What is d-cr*p? Can you translate it into english as the lady up at Balmoral
speaks it?
Michael
----- Original Message -----
From: "Glenn Morton" <glenn.morton@btinternet.com>
To: "Allen Roy" <allenroy@peoplepc.com>; "george murphy" <gmurphy@raex.com>
Cc: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Saturday, May 11, 2002 6:02 AM
Subject: RE: more on information from naught
>
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
> >Behalf Of Allen Roy
> >Sent: Friday, May 10, 2002 9:57 AM
>
> > To report that Dembski is purposefully using "smoke and mirrors" when
=
> >he is not, is "willful misrepresentation".
> > If you are big enough to dish it out, you are big enough to take it.
> >
>
> The problem I see is that Dembski doesn't seem to understand what
> information is. In Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith Sept 1997,
> Dembski wrote an article which mis-used the definition of information .
> He wrote:
>
> "It is CSI [complex specified information] that within the
> Kolmogorov-Chaitin
> theory of algorithmic information takes the form of a highly compressible,
> nonrandom strings of digits."Dembski, Sept. 1997 PSCF. p 186
>
> What he is saying here is that a sequence which is highly compressible is
> high in informational content. But that is pure d-cr*p! The sequence
>
> 'AAAAAAAAAAAAA'
>
> can be compressed to the string:
>
> 13A
>
> but the string
>
> 'ihavefourcats'
>
> can not be compressed a lot. There is more information in ihave four cats
> than
>
> is in 13A. But the sequence
>
> 'jibwfgpvsdbut' has as much information as does ihavefourcats. While
> ihavefourcats has meaning, it has no more informational content.
>
> The point of all this is that Dembski can't even define his terms
correctly
> within information theory. And in a phone conversation with Steve Meyers
> about this, he acknoweldged to me that I was correct on this--that Dembski
> was backwards. To be backwards, Allen, means Dembski doesn't know what he
> is talking about.
>
> Dembski never did correct this. That entire group has a credibility
problem
> with me. When I tried repeatedly to get the Discovery Institute to change
> its web page which claimed Dembski gave a plenary session paper to the
> entire attendees (which was factually false), they didn't seem to see the
> problem with that. I guess being accurate with that group isn't
important.
>
>
>
> glenn
>
> see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
> for lots of creation/evolution information
> anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
> personal stories of struggle
>
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