NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/talk/origins/14339

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-17 | 5.9 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!gatech!nscf!lakes!kalki33!system
From: kalki33![e-mail]
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Probability of Evolution
Message-ID: <ZBoDuB10w165w@kalki33>
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 92 05:00:46 EST
References: <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: kalki33![e-mail]
Organization: Kalki's Infoline BBS, Aiken, SC, USA
Lines: 112

[e-mail] (Onar Aam) writes:

> >> Take a cup of tea. Map the speed,direction and position of every single mo
> >> at one instant. Surely you agree that the information content in the physi
> >> that govern the cup of tea is low. Therefore, according to your argumentat
> >> the information in the system must be low as well, right? Not so. You will
> >> three numbers per molecule to describe its velocity [A,B,C] and three
> >> numbers to describe its position (x,y,z). Without going into detail it is
> >> see that the resulting information will be horrendously large since there
> >> about 10^20 molecules in a cup of tea. What you would find striking is tha
> >> very cup of tea contains MORE information than any cell. In fact, the enti
> >> human genome consists of merely 4 billion base pairs, and each base pair c
> >> have 4 different states. This adds up to a to a mere Gigabyte of informati
> >
> >Isn't tea the mashed leaves of the tea plant. So doesn't tea contain at
> >least the remnants of the DNA in the cells of those leaves? So isn't tea
> >even more complicated than we think?
>
> Well go ahead and use a glass of water instead. You ignored that I strictly
> looked at the information on the velocity and position of each an every atom
> the liquid. This information is indpendent of the liquid used.
>
>
> >And isn't a cell more than just a
> >genome. Doesn't it also have several thousands of different types of
> >proteins?
>
> Where do you think the information in all those proteins relates from? That's
> right, the genome. In fact, all the information in an organism ultimately rel
> to the genome of that organism.

No. You specified "one instant" of time. At one instant of time both the
genome and the proteins are separately existing in the cell. Therefore the
information content must be estimated for the entire contents of the
cell.

> >If you specify the exact initial conditions for a cup of tea, then you
> >have created a huge amount of information.
>
> Wait a minute. Are you suggesting that we have to preset every atom in a cup
> tea or a glass of water in order for it to contain energy? That is obviously
> wrong. The information is created by the *random* behaviour of the atoms, not
> some intelligence.

This is what you yourself specified. You said "map the speed, direction
and position of every single molecule..."

> >In spite of all this, you may really want to believe that amoebas come
> >from tea, so you fudge a little. You claim that the laws of tea are such
> >that, since you found an amoeba in your teacup, there must be a set of
> >initial conditions which, when supplied to the laws of tea, will produce
> >an amoeba after a certain time. You may even admit that you cannot prove
> >this because specifying the initial conditions is too difficult.
> >"Nevertheless," you say, "since an amoeba was found in the tea, it must
> >be that amoebas come from tea." "Therefore," you claim, "since we know
> >of nothing that influences tea except for the tea laws, it must be that
> >this amoeba has been formed from the tea by the action of these laws."
>
>
> Oh, oh, Kalki. Through this analogy you are revealing your lack of understand
> of biology. Not wise, not wise.

So you say. But we think you are revealing your lack of understanding of
physics, of information theory, and even of the basic principles of
logic.

> >In spite of the fact that the laws of physics are very simple, and in
> >spite of the fact that scientists can not even begin to precisely
> >specify any set of initial conditions for the origin of life,
> >nevertheless, simply because they want to believe it, they claim that
> >"in principle" there is such a set of initial conditions that will turn
> >lifeless matter into living organisms in a certain period of time.
>
> In a sense scientists have already done this in computer simulations. Some wo
> even argue that life has been created in such simulations. Besides, if the la
> of physics are so simple as you say, why do I get this feeling that you don't
> understand them?

No scientist (except God) has ever created life, either in a computer
simulation or otherwise.

> >Since a cup of earl gray is nothing more than the mashed leaves of a
> >subset of all biological systems, along with some water, it cannot be
> >true that a cup of tea contains more information than all biological
> >systems, many of which themselves contain a lot of water.
>
> Well, I correct myself then. A glass of water contains more information than
> living species combined.

Well, what do you expect me to say to this non sequiter?

> Please answer these questions: Do you think that information cannot arise fro
> natural systems? Or is a deity or an intelligence needed?

Information content is a quantitative measure which obeys rules similar
to the rules of statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. As such it can
be applied to any system which can be described by a finite string of
symbols from a given alphabet.

Sincerely,
Kalki Dasa


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