Re: Dawkins gives incorrect answer
From: Guy Hoelzer (hoelzer_at_unr.edu)
Date: 08/27/04
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Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 04:16:07 +0000 (UTC)
Dear John,
I find myself getting extremely frustrated with this dialogue. It feels
like I am bashing my head against a brick wall, and I am sure that you feel
the same way. Therefore, I have heavily snipped your post here, answering
those questions that I feel might help to clarify my position, and then I
plan to take a break from this thread. We will have to let our
disagreements rest for a while.
in article cgjrj3$2jd6$1@darwin.ediacara.org, John Edser at edser@tpg.com.au
wrote on 8/25/04 10:14 PM:
[snip]
>>> JE:-
>>> How can "sensible" information evoke "inappropriate" behaviour?
>>> The terms "sensible" and "inappropriate" appear to me
>>> to be contradictions in this context. I can see how
>>> senseless information can produce inappropriate behaviour.
>>
>> GH:-
>> Not me. Why would anything respond to data that makes no sense?
>
> JE:-
> Because it may have no other choice
> e.g. the wrong pheromone/hormone
> or just a wrong concentration of
> either can force inappropriate
> behaviour.
This is an excellent example of a signal that makes sense to its recipient,
which is why it "forces" a response. The structure of the signal resonates
with the structure of the recipient (it is sensible to the recipient),
although it may lead to recipient to behave in ways that are detrimental to
its fitness. Extrapolating to our experience of being human, this is why we
are often confident as we commit mistakes.
[snip]
> JE:-
> I do not claim "that Biology involves metaphysics
> (magic)" I claim that biology is NOT EQUAL to
> physics, i.e. all biology is physics but not
> all physics is biology. Surely this is just,
> obvious?
I posted previously that I consider Biology to be a subset of Physics, so I
am happy to see that you agree; although it is far from obvious to many
biologists that I have talked to on this issue.
[snip]
> JE:-
> All you did was delete science from the
> discussion. If you maintain that ALL the
> "influence of context is about judgment
> and subjectivity" then just anything goes.
>
> Do you actually contend that ALL influence of
> context is about judgment and subjectivity?
Yes, but I don't think you are interpreting the meaning of these words the
same way I do. I was referring to the subjectivity of information
processing by all natural systems, not just by human observers.
[snip]
> JE:-
> You appear to be suggesting that changes
> in heritable noise validly constitutes evolution.
> Would this be a correct interpretation?
YES, for the umpteenth time. We call it evolutionary drift.
>> GH:-
>> IMHO, excluding random evolution from the term "evolution" altogether would
>> be like arguing that a student's senseless (noisy, apparently random) answers
>> on an exam are not really answers at all. If a student made that argument to
>> me, I would be impressed with their creativity, but I would not be persuaded.
>>
>
> JE:-
> Would you give extra marks
> for just increased noise?
I just indicated that the answer would be NO.
> If a student repeated the word
> "gene" a million times instead of
> just writing it once as an answer
> to a question that asked what was
> the name of the biological unit that
> constitutes one Mendelian unit of
> inheritance, has that student
> supplied more information?
No.
> Clearly the extra uses of the word
> "gene" is not information or
> disinformation it is just noise.
It is neither information or noise. I thought we agreed earlier that
disinformation was a subjective subcategory of information, so it is
redundant to include it in this short list. Similarly, the redundancy of
repeating the word "gene", or any other form of redundancy, can only REDUCE
both the information and noise contents of any data, because these are about
the spectrum of structure/entropy of variation. When you add redundancy to
data, you reduce the degree of variation overall.
[snip]
>>> JE:-
>>> You will not agree
>>> or disagree with my definition of
>>> Darwinian fitness which remains simple,
>>> objective and testable to refutation.
>>> You seem to wish to substitute just a
>>> hand waving notion of fitness, or
>>> just delete fitness altogether,
>>> as the measure of "better or worse"
>>> within evolutionary theory?
>
>> GH:-
>> I don't want to have ANY measures of "better or worse" in science.
>
> JE:-
> What you "want" is besides the point..
Not when I am responding to what YOU asserted that I "wish" something that I
do not.
> Do you agree or disagree that the science
> of biology rests entirely on an objective
> fitness concept, ever since Darwin?
My view is that Darwin and Wallace suggested an objective fitness concept,
relative success in survival and reproduction, which has turned out to be
both much harder to measure and more ambiguous than it appears.
Evolutionary research over the 135 years since the introduction of this
concept, combined with personal reflection (actually thinking about it
myself), has made it clear to me that fitness is only an abstract concept
without any natural existence. It has been of enormous heuristic value, but
we should not confuse a useful conceptual tool with the real entities and
processes in nature. Therefore, I think it would be foolish for the science
of biology to rest entirely on this conceptual tool. We should be open to
alternative conceptual frameworks that might allow us to grow out of the
conceptual limitations of the past. Such a framework ought to subsume and
explain Darwinism, unless Darwinism has much greater problems than I can
see, similar to the way that Einstein's theories subsumed and explained
Newtonian physics. Some of us should even be seeking such alternatives when
the time is right, which I personally think is now.
[snip]
>> GH:-
>> structure is information (the opposite of entropy, which is pure noise in the
>> presence of variation). I could have written "relative to maximum entropy".
>
> JE:-
> The you should have (and not
> just could have) written it.
There are probably dozens of other ways I could have written it, too. Are
you sure that one of those isn't the one I "should have written it?" I have
found it exceedingly difficult to communicate my thoughts on information
theory to you, and I have tried to be clear at each step. Most people I
talk to on these issues seem to understand the term "noise," and I don't
have so much difficulty in those conversations. Of course, a better
communicator than I may have picked words that would cause the structure of
your neural network representing the idea to more closely match the template
in their heads than I have been able to achieve.
> _________________________
> Thank you for (finally)
> including the missing
> maximand to your argument.
> ___________________________
>
> Is it correct to suggest that you
> are arguing that information within
> the biological sciences constitutes
> any reduction in maximal entropy?
Not exactly. From the structuralist view that I advocate, the maximum
entropy of a system is a function of the amount of variation it contains.
Its manifested entropy is the inverse of the extent of structure (negentropy
is another term in the literature) exhibited by that variation. A reduction
in the entropy of a non-isolated system is equivalent to an increase in the
information content of that system, and it universally takes work to achieve
this according to the second law of thermodynamics. Information, like
energy, is a universal concept that should not be allowed to vary among
scientific disciplines.
>>> JE:-
>>> Something cannot be relative to just
>>> itself.
>
>> GH:-
>> Sure it can. We call it a spectrum.
>
> JE:-
> Please illustrate.
>
> Are you arguing that something
> can be relative to just itself
> without being an absolute
> assumption?
It can be relative to itself either because it is an absolute assumption, or
because it represents a universality. If you want to argue that we can
never know about universalities even if they exist, they you are obliged to
show the flaws in the method of renormalization group analysis, which is an
accepted method (Nobel prizes awarded, etc.) in physics for PROVING the
existence of particular universalities. Note that the meaning of
universality is that it is not contingent or context-dependent and should
not be treated as unknown by any scientific disciplines.
>>> JE:-
>>> If it is it now constitutes
>>> an absolute assumption. Please provide
>>> something other than information to
>>> which information can be measured as
>>> "structured" or declare your view of
>>> information to be an absolute
>>> assumption within the biological
>>> sciences.
>
>> GH:-
>> Maximum entropy.
>
> JE:-
> Thank you.
> Do you declare that minimal
> entropy is a biological maximand?
No. Maximum entropy is the maximand of the universe (second law of
thermodynamics), and self-organizing systems, like all living systems,
decrease entropy locally as a mechanism of degrading structures (destroying
information). Thermodynamics requires that they generate entropy in the
universe faster than they construct themselves. This does not mean that
they attempt to minimize their own entropy.
[snip]
> JE:-
> _________________________________________
> The experiment that I outlined that
> must stop all evolution by Darwinian
> natural selection (which you only commented
> was "interesting" and just left it at
> that) does not contradict your stated
> maximand that all information is
> reduced entropy. However, it does show
> that reduced entropy cannot separate
> information from disinformation within
> the biological sciences.
I never suggested otherwise. In fact, I did indicate that every system
responds to external inputs through subjective "interpretation" (internal
information processing) of those data, which can include distinguishing
informational resources from "disinformation" from the systems perspective.
We probably agree that evolving to filter information inputs so as to more
efficiently and effectively use informational resources to enhance survival
and reproduction constitutes evolutionary adaptation.
> The only thing
> that can do that is the biological concept
> of fitness, specifically and exactly,
> absolute fitness (as I defined it in
> A DECLARATION OF MEANING).
Every kind of complex adaptive system does this, biological or otherwise.
I hope you enjoy the rest of this thread, and I am sure we will engage again
on other threads.
Regards,
Guy
- Next message: dkomo: "Re: limit of selection???"
- Previous message: TomHendricks474: "Re: Challenge: Humans are not at all the most "evolved" or "complex" speicies"
- In reply to: John Edser: "Re: Dawkins gives incorrect answer"
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