Re: Dawkins' video (was: a transitional turtle)

Glenn R. Morton (grmorton@waymark.net)
Sat, 06 Jun 1998 22:32:02 -0500

At 10:50 PM 6/6/98 -0500, mullerd@chplink.CHP.EDU wrote:
>
>
> Glen wrote:
>
> >...but once in a while the crossed plant doubles the number
> > of chromosomes and produces a fertile species with the
> > entire genetic material from both parent species. This
> > daughter species is unable to breed with the parent
> > species. The daughter species represents a species with
> > more genetic information than either of the parents!
>
> But Glenn, does the daughter species have more genetic
> information than the total of the parental genetic
> information?

No, but subsequent generations may. Most people don't know the technical
definition of information and confuse "meaning" with information. A
sentence has meaning; a sequence has information and may or may not have
meaning. An example:

the sentence--

I have a cat

has as much information as

B nrts r zrs

One sequence has meaning (the sentence) and the second sequence has no
meaning. Information is defined by an entropy type equation or by a
compressibility criteria. A highly compressible sequence--0101010101010101
has little information and is highly compressible being represented by a
shorter sequence "8 '01'"

So, to answer your question, information, being measured by compressibility
a daughter plant may have more or less information than the parent. I
suggest you take a look at Yockey's Information theory and Molecular
Biology.
glenn

Adam, Apes and Anthropology
Foundation, Fall and Flood
& lots of creation/evolution information
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm