When does design become intelligent? (AS OF 8/2/10 - CLOSING COMMENTS ONLY)

I tend to agree with crashfrog on this, though I admit it's perhaps a bit fussy making the distinctions.The piano roll is part of a causal chain. The key I use to unlock my front door is part of a causal chain. I expect information to be abstract, and separated from causal chains. Otherwise we begin to start calling the cogs on gear wheels bits of information, and before long everything is information. John Wilkins takes the view that it isn't information unless it is part of an information processing system. That's probably about right. I think his most relevant post about that was from before he moved from scienceblogs to his current wordpress blog site, and I didn't dig that far back.

Hi, ICANT. Do you agree that some things are not the result of intelligent design?Do you also agree that intelligent designers can figure out ways to simulate those things that are not the result of intelligent design?Do you also agree that simulations that are designed to behave exactly like non-intelligent processes will produce the same results as the non-intelligent processes themselves would produce?If so, what objection can you possibly have to the results of this antenna example?

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Did you only read the last few lines of my post? I explicitly said that DNA contains information by several definitions. Do you mean what the total number of proteins produced by the human genome is? There are ~21,000 estimated protein coding genes in the genome, but this underestimates the number of different proteins that can be produced since a single gene can produce multiple different 'isoforms' of one protein. I have seen estimates of the 'complete human proteome', all the different proteins that a human genome can produce, as being ~1,000,000. I'll not answer each question then since you seem to be asking the wrong question overall, I thought you were interested in the source of the information in the genome, not how it was then transmitted once inside the genome.No one has said that genetic information is not transferred within the cell. Hubert Yockey has made an extensive formulation of genetic information transmission from gene to protein in terms of Shannon information. Again I get the impression you only skim read my last response. Some examples of information without an intelligent source would be the information about seasonal temperature we can extract from tree rings. The information about geological processes we can extract from studying geological strata, the information about recent tides we can extract from patterns of sand on a shore. Obviously I don't expect you to accept these examples but that is because you are using a restricted notion of information which you insist must include intelligence a priori.TTFN,WKP.S. I read through the blog post NWR linked to and it makes a good argument why DNA, and most of the other examples I put forward, should not be considered to be information. Which works for me as well, I view an informational approach to biology as a pragmatic rather than a fundamental one, it is useful to the extent it allows us to work out how biological systems function. Edited by Wounded King, : No reason given.

This is true. I have no idea why you think it is a reply to what I posted. There, my good sir, you are in error. Well, if you asked "how did the boopdedoop get into the DNA" then of course I wouldn't be able to answer at all, because I would have no idea what you meant by "boopdedoop".When you ask the same question about "information" then I can give you only a bare sketch of an answer because you have left me with only an extremely sketchy idea of what you mean by "information".If you made it more precise by talking about Shannon information or Kolmogorov complexity or something specific like that then I could make my answer more precise.In short, I can't answer your question at a greater level of detail than you are prepared to ask it. I've done that. But, for reasons I've just explained, I've had to do so in a fairly abstract way.

Hi Dr, How many cells is that information in? What does that have to do with how many proteins can be created by the Human DNA? So is there is some information in the messenger RNA that the ribosomes can understand and make the particular protein that the cell requests? If they can't understand it as you do the newspaper, how can they chose the correct amino acids to make the particular protein requested? How can you have a string of characters without a language?I thought the characters put together is what formed a language that could be read. I would have thought it a given that I believed human DNA contained information.That information being the complete blueprint for the human it resides in and only that human.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Your genome does not contain a "complete blueprint" of you.

They don't chose to do anything.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Hi jay, If the information had to begin to exist at the same time the molecule began to exist, how could it have evolved into existence? I don't believe molecules were put together. I believe they were all created as you see them today.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Well, we know that's not true. When oxygen and hydrogen gases react, the result is new molecules of water that weren't there before. I mean, simple common sense dictates that molecules must be created and destroyed, otherwise chemistry would be impossible.The metabolism of your body is a process by which molecules are broken down or built up from other molecules. Many of the molecules "we see today" were created today, not 6000 years ago.You're saying things that are dramatically at odds with common sense.

AFAIK, all of them except the red blood cells. It doesn't. I misinterpreted your question, which is ambiguous. (I read it as meaning "by what means are many proteins made", whereas you meant "what is the number of proteins that are made". If you look at your post you will see that it bears both interpretations.)Human DNA is estimated to produce somewhere over 100,000 different proteins (the set of all such proteins is known as the "human proteome", and you can find out more about it by googling that phrase). Biologists are still counting the proteins --- they're harder to count than genes are. Just as they can't really understand, so they also they can't really choose. No brains, y'see. Speaking of them "choosing" is rank anthropomorphism. You might as well ask how gravity knows which way is down. Like this: fkjhapi4hfibwpifbpiab034fh. Languages are often expressed in strings of characters. It does not follow that every string of characters is a word or sentence in a language. I thought that that was what you thought, yes.

Hi jay, I have no objection.I do have an observation that it was created by a program that was created by intelligent people writing a program and putting it on a machine that was created by intelligent people.It did not come into existence by itself.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

A program designed to accurately simulate mindlessness.If simulated mindlessness can produce complexity, why couldn't real mindlessness?

You do understand that considering the program that is a really stupid observation don't you?

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Hi, ICANT. DNA and RNA chains are strung together by the formation of phosphate bonds between DNA or RNA bases.
Information derives from the order of the DNA or RNA chain.
Thus, information evolved into existence by the formation of phosphate bonds.
Obviously, this is not really evolution, but you get the idea.Why is this hard to understand?
Do you really have this much of a problem with information arising without design?

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Wonderful. My observations are that it won't pour my cereal in the morning and it doesn't consume enough mosquitoes.It would be interesting if your objections actually had something to do with the topic of the thread. Nobody ever claimed that it came into existence by itself. The point is that the design of the antenna, the particular arrangement of the wires, came about without intelligent input.I've asked you to read how the antenna was created. Either you haven't or you haven't the wit to understand it. Let me try to explain it to you.They began with a population of very simple antennae, then selected those that most closely matched the characteristics they were looking for. Then the program combined and changed those first generation selected antennae in random ways. The program then tested the next generation, selected those that most closely matched the characteristics they were looking for. Then the program combined and changed those second generation antennae in random ways. This process continued for several generations until they got to the end result, which met all the characteristics they were looking for.To summarize, from the moment that they put the characteristics of the first generation antennae into the program until the end result emerged, all that happened was random changes and combinations together with selecting the best ones from each generation.Now, tell me where the intelligence entered into the antennae design.Edited by subbie, : Tyop

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. -- Thomas JeffersonFor we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers. -- Barack ObamaWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- PhatIt has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate