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Lee Spetner on evolution and information

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From Lee Spetner, author of The Evolution Revolution at True Origin:

Many years ago I published a paper that pointed out that the evolutionary process can be characterized as a transmission of information from the environment to the genome (Spetner 1964). Somewhat later I wrote that there is no known random mutation that adds information to the genome (Spetner 1997). This statement in one form or another has found its way into the debate on evolution versus creation. Evolutionists have distorted the statement to attack it, as in Claim CB102, where Isaak has written his target for attack as, ‘Mutations are random noise; they do not add information. Evolution cannot cause an increase in information.’ Perhaps something like this statement was indeed made in an argument by someone, but Isaak has distorted its meaning. For his ‘refutation’ he writes the following 4 points (the references are his citations): More.

See also: Lee Spetner answers his critics

Comments
Bob O'H:
So if you create a duplicate copy, you double the number of terms.
Redundancy does not add information. Clearly you don't grasp information theory.ET
July 31, 2017
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Bob O'H- Why is it that only evolutionists seem to have issues with the word "information"?ET
July 31, 2017
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ET, he refused a CBE in 1963, and is often referred to incorrectly as 'Sir'. Sorry!rvb8
July 31, 2017
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ET @ 28 - I don't understand what Spetner means by information - he doesn't explain it, and your explanations don't make any sense, as I've explained. It's possible that you don't understand what he writes either, which would explain why your explanation doesn't seem to make sense.Bob O'H
July 30, 2017
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Mung @ 27 - Shannon information is - sum p log p. So if you create a duplicate copy, you double the number of terms. So the information is - 2 sum p log p. There is a change in the distribution: duplication even changes the dimensions of the distribution!Bob O'H
July 30, 2017
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rvb8- Crick was knighted in 1999. Now it's time for you to show there was a quote-mine as opposed to mindlessly just saying it. But we all know that you cannot.ET
July 30, 2017
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Your turn to quote mine. It is after all the central pillar of anti-ID argumentation; get some one famous, preferrably Behe, and twist, and mutilate their words.
:)Mung
July 30, 2017
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ET @32, when did Francis Crick become Sir Francis Crick? 'Christianity may be OK between consenting adults in private but should not be taught to young children.' Francis Crick. Your turn to quote mine. It is after all the central pillar of ID argument; get some one famous, preferrably Darwin, and twist, and mutilate there words.rvb8
July 29, 2017
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Any examples of people teaching about entropy while lacking any understanding of it? Any examples of Dr Spetner misusing the word information with respect to information theory (or not understanding IT)?ET
July 29, 2017
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Information means here the precise determination of sequence, either of bases in the nucleic acid or on amino acid residues in the protein. Sir Francis Crick in "Central Dogma"
ET
July 29, 2017
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http://rtfessays.org/the-use-of-information-theory-in-biology--a-historical-perspec.htmlMung
July 29, 2017
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ET, the fact that he taught it doesn't count for much. All sorts of people teach about entropy while still lacking any understanding of what it is.Mung
July 29, 2017
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Mung@ 26- Was their someone else before Crick who talked about information with respect to biology? Probably was but he seems to be the one who defined it in terms of sequence specificity.ET
July 29, 2017
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Bob O'H- You clearly don't understand what Shannon-Weaver said. Spetner taught Information and communication theory. And you? Dr Spetner talks about information in the sense of information theory. That much is in his books.ET
July 29, 2017
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You’re clearly not using Shannon-Weaver information: mathematically duplication has to increase the Shannon-Weaver information (because each term in the summation is non-negative, and duplication increases the number of terms).
How does a simple duplication change the probabilities involved? And if there is no change in the probability distribution there is no change in the Shannon information sense.Mung
July 29, 2017
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Sir Francis Crick is the one who started the information with respect to biology path.
I sincerely doubt that this is the case.Mung
July 29, 2017
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ET @ 14 - You're clearly not using Shannon-Weaver information: mathematically duplication has to increase the Shannon-Weaver information (because each term in the summation is non-negative, and duplication increases the number of terms). Fine, but that still doesn't explain what definition of information Spetner uses.Bob O'H
July 29, 2017
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rvb8- Sir Francis Crick is the one who started the information with respect to biology path.ET
July 29, 2017
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@21: The term "information" is very generic and can be applied to many different concepts. In the biology literature we see that term employed regularly in different contexts and with different meanings. Just see the numerous papers referenced in the thread "Mystery at the heart of life" and verify this by yourself. Don't rely on what others say. Test everything and hold what is good. Here's an example: Used over 20 times in the non-ID paper referenced through the link provided here: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/neuroscience-tries-to-be-physics-asks-is-matter-conscious/#comment-636746 Page 3: According to this, and in contrast to the classical view, the information processing units are not the nerve cells but smaller quantum physical processes inside the cells and forming connections between them. Page 4: At the same time it is seen that when the experimental apparatus and the experimenter are regarded as a unified system, there is a problem with collecting and interpreting the information of that system. When expressing a quantum system with classical information, there is a loss of information. We, as the experimenter/observer, change the relationship between the autonomy and reliability of the information obtained from the system (von Lucadou, 1995), and this causes a loss of information (Weizsacker and Weizsacker, 1972). In addition, the measurement instruments and the characteristics of micro-universe particles which are carried to the macro universe such as position, velocity and momentum interact and are recorded. In this process information loss occurs and the level of loss is closely related to the descriptive language which science uses. page 5: What can be understood is that we urgently need a paradigm shift in the way we understand and explain this new information [...] Page 6: Quantum physics can show itself in biological structures in the shape of superposition, entanglement, quantum information processing and matter–wave interaction, and there is much experimental proof on this topic [...] This congregation of retinal cells is where the information from light undergoes its first processing. Does quantum collapse occur only in the presence of human beings? Does it happen before measurement information reaches the retina, or after? Page 7: [...] the information is on average flowing from the microscopic level to the macroscopic or mesoscopic level. [...] the collapse of the wave function can occur without the presence of a conscious human being or in other words that photons do collapse within the retina and subsequent processing of information at the level of neural membranes proceeds [...] Page 8: In our daily lives, we can decode the very complex magnetic information in radio and television and transform it into sound and vision. Similarly, the nerve information in the brain may be represented electromagnetically. Coherent firing in nerve cells may provide the possibility for information to pass from the nerve cells to the magnetic field [...] Page 10: Tubulins behave in this situation as qubits, the operational unit of quantum information. Spin mediated consciousness theory, quantum brain dynamics and the Orch OR theory may bring an explanation to the mechanisms of the consciousness–brain connection problem, free will, the unity of consciousness, qualia, non- algorithmic information processing, remembering and forgetting over time, and the effect of anesthesia. Page 11: The logic of the normal unconscious mind and the schizophrenic consciousness may therefore be Lq, or the logic of quantum information [...] Page 12: In Lq, propositions are configured in qubits and the formal interpretation of the unconscious mind may potentially be understood as quantum-informational. These considerations lead to the possibility of building a different approach for information; two possible complementary ways are the study of quantum gates on qubits and Licata's Hamiltonians with constraints. The geometric approach to the handling of quantum information is more fruitful when we try to study the global evolution of a system without forcing its non-local nature in any way. What we call science is the systematisation of information obtained from nature.Dionisio
July 29, 2017
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@20 error correction: "...before he explained it and it got written in the tech specs..."Dionisio
July 29, 2017
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'Information', in the genome really is an ID concept. Evolutionary biologists never talk about 'information' in the genome, they talk about replication, errors, expression, genotype, and phenotype. The term 'information', was popularised largely by Dembski, was latched on upon by people desperate for the hand of God in nature, and is now popular in many places, excepting those places where Biology is understood. Ken Ham of AIG is now beginning to use the term, 'information', this should be worrying for ID folk, as Ham is nothing but a clear YEC.rvb8
July 29, 2017
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Bob O'H @13: If it does not relate to complex functionally specified information, then it shouldn't be relevant to the central idea of the ID paradigm. As I have stated before (more than once), I'm not an ID proponent per se, but I definitely agree with their central scientific idea --at least in reference to biology-- that the biological systems are intelligently designed. As far as I'm aware of, complex functionally specified information is not fully quantifiable. Engineering design and software development are not fully quantifiable either. There are important conceptualization steps that are fully "inspirational", hence can't be measured in numbers. My project manager --a brilliant engineer-- had the initial concept of the software product in his mind before he explained it got written in the tech specs for the programmers to develop it. I can't think of any way to measure in numbers that initial process in the development. The idea was first, the software product was the result. The idea was first, the biological systems were the result.Dionisio
July 28, 2017
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A duplicated gene would be redundant. And as such doesn't add information.ET
July 28, 2017
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gpuccio: Off topic observation: apparently the author of the paper in the link you provided @7 died the same year the paper was published (2008). At least that's what the DOI seems to indicate.Dionisio
July 28, 2017
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@9 error correction: strongDionisio
July 28, 2017
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More on Dr Spetner:
I received a PhD degree in physics from MIT in 1950, and joined APL (applied physics lab) in 1951. I spent most of my professional career doing research and development on information processing in electronic systems, and teaching information and communication theory. After I had been at APL for about a dozen years, I was offered a year's fellowship in the university's (Johns Hopkins) Department of Biophysics. There I was to solve the problems in the extraction of signal from noise in DNA electron-micrographs. I accepted the fellowship and, as it turns out, I learned a lot about biology. (he took courses in biology at Johns Hopkins)
He goes on to say that he published several papers between 1964-1970 pertaining to the problem of how the information in living organisms could have developed. His book "Not By Chance" was a direct response to Dawkins' "The Blind Watchmaker"ET
July 28, 2017
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As for transposons he brings up the work of Dr McClintock and also Barry Warner who posited that TEs are part of a control system that would produce heritable changes in response to environmental cues.ET
July 28, 2017
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Bob, Two copies of the same thing does not increase the information. And gene duplication has never been demonstrated to be a random process, ie an accident. As for Information Theory, well Dr Spetner is an expert. That said he is talking about the information required to build and maintain an organism. He says:
The information required for large-scale evolution cannot come from random variations. There are cases in which random mutations do lead to evolution on a small scale. But it turns out that, in these instances, no information is added to the organism. Most often, information is lost- Not By Chance page vii
ET
July 28, 2017
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ET @ 12 - the problem is that there are multiple standard and accepted meanings of information. If Shannon-Weaver is OK, then duplication does increase information,simply because it increases the number of terms in the summation. As Spetner claims that duplication doesn't increase information, I'm guessing that's not the definition he's using. You're not trying to defend the suggestion that mutations due to TEs are directed, so does that mean you agree with me on that score?Bob O'H
July 28, 2017
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Buy a dictionary, Bob O'H. He uses the standard and accepted meanings of the word. And Shannon- Weaver and Crick are OK too.
But he gives no evidence that they are directed: they’ll insert into any target sequence, regardless of effect on phenotype.
They occur only when needed and transposons carry within their sequence the coding for two of the enzymes required for the TE's to move around. I would love to hear how natural selection did that. Anyone?ET
July 28, 2017
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