutation event so that we have AB, how is that not an "increase in information"?According to your description of Gitt saying that A and AA have the same "information" and that A and B have the same "information," then this process that involves two actions that don't by themselves create new "information" actually creates new "information" since we started with A and we ended with AB which, according to your own description, is new "information."By your description of Shannon, the new "information" step happened at the duplication stage.So I have to ask you: Where is your justification of "no new information" when we have directly observed processes that result in what you claim is "new information"?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

traderdrew writes:

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Although it could raise another point, why would someone decide to leave the outcome of this trial hinging on one person to make?

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Because the creationists, unable to document their claims in the arena of science where papers are written, subjected to peer review, and has other scientists try to replicate the results, decided to go the way of the courts. All it takes is one judge to say, "Creationism should be taught in science class," for them to claim victory.They can't justify their claims scientifically, so they try to get it declared valid by fiat.This is the basis for my solution regarding what should be taught in class:Every year, we do a survey of the literature to see what has been published regarding biology. We look for the breakdown of which papers are in support of evolutionary theory and which papers are in support of creationist claims. We then break down the time spent on biological diversity to that standard: If 70% of the papers advocate evolution while 30% advocate creationism, then that's the breakdown we do.The reason why no creationist will ever agree to this, of course, is that there are no papers that advocate creationism in the literature. This is precisely why Behe published his book regarding "irreducible complexity" in the popular press, not the scientific literature: He couldn't get it past peer review.Because they can't manage to have their claims survive scrutiny by scientists, they try to get other authority figures such as the courts to declare them true by fiat.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

You are simply wrong!"MY HOUSE IS BIG"
"MY HOUSE IS BIG"has twice the information content as
"MY HOUSE IS BIG"This is very basic!To claim it has the same information content is just silly!Lets keepit simple. By your claim the string 1 has the same information as the string 11. But then the string 1111 has the same content as 1 no?In fact you could repeat the 1 5459795 times and still only have the same information content as in the string 1?Now if you convert 5459795 to hex, and make three pairs it can be interpreted as the string "SOS" using the standard ASCII notation.So by you claim we can incode the string "SOS" in just one bit?In fact using standard ASCII we can encode any random finite length text string as just one number, lets call it N.You can then represent that number as N repetitions of a string. Your claim is that N repetitions of a string has the exact same information content as the string itself.Thus any string has the same information content?Either your definition of information content is seriously screwed, or you are mistaken.

I know this is open to interpretation but wasn't it rather that the creationists went straight to the schools, through the school board, and that the actual case was bought by a parent unhappy with the teaching of ID?I'm sure one could see the instatement of ID into school curricula as an open invitation to sue but is this the same as ID deciding to go the way of the courts?Indeed they seem to much prefer holding their own faux court cases like the one in Kansas organised by the state board of education. Unfortunately as long as people keep voting religious fundamentalists onto boards of education this problem is unlikely to go away, but is likely to waste thousands or indeed millions of dollars of tax payers money that is supposed to be paying for education.TTFN,WK

Whoa, whoa, whoa, there, back the buggy up.We don't often see this from anyone on either side. --Percy

I think we have to make sure how SO is really thinking about this. He may be saying that sending the message "MY HOUSE IS BIG" twice communicates no more information than sending it once. It's a little difficult to tell since there are so many details he doesn't make explicit.Also, SO's "MY HOUSE IS BIG" example has the potential for creating confusion because it is not only a message, it's a message with meaning, and one of the way's that SO misunderstands information theory is that he thinks it includes semantics, apparently because he's been listening to Dembski, Gitt and Spetner.I'll post a more detailed reply to SO when I have time.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Got a name wrong, "Werner" => "Spetner"

About being open to interpretation, I'm not sure how since the facts of how the case came to court are pretty clear, and they're pretty much the same as all other previous cases. Creationists persuade a school board or a legislature to create a policy or law advancing the cause of creationism in the public schools, and acting out of concern for science education parents bring suit on the basis of separation of church and state.--Percy

Its also worth remembering that simple gene duplications certainly can produce selectable phenotypes whether or not they constitute an 'increase in information'.It seems to me that as these discussions progress IDist notions of information and function get more and more divorced from the actual biological functionality that is the substrate for natural selection.TTFN,WK

My problem is that SO seems to make an awful lot of assumptions regarding how to measure information.I forget the specifics of Shannons theory, since its been, hmm, to many years since university.But of course context matters. I remember an example with child birth. The father to be is outside the door, and he desperately needs to know the sex of the newborn.Now The nurse might come out the door and say "It's a boy", a message which is 10 characters long, but they could have agreed on a protocol, such that she just displayed either a black or white piece of paper in the window in the door, white for boy and black for girl.The information content would be the same for the father. But this is just because the set of possible messages is exactly 2, so either way she could at most communicate 1 bit of information.Now claiming that
MY HOUSE IS BIG
MY HOUSE IS BIGhas the same information content as
MY HOUSE IS BIGis just silly, when you do not specify any context. As my simple example showed, repeating the message can communicate more information. And indeed it must, since even if you get no new information about his house when he repeats the statement, you still gain new knowledge, since you now know he said it twice.Since we are talking about biological entities, we should look at DNA. I know nothing of how it works, beyond a cartoonish impression,
but to take our analogy to the breaking point, will duplicating a gene never ever have any effect on the phenotype of an organism.Notice however that this a question quite separate from whether there is more information or not.

I magically answered your question before you asked it, see above at Message 235.TTFN,WK

I was trying to leave Rrhain some wiggle room since he was saying it was creationist taking things to the courts.TTFN,WK

There were two other ID expert witnesses in court: Steve Fuller and Scott Minnich. Dembski backed out. Meyer and a couple of others were originally schedulted but cancelled for reasons I forget.Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

Strictly speaking, Dembski and Meyer didn't "back out." They were fired by the school board's lawyers. (link)

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