[DouglasKC]

If there is information in DNA, then that "information" ought to be just as useful, or perhaps I should say utilitarian, if carried by some other medium, just like "War and Peace" is "war and Peace" whether printed on paper or stored on a CD ROM. But, it is demonstably false that the amino acid sequences of DNA have any utility expressed in any other form.

Oh? I guess you better tell that to all the lawyers who are using DNA evidence in court cases. This particular information is considered so reliable for identification that decades old crimes are being solved. Is that useful?

[John Valentine]

Is that useful?

Not to the DNA, it isn't.

You are confusing things by conflating what use to which humans might put information ABOUT DNA, with the notion that DNA itself contains information. DNA is nothing more than a very complex orgainic chemical with the characteristic that it can reproduce, and with a secondary characteristic that it can facilitate the formation of other non-reproducing chemical sequences.

Now, I won't disagree that those characterisstics are crucial to the existence of life, but that does not mean that we can start imbuing it with supernatural characteristics. DNA most certainly does not carry "information" as the term is used in the article.

And the 'information" such as it is, about DNA, that is used in courts is infomation of the old-fashioned kind.