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Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Data, Information, and all that.... | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
I came across this recently:
"Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe." The research is actually from a doctoral thesis by Graham Rowinsonat Nottingham University (1976), but it made me think. Several very different orderings of the same data can provideexactly the same information. Not because of anything in the data, but because our mindsinterpret the data into something we recognise. I think this shows that data and information are separate(not entirely independent, but not the same thing). This means that ANY change in data COULD be an increase information regardless if whether the data increases or decreases and maynot change at all. Not sure whether that is a useful thought or not now ... stillthat's never stopped me before
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Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
Interestingly this jumbing doesn't work in Hebrew.
The language is apparently compressed alreadyby the removal of vowels (or some such).
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Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
quote: I've not forgotten about it -- I am pointing it outsepifically as the reason that data and information are not directly related. The extrusion of information from data requires aninterpretive act ... so information in this sense cannot be applied to DNA, or if it is, it must be recognised that it is the interpretation of the data that forms the informaiton, not the data itself. Adding or removing a base changes the data, it may or may notchanged the information. The same addition/deletion could represent a gain or a lossof inforamtion dpnednig on context.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
By data in connection to DNA I meant the base
sequence. In that way any change to base sequence represents achange of data. The proteins that are coded for might not be changedby a substitution (for example) and so the information has not changed. The same MAY be true of additions or deletions giventhe right context. If I were seeking intelligence in an assumed design or codeI would expect a single direct traceable mapping -- maybe that's just me.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
I cannot read hebrew even without scrambling, just passing on
something that I read here: People Which also suggests that spanish isn't that much of a problem. My thoughts based upon the above page are that recognitionhas more to do with familiarity with the unscrambled word . Unusual words (or jargon) are harder to decypher ... different for everyone 'cause we all have somewhat different backgrounds and reading habits. Words which are almagamations of more than one word alsoprove difficult ... like mhslaatnuger for example.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
DNA doesn't 'contain' information.
Nothing does. Information can be gleaned from data, given sufficientsurrounding context. DNA is a chemical ... it reacts with the chemicalsaround it, and in cells forms a part of a highly complex, self-replicating system. The emergent property of such systems is an 'organism'.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
quote: Hydrogen must contain an awful lot of information then,since of all the chemicals in existence hydrogen can only form a small portion of them. ...and what about carbon ...
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Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
That's a physics specific definition, please show that
it is relvant to biological systems.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
If a chemical process that is, given the right
environment, deterministic can imply that the underlying chemicals contain information about the reactions thay make, then hydrogen atoms must also. Given the right environment large numbers of differentcompounds can be formed when hydrogen interacts with other elements or compounds. Where do YOU draw the line between basic chemistryand information. It is not at the level of the molecular structure(which you implied by referring to a physics definition of information).
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Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
Which definition of information are you using, and
in what way does it apply to a complex chemical system?
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Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
quote: So it's an assumption on your part then? Your definition of information was 'reduction in uncertainty', withthe metric being that the less uncertainty there is the more information is present. By this definition there is very little information inDNA. 1) You require a complete genome to be able to tell which organismthe genome is for. 2) Even then you would need to know the proteins formed and thetiming of such, within the cell to determine which organism you have the genome for. 3) It is impossible to tell the next base in a sequence fromANY previous sequence unless you already know the sequence ... hence in an reduction of uncertainty sense there is no information contained in a DNA sequence.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
Symbol sequences do not contain information.
Show this sequence of symbols to a 3 year-old oranyone who is not able to understand written english. The information in this sequence is in my head, I haveused a common coding format to convey that, but for the information to be relayed it relies upon the same coding ability/codex to be in the reader's head. The sequence does NOT inherently contain information, theinformation is a mixture of the sequence and the learned ability to interpret the sequence. Any arbitrary sequence can be used to convey informationprovided that both the originator and the recipient share the 'plan'. This is NOT the case with DNA. DNA is a chemical, it does what it does ... and sometimesthe combination of chemicals produced form what we call life. It does not CODE for an organism in anything but an analagoussense.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
Funnily enough, not having access to the book
sort of makes it hard to find the connection that it suggests ... the title tells very little apart ... one could say in contains insufficient information. Perhaps an on-line reference covers the material?Or perhaps you would like to answer the question based upon your understanding of the material?
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Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
Perhaps you could elaborate on the logic that is
so glaringly obvious that I am missing it. I am aware that 'information' is used in an analgous sensewhen referring to genomes, and I am also aware that the term 'information' is used (in a different context) to indicate the 'size' of a genome. That information usage is the data-processing one and is referring to the number of bits required to store the sequences. Perhaps we are at odds with the definitions of information,many and multi-farious as they be. You have stated that information is the reduction in uncertainty. Whose uncertainty or the uncertainty of what is reducedby DNA? If I were to randomly add bases to a DNA sequence andthe emerging sequence became closer and closer to one that produces a known protein would I be increasing the information (as you see it) in the genome? 'Redcution in uncertainty' and 'template for organism' are twovery different views of 'information' which is closer to your view? My normal 'information' concept is a soft-systems one, inwhich 'meaning' or some similar concept is required.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
quote: And there's the rub! What if, from the cells point of view, it doesn't care whatproteins are produced? If ANY group of amino acids can be 'plugged' together toform a protein, and that protein may or may not cause reactions that help to maintain the cell, then the information isn't in the DNA sequence (that's raw data). If any DNA sequence can produce a protein ... or almost anyat least ... how is that information? How can you tell the difference between something designedby an intelligence to do a job, and something that adapted to do that job because it is fundamentally based upon a completely generic, non-specific protein manufacturing capability? Doesn't the simple fact that amino acids can be 'plugged' togetherin any order suggest a lack of specificity in the DNA->protein system? And there's not even a 1:1 mapping between amino-acid sequenceand protein. The only way that information makes any sense biologically(to me anyhow) is in the emergent properties that define different cells. That is a function of the interaction of the proteins, not a function of what proteins are manufactured off DNA 'templates'.
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