Sewell: One can still argue that once upon a time, on a special planet called Earth, a collection of atoms formed by pure chance that was able to duplicate itself, and these complex collections of atoms were able to pass their complex structures on to their descendants generation after generation, even correcting errors. One can still argue that, after a long time, …
Cornell Conference
Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference Chapter 8—Entropy, Evolution and Open Systems—Abstract
Sewell: … unless we are willing to argue that the influx of solar energy into the Earth makes the appearance of spaceships, computers and the Internet not extremely improbable, we have to conclude that at least the basic principle behind the second law has in fact been violated here.
Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference Chapter 7—Probability of Beneficial Mutation—Conclusion
How might such vanishingly rare beneficial mutations ever be sufficient for genome building? How might genetic degeneration ever be averted, given the continuous accumulation of low impact deleterious mutations?
Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference Chapter 7—Probability of Beneficial Mutation—Abstract
We show that: a) the probability of beneficial mutation is inversely related to the degree that a sequence is already optimized for a given code; …
Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference Chapter Six – Ewert et all on the Tierra evolution program – Summary
“The author of Tierra sought to create a digital Cambrian explosion whereby the power of the evolutionary process was unleashed. It is agreed that Tierra did not succeed in accomplishing this feat. “
Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference Chapter Five – Basener on limits of chaos – Conclusion
Chaos and nonlinear dynamical systems contribute nothing to the ongoing increase in complexity or evolutionary fitness of biological systems.
Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference Chapter Five Abstract
In a mathematical evolutionary dynamical system driven by increasing fitness, the system will reach a point after which there is not observable increase in fitness.
Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference—Chapter Four, Pragmatic information: Conclusion
a maximally informative representation would be the sort found in a name mapped onto a particular identity appearing throughout a faithfully reported true narrative.
Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference—Chapter Four: Pragmatic Information
The goal of this paper is to define pragmatic information with a view toward measuring it.
Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference—Chapter Three on the true cost of a successful search—Conservation of information
Conservation of Information: The amount of information exhibited by the search in locating a target can never exceed the amount of information inputted in its construction.
Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference—Chapter Three, Dembski, Ewert, and Marks on the true cost of a successful search
Conservation of information shows that information, like money, obeys strict accounting principles.
Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference—New definition of information proposed: Universal Information
“A symbolically encoded, abstractly represented message conveying the expected action and the intended purpose.”
Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference—Is a new definition of information needed for biology?
“Unfortunately, all of these traditional definitions lack aspects that even non-specialists recognize as being essential attributes of information.”
Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference—Can you answer these conundrums about information?
“Information is information, neither matter nor energy.” But then the puzzles start.
Open mike: Origin of Biological Information conference: Origin of life studies flatlined
The origin of life is the most vexing problem facing contemporary science. Agree? Disagree?