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Abstracts for the What Is Information? meeting, November 13-14, 2015, Seattle

Courtesy Christian Scientific Society, here. Friday night: Doug Axe, Biologic Institute Intelligible Design Although technical work in mathematics and experimental biology has been crucial for establishing the academic legitimacy of intelligent design, the downside of emphasizing technical arguments is that it promotes a perception of elitism. My impression is that the vast majority of people who favor design over Darwinism feel unqualified to offer a robust defense of design, which means everyone is looking to the experts to resolve this controversy. Contrary to this, I argue in my forthcoming book that the key insights for resolving the controversy come from common-sense reasoning and experience-based intuitions shared by all people. This makes everyone qualified to participate in the debate. … Saturday Morning: Read More ›

He said it: Bill Gates on the genome as software

Human DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created.” (Bill Gates, The Road Ahead, page 228 (Viking, Penguin Group, 1996, Revised Edition)* On line here. *Also: Bill Gates, with Nathan Myhrvold and Peter Rinearson, The Road Ahead (New York: Penguin Books, 1995), p. 188. Wonder what he’d say now. Would he break down and cry, erupt into maniacal laughter, or read Darwin’s Doubt? Follow UD News at Twitter!

New (podium-free) film addresses origin of information

Further to: Origin of life research still “abject failure” (Franklin Harold)? The answers will remain murky because the researchers are trying to get information out of matter. Great physicists have said it was the other way around: Here’s the trailer for a new film addressing the problem, The Information Enigma Information drives the development of life. But what is the source of that information? Could it have been produced by an unguided Darwinian process? Or did it require intelligent design? The Information Enigma is a fascinating 21-minute documentary that probes the mystery of biological information, the challenge it poses to orthodox Darwinian theory, and the reason it points to intelligent design. The video features molecular biologist Douglas Axe and Stephen Read More ›

What IS information, when so many sciences disagree?

From the Christian Scientific Society: We will be having a regional meeting again this year, November 13-14 in Seattle, at the Discovery Institute. This year’s meeting in on the topic “What is Information?” This question seems to keep coming up. At the annual meeting in Pittsburgh, J.P. Moreland argued that information must have a spiritual/non-physical aspect. Randy Isaac has argued that there is no information in biological systems because information presumes communication between intelligent agents. Bill Dembski has argued that information can never be spontaneously created, only destroyed, except by an intelligent agent. In the physics world, information is viewed as exchangeable with energy. We have six speakers who will be addressing different aspects of this topic: Friday night: Doug Read More ›

Ann Gauger on why Darwinism = information loss

Not gain. Darwinism, as taught in school, is the claim that natural selection acting on random mutation generates huge levels of information, not noise. Here is what really happens: Ann Gauger of the Biologic Institute here: Microbiologist Ralph Seelke and I published a paper in 2010 where we demonstrated that cells always, or nearly always, take the easiest road to success. Given a choice between a simple two-step path leading to repair of two genes needed to make tryptophan, versus a one-step path that eliminated expression of the those genes, only one out of a trillion cells went down the path toward making tryptophan, even though that path would ultimately be much more beneficial. Why did this happen? The genes Read More ›

Finally, a book on the ID debate that addresses actual issues

From David Snoke’s review at the Christian Scientific Society of Perry Marshall’s Evolution 2.0: Breaking the DeadlockBetween Darwin and Design Perry Marshall is a well known, successful expert on internet marketing, and his career has included developing new algorithms and paradigms in business and market analysis. For several years, he has been involved in online discussions about intelligent design and evolution. He has now come out with a book giving a comprehensive presentation of his views. The book will be quite useful as an introduction to the debate, especially for those who are not experts in biology. His writing style is easy to read and to the point. Here are some of the things I like about the book: 1) Read More ›

Uncommon Descent at 15000 posts: A tribute to Bill Dembski

I (O’Leary for News ) must have first met Bill Dembski (who started this blog in 2005) at some  Christian meet in the Toronto area, Canada, roughly 2002. You know, the usual Templeton-funded stuff, aimed at sedating and anaesthetizing Christians in science while their hands are conveniently chopped off. They are more useful that way. Bill struck a chord with me because his main point was, information theory cannot be incorporated into this so-easy-victory-for-materialism agenda. I’d never before heard anyone offer evidence as to why the unbelievable just isn’t true. As opposed to the usual rubbish: We should quiet our concerns by  developing two lives, one in which we assent that the unbelievable is true (and get good jobs). Otherwise, Read More ›

Do animals use quantum information processing?

From +plus Living Mathematics: Organisms — humans, animals and arguably even plants — have a striking ability to predict what their environment might throw at them. They use information from the past to respond to cues in the world and learn from surprises, meaning that when they encounter similar situations again in the future, they can act faster and more appropriately. In fact, this so-called predictive inference is such an important skill that it helps organisms to stay alive. But Susanne Still and Gavin Crooks think that this ability might also hold the key to understanding how all types of living systems behave efficiently in the natural world — perhaps with a little help from quantum information processing. Their work Read More ›

A coincidence? Or a Darwin incidence?

Darwin incidence: A planned event that must be treated as a coincidence, irrespective of probability. What do readers think? At 11.32am (EDT) on 8 July, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) computers went down, causing a four-hour suspension of transactions. In a four-hour period the NYSE averages about $400m (£259m) in trades – a substantial daily loss. The NYSE and Homeland Security both quickly announced the problem was not due to a cyberattack. At around the same time that the NYSE went down, the Wall Street Journal’s website went offline, as did that of popular financial blog Zero Hedge. United Airlines also experienced a “network connectivity issue” which impacted almost 5,000 flights worldwide. Given the criticality of technology to United Read More ›

Is life a form of signalling?

Suzan Mazur interviews biologists who take the information nature of life seriously: I thought it might be time to ring up Kalevi Kull, a theoretical biologist in Estonia at the University of Tartu’s Institute of Philosophy and Semiotics to talk about developments. Kull is known for his contributions to the field of biosemiotics and currently serves as president of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies. His most recent book is Towards a Semiotic Biology: Life is the Action of Signs Suzan Mazur: Is biosemiotics an exact enough science at this point to be poking holes in the Modern Synthesis? Are the operational concepts developed enough? Kalevi Kull: I would say they are developed as much as linguistics can be called Read More ›

ID is case study in diffusion of knowledge

A friend writes, “The following paper [in Frontiers in Physics] makes ID the basis of a case study in the diffusion of knowledge. Behe and Meyer are prominently featured:” Slow-down or speed-up of inter- and intra-cluster diffusion of controversial knowledge in stubborn communities based on a small world network Here’s the abstract: Diffusion of knowledge is expected to be huge when agents are open minded. The report concerns a more difficult diffusion case when communities are made of stubborn agents. Communities having markedly different opinions are for example the Neocreationist and Intelligent Design Proponents (IDP), on one hand, and the Darwinian Evolution Defenders (DED), on the other hand. The case of knowledge diffusion within such communities is studied here on Read More ›

FYI-FTR: Communication system framework model . . . relevance to the cell

Andre just asked me: can you please embed a flowchart of how communication works for [XXXX] … You know the one that goes like this input encoder medium decoder output. I don’t think [XXXX] understands the problems such a system has with accidental processes nor does he understand IC. Please KF. With a little bit of luck a light bulb might go on for him. I don’t know how to embed an image in a comment here at UD, which — for cause — is quite restrictive as a WP blog. Here is my slightly expanded version of the classic diagram used by Shannon (a version of what I usually used in the classroom, sometimes with modulator/demodulator rather than encoder/decoder*): Read More ›

Apparently social science data are easy to fake

Could that be because humans are naturally deceitful? Stay tuned. It sounds as though the intelligent design view is right after all. Humans are not meat puppets, and anything one human thinks up can be trumped by another one. Not something one has to deal with much with cattle. See also: Why is it okay for tenured profs to be dumber than the rest of us? Follow UD News at Twitter!

Catholic Darwinist Ken Miller claims increasing information in life forms is easy

What’s needed to drive this increase? Just three things: selection, replication, and mutation.” – Kenneth Miller, Only a Theory, p. 77 Thoughts? See also: Wow. Catholic Darwinism goes nuts. A mass for Darwin. Or is this a joke? Open a window, someone, please. Follow UD News at Twitter!

How the non-random evolutionary hypothesis differs from Lamarckism

Further to: Lee Spetner’s non-random evolutionary hypothesis (NREH) vs. neo-Darwinian theory (May 4, 2015), Spetner, author of The Evolution Revolution comments, The NREH is very different from Lamarckism. The latter is a theory of evolution based on the inheritance of acquired characteristics. If an animal builds up strength in its limbs, this limb-strength can be inherited by its offspring. There was no mechanism offered for how it happened, principally because there was no understanding of heredity. The NREH, on the other hand, says that organisms have a built-in capability of responding to environmental stress by making epigenetic changes. These changes often involve the turning on of cryptic genes that produce phenotypic changes that are usually adaptive to the new stress. Read More ›