Hossenfelder: Today I comment on the recent claim that the black hole information loss problem is “near its end” and explain why this is nonsense.
Information
At Forbes: Hawking’s black hole paradox is NOT solved
Ethan Siegel looks at the limitations: But we’re still a long way away from determining exactly where that information goes, and how it gets out of a black hole. Theorists disagree over the validity and soundness of many of the methods that are currently being employed to do these calculations, and no one has even a theoretical prediction for how this information should be encoded by an evaporating black hole, much less how to measure it.
Jonathan Bartlett: Elon Musk inadvertently tumbles to a big problem in origin of life theory
Bartlett: Indeed, whatever the difficulty of creating life in the lab, making individual prototypes is not nearly as problematic as making “the machine that makes the machine,” which all reproducing living cells can do. That is, the ability of an organism to reproduce is at least an order of magnitude harder that the ability of an organism to just live.
Steve Meyer on James Tour’s podcast
“In this interview, Dr. James Tour and Dr. Stephen Meyer discuss science and faith, while getting into the details on the discovery of complex, sequence specific information required for life’s function and origin, and the required fine-tuned laboratory that we call our universe that must exist in order for assembly to occur.” People are taking reality seriously? What next, we wonder?
Is information really the fifth state of matter? Rob Sheldon responds
Sheldon: Throughout history we have examples of these bad physics generalizations. For example, heat was once considered a fluid embedded in the oak log, absorbed from the sun, called phlogiston. As it turned out, heat is not a material substance.
Eric Holloway: Dembski’s filter is critical for internet communication
It turns out that legions of critics of the explanatory filter use it all the time, without noticing.
Eric Holloway: Why Bell’s theorem matters
Especially to conservation of information theory: This brings us to a more general result known as the conservation of information. Design theorists William Dembski and Robert J. Marks defined the law of conservation of information in their 2009 paper “Conservation of Information in Search” and then proved the result in their follow-on 2010 paper “The Read More…
New paper at Biocomplexity by Daniel Andrés Díaz-Pachón and Robert J. Marks II
Paper’s conclusion: We have proposed extension of active information for domains other than those confined to a finite interval. Maximum entropy (maxent) is defined on domains other than a finite interval.
When science writer John Horgan reluctantly sort of acknowledged: Information implies minds
Horgan: The concept of information makes no sense in the absence of something to be informed—that is, a conscious observer capable of choice, or free will (sorry, I can’t help it, free will is an obsession).
New vid: What is information?
The fact that anyone is taking information seriously is a big step forward.
A note on layer-cake communication systems and protocols
There is a live exchange on the molecular nanotech communication systems in the cell that is trying to reduce them to Chemistry; where a chemical reaction is a physical process. Accordingly, I beg to remind one and all regarding layered communication systems and protocols: This is an elaboration of the general communication system: Here is Read More…
Evolutionary Informatics Lab guys on COVID-19: When 900 bytes shut down the world
A great physicist warned us, information precedes matter and energy: Bit before it: The COVID-19 virus contains about as much information as a sticker in WhatsApp. Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks and Dr. Daniel Andrés Díaz-Pachón explore a dreadful truth: “Human biology is so finely tuned that less than a kilobyte of information Read More…
Wikipedia erases list of climate skeptics
Even if everything is all pristine and honest with climate science today, the settled habit of simply censoring opposing views inevitably corrupts. Over time it corrupts absolutely. Darwinism is paying the price even now for that kind of thing, if we go by the defensive Darwinblather around the current, sublime embarrassment of de novo genes.
Davies and Walker on Origin of life: Life as information
Walker and Davies, 2013: The manner in which information flows through and between cells and sub-cellular structures is quite unlike anything else observed in nature. If life is more than just complex chemistry, its unique informational management properties may be the crucial indicator of this distinction [13]. Unfortunately, the way that information operates in biology is not easily characterized.
Bill Dembski on the primacy of information for science
The conversation with Fred Skiff, chair of the physics department at the University of Iowa examines why information is the most basic object of study in science and how Conservation of Information naturally leads to the conclusion that intelligence is the ultimate source of information.