> * Whether Dawkins is talking about species or
>   individuals is totally irrelevant. 

JE:-
An objective concept of "information" 
can only make RELATIVE sense, i.e. sense
relative to the thing it is supplying 
information for.  Thus "information" that 
dismantles this thing is not information 
it only constitutes disinformation. A science 
of biology requires a testable separation of 
information from disinformation.

In evolutionary theory the only "information" 
that matters is the information required to increase
the absolute fitness of each Darwinian selectee (one 
fertile form). If you are measuring a grouped
selectee's information content then you have changed 
the unit that delineates the information as
meaningful. Units of information can constitute units
of disinformation relative to each other, i.e. one 
grouped unit of information may contradict one 
individual unit of information. In this case
the information content of one unit is just
disinformation for the other unit. Any attempt
to assume information can constitute an absolute
assumption (become an objective maximand) cannot  
work.


> TT:-
> Either way,
> mutations add large volumes of information to the
> genetic message, and natural selection (mostly)
> removes it again.

JE:-
Meaningful information is not just added complexity.
Mutations may add large volumes of complexity but
they do not normally add large volumes of
meaningful information. The information stored
as heritable variation has to increase the 
absolute fitness of a selectee to be meaningful
information. When this information reduces
absolute fitness it only constitutes meaningless
information for that selectee, i.e. a _reduction_
and not an increase in formation.



>  TT:-
> * Wirt appears to have missed Dawkins definition of 
>   "true information content".  Dawkins clearly states in
>   his essay: "The true information content is what's
>   left when the redundancy has been compressed out of
>   the message, by the theoretical equivalent of Stuffit."
>   I.e. he is talking about Chaitin-style information
>   content at that point.  Mutation certainly *increases*
>   this information content - by introducting random
>   noise into the message - and making it less compressible.

JE:-
When information is not measured on just a relative
basis, i.e. is not strictly measured relative to the thing 
it is supplying information for it becomes a meaningless
concept because "everything" now becomes "information"
so an increase in anything becomes an increase
in information. In _biology_ random noise is not information 
it is disinformation. Selection reduces noise and does
not increase it, i.e. selection increases information
while reducing disinformation. The science of biology
cannot function when disinformation is not separated
from information on a testable basis.

 
> TT:-
> * Inman is correct to point out that Dawkins deliberately
>   confines his attention to the functional region of
>   the genome.  However *even* there I claim that it
>   is mutations that are primarily responsible for
>   increasing the information content of the genome.

JE:-
Mutation increases (mostly random) variation 
which contains BOTH information and disinformation.
The job of selection is to remove the 
disinformation and evolve mechanisms to
be able to do this more and more efficiently. 


> TT:-
> snip<
>   The whole point of Dawkins' essay is that
>   he is addressing the question of whether
>   evolutionary processes can increase the
>   information in the genome.
>   The observer in that case has surely got to be
>   an *external* observer, examining the genome
>   and measuring its information content.

JE:-
The objective observer is absolute
fitness. When it increases information
has increased.


> TT:-
> To give some more technical details of why
> I think Dawkins is saying something which
> is basically wrong - or at least _very_
> misleading in this essay:
> Basically I agree with Larry Moran - that
> genetic drift and random mutation are
> the main forces in evolution as far as
> molecular evolution go - and when
> talking about the information content
> of the genome, that has realisitically
> *got* to be the perspective you take.

JE:-
Dr Moran does not distinguish between 
information and disinformation allowing
just random variation to constitute
evolution.

> TT:-
> I don't dispute that natural selection
> transfers *some* information - about how
> to survive - from the environment to
> the genome.  However, the *main* role
> in evolution - as far as making changes
> to the information content of genomes goes
> has simply *got* to be given to random events.

JE:-
Only if you define biological disinformation
as biological information reducing the 
science of biology to a non testable
status.

> TT:-
> Mutation *totally* swamps natural selection
> in terms of introduced information content
> by just about every metric I can imagine.

JE:-
Mutation is mostly disinformation. 
However, selectee's have evolved
be able to deal with large amounts of
disinformation, i.e. they have had
eons of time to select systems that
can extract the information and 
harmlessly dispense with 
most (but not all) disinformation.


> TT:-
> Natural selection removes whole individuals
> from the population, destroying *all* the
> information represented my the chance events
> that occurred during meiosis and any mutations
> or other information that has accumulated
> in them since they were born.

JE:-
The crudest possible sorting device
that nature can employ is removing
entire individuals. Waddington's
genetic canalisation experiments
confirm that a complex developmental
landscape (which is almost entirely
ignored by gene centric Neo Darwinism)
can be shown to buffer information against
disinformation within the genome so that
removing entire individuals is not 
always required. 
 

> TT:-
> What information does an individual death
> add?  At the very *maximum* it adds the
> information required to identify that
> individual in the population.  That
> can typically be a number between 1
> and the size of the population, assuming
> the population is ordered by birth date.

JE:-
Death alone cannot drive Darwinian
natural selection. What drives selection
is a differential reproductive _increase_
where a minimum of two absolute fitness
totals must be compared by default and
not by intent to measure such. Selectee's have 
no way of knowing that these totals are being 
compared. This being the case, each and every 
selectee is always driven to increase and not 
decease the information that allows an 
increase in their own fitness total.

>snip<

Regards,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

PO Box 266
Church Pt
NSW 2105
Australia

edser{at}tpg.com.au
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