You know what died and made me king? What died is the basic damn honesty to keep your mouth shut when you know nothing about a subject. So as long as you (and by you I don't just mean you specifically AndrewC, but everyone on this shameful thread) are publicly ignorant and I am knowledgeable, I am king.
"As to your link, Albert Gore wrote a book. Does that make him believable and a requirement for people to discuss the subject of climate?"
Laughable fallacy of equivocation. Al Gore is a freakin politican who wrote a freakin propaganda piece for the consumption of the gullible masses. I linked to a textbook, written by an actual practicing specialist in the field, intended for use in rigorous college level math courses.
"I've looked at the first few pages of the book you linked to and I have not found a definition of "information" in it so far."
hahahahahahah, this is the whole dirty little secret that keeps me alternately laughing at you and spraying bile at you. Information theory is, in very loose terms, an approach to statistics that focuses on measuring the "surprise" and "uncertainty" associated with the outcomes of a random variable. There are multiple ways of doing this, and so the term "information" can be attached to several different constructions. Self-information, mutual information, entropy, joint entropy, conditional entropy, etc. None of these really correspond to what creationists are feebly attempting to talk about; the one that comes closest might be Kolmogorov complexity. Which leads me to...
"Kolmogorov, Chaitin, and Solomonoff put for the idea that the complexity of a string of data can be defined by the length of the shortest binary computer program for computing the string.
What exactly is data, and a computer program? I suppose the least objectionable statement would have been...[nonsense omitted by editor]"
Son you realize you read an introduction right? That there is in fact an entire chapter devoted to Kolmogorov complexity, and that's where you should look for rigorous definitions? Specifically the section entitled "Kolmogorov Complexity: Definitions"? For what it's worth, I believe strings of data are usually just functions from the natural numbers into a set (the set is the "alphabet"), and computer programs can be given rigorous definitions using Turing Machines. In fact, I believe that the rigorous discussion of Kolmogorov complexity is usually conducted in the context of Turing Machines.
DISCLAIMER: I know very little about Kolmogorov complexity, theoretical computer science, and related matters, please consult actual experts or their actual expert books for real education on this subject.
Sorry buddy, but you could Shannon, Kolmogorov, or Chaitin but that does not make you gatekeeper on participation in discussions. You do not have to listen, heed, or even respect anybody's argument, but that does not give you the right to attempt to prevent their participation.
Al Gore is a freakin politican who wrote a freakin propaganda piece for the consumption of the gullible masses.
Is it not a book which purports to be fact and not fiction? There is no equivocation there unless you use book in the sense that Tony Soprano would use the word. Book on it.
hahahahahahah, this is the whole dirty little secret that keeps me alternately laughing at you and spraying bile at you.
Well, at least you are truthful about the bile.
None of these really correspond to what creationists are feebly attempting to talk about; the one that comes closest might be Kolmogorov complexity. Which leads me to...
So you at the end you admit that the discussion doesn't seem to be about what you explicitly say it is. Now if you look at my post 85 you'll see a link to Shannon's paper. You'll find it handy to see if I have ever used the term "Information theory". You'll also note that I often put "information" in quotes. I do that because no one has really defined what we are talking about. Having said those things, I have read the Shannon paper, and I do know something about the subject when talking about his view of communication. And as I pointed out, meaning is not important to his analysis, but obviously his paper is a message with meaning.
Son you realize you read an introduction right?
No shit Sherlock. You might use your magnifying glass to note the I expressly used the words "so far". Those words have meaning despite the irrelevance of that meaning to Shannon. And I am not your son being the age of 60 and knowing my parents, which is something I fear you might have difficulty with seeing that you do not know your children.
and computer programs can be given rigorous definitions using Turing Machines. In fact, I believe that the rigorous discussion of Kolmogorov complexity is usually conducted in the context of Turing Machines.
And I know about Turing machines having conceptually programmed them while learning PL/1 in 1968. So I have some familiarity with state machines.
Finally, who died and made you king?