I am somewhat surprised to find myself having defend
someone like Schutzenberger from charges of stupidity,
childishness and dishonesty. Well, of course, Marcel
doesn't need someone like me to defend him. His work
and reputation will do the job. The problem is that there
may be many here who have never heard of Schutzenberger.
These individuals may be unduly influenced by the ridiculous
charges that have been made. If anyone finds them self in
this situation then I would invite them to take a little time to
familiarize themselves with this great giant of a man. You
can start by searching the web using his name. I tried this
myself and turned up almost immediately this supposedly
staged interview in the French science monthly _La Recherche_.
OK, first of all, you are right that Marcel slips up by switching
to bit instead of saying unit or word as he does elsewhere. The
context indicates that this was just a slip. Given (a) who this is,
(b) the context, (c) that this is an interview not a refereed paper
and (d) that it doesn't affect his point, then I believe itappropriate
to give the benefit of the doubt.
What Marcel is doing is just elementary information theory. When
you encounter sequences repeated over and over you do not
count their information content each time. You give the sequence
a name, assign a symbol to it. In this way you can compress
messages tremendously and thus decrease the information content.
Using these techniques one can compress the English language
from about 4.76 bits per symbol to about 1.
Well, enough of this. My point is that you have maligned a truly
great man over what amounts to nitpicking. And with such zeal.
Really, that is shameful.
Now just two other points. First, what Marcel is talking about
has nothing to do with ID and is in fact contrary to ID as I
understand it. Why do I say this? Well, suppose we are discussing
IC. I propose the growth and development of an organism as
a natural process which generates IC structures without intervention
by an intelligent agent. The counter is that this growth and
development is directed by the information in the genetic programme.
Ah, but that's exactly the view that Marcel is opposing :).
Secondly, the view that Marcel is presenting here is one that is
commonly held by a number of scientists, primarily developmental
biologists. Accounting for all biologists one would have to say the
view is a minority one. It is nevertheless highly respected and has
been presented and developed and defended in scholarly refereed
journals.
Now just one last thing. I've read quite a bit about thiscontroversy
over the genetic programme. According to what I've read, thefollowing
statement by Marcel is accurate: A: Not according to the understanding of the genome
we now possess. The biological propertiesinvoked by
biologists are quite insufficient; whilebiologists may
understand that a gene triggers the productionof a
particular protein, that knowledge -- that kindof
knowledge -- does not allow them tocomprehend
how one or two thousand genes suffice to directthe
course of embryonicdevelopment.
Well, I'm hoping this will be my last reply in this thread.
If Chris continues to make absurd claims of childishness,
stupidity and dishonesty then I would hope interested
folks would take my advice above and take the time to
find out who Chris thinks is a dishonest, stupid child.
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