At Phys.Org there’s a press release that talks about how “information” can be “hidden” in plain text. They use some kind of ‘perturbation’ method, which, I suspect is linked to some kind of set of statistics.
Here’s what they say:
Computer scientists at Columbia Engineering have invented FontCode, a new way to embed hidden information in ordinary text by imperceptibly changing, or perturbing, the shapes of fonts in text. FontCode creates font perturbations, using them to encode a message that can later be decoded to recover the message. . . .
“While there are obvious applications for espionage, we think FontCode has even more practical uses for companies wanting to prevent document tampering or protect copyrights, and for retailers and artists wanting to embed QR codes and other metadata without altering the look or layout of a document,” says Changxi Zheng, associate professor of computer science and the paper’s senior author.
Scientists have already found different types of ‘codes’ at work in nuclear and mitochondrial DNA. I suspect that someday soon they will discover something along the lines of FontCode also “embedded” in the ‘ordinary text’ of DNA.
This is an ID prediction. It is based, as is the technique described by the PR, on “information theory,” something that didn’t exist in the 19th Century. This type of ‘coding’ is now ‘hidden’ from us, but, when we know what to look for, will be ‘discovered.’
How is this an ID prediction? How is a designer involved, and why could such an unknown code not have evolved, and biology just not have advanced far enough for us to notice it?
BTW, the perturbation is simply to change a font slightly (i.e. perturb it), so that the differences can be recognised by a computer, but not by the naked eye. No statistics involved in the perturbation (but machine learning is used to recognise the perturbations).
Codes only come from intelligent agents, Bob. And ID is OK with the code evolving by means of intelligent design
“How is this an ID prediction?”
ID ‘predicts’ that information, particularly coded information, only comes from a mind.
“How is a designer involved,”
Via Agent Causality, i.e. Only intelligent agents are known to devise codes.
“and why could such an unknown code not have evolved,”
Ask Richard Dawkins that question:
“and biology just not have advanced far enough for us to notice it?”
I have no clue what that question is suppose to mean.
Of final note, if I recall correctly, in the following video Trifonov speaks of a newly discovered genetic code that was defined by the specific shapes of the molecules in the sequence.
Bob How is this an ID prediction? How is a designer involved, and why could such an unknown code not have evolved, and biology just not have advanced far enough for us to notice it
Information does not exist outside the context of intelligence, mind, or consciousness. And codes are structures within information theory. Biologists may claim that information in the genome was created by chaos, but this has never been and never will be proven.
Information can be categorised in various ways. Here is a crack at it:
(1) information acquired by humans by observation, measurement, estimation, imaging, data acquisition, sound recording, etc. etc.
(2) information springing from the creative process. This would include all of human creative activity, and that by non-human agents and would include CSI of Dempski. However this can be illusory in some ways because one person’s value of information may be such that another person’s information is worthless, or essentially non-informational in content.
(3) Information exchanged by living things or within living things is a byproduct of the CSI of Dempsky. This may be a subcategory of (2)
This is a rough outline and is an attempt to organise a topic that is not easy to nail down being somewhat squishy. However I am sure of one thing. If a biologist tells you that living things obtain information from the environment which is transferred to their genomes and thus the source of information there, this is pseudo-science. And you can prove it by asking said biologist how much information is in a grain of sand, or in a puddle of water. In other words science is all about quantifying, so such a claim should be backed up with answers, in the measure of information in bits.
Bob O’H:
Briefly, this is an ID prediction because it correlates known intelligent activity as the source of characteristic markings associated in a ‘code’ (language). When, and if, similar ‘markings’ are found in the genetic code, ID theory would have ‘predicted’ that the “source of [these] markings associated [with] a ‘code'” would be found given the ‘nature’ of intelligence.
As to “why . . . such an unknown code [could] not evolve,” is the same as saying these indistinguishable markings “evolved” through human usage of written language. Obviously, if these markings are “indistinguishable,” then they wouldn’t form part of the ‘evolution of language,’ and, if they somehow evolved, they would have done so without serving any function/purpose at all. As the Darwinists say, “No increase in ‘fitness’.”
I hardly looked at the paper, but, from the ‘markings’ I saw it looked like the computer was picking up these markings and then applying some kind of algorithm to them; that makes me suspect some kind of statistical weighing is involved.
Here’s the pdf of the paper, and here’s a quote:
Looks like I was right.
Steganography is extremely old. Altering the font is one of the old methods. Steganography was always used by spies, and always used for copyright protection and commercial signals.
Nature uses steganography all the time. Nervous systems are extremely good at detecting a slight change in a habitual pattern. A stranger won’t notice it but a friend or family member will; so a slight change is a good way to leave a coded message or a call for help.
Why is this even news?
polistra:
I’m making a prediction. Darwinism can’t do that. It’s all a posteriori since all of its predictions fail to materialize.
So, when the prediction comes to pass, then it will be ‘news.’
Yes, intelligent agents can, and do, use systems of code.