While taking a break from some puzzling debugging, I decided to hit one of my favorite comedy sites, Answers in Genesis. I can pretty much always find something sufficiently stupid to amuse me on their site. Today, I came across a gem called [“Information, science and biology”][gitt], by the all too appropriately named “Werner Gitt”. It’s yet another attempt by a creationist twit to find some way to use information theory to prove that life must have been created by god.
\nIt looks like the Gitt hasn’t actually *read* any real information theory, but has rather just read Dembski’s wretched mischaracterizations, and then regurgitated and expanded upon them. Dembski was bad enough; building on an incomplete understand of Dembski’s misrepresentations and errors is just astonishing.
\nAnyway, after butchering an introduction to Shannon theory, he moves onward.
\n>The highest information density known to us is that of the DNA
\n>(deoxyribonucleic acid) molecules of living cells. This chemical storage medium
\n>is 2 nm in diameter and has a 3.4 NM helix pitch (see Figure 1). This results
\n>in a volume of 10.68 x 10-21 cm3 per spiral. Each spiral contains ten chemical
\n>letters (nucleotides), resulting in a volumetric information density of 0.94 x
\n>1021 letters\/cm3. In the genetic alphabet, the DNA molecules contain only the
\n>four nucleotide bases, that is, adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine. The
\n>information content of such a letter is 2 bits\/nucleotide. Thus, the
\n>statistical information density is 1.88 x 1021 bits\/cm3.
\nThis is, of course, utter gibberish. DNA is *not* the “highest information density known”. In fact, the concept of *information density* is not well-defined *at all*. How do you compare the “information density” of a DNA molecule with the information density of an electromagnetic wave emitted by a pulsar? It’s meaningless to compare. But even if we accept information as only physically encoded, Consider the information density of a crystal, like a diamond. A diamond is an incredibly compact crystal of carbon atoms. There are no perfect diamonds: all crystals contain irregularities and impurities. Consider how dense the information of that crystal is: the position of every flaw, every impurity, the positions of the subset of carbon atoms in the crystal that are carbon-14 as opposed to carbon-12. Considerably denser than DNA, huh?
\nAfter this is where it *really* starts to get silly. Our Gitt claims that Shannon theory is incomplete, because after all, it’s got a strictly *quantitative* measure of information: it doesn’t care about what the message *means*. So he sets out to “fix” that problem. He proposes five levels of information: statistics, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and apobetics. He claims that Shannon theory (and in fact information theory *as a whole*) only concerns itself with the first; because it doesn’t differentiate between syntactically valid and invalid information.
\nLet’s take a quick run through the five, before I start mocking them.
\n1. Statistics. This is what information theory refers to as information content, expressed in terms of an event sequence (as I said, he’s following Dembski); so we’re looking at a series of events, each of which is receiving a character of a message, and the information added by each event is how surprising that event was. That’s why he calls it statistical.
\n2. Syntax. The structure of the language encoded by the message. At this level, it is assumed that every message is written in a *code*; you can distinguish between “valid” and “invalid” messages by checking whether they are valid strings of characters for the given code.
\n3. Semantics. What the message *means*.
\n4. Pragmatics. The *primitive intention* of the transmitter of the message; the specific events\/actions that the transmitter wanted to occur as a result of sending the message.
\n5. Apobetics: The *purpose* of the message.
\nAccording to him, level 5 is the most important one.
\nThroughout the article, he constantly writes “theorems”. He clearly doesn’t understand what the word “theorem” means, because these things are just statements that he would *like* to be true, but which are unproven, and often unprovable. A few examples?
\nFor example, if we look at the section about “syntax”, we find the following as theorems:
\n>Theorem 4: A code is an absolutely necessary condition for the representation
\n>of information.
\n>
\n>Theorem 5: The assignment of the symbol set is based on convention and
\n>constitutes a mental process.
\n>
\n>Theorem 6: Once the code has been freely defined by convention, this definition
\n>must be strictly observed thereafter.
\n>
\n>Theorem 7: The code used must be known both to the transmitter and receiver if
\n>the information is to be understood.
\n>
\n>Theorem 8: Only those structures that are based on a code can represent
\n>information (because of Theorem 4). This is a necessary, but still inadequate,
\n>condition for the existence of information.
\n>
\n>These theorems already allow fundamental statements to be made at the level of
\n>the code. If, for example, a basic code is found in any system, it can be
\n>concluded that the system originates from a mental concept.
\nHow do we conclude that a code is a necessary condition for the representation of information? We just assert it. Worse, how do we conclude that *only* things that are based on a code represent information? Again, just an assertion – but an *incredibly* strong one. He is asserting that *nothing* without a
\nstructured encoding is information. And this is also the absolute crux of his argument: information only exists as a part of a code *designed by an intelligent process*.
\nDespite the fact that he claims to be completing Shannon theory, there is *nothing* to do with math in the rest of this article. It’s all words. Theorems like the ones quoted above, but becoming progressively more outrageous and unjustified.
\nFor example, his theorem 11:
\n>The apobetic aspect of information is the most important, because it embraces
\n>the objective of the transmitter. The entire effort involved in the four lower
\n>levels is necessary only as a means to an end in order to achieve this
\n>objective.
\nAfter this, we get to his conclusion, which is quite a prize.
\n>On the basis of Shannon’s information theory, which can now be regarded as
\n>being mathematically complete, we have extended the concept of information as
\n>far as the fifth level. The most important empirical principles relating to the
\n>concept of information have been defined in the form of theorems.
\nSee, to him, a theorem is nothing but a “form”: a syntactic structure. And this whole article, to him, is mathematically complete.
\n>The Bible has long made it clear that the creation of the original groups of
\n>fully operational living creatures, programmed to transmit their information to
\n>their descendants, was the deliberate act of the mind and the will of the
\n>Creator, the great Logos Jesus Christ.
\n>
\n>We have already shown that life is overwhelmingly loaded with information; it
\n>should be clear that a rigorous application of the science of information is
\n>devastating to materialistic philosophy in the guise of evolution, and strongly
\n>supportive of Genesis creation.
\nThat’s where he wanted to go all through this train-wreck. DNA is the highest-possible density information source. It’s a message originated by god, and transmitted by each generation to its children.
\nAnd as usual for the twits (or Gitts) that write this stuff, they’re pretending to put together logical\/scientific\/mathematical arguments for god; but they can only do it by specifically including the necessity of god as a premise. In this case, he asserts that DNA is a message; and a message must have an intelligent agent creating it. Since living things cannot be the original creators of the message, since the DNA had to be created before us. Therefore there must be a god.
\nSame old shit.
\n[gitt]: http:\/\/www.answersingenesis.org\/tj\/v10\/i2\/information.asp<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While taking a break from some puzzling debugging, I decided to hit one of my favorite comedy sites, Answers in Genesis. I can pretty much always find something sufficiently stupid to amuse me on their site. Today, I came across a gem called [“Information, science and biology”][gitt], by the all too appropriately named “Werner Gitt”. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-debunking-creationism","category-information-theory"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4lzZS-1w","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}