"Perplexed in Peoria"  wrote:

> > TT:-
> > Dawkins stated position appears to be not remotely defensible -
> > it is completely mistaken - he totally reverses the roles of
> > mutation and natural selection, as far as their effect on
> > information content of genomes is concerned.
> > It appears that St Richard is fallible after all ;-)

> JM:-
> Dawkins understands information theory as well as, or better than,
> you do.  His mistake, if there is a mistake, is one of exposition.
> You have failed to understand that he is using "information content
> of the genome" in a sense exactly opposite to you.  And the word
> that is causing the problem is not "information", but rather
"genome".

JE:-
Dawkins has mistaken the simple addition
of each genome's information within
one population as an information maximand 
for the total of all information within one 
genome. Dawkins has either: only provided 
(yet another) group selective maximand 
OR misused a statistical model of an 
individual information maximand.


> JM:-
> Naively take the information content of an individual's DNA as
> 2N bits, where N is the number of base pairs.  Divide this information
> into two components:
> A. The information about the individual DNA sequence that we know
>     simply by knowing the species of the individual.
> B. The additional information that is gained by looking at the
>     individual DNA sequence itself.
> 
> A + B = 2N

JE:-
Only "the information that is gained 
by looking at the individual DNA sequence 
itself" constitutes a heritable information
maximand when _known_, above DNA information
is just deleted within the model. Note also,
that epistatic information (the non
additive information that exists within
DNA between sets of base pairs commonly 
referred to a genes)  is included BUT NOT
MEASURED. 

"Haldane's Dilemma" only proved one thing:
no dilemma existed! The premises that
had to conclude that no enough time existed
to evolve both man and chimp from a common
ancestor were false. This was proven when 
the Human Genome Project only discovered
30,000 or so genes. The "only additive
fitness is heritable" school of thought
predicted 100,000's of genes because they 
had to, to be able to explain the vast number 
of heritable phenotypes both humans and chimps
have.


> JM:-
> I am pretty sure that Dawkins is talking about the information content
> of component A, whereas you are talking about component B. 


JE:-
Information A is just group selective
while information B is the addition
of group selective information to 
individually selective information,
i.e. B makes no evolutionary theory,
sense as a proposed information maximand.


> JM:-
> NS shifts
> "ownership" of information from B to A - thus increasing information
> in his sense, while decreasing it in yours.  Mutation (in some sense)
> shifts information in the opposite direction.

JE:-
The "ownership" of information
is only possible via each defined
selectee, i.e. only each selectee
"owns" information within testable
evolutionary theory. Adding competing
owned units of information is group
selective. For the information to
evolve you have to decide which
maximand wins: the total information
per individual OR the total information
per group.


> JM:-
> Since it is the species that evolves - not the individual - I believe
> that Dawkins' viewpoint is quite defensible. 

JE:-
The species only evolves via
natural selection acting on 
fitness independent Darwinian
individuals (fertile forms)
within one population. The
total information content B
can only evolve via competing
Darwinian fitness maximands,
i.e. _meaningful_ information 
expands at the Darwinian level
of selection, only.

>snip<

Regards,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

PO Box 266
Church Pt
NSW 2105
Australia

edser{at}tpg.com.au
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