Can random mutations cause an increase in information in the genome?

I think the biggest problem I have seen whenever this discussion comes up boils down to a misunderstanding and misuse of the term "information". The reason skeptics of creation are always asking for your precise definition of information is because the one you give, or link to in this curcumstance, is not usefull.This usually leads to a cycle of frustration where people on both sides of the debate start screaming about the definition of information. The most important thing to point out is that under the strict definition of information that creationists use (as long as they don't switch back and forth between definitions) it can be shown that the information content of an object can and does increase with the addition of changes analogous to the kinds of mutation that are known.The best example I can think of this is the constant claim of creationists that duplication does not increase information. In this subtle claim what actually is happening is that you are changing your definition of information!If I take the word 'dog' and I duplicate it I then have 'dogdog'. Since I can also do "point mutations" I can also change 'dogdog' into 'gotdog' which IS more information that just 'dog'. At that point the creationist may say that this isn't new information because you are in same alphabet. Thus increase of information has changed from a Shannon style definition to saying that it is not new information unless it involves new symbols which of course does not correspond to the reality of the combinations of things that happen in a genome. When confronted with this the creationists normally just switches back to their original Shannon style definition of information.I think the major point to take from this is that you will be continually hounded for a proper definition of information up until the point that you can actually demonstrate that the definition is both internally consistent and matches reality without the changeup tactic.According to a single definition of information that all of us who have actually studied information theory know, the information of a genome can be positivly shown to increase given the mechanism of evolution. Thus your point is refuted unless you have a way to convince us that our definition of information is wrong and propose a reasonable alternative.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

In this situation you again have changed the definition of information. In this circumstance the definition of information is equivalent to the definition of "meaning".In this context of the human language the duplication of the word 'lazy' does not add meaning but it most certainly does add information.In the context of a genetic sequence it may very well add "meaning" also. The important thing to notice is that in both circumstances it certainly does add information via any classical information theory definition.If you want to talk about how evolution is impossible because random mutation and selection does not add "meaning" then you need to be capable of providing a definition of meaning and how duplication does not add meaning in the case of genetic duplication.This message has been edited by Jazzns, 02-14-2006 11:55 AM

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Once again you are confusing information and meaning. Meaning changes with context but information does not. Therefore using the english language as an analogy into genetics is a fallacy because the context is VASTLY different. Random sequences of characters actually has "meaning" in genetics which it does not in the english language. I may suggest that you actually read up on some information theory before you continue. It may at least help you understand where we are coming from in our insistance that you define your terms well.And remember, the greatest source of information is a true random number generator. If that does not make sense to you then you don't understand information theory.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Sure. Random by itself is hard to define because you have things like random sequences, or random events. In the case of mutation which is a random event a good definition would be an event that does not have a well defined generator. In the case of a random sequence I would say it is a sequence for which there can be no closed form for defining the sequence.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Please I am not trying to berate you. I am trying to be as straight forward as I can.Your response is insufficent although I can respond in a way that makes it clearer what is needed.You need a definition for whatever you want to call it (specified complexity, information, meaning, etc) such that you can then derive a metric from it.You cannot say that one thing has more or less information unless you have a metric for calculating how much information the subject has.This is important because right now this sentence: has no value without a metic and there is no way for you to show that this is true. With a metric you could then calculate the specified complexity of that phrase you used as an example. Then you could add the word 'lazy' like you did and independently check your metric. Then if the value you get out of your metric is the same you could say that there was no increase by the duplication.Without that though all you are doing is basically typing gibberish using big words like 'specified complexity'.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Actually randman it may just be that no one you have asked is equipped to or cares to answer your question about randomness because it is off topic for this thread. I'll provide my response to you and no further more unless you want to open up a thread to define randomness. You question though to have it defined is just as valid as our continual persistance for the need to define information.I would like to talk about randomness in terms of a sequence because that is the easiest to talk about. A workable definition of a random sequence, for the purposes of these discussions, would be a sequence of numbers, letters, events, etc for which there is no identifiable closed form for determining the next item in the sequence.If mutations were truly not random there there should be a way or a mechanism for determining what the next mutation will be. All one would have to do to show that mutations are not random would be to provide this mechanism.I have found though that often when you bring up randomness it comes in the context of being purposeless. If you really do want to equate randomness with purpose or lack there of then truly you have gone beyond the bounds of what we can answer. There is no way to know if randomness has purpose. Maybe God is the great eternal chaos generator. The point here being that no fruitful discussion can proceed when the two terms are equated in such a way.If you want to talk more about randomness I will participate with you in the appropriate seperate thread.Thanks,

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Hey Garrett. I know you are being flooded with responses but I just wanted to point out one of my previous posts Message 87 specifically with regards to being able to derive a metric. I see a number of subsequent posts of your where my point stands in refutation of comparison of the quantity of specified complexity and meaning.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Yes with regards to information one might define randomness in a way better suited. The clarification you gave is great.The thing about randomness though is that some people start to pull out somewhat equivalent definitions that may distort thing. A valid definition of randomness is simply that for a given random choice all possible options are equally likely. There are situations where a given implementation of random has been considered erroneous where that condition has not been met. Certainly biological systems do not meet that standard for randomness yet do given my looser definition of simply not being able to provide a closed form. It is still random because it is undefinable yet all outcomes are not equally likely.I think with regards to rand and Garrett in this thread there are a number of things that they will have to learn in order to even be able to argue on the correct vein.1. Randomness in the true sense is the most effective producer of information. This point is lost in the invalid equating of information and meaning. To tie this into your clarification all you would need to get true randomness is to reduce your set to the elements that do not have a dependency. (i.e. collapse 'qu' into just 'q' or an equavalent symbol)2. Before you can declare that information cannot increase you must be able to measure information. That is why I really want Garrett to address my post #87 because it outlines an experiment he can do to show he is right. Quantify information and then take a measurement of the information content of his sentence. Then all he needs to do is duplicate a word and remeasure. If the quantity of information is the same then he is right. If it is not then either his metric may not be right or he is just simply wrong.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

It is. The problem is that Garrett and randman and many others before them don't want this to be true because this is the last holdout of the true creationist.Therefore they will always say that this is not new information just a copy of old information. Thus their definition of information has just changed. This is why there is the persistant asking of what definition of information they are using, because they switch back and forth.According to standard information theory this is most certainly new information. If you define information to mean a new symbol or a 'word' that does not exist in the grammar then you have just changed the definition of information to be equivalent to "meaning" which has no purpose in genetics. Usually from here you get a bunch of useless and invalid analogies between genetics and english sentence structure that have no basis in reality.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

To be very clear. What is required is not just the definition of SC but also the metric derived from said definition so that we can actually check to see if something has less or more SC.We can sit here all day and puff about what is and is not SC but until we can measure it this conversation is meaningless.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

I agree which is why it is important to argue on the point of the metric. It is easy to see why a metric is needed. The onus is then upon the IDer or the Creationist to produce the metric and when they define SC such that you cannot produce a metric then their argument fails.However the conversation goes the focus should be on producing that metric. Until it shows up all we are doing is sort of listening to complicated sounding nonsense.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

The whole issue is just one of parsing their language. At first they say "no new information". Then when you show them that using information theory this is false they abandon AIG and switch to ID terminology and talk about specified complexity. The thing they don't realize in the changeup is that the same things that are well defined for information theory don't just carry over because they want them to.The problem is that they truly are confused and in their confusion produce obfuscated arguments to deal with. Essentially at that point most of what they say constitutes gibberish with big words.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

How a creationist withdraws from a conversation.Step 1. Dismiss yourself of responsibility for defending your assertions. Actually Garrett if you want to show something is not increasing you need to actually SHOW IT. We DO need to define it if you want to understand that something is not increasing or else all we have is the word of people with questionable credentials who are known to be liars telling us so.Step 2. Change the subject to something you equally misunderstand with a new set of obfuscated points to bring up. Mutations don't leave fossils. Fossils are also only one of the most cursory evidences for evolution. Fossils are also off topic. Start a fossil thread if you want to go down this road.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)