Lawrence Krauss’ Monumental Blunder(s)

_{Cornelius Hunter

March 19, 2016

Cosmology, Culture, Darwinism, Evolution, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design}

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In tonight’s “What’s Behind It All? God, Science, and the Universe,” debate, the topic of protein evolution induced a long sequence of blunders. Lawrence Krauss attempted to compare a protein to a snowflake. If snowflakes spontaneously arise, then why not protein-coding genes? When Stephen Meyer called him on his absurdity, Krauss doubled down, making the ludicrous claim that there is “a lot of information” in a snowflake, and that Shannon’s information theorem would tell you that. Read more

Comments

Whatever information there may be in a snowflake makes virtually no difference at all. This is certainly not the case with proteins, where the slightest difference in structure can make all of the difference in a protein's properties and function.EvilSnack_{March 20, 2016
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James Shapiro, Denis Noble, Eugene Koonin and most of those quoted in the book, The Altenberg 16: An Exposé of the Evolution Industry.nkendall_{March 20, 2016
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Hello Mapou, #4
UB, I think maybe you should clarify. A snowflake does have information. It’s the information that dictates the snowflake’s design and configuration.
The kind of “information” that Krauss is talking about is what some might call “physical information” – the anthropocentric notion that information is in everything. Physical information is basically equal to the state of an object, or as you suggest, the information that ‘dictates the snowflake’. On the other hand, the information contained in genes is what others describe as “meaningful information”, which is an arrangement of matter (a medium) that (when translated) creates the unambiguous function found in the living kingdom. In fact, it is the thing that organizes the function found in the living kingdom. These two conceptions of information have nothing in common, and it is entirely gratuitous (and either uninformed or deceptive) of Krauss to suggest equivalence between them. In every possibly relevant way, they have absolutely nothing to do with each other. The “physical information” that determines the elementary state of a snowflake (and a gene) tells you everything about a snowflake, but it tells you nothing whatsoever about the information a gene contains (by virtue of its arrangement). In other words, the meaningful information in a gene isn’t derived from the “physical information” of the gene. This demonstrated fact is only the tip of the iceberg of dissimilarity between them. One might suspect that a trained physicist like Krauss would grasp the distinction; after all, the distinction has been made explicit within the literature (for at least the last half century). One could also hope that Krauss would choose not to be deceptive and misleading to the public on the issue. But Krauss is an ideologue who has become modestly famous for his ideology. He realizes that he is being sought-after because he’ll present his ideology as science. He’s doing what profits him. It comes with the territory. (hey Larry, I know you are busy, so let me be your secretary: Bibliography).Upright BiPed_{March 20, 2016
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nkendall: I don’t think any serious evolutionary scientist who is familiar with the most recent research believes that natural selection plays much or any positive role in evolution at all. For reference, can you name a prominent biologist who doesn't recognize the importance of natural selection in evolution?Zachriel_{March 20, 2016
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Okay after having listened to most of the debate I can offer the following comments: There was only one relevant point made throughout the entire debate. And that was the point made by Stephen Meyer about the origin of information, the indeterminate alignment of information along the spine of the DNA molecule and the associated point about the diminishingly small set of functional segments compared to the vast set of nonfunctional segments. Neither Krauss nor Larmoreux touched that point. Krauss attempted to with his snowflake idea and Lamoreux with his nylon yarn which was a begging of the question. Snowflakes are the result of deterministic laws which are precisely the opposite of what is needed to produce information which is creative. Furthermore, both Krauss and Lamoreux appear to be about 20 years behind in their science. Orphan genes, overlapping genes, epigenetics, RNA editing and splicing and a whole host of other recent findings are entirely at odds with any naturalistic process of biological evolution. The gaps are not being closed as Lamoreux and Krauss assert; they are widening. I don’t think any serious evolutionary scientist who is familiar with the most recent research believes that natural selection plays much or any positive role in evolution at all. Moreover, the ubiquity of convergent evolution at all levels, molecular, tissue, organism is entirely at odds with a stochastic process even if aided by some sort of selection. When you couple the recent findings about the far greater degree of complexity of living systems with convergence any reasonable person would have to assess that there is teleology lurking in the evolutionary process somewhere, somehow. The information problem is not going away it is getting wider. And as I have pointed out on this forum before, the information problems related to the human mind are far more confounding than the unsolved and probably unsolvable information problems in evolutionary biology. The mind, each and moment, produces a stream of novel, related, complex specified information spontaneously and it does so instantaneously and unfailingly. For materialism to be true, this would mean that the neural firing patterns which are purported to explain consciousness and thought would have to align themselves in precise series of arrangements that they have never arranged themselves into before, to produce any coherent idea—such as relativity or Krauss’ silly notion that the universe could pop out of nothing. And the brain would have to arrange itself in these coherent ways over and over again for each and everyone one of us. Dreams are perhaps the best way to envision the difficulties of the information problem related to the human mind. Dreams, result from the emulation of the five senses—which itself is inexplicable in terms of a naturalistic process—but dreams also exhibit vast amounts of novel complex specified information in the form of imagery, sound, tactile sensations all of which are somehow integrated and synchronized with one another and with the thoughts that lead the dreams and then presented to our sleeping consciousness—somehow. The belief that the neurons would just happen to fire in precisely the right way to produce this rich, creative “poor man’s theater” every night is pure foolishness. No one knows, nor will anyone ever know how that happens if they are limiting themselves to naturalistic causation. Stephen Meyer, who was obviously struggling with a migraine—made the excellent point about information and he got snowflakes in return. That type of response might have given me a migraine as well.nkendall_{March 20, 2016
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If there is information in a snowflake, what is that information about?Mung_{March 20, 2016
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Axel, Maybe Krauss' mind is made purely of matter...that might explain things.nkendall_{March 20, 2016
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I am sure future generations will marvel that relatively highly-accredited scientists could be so wilfully blind as to, for instance, claim that minds are created by matter ! Nor have they been able to explain how their materialistic determinism would not render their own thought-processes worthless.Axel_{March 20, 2016
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'Krauss has already debated someone from the DI. Berlinski. Maybe others as well.' Who better to teach him not to debate with those above his pay-grade !Axel_{March 20, 2016
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Snowflakes form from deterministic causes based on temperature and humidity which is precisely the opposite of what is needed for creating information which is never deterministic except by chance. Not sure why Krauss stopped there...why not propose that an avalanche of snowflakes is a further higher level of information. As an aside...my theory is that human flakes form from deterministic causes in academia. I offer Lawrence Krauss' comments in the debate as exhibit A to support my theory.nkendall_{March 20, 2016
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Mapou @1
I knew it was going to be a fantastic debate when Krauss started out by making sure the audience knew he was lured there under a false pretext, that he never would have agreed to debate with Meyer or anyone else from the Discovery Institute, and that he could not take either of his debate partners seriously.
After that performance, who could blame him for not wanting to debate anyone from the DI? He will win no converts with the kind of arguments he tried to make. The only people who will receive his claims positively are those who are already believers and are willing to grasp anything to help them defeat this argument about information. It's only going to get worse for them though as science proceeds. Pretty soon I think their arguments will begin to seem absurd even to some of their own people. A snowflake = a protein? What a fine example of rational thinking and atheistic logic!tjguy_{March 20, 2016
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as to:
If that was not enough, Krauss followed this with the equally absurd claim that the Sun’s energy fuels protein evolution. “Fortunately we have the Sun,” concluded the religiously-driven atheist.
a few notes:
Ultraviolet Light Illuminates More Problems for Chemical Evolution - March 17, 2016 - By Dr. Fazale Rana Excerpt: For the origin of life to have occurred via chemical evolution, an efficient energy source must be identified. Most origin-of-life investigators assume that solar UV radiation would have provided that energy. Thus, they routinely employ UV radiation in prebiotic simulation studies. Yet, as the CfA scientists have shown, early Earth’s water and carbon dioxide would have frustrated a number of critical prebiotic reactions. Plus, the use of single-wavelength UV sources in laboratory simulation studies is unrealistic and raises questions about relevancy. http://www.reasons.org/articles/ultraviolet-light-illuminates-more-problems-for-chemical-evolution Nobel Prize 2015: What the chemistry winners taught us about the fragility of human life - Julia Belluz - October 7, 2015, Excerpt: Lindahl's co-winner, Aziz Sancar, later built on this work, mapping the mechanism that cells use to repair the most common type of assault — UV damage — a technique called "nucleotide excision repair." Basically, our cells can cut out sections of DNA that are damaged by UV light and replace them with new DNA. Meanwhile, Paul Modrich discovered yet another repair mechanism: Cells can correct replication errors through a process called "mismatch repair." The upshot of these discoveries is that cells are constantly working to repair DNA damage. "Every day, [these processes] fix thousands of occurrences of DNA damage caused by the sun,,, http://www.vox.com/2015/10/7/9470913/nobel-prize-2015-what-the-chemistry-winners-taught-us-about-the Researchers discover how key enzyme repairs sun-damaged DNA - July 2010 Excerpt: Ohio State University physicist and chemist Dongping Zhong and his colleagues describe how they were able to observe the enzyme, called photolyase, inject a single electron and proton into an injured strand of DNA. The two subatomic particles healed the damage in a few billionths of a second. "It sounds simple, but those two atomic particles actually initiated a very complex series of chemical reactions," said Zhong,,, "It all happened very fast, and the timing had to be just right." http://www.physorg.com/news199111045.html DNA Optimized for Photostability Excerpt: These nucleobases maximally absorb UV-radiation at the same wavelengths that are most effectively shielded by ozone. Moreover, the chemical structures of the nucleobases of DNA allow the UV-radiation to be efficiently radiated away after it has been absorbed, restricting the opportunity for damage. http://www.reasons.org/dna-soaks-suns-rays Base-pairing protects DNA from UV damage - Sept. 19, 2014 Excerpt: researchers have discovered a further function of the base-pairing that holds the two strands of the DNA double helix together: it plays a crucial role in protecting the DNA from the ultraviolet rays of the Sun.,, The researchers have now used a combination of femtosecond infrared spectroscopy – a technique which employs ultrashort pulses of infrared light (a femtosecond lasts for a millionth of a billionth of second) to probe the dynamics of excited molecular states – and bioorganic chemistry to elucidate a new function of base-pairing: it protects DNA from photodamage.,,, After photoexcitation of this DNA with short laser pulses of UV light, the researchers discovered that the hazardous excited states, which can form in any of the bases, are deactivated by an unexpectedly simple mechanism: Each excited pair – whether it be a G-C or an A-T pair – decays into the ground state in a concerted manner. "Thus, the Watson-Crick base-pairing mechanism itself controls the dissipation of the absorbed UV energy.,, Watson-Crick base pairing acts as a natural "sunscreen" and is of fundamental importance in enabling organisms to survive exposure to UV radiation.,,, http://phys.org/news/2014-09-base-pairing-dna-uv.html Fine tuning of Light, Atmosphere, and Water to Photosynthesis (etc..) - video https://www.facebook.com/philip.cunningham.73/videos/vb.100000088262100/1136462999699965/?type=2&theater
bornagain77_{March 20, 2016
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The information a snowflake contains is simple and repetitive. It is simply like saying the same sentence over again. Just the same thing over and over again. It doesn't know what to do to replicate itself or even maintain itself. It is a crystal and I for one am tired of hearing that it is the equivalent of a single cell constructing itself from chemicals floating around in a mythical soup or undersea vents where a protein could never form on it's own, let alone build a membrane around itself and come up with DNA/RNA and all the other things that exist in the simplest of cells.jimmontg_{March 19, 2016
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UB, I think maybe you should clarify. A snowflake does have information. It's the information that dictates the snowflake's design and configuration. The problem is that no snowflake ever contains new information. Why? Because information is always conserved. At least, this is the way I understand the problem.Mapou_{March 19, 2016
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Krauss says a snowflake contains information. Here is a sought-after American spokesperson, a professor of an American university, and he is completely clueless about the topic.Upright BiPed_{March 19, 2016
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Krauss has already debated someone from the DI. Berlinski. Maybe others as well.Upright BiPed_{March 19, 2016
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I knew it was going to be a fantastic debate when Krauss started out by making sure the audience knew he was lured there under a false pretext, that he never would have agreed to debate with Meyer or anyone else from the Discovery Institute, and that he could not take either of his debate partners seriously. What a poster child for science (so called).Mung_{March 19, 2016
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