In a message dated 9/12/2000 10:11:49 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
ccogan@telepath.com writes:
<< >=======================
>Information can arise naturally as has been shown by several researchers now.
>=======================
>Nelson:
>Only if you use straw man and faulty premises like it was done in this post.
>>
I missed this one. What are the faulty premises?
<< Actually, the process I described does not even need a "seed" string to
get
started. And, in any case, it is trivially easy to prove that information
structures can arise naturally. For one incredibly obvious example: all
chemical reactions that combine two or more existing molecules into a
larger one.
>>
For example but the references I gave show how information in the genome can
increase under pressure of natural selection and mutation alone.
<< Further, as I think I pointed out, the method of varying the strings can
be
as randomized as you like, with absolutely no intelligence whatever, of any
kind. It will *still* work. It's a simple logical fact that, some members
of the set of all possible strings of a given length will have recognizable
complex order, by *any* applicable principle of recognition for such
strings. That is, *if* a string of this type is possible at all, then it is
a member of the set of *all* possible strings of the same length. Since the
environment I describe will eventually generate all possible strings of a
given length or less (*because* the process is randomized), it will
eventually generate all such strings.
If the generation process is biased, or is not allowed to produce *all*
possible strings, it can still generate strings of any given type, and the
probability of its doing so is easily calculated. Since it is *obvious*
that DNA strings that actually exist are possible, and since it is
empirically established that there is a wide range of possible variation
even if variations are not perfectly mathematically random (which they
aren't), it is clear that it is possible for new *and* biologically
information to arise in DNA by a similar random process, a little at a time.
>>
Hear hear. Not only can this be argued, but it can also be shown to be the
case. I have given the references. If Nelson missed them he can email me for
the links, if he hasn't then he surely can address the problems in the
arguments.
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