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Undersea vents possible origin of life
MSNBC ^ | 07/24/03 | Robert Roy Britt

Posted on 07/24/2003 12:01:57 PM PDT by bedolido

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To: Physicist
When he says that "information has to come from somewhere," he seems to be saying that information obeys some sort of conservation law, like energy.

Information can't be conserved in the real universe and the information of the system increases with time. Information creation is a fundamental characteristic of the system.

In fact, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics mandates a trend towards increased information over time (via entropy aka information efficiency). If entropy increases in a system, the amount of information in the system also has to increase, since that is what entropy is more or less directly measuring.

If you look at the universe as a transaction theoretic system (i.e. with the "copy" law I mentioned earlier), the lower the entropy is the more likely that a particular instance of a pattern will be destroyed/altered by the dynamics of the system. An analogy would be like a register in a CPU, except that every location memory is potentially a register. When an operation is performed between two patterns the state of some register is modified except in this case it is some location in memory which previously contained another pattern. (This is a computational model variation theoretically similar to but not the same as things like LISP machines.) Over many iterations, the distribution of patterns becomes random i.e. approaches perfect entropy.

161 posted on 07/26/2003 9:59:47 AM PDT by tortoise (All these moments lost in time, like tears in the rain.)
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To: LiteKeeper
It is shown that the well-known theory of information given by Shannon is an important contribution, but can only describe the lowest (statistical) level of information, while ignoring the most crucial aspects of its higher level definition.

Yes, this is the primary theoretical difference between Kolmogorov and Shannon. Shannon only deals with "zero-order" information, whereas Kolmogorov information deals with "n-order" information.

Using a fixed fifth-order structure for his theory is only slightly less wrong than using a fixed zero-order structure (i.e. Shannon). From what you are saying, he is trying to reinvent Kolmogorov, badly. It is puzzling that someone who nominally knows so much about information theory is apparently unaware of Kolmogorov's redefinition of the field, since it is really the essence of the matter.

162 posted on 07/26/2003 10:06:20 AM PDT by tortoise (All these moments lost in time, like tears in the rain.)
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To: tortoise
It is puzzling that someone who nominally knows so much about information theory is apparently unaware of Kolmogorov's redefinition of the field, since it is really the essence of the matter.

What is even more puzzling is how it is that someone who nominally knows so much about information theory manages to have NO papers published in the relevant technical journals to that field, but instead publishes a book on the topic.

Or perhaps I should say it is temporarily puzzling, that is until one becomes aware that technical journal articles must undergo a nominally rigorous peer-review process before the are accepted for publication, while book manuscripts do not.

163 posted on 07/26/2003 12:00:11 PM PDT by longshadow
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To: bedolido
God is the Creator of those who are from Adams lineage,
Those who come from the vent, must have hung out with the snake.

Ops4 God Bless America!
164 posted on 07/26/2003 12:03:03 PM PDT by OPS4
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To: LiteKeeper
The article you linked to is basically discounting the fact that ape/human dna is 95% or so similar. He does not address the point I was making: that human and ape dna share **the exact same mistakes** as compared to other mammals.

How do you escape the obvious conclusion of acommon ancestor where the mistake arose?

The odds are very much against the same mutation occurring multiple times. There is no theological reason to suppose that the mutation in people is a result of the Fall, but for His own mysterious reasons, God decided to put **the exact same mistake** into the apes. In fact, that sounds blasphemous to me.

Why isn't the logic used in copyright cases (common mistakes imply copying) applicable here?

165 posted on 07/26/2003 8:21:14 PM PDT by Virginia-American
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To: Virginia-American
May I invite you to listen to the audio link below...it is only 1:32 minutes. He has some very interesting information relative to whether or not there really is "95%" concurrence between Chimp and man.

Click on arrow to the left of ‘Chimps and humans - are they similar?’

166 posted on 07/26/2003 8:30:34 PM PDT by LiteKeeper
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To: LiteKeeper
No speaker on this computer. (Sorry for the private post)
167 posted on 07/26/2003 9:52:29 PM PDT by Virginia-American
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