Excellent point.
I’d add that we perceive such a small amount of the information that is likely out there; just enough to build a crude model of reality and use it to make predictions that help us negotiate reality without perishing right away.
Information is simply a word to describe or indicate various factual aspects which could be said to “possess” elucidating characteristics or revealing qualities, generally available for application to further overall knowledge or understanding of a “thing” when applied in a functional manner. Until they are organized, categorized, or otherwise assembled, either consciously or not, those aspects cannot necessarily be claimed to possess the functionality of information. Human minds analyze, organize, categorize, assemble, sort, compile and otherwise make these aspects or patterns thereof collectively available, which in turn renders them informational.
The word is often used to imply independently existing compilations of data points, but in reality the true implication is one of transmission of compiled points for the purposes of understanding or elucidation.
Edit to call 411
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You know . . . an easier way of refuting the irreducable complexity occurs to me.
I have a bowl filled with hot water and a lot of dissolved sugar.
So, I put a stick in it with a few grains of sugar on the tip and–right away–sugar begins to crystalizeon the stick, and then we have rock candy.
The crytalization represents order, as the sugar molecules are moving around at random in the solution in the bowl . . . yet lined up in a neat, repeating pattern when the solution cools.
This process is not a violation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
Yet it demonstrates that order can come from disorder if there is a corresponding increase in entropy somewhere else.
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That is why I constantly dribble about closed system. Entropy is useless, unless you can be sure that you are working with closed system.
Even then we have to take in to account quantum tunneling and fluctuations in general.
I’ve watched this one yesterday and it makes some good points about infinite regress.
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“change is the actualization of potential”. That is the “physics” of Aristotle: the whole 4 elements things (fire, air, earth, water stuff). Written almost 2000 years before the discovery/invention of calculus (that mathematics of change, which makes no reference to “actualization of potential”, btw).
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It’s not my argument I like rebuttals, however Ben and Jordan are quite loved amongst the orthodox christians so it’s pretty relevant, to me at least, even if it’s more than 2000 years old argument.
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Believe it or not, there are regulars here who think Shapiro is an: “…articulate, accurate, [purveyor of] statements backed up by facts…”.
You know: the kinds of people who treat women as second class citizens, thinks scientists are scam artists, and that racism is a myth.
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This might change their mind about Shapiro anyway:
Aw Hell, I’ve said plenty of dumb things in my life, but lets be clear, this is Dumb. (capitalised for effect)
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LOL: Is this the ole ‘DNA’ is a code bullshit? DNA ‘IS’ non-random chemestry. Just like the bonding of the oxygen atom, or carbon. WE - put the code on DNA to understand it. The ‘Code’ stands for protines. and it is a shorthand so that we do not have to write them out while talking about them.
first define ‘code’.
A code is not a symbol. A symbol is not a code. * A symbol stands in place of an object* or idea. A code stands in place of a symbol : it is a symbol for a symbol.
The letters in the DNA ‘Code’ directly represent chemicals. They are chemical names. As such, they are not codes.
To claim that computer code and DNA are both codes is an abuse of the power of words. It is decidedly not scientific.
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