University of Pittsburgh physicist David Snoke: You’ve read a book in order but can’t know if it was written in that order. Maybe the author started with pivotal Chapter 5, then wrote Chapter 1:
Essentially by definition, good information-carrying systems are intrinsically history-erasing systems. Let me expand on this. Deterministic processes favor one state over another and remove contingency. Deterministic processes say only this outcome is possible, and the other ones are not. So a deterministic process forces things into a certain state.
[Dr. Snoke goes on to talk about the difficulty that information systems create when we infer design in a system. Information erases its history so if you don’t know the history, you can only infer the design. But that doesn’t show that there is no design.]
For example, if you are given a book and you read the book, you will not be able to deduce what order the chapters are written in. You might assume the author wrote them in order. But they might not have. They might have started out with a really good idea for Chapter 5, then gone back and said, “I need to write Chapter 1 to introduce this.” I write papers like this all the time. I write the conclusion first, then I go back and write other parts and so on. Or I’ll describe the figures, then I’ll generate the figures.
There is no way to deduce from a set of information, how it was generated, almost by definition, because the information-carrying medium erases all history. Because it’s non-deterministic. Because it allows for contingency. So the very fact that allows many states as possibilities means that it doesn’t carry a history of how that was generated. In general, it’s not something you get just from the physical aspects of the novel itself.
News, “Is information physical? It depends on what you mean by physical…” at Mind Matters News (July 10, 2022)
Takehome: Information makes things happen but, curiously, it erases its own history. You’ve read a book in order but can’t know if it was written in that order. Maybe the author started with pivotal Chapter 5, then wrote Chapter 1. Design of any kind does not come with a history included.
You may also wish to read: Information theory: Evolution as the transfer of information Information follows different rules from matter and energy, which might change the way we see evolution. A pair of researchers have introduced an Information Continuum Model of Evolution (ICM) which takes into account that information is immaterial.