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

Yes, for most definitions of information. Not Werner Gitt's, of course. Modulo mutation and recombination, yes. Yes. It's in the cells. Transcription and translation. By translating the mRNA. Yes. Metaphorically. (They can't read it as I read a newspaper, in the sense of understanding it.) In Shannon's sense, any string of characters contains information, whatever the source, and whether or not it "has a language".If you will admit that DNA contains information, then the sequence of bases in a genome is just such a piece of information.

For any two given genomes there are an infinite number of sequences of mutations that would get you from one genome to another. Therefore if it is possible for one genome to contain more information than another, then there are an infinite number of sequences of mutations that create information.(If, on the other hand, you wish to define information such that all genomes contain the same amount of information, then the question of creating information is not relevant to genetics.)If you would be more precise about how you're measuring information, then it would be possible for me to be more specific and more brief. But you're a creationist, so I guess you're not going to.

ToMAYto, toMAHto. Well ... the ability of a piano roll to make a pianola produce a piece of music is also the result of its structure.If you're going to go down this route I don't quite see what would count as "information".

The requirement for a computer and a computer designer and a computer program and a computer programmer is the precise difference between the simulation and reality, and as such has nothing to tell us about reality. The similarity lies in the fidelity of the simulation to the thing being simulated.The fact that these processes found in nature are (when simulated) sufficient to produce the appearance of design strongly suggests that the real processes being simulated, which do not require a computer nor a program nor a computer designer nor a computer programmer are sufficient to produce the appearance of design.It takes a lot of design and programming to simulate the growth of snowflakes by natural processes. The success of such a program does not suggest that each snowflake is intelligently designed by Jack Frost. It suggests the exact opposite.It takes a lot of design and programming to simulate the origins of the weather by natural processes. The success of such programs does not suggest that storms are caused by thunder-gods. It suggests the exact opposite.It takes a lot of design and programming to simulate the dynamics of the solar system as a result of the laws of motion and gravity. The success of such programs does not suggest that the planets are pushed round by angels. It suggests the exact opposite.It takes a lot of design and programming to simulate anything at all. This is one thing that invariably and inevitably distinguishes a simulation from reality. The success of a program which simulates natural processes and produces a given result shows that these processes are sufficient to produce that result. It does not imply that supernatural processes are required. Instead, it proves the exact opposite.Have you got that? It really is very simple. It was not the antenna that evolved but the specification for it.Edited by Dr Adequate, : 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.

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.

A few objections come to mind.The first is that ribosomes do not understand mRNA.The second is that in that case a protein sequence would not constitute information, since there's no receptor --- but perhaps you're happy with that.The third is that I'm not sure that "message" is the right word for the information on the genome ... perhaps now you should try to define the word "message". Without using the word "information", of course.

But I was not using the English language.Also what makes you think they were English letters and not Spanish or French or German or Italian letters? Actually I can.—Ħţƺ╧ƿɷʁɅɇI didn't make any of those up, and they are not the characters of "a known language".But this is by-the-by. Not over the internet, no. But this is also by-the-by.The fact that we often express language by a string of characters doesn't mean that any string of characters is a language.Just as the fact that we juggle by moving our arms doesn't mean that any arm movements constitute juggling. DNA can't decide anything, 'cos of not having a brain. The way it works is not much like a computer program. That would be a very loose analogy.I'd suggest that instead of trying to understand genetics in terms of bad analogies, you just try to understand genetics.I'd never try to teach a computer science student about computer programming by analogy to genetics, and it doesn't really work the other way round either. No: we can watch systems that control the expression of genes evolving in the laboratory. No intelligent designer is required.If it comes to that, we can watch self-replicating computer programs spontaneously arising from randomness and then evolving --- again, without anyone deisgning them.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Who designed the antenna? Agree with who about what? No-one has claimed that we can use a computer program to simulate evolutionary processes without using a computer program or a computer.The claim is that when we use a computer program to simulate evolution this produces things which have the appearance of design without any person having actually designed them.Do you agree with that? Only that is what is actually being claimed.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

The symbols are known. They are not the symbols of a known language. False dichotomy. Computer programs can be produced without being intelligently designed. It's called "genetic programming". Could you clarify your point? This is true but irrelevant. This is not strictly true. This is not remotely true. This is irrelevant.Just to make it clear once again.No-one claims that it is possible to write a computer simulation of evolutionary processes without a computer.What they claim is that a computer simulation of evolutionary processes can produce useful information.Do you disagree? If by "without intelligent input" you mean "without completely unintelligent processes unguided by any intelligence whatsoever being simulated on a computer", then the answer would be: in reality, where completely unintelligent processes unguided by any intelligence whatsoever are not simulated on a computer.Evolution is an excellent example of such a process.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

YES. Intelligence is required to set up any computer simulation of anything.That's one of the key ways in which all computer simulations differ from reality, which does not run on a computer.Therefore this fact is as irrelevant to the implications of the simulation as that the computer runs on electricity, or that it's sitting on a desk, or that it was made in China, or that it has a Microsoft operating system. No conclusions can be drawn from these irrelevant observations about the real process being simulated.

Who designed the antenna? This is, of course completely untrue. If it was true, no-one would ever bother to write computer programs. This is true but irrelevant to the false claim in your previous paragraph. Without intelligent input, yes. Without electricity, no.These are actually two different things.

No, of course not.Who designs the programs that are produced by genetic programming? I still don't see your point. It's irrelevant to the question of whether an unintelligent process can produce a computer program. It can. That has nothing to do with what I wrote. Irrelevant to whether unintelligent processes produce information. What makes you think that the first life-form was DNA based?Interestingly, we can observe self-replicating computer programs arise from random code and then evolve to be better adapted for reproduction. No intelligent designer, of course, is required to intervene in this process.

And so in the case of genetic programming the computer scientists only know that they are simulating a natural process because biologists have proved that mutations exist in nature.Even if they had not, a genetic algorithm would still be an unintelligent process which produces results which have the appearance of design without anyone actually designing the results. But of course biologists have proved that mutations occur in nature, a fact that I presume you will not deny.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

And this program itself is not an intelligent designer, correct?The very most you could argue by trying to make the existence of the programmer part of the simulation (which he is not) is that some sort of intelligent designer would be required to make a universe in which evolution then happened by itself. That would be an analogue to the role played by the programmer. Such a designer would be irrelevant to questions about whether species require intelligent design. No. You can tell that I'm not saying that by the way I said something totally different.Why don't you go back and read what I wrote? And no-one has disputed that. So maybe you could stop saying it now, and address the point actually under discussion.