I think the information metaphor is more harmful than helpful for discussing what happens in evolution. But for those who insist on using it, the information flows from the environment to the genome, as you say by supplying the answer to whether a change is helpful, neutral or harmful.
This flow isn't really contested any more by ID proponents. Dembski has even written a paper on it.
ID proponents are now discussing the laws of nature as the ultimate repository of information.
Is there a theory on how many layers of abstraction you can stack on top of each other before you lose track of what it is you're looking at?
[[But for those who insist on using it, the information flows from the environment to the genome, as you say by supplying the answer to whether a change is helpful, neutral or harmful.]]
Again- the info doesn’t come from nature- Environment can’t introduce info into the species- If you have an example of ‘information flowing fro mthe environment into the geentic info of a species,’ I’d certainly liek to see this. you make it sound as though the environment is endowed with some kind of metainfo that was intelligently designed, and when secies run into problems, the environment jumps into action with corrective information which it somehow inserts into the genetic info of species.
Demski wrote a paper on htis? Hmm- then that settles it apparently. Got a link?
ID doesn’t contest it anymore? Says who? You? Demski’s hypothesis is I’m afraid far fetched, and has no support- He is simply assuming information is stored in nature, or hte universe, and quite frankly, His hypothesis is detached from the reality of Biology:
“Biologists don’t know all the details of the solution of the first question: the origin of life. The simplest free-living organism, Mycoplasma genitalium, has 468 genes. This would exceed Dembski’s boundary of 500 bits, I guess. Could this evolve gradually? We need data and experiments.
Now the second question. Although Dembski tries to escape a positive answer to the second question, he finds himself saying: “selection introduces new information” (p177). Dembski also seems to accept that information can flow from the environment to an organism, thereby increasing the organism’s information content. Both statements contradict his main thesis that natural processes cannot generate CSI. On other pages he is so attached to the Law of Conservation of Information (’Only Information begets Information’, p183) and the belief that CSI cannot be generated by natural processes, that he is forced to believe that CSI existed before the origin of life: CSI could be ‘abundant in the universe’ and ‘CSI is inherent in a lifeless universe’. This amounts to free-floating ghostly information in space, which is too far removed from down-to-earth biological science. The whole idea that information in DNA has any meaning outside living organisms is caused by pushing the information metaphor too far. The information in DNA is meaningless outside the cell. Just like the instructions in software do not have any meaning outside the very specific hardware environment in which they are executed. Further Dembski believes in ‘discrete insertions of CSI over time in organisms’ (p171). In that case I prefer Fred Hoyle’s panspermia theory, which is as unearthly but closer to observational science.”
http://home.planet.nl/~gkorthof/kortho44.htm
The only thing I can find is that Demski thinks info flows from a ‘creator’ to ‘the created’ (Think of a mother and fetus- the fetus gains info from the mother, the egg gains info from the father etc) and that he thinks CSI is ‘out there somewhere’ but doesn’t state where. IF then Info flows from creator to created, then this just supports metaifno concepts being discussed in this paper in htis htread, as metainfo has to be present first in order for info to flow to each level for hte development of each level.
There seems to be a concept of ‘flow of energy’ where a species system (note, a species individual already created) whereby the species system draws low entropy from it’s surroundings, to help stave off higher entropy within itself, But you’ll note that in so doing, the species systems burns energy drawing and utilizing the low entropy, thus affectign it elsewhere within the specie’s other systems. Not sure if this is what you are referring to ? (Just type ‘flow’ in the search function of your browser when you get to the link- it’ll bring you to hte pertinent info)
http://www.iscid.org/boards/ubb-get_topic-f-6-t-000001.html
Ok I think we’re gettign to the bottom of this- Demski- without any evidence, was proposing a ... get ready for it .... “4’TH Law Of Thermodynamics” or rather a “Law for the Conservation of Information”, and in his proposal, he suggested not that information was caused by nature, or created by nature, but that nature somehow TRANSMITS information (Assumedly because he knows informaiton is even subject to entropy, and in order to posit a purely natural origins for information, and hten transference to species, in which the species somehow managed to avoid information entropy while it waited billions of years to evolve, he needed a constant source of new info influx into the evolution awaiting species- so he coems up with a hypothesis that really isn’t beign taken seriously, as it can’t explain species specific metainfo)
He states: [[This strong proscriptive claim, that natural causes can only transmit CSI but never originate it, I call the Law of Conservation of Information]]
So here again, even if we are to assume metainfo isn’t natural to all species from single cells on upwards, Nature certainly isn’t the originator of this metainfo, simply hte transporter- BUT, he imposes the following environmental conditions, which again, have absolutely no evidence to back up:
(1) The CSI in a closed system of natural causes remains constant or decreases.
(2) CSI cannot be generated spontaneously, originate endogenously, or organize itself (as these terms are used in origins-of-life research).
(3) The CSI in a closed system of natural causes either has been in the system eternally or was at some point added exogenously (implying that the system though now closed was not always closed). >
(4) In particular, any closed system of natural causes that is also of finite duration received whatever CSI it contains before it became a closed system.
http://home.mira.net/~reynella/debate/dembski.htm
Sounds to me that he is simply coming up with an unsupported hypothesis to give the poor single cells enough time to avoid informaiton entropy while it waits billions of years for ‘mutaitons to do their magic’,