Information = IT

Thanks to P e r ∙ C r u c e m ∙ a d ∙ L u c e m for the visual above. My personal recommendation is to choose to drink and ignore the naysayers.

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Information is one of the three topics this blog is currently discussing, along with the beginning of life and the process of evolution. Other issues may be addressed later on but let us deal with that which is at hand thoroughly rather than be all over the map.

I made the following statements in more than one way:

1) Naturalistic Materialists have no coherent explanation for the advent of information.

2) They also have no explanation for where life came from, and in fact science has "proven" that life only comes from life.

3) They have also failed to demonstrate evolution in action, despite long years with short-life/quick generating organisms like bacteria and fruit flies.

Today I am responding to commenters who were dissatisfied with dictionary definitions of information. Being an information technology professional, I am qualified to speak to this subject in detail.

First, let me say that information is NOT material and one must be careful not to confuse the container with what is contained. The human mind is used to dealing with and understanding the material world and it is harder to conceive of supernatural concepts.

If I hand you a glass of milk, you would recognize the glass as a container and the liquid within as the milk itself. You wish to receive and drink the milk, but milk requires some kind of container in order to transfer it to your possession. This is a simple example and hopefully everyone recognizes that both milk and glass are material, having mass and taking up space within the Universe.

In the world of IT, I might describe my computer in ways that are related to information. For instance, I have a Vista 64-bit OS running with a 1.8 gig AMD quad processor and 4 gigs of RAM and a 250 gig hard drive. I have described numbers relative to information but those numbers are qualitative. They represent rates or quantities of information represented materially as bits. Those bits, the smallest unit of information represented materially in the world of IT, are part of the material world.

You can discuss Shannon's law/theory concerning amounts of information and the speed of the transmission of information but, when you do, you are merely discussing the movement of tiny containers. The information itself is not actually addressed. I can have a hard drive stuffed full of old files left over from downloads and just a bunch of random junk. I could be opening Word documents and put a rock on one of my keyboard keys and fill up my harddrive with documents consisting of nothing more that long strings of the letter "a" or "n" and not actually be transmitting information itself.

You see, information is not the bits or bytes or kilobytes or gigabytes or terabytes. It is the message contained within.

MARSHALL MCLUHAN WAS WRONG


The guy who coined the phrase, "global village", McLuhan recognized that the rapid growth of new methods of communication would revolutionize the world. He sought to quantify and identify the growth, to analyze the effects of such growth and recognize patterns within the process. He came to several conclusions based upon the idea that information was part of the material world. He was wrong, even though many of his conclusions were pretty accurate. The medium is NOT the message. Information is intelligence transmitted. What we commonly call information is actually the translation of a message into a material form. One must not confuse the medium or the method for the message itself. A message is a transfer of intelligence and information is that intelligence which is being transmitted from one entity to another.

I will use an example I presented previously in greater detail. Suppose I have a notepad and a pen. I show you the items. Nothing has been written upon the notepad. I put them on a scale and weigh them. I put you on a scale and weigh you. I weigh myself.

Now I take the pen and draw a bunch of quick scribbles and lines on the pad in a random way. I show it to you. You do not perceive a message from me on the notepad. I weigh the pad and paper and the weight is unchanged. You stand on the scale and your weight is unchanged. I weigh myself and my weight is unchanged.

Now I take the pen and write "Jesus rose from the dead on Easter." You are able to read this message. I have transmitted information to you. I now weigh the notepad and paper and the weight remains the same. You get on the scale and you weigh the same. I get on the scale and I weigh the same. But now you and I both agree that something has passed between you and I. I have transmitted information to you without passing anything material to you. Maybe you already know that Jesus rose from the dead and when. Maybe you didn't know it, or maybe you don't believe it. But you know that I transmitted that message to you whether you agree with it or not.

Back to information technology. I can add items to my harddrive that are nonsensical and they will still take up space. The amount of space taken up by the bits and bytes will not tell me whether they represent actual information or just "white noise."

As you read this blog now, you are receiving information from me and you can do so because you can understand the code I am using and the method of code transmission. I am using the Engligh language and transmitting it using the alphabet typed into this website. Blogger is using bits and bytes organized in such a way that you read my words as if they had been printed upon a page. Do you understand that the bits and bytes, the letters themselves, they are not the message? They are simply the medium by which the message is transmitted. Even the code itself is not the message, it is simply a method I am using by which I can transmit intelligence and that you are able to translate into thoughts within your mind.

In our daily lives, we easily recognize information and differentiate the transmission of information from random noise.

Perhaps I see a utility pole, a metal one, and it has a small smudge of paint. I examine the paint and using logic and forensic reasoning I determine that the paint came from an automobile that scraped against the pole. Perhaps I can determine the make and model of automobile from the composition of the paint and perhaps I can sift through all the local examples of that particular auto and identify the specific auto with a scratch in the right place that actually collided with that pole. Now there is information being transmitted in the form of evidence. We can determine as best we can what event was represented by that smudge. However, the car itself was not attempting to communicate with us. We have reasoning powers that enable us to translate the language of evidence into an understanding of an event. But, again, understand that the automobile was not trying to pass us a message nor was the driver. We may be able to figure out where it came from but it was not an attempt to pass a message to me or anyone else. It is simply an accidental random mark left as a reminder of an event that was almost certainly unintended. It is not a transmission of an intelligent thought.

But if that same pole has a crown and a few letters and symbols painted upon it, that might well be a sign from a gang member that is telling all who understand that this is marked territory, that in the opinion of that gang member this area belongs to him and his gang and other gang members should stay away lest they be attacked. Hmmm. Both cases involve paint on a utility pole. One is just a smudge left over from an accident that we can study and perhaps even find a way to recreate in our mind's eye what that accident may have been. The other is an attempt to transmit a message using a code understood by the target audience/receivers.

Elsewhere on the pole is a message that appears to have been spray painted on using a template so that it appears to be neatly printed, "Post No Bills." We may not have any desire or ability to identify the smudge and it may be difficult to do so. We may not understand gang symbols and therefore can't really get the message the gang is sending. But we are able to read the message that was posted specifically for us that tells us not to put up any "bills", which is an archaic way of telling people not to put up posters and signs. If I happen to be a gang member of a rival gang, I am going to be able to understand the gang signage and now I can decide whether to be warned away by or to ignore it or whether it actually is some kind of welcome to me.

Paint on a utility pole. It could be meaningless, it could be evidence, it could be code intended for a limited audience or code intended for a general audience.

dklsaotguuslnhous is a series of letters of the English alphabet. It is meaningless, simply a bunch of letters I randomly typed. Even though it is using symbols commonly used to transmit information it does not convey any message. Green side up, on the other hand, is a message that has meaning. It might be an instruction for laying sod, for instance.

I conclude that the medium is not the message at all. Containers that commonly carry a message must be filled with intelligence before a message is actually conveyed. It takes an intelligent entity to input the message.

You see, a gang member designed and painted the symbols that made a territorial statement. A worker for the utility company painted the warning, almost certainly because he was directed to do so by a supervisor. The automobile did not purpose to strike the pole, nor did it have a message to transmit.

Now let us apply this to the Universe. There are many ways of transmitting information within this material universe and we find that we must use a material means to convey the message and yet the message is not the medium or the method itself. So when you consider DNA, you find that you have a medium (organic material) and a method (a code using combinations of adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine) used to convey intelligence. Wikipedia describes DNA thusly:

"Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms and some viruses. The main role of DNA molecules is the long-term storage of information. DNA is often compared to a set of blueprints or a recipe, or a code, since it contains the instructions needed to construct other components of cells, such as proteins and RNA molecules. The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in regulating the use of this genetic information.

Chemically, DNA consists of two long polymers of simple units called nucleotides, with backbones made of sugars and phosphate groups joined by ester bonds. These two strands run in opposite directions to each other and are therefore anti-parallel. Attached to each sugar is one of four types of molecules called bases. It is the sequence of these four bases along the backbone that encodes information. This information is read using the genetic code, which specifies the sequence of the amino acids within proteins. The code is read by copying stretches of DNA into the related nucleic acid RNA, in a process called transcription."

Please note the language used above. "Instructions. Purposes." So now I will add to our definition. Information is intelligence transmitted for a specific purpose.

When I make a blog post, when you speak with your friends, when you write a letter, you are transmitting intelligence and you have a purpose in mind. You also have a recipient in mind and a specific result in response to your message. Dr. Werner Gitt identifies five basic levels of information concept as represented by the illustration.

RUBBER MEETS ROAD

I insist that it is great foolishness to suppose that intelligence has ever been transmitted accidently and with no purpose. Yet a naturalistic materialist will say that intelligence simple developed and that DNA evolved from a series of accidents and the working of natural selection. Have you not learned anything from your time here on Earth? Accidents break things, not fix things. If I drop the glass of milk I will break the glass and spill the milk. By the reasoning of the naturalistic materialist, one of these times I will drop the glass of milk and produce ice cream.

In our world heat transfers from hot things to cold things rather than the reverse. Energy is converted to entropy. Order becomes disorder. There is no place found in the Universe in which these operations are not observed unless an intelligent source brings energy and information into a system to alter the system. Futhermore, throughout the known Universe we have found that matter obeys certain laws that can be understood logically. Gravity operates under an apple tree and five million miles out in space. E=MC2 is true on Earth and on Mars.

The entire Universe is ordered and logically functioning by a set of laws and composed of building blocks that we are able to study and attempt to understand. Matter is composed of molecules which are composed of atoms which are composed of subatomic particles and we can study and predict the behavior of the molecules and the atoms and even, to an extent, the subatomic particles although at the moment mankind has come to the outer limits of his intellect in attempting to comprehend the behavior of subatomic particles.

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It puzzles me that a man can see an automobile and recognize that said automobile had to have been designed and manufactured by intelligent beings and yet, upon discovering that a simple human cell is more complex than a Rolls Royce that same man will accept the idea that said cell came about by a series of accidents. It is not simply the ridiculous odds against the material composition of a cell having happened by a series of chance events, it is the magical appearance of the intelligence/instruction contained within the DNA. Naturalistic materialists must believe that instructions and codes and intelligence just came from nowhere and no one. It is absurdity in the extreme.

Some commenters laugh because I contend that God created the Universe and all contained within it. But my contention is logical and conceivable. If you do not believe in God, you believe in magic because intelligence transmitting instructions via coding for a purpose is simply not going to just happen. I dare you to even begin to explain this logically.

Today is Easter, the day that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. He was seen after his death by over 500 witnesses in at least ten different locations and times. It would have greatly benefitted both the Romans and the unbelieving Jews to find a dead Jesus body or refute the witnesses to his reappearance on Earth but they were quite unable to do it.

Was Jesus raising from death a miracle? Yes, and so was His conversion of water into wine, His raising Lazarus from death and His healings of the lame and blind and demon-possessed. God created the Universe and has authority over it and its laws and systems. He is the owner and according to Colossians chapter one He actually sustains the Universe at every moment by His will.

You can continue to be a grasshopper on the rail, shaking your fist at the oncoming train while claiming to believe that said train does not exist. Or, you can have your free ticket, climb on board and ride the train with the rest of us. My naturalist materialistic friends, you have no logical explanation for the presence of information in the world other than by a creation by a higher entity. I say that the Creator God wants us to know and understand Him and what He has done and thus made sure the Bible was available for man to read and begin to comprehend God within the constraints of our limited abilities.

PS - I would recommend reading this chapter excerpt from Werner Gitt's book.