2012

David W. Gibson writes in a comment to a prior post: Joe, I think you have identified the problem here. In order to make his case airtight (i.e. that no other possible process can produce his entailments), Upright BiPed must prove a negative [Editors, i.e. that only intelligent agents produce semiotic* systems]. And I think he realizes this, which is why he simply continues to assert this. When the number of possibilities is unknown, process of elimination is not a valid means of picking one. I’d be willing to bet that Bill et. al. feel that they have indeed identified an alternative process, backed by 150 years of increasingly detailed scientific research. Their alternative may not meet what you feel Read More ›

DWG: I see: Bill is saying that IF you can demonstrate (and not just assert) that no other process can possibly produce the material observations, then your logic is correct. Stop right there, we are dealing with an empirical situation. No inductive or empirical fact or principle can be established beyond possible contradiction. To demand such a proof for a case where you should know better is selective hyperskepticism, here a form of question-begging. That’s like the rhetorical fast move played by Darwin when he spoke of a like condition. That boils down to demanding a default you have no right to. What inductive evidence can and does support is that there are two observed sources of highly contingent outcomes Read More ›

Listen to this description: They first converted the book, program and images to HTML and then translated this into a sequence of 5.27 million 0s and 1s, and these 5.27 megabits were then sequenced into sections of nucleotides 96 bits long using one DNA nucleotide for one bit. The nucleotide bases A and C encoded for 0, while G and T encoded for 1. Each block also contained a 19 bit address to encode the block’s place in the overall sequence. Multiple copies of each block were synthesized to help in error correction. From PhysOrg.com we get the abstract: Digital information is accumulating at an astounding rate, straining our ability to store and archive it. DNA is among the most Read More ›