On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 5:51 PM, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]>wrote:
> You could much more easily write a probabilistic equation to simulate any > given volume of water than the same volume of DNA, especially The motion of both can be well described by Napier-Stokes equations which describe fluid flow using Newton's laws, and DNA being more viscous than water the resulting equations would be simpler than the ones for water. > > when you get into secondary and tertiary structure. > You've got to play fair, it you talk about micro states for DNA I get to talk about micro states for water. > I had not heard of Shannon information. > Somehow I'm not surprised, and it's Shannon Information Theory. > The key phrase for me here is "the thermodynamic entropy is interpreted as > being proportional to the amount of further Shannon information needed to > define the detailed microscopic state of the > system". OK, although I don't see what purpose the word "further" serves in the above, and although I know all about Claude Shannon the term "Shannon information" is nonstandard. What would Non-Shannon information be? > > This confirms what I have been saying and is the opposite of what you > are saying. What on Earth are you talking about?? The more entropy a system has the more information needed to describe it. > > This means that DNA, having low entropy compared with pure water, has > high pattern content, high information, and less Shannon information" > I see, it has high information and less information. No I take that back, I don't see, although it is consistent with your usual logical standards. > Easier to compress does *not* mean less information It means a message has been inflated with useless gas and a compression program can remove that gas and recover the small kernel of information undamaged. White noise has no gas in it for a compression program to deflate, that's why if you don't know the specific compression program used the resulting file ( like a zip or gif file) would look like random white noise, and yet its full of useful information if you know how to get it. The same thing is true of encrypted files, if the encription is good then the file will look completely random, just white noise, to anyone who does not have the secret key. > The compressibility of a novel or picture does not relate to the quality > of information How do you expect mathematics to deal with anything as subjective as quality? A novel that's high quality to you may be junk to me. > Knowledge and wisdom are already owned by philosophy and religion, > I've never heard of religion saying anything wise, philosophy does contain wisdom but none of it came from professional philosophers, at least not in the last 300 years. > The human mind does not work like a computer As you've said before, but saying it does not make it so. > it does not compress and decode memories > Then the human mind works very inefficiently and needs improvement. > are concrete analog presentations that re-present, *not* representations > and not digital data. > Even asterisks do not make it so. > I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that 99% of people who use the > word information use it the way that I've been using it I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that if you wish to understand how mind works the verbiage generated by 99% of the people on this planet will be of no help to you whatsoever; better to listen to what the experts have to say about the subject. > The bucket of water has higher thermodynamic entropy which requires more > Shannon information to describe. Yes > > The encoded description of the water has more information if we were to > simulate it exactly Yes. > but that doesn't mean the original has more information, I see, it has more information but that doesn't mean it has more information. No I take that back, I don't see, although it is consistent with your usual logical standards. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
