Law of Conservation of Information vs Darwinism

_{Denyse O'Leary

April 10, 2018

Darwinism, Information, Intelligent Design}

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From Andrew Jones at ENST:

One of the most fundamental and useful ideas that has come out of the intelligent design movement is the insight expressed by Bill Dembski as the Law of Conservation of Information. Put simply, the idea is that information does not appear out of nowhere, but can always be traced to a prior source, analogous to conservation of energy or momentum in physics. It has been used to argue that evolution cannot create information, and I think that is true, so long as you properly understand what we are saying. But a lot of critics have not understood it yet.

It has been critiqued from a number of directions; a suspiciously large number of directions in fact: usually if an idea is wrong there is just one main thing wrong with it, so I am always suspicious when any idea is portrayed as “wrong in every way” or gets attacked in a scattergun way. You should be suspicious, too. More.

Of course the LCI is correct. Otherwise, Boltzmann brains or flowered teacups would be appearing everywhere.

And of course Darwinism isn’t even possible. It is amazing the number of tenures today that depend on proclaiming the opposite. If that does not make you suspicious…

and

Law of Conservation of Information Part II

Comments

OLV Thanks! I find comments from PaV very interesting. Unfortunately, he does not show up very often. "Curiosity: why is there a space before the S in (8) but not in (4)?" I don't know :) It might just be WordPress. I notice that sometimes I can't edit my own comments even though there's 10+ minutes before the editing time expires.Eugene S_{April 13, 2018
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EugeneS (4) and Eugene S (8): Interesting comments. Both in (4) and (8). Curiosity: why is there a space before the S in (8) but not in (4)? Thanks.OLV_{April 13, 2018
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Hi Eric "For example, no algorithm can generate greater Kolmogorov Complexity than it contains. That right there means evolution cannot increase the Kolmogorov Complexity of its initial conditions." Can you elaborate on this please?Eugene S_{April 13, 2018
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It's funny how controversial the COI law is, when it is very similar (identical?) to the No Free Lunch Theorem, Data Processing Inequality, Kolmogorov Complexity, etc. Only when the COI is framed in the evolution debate does it become controversial. That says something. For example, no algorithm can generate greater Kolmogorov Complexity than it contains. That right there means evolution cannot increase the Kolmogorov Complexity of its initial conditions.EricMH_{April 11, 2018
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The confusion is not in the sources. What the sources show is that immaterial information is now experimentally shown to a physically real entity with a 'thermodynamic content', Period! That was the only point I was making. And that one simple point is devastating to the reductive materialistic presuppositions of Darwinists.bornagain77_{April 11, 2018
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BA77, Your sources seem confused: 1. ‘Information’, ‘data’ and ‘media’ are distinct concepts. Media is the mechanical support for data and can be any material including DNA and RNA in biology. Data is the symbols that carry information and are stored and transmitted on the media. ACGT nucleotides forming strands of DNA are biologic data. Information is an entity that answers a question and is represented by data encoded on a particular media. Information is always created by an intelligent agent and used by the same or another intelligent agent. Interpreting the data to extract information requires a deciphering key such as a language. For example, proteins are made of amino acids selected based on a translation table (the deciphering key) from nucleotides. 2. Information is entirely separate from matter. The same media (matter) may contain data representing information for one or more users, or random noise if the same bits of data have been randomly configured. Furthermore, without a deciphering key, one user’s information is random noise to another (like bird songs to unrelated birds). Information can be encoded in different ways (like distinct languages), resulting in unequal data sets. The size of the data is [in practice] always larger than the information carried due to redundancy which is necessary to maintain the integrity of the carried or stored information. ... http://nonlin.org/biological-information/Nonlin.org_{April 11, 2018
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PaV Could this be something to do with semantic closure? For persistence, an organism must contain a description of itself AND a description of how to build an interpreter.EugeneS_{April 11, 2018
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as to:
the Law of Conservation of Information. Put simply, the idea is that information does not appear out of nowhere, but can always be traced to a prior source, analogous to conservation of energy or momentum in physics.
A much more 'physical' conservation of information is found in Quantum Mechanics.
Quantum no-hiding theorem experimentally confirmed for first time Excerpt: In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed. This concept stems from two fundamental theorems of quantum mechanics: the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem. A third and related theorem, called the no-hiding theorem, addresses information loss in the quantum world. According to the no-hiding theorem, if information is missing from one system (which may happen when the system interacts with the environment), then the information is simply residing somewhere else in the Universe; in other words, the missing information cannot be hidden in the correlations between a system and its environment. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-quantum-no-hiding-theorem-experimentally.html Quantum no-deleting theorem Excerpt: A stronger version of the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem provide permanence to quantum information. To create a copy one must import the information from some part of the universe and to delete a state one needs to export it to another part of the universe where it will continue to exist. per wikipedia
And classical information, such as what Dembski and Marks demonstrated the conservation of, is found to be a subset of quantum information by the following method:
Quantum knowledge cools computers: New understanding of entropy – June 2011 Excerpt: No heat, even a cooling effect; In the case of perfect classical knowledge of a computer memory (zero entropy), deletion of the data requires in theory no energy at all. The researchers prove that “more than complete knowledge” from quantum entanglement with the memory (negative entropy) leads to deletion of the data being accompanied by removal of heat from the computer and its release as usable energy. This is the physical meaning of negative entropy. Renner emphasizes, however, “This doesn’t mean that we can develop a perpetual motion machine.” The data can only be deleted once, so there is no possibility to continue to generate energy. The process also destroys the entanglement, and it would take an input of energy to reset the system to its starting state. The equations are consistent with what’s known as the second law of thermodynamics: the idea that the entropy of the universe can never decrease. Vedral says “We’re working on the edge of the second law. If you go any further, you will break it.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110601134300.htm
And in direct contradiction to Landauer's (and Darwinian) contentions that immaterial information does not exist independent of matter and energy, Dr Vaccaro states in regards to the preceding that “Landauer said that information is physical because it takes energy to erase it. We are saying that the reason it (information) is physical has a broader context than that.”,
Scientists show how to erase information without using energy – January 2011 Excerpt: Until now, scientists have thought that the process of erasing information requires energy. But a new study shows that, theoretically, information can be erased without using any energy at all.,,, “Landauer said that information is physical because it takes energy to erase it. We are saying that the reason it (information) is physical has a broader context than that.”, Vaccaro explained. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-scientists-erase-energy.html Information is physical (but not how Rolf Landauer meant) - video https://youtu.be/H35I83y5Uro
And what this conservation of 'physical' information, (both quantum and classical information), basically means is that when you erase classical information from a computer, blackboard, or whatever, that information does not just simply disappear from existence, as Darwinian materialists presuppose, but that information still exists. It is conserved, i.e. it cannot be created or destroyed. To further back up the claim that classical information is just as physically real as quantum information is, it is now found that information has, of all things, a 'thermodynamic content':
Demonic device converts information to energy – 2010 Excerpt: “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,” says Christopher Jarzynski, a statistical chemist at the University of Maryland in College Park. In 1997, Jarzynski formulated an equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information2; the work by Sano and his team has now confirmed this equation. “This tells us something new about how the laws of thermodynamics work on the microscopic scale,” says Jarzynski. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=demonic-device-converts-inform
The preceding work was recently greatly extended:
Information engine operates with nearly perfect efficiency - Lisa Zyga - January 19, 2018 Excerpt: Physicists have experimentally demonstrated an information engine—a device that converts information into work—with an efficiency that exceeds the conventional second law of thermodynamics. Instead, the engine's efficiency is bounded by a recently proposed generalized second law of thermodynamics, and it is the first information engine to approach this new bound.,,, By avoiding practically any information loss, the information-to-energy conversion of this process reaches approximately 98.5% of the bound set by the generalized second law. The results lend support for this bound, and illustrate the possibility of extracting the maximum amount of work possible from information. https://phys.org/news/2018-01-efficiency.html
This work, besides directly challenging Darwinian claims about the 'non-physicallity' of information, validates Dr. McIntosh’s contention that it must be non-material information which constrains biological life to be so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium:
Information and Thermodynamics in Living Systems – Andy C. McIntosh – 2013 Excerpt: ,,, information is in fact non-material and that the coded information systems (such as, but not restricted to the coding of DNA in all living systems) is not defined at all by the biochemistry or physics of the molecules used to store the data. Rather than matter and energy defining the information sitting on the polymers of life, this approach posits that the reverse is in fact the case. Information has its definition outside the matter and energy on which it sits, and furthermore constrains it to operate in a highly non-equilibrium thermodynamic environment. This proposal resolves the thermodynamic issues and invokes the correct paradigm for understanding the vital area of thermodynamic/organisational interactions, which despite the efforts from alternative paradigms has not given a satisfactory explanation of the way information in systems operates.,,, http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9789814508728_0008
The fact that immaterial information is now found to be a physically real entity that is 'conserved' has some rather profound implications for us. In the following video, entitled Quantum Entangled Consciousness, Stuart Hameroff states that 'the quantum information, which is in the microtubules, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed.,,, it's possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul'.
“Let’s say the heart stops beating. The blood stops flowing. The microtubules lose their quantum state. But the quantum information, which is in the microtubules, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed. It just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large. If a patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says, “I had a near death experience. I saw a white light. I saw a tunnel. I saw my dead relatives.,,” Now if they’re not revived and the patient dies, then it's possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.” - Stuart Hameroff - Quantum Entangled Consciousness - Life After Death - video (5:00 minute mark) https://youtu.be/jjpEc98o_Oo?t=300 Darwinian Materialism vs Quantum Biology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHdD2Am1g5Y
Verse:
Mark 8:37 Is anything worth more than your soul?
bornagain77_{April 10, 2018
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Just a brief thought or two: Conservation Laws tell us that some entity doesn't change with time; i.e., the derivative w.r.t. time of some entity equals zero. Also, via Noether's Theorem, we know that there is a 'symmetry' associated with every conserved quantity. Thinking this over very quickly, I don't see the analogy working in the case of conservation of information. Perhaps some deeper thought is needed, and could prove very fruitful. Energy is a concept that sort of emerged over time. It's a useful quantity. There needs to be some similar kind of 'useful' quantity in the case of Conservation of Information. Now conservation laws apply in 'systems' that are conserved. Maybe we need to say that in conserved 'systems,' like biological entities, 'conserve' an 'alphabet.' In the case of biology, it would be the 'genetic code.' However, what 'symmetry' is this 'alphabet/genetic code' giving rise to? I'll continue to scratch my head for a while.PaV_{April 10, 2018
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Don't know about "conservation", but indeed: http://nonlin.org/biological-information/ ... 5. Information cannot just pop into existence in the absence of an intelligent agent. That is why all noise-based information generating attempts including all “infinite monkey” experiments have failed and that is why “Artificial Intelligence” will never “rise”. Separating information from noise has been a very important human activity for thousands of years and success in this endeavor has always been based on two critical elements: deciphering key and redundant encoding. ...Nonlin.org_{April 10, 2018
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