Post by Pahu79 on Mar 28, 2013 13:26:19 GMT -5
Codes, Programs, and Information 3
Life contains matter, energy, and information (e).
e. How can we measure information? A computer file might contain information for printing a story, reproducing a picture at a given resolution, or producing a widget to specified tolerances. Information can usually be compressed to some degree, just as the English language could be compressed by eliminating every “u” that directly follows a “q”. If compression could be accomplished to the maximum extent possible (eliminating all redundancies and unnecessary information), the number of bits (0s or 1s) would be a measure of the information needed to produce the story, picture, or widget.
Each living system can be described by its age and the information stored in its DNA. Each basic unit of DNA, called a nucleotide, can be one of four types. Therefore, each nucleotide represents two (log24 = 2) bits of information. Conceptual systems, such as ideas, a filing system, or a system for betting on race horses, can be explained in books. Several bits of information can define each symbol in these books. The number of bits of information, after compression, needed to duplicate and achieve the purpose of a system will be defined as its information content. That number is also a measure of the system’s complexity.
Objects and organisms are not information. Each is a complex combination of matter and energy that the proper equipment—and information—could theoretically produce. Matter and energy alone cannot produce complex objects, living organisms, or information.
While we may not know the precise amount of information in different organisms, we do know those numbers are enormous and quite different. Simply changing (mutating) a few bits to begin the gigantic leap toward evolving a new organ or organism would likely kill the host.
“Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day.” [/i] Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics; or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, 2nd edition (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1948), p. 132.
Werner Gitt (Professor of Information Systems) describes man as the most complex information processing system on earth. Gitt estimated that about 3 × 1024 bits of information are processed daily in an average human body. That is thousands of times more than all the information in all the world’s libraries. [See Werner Gitt, In the Beginning Was Information, 2nd edition (Bielefeld, Germany: CLV, 2000), p. 88.]
[From “In the Beginning” by Walt Brown]