From: onar@hsr.no (Onar Aam)
Subject: Re: Probability of Evolution
Organization: Rogaland University Centre
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 16:08:02 GMT


>The book demonstrates that by adopting the hypotheses of the theory
>of molecular evolution, it must follow from these hypotheses that there
>is an extremely tiny --virtually infinitesimal-- probability that a
>living cell could have arisen by random molecular combination under
                                  ^^^^^^ 
>natural selection, even given a period of time much longer than the
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>estimated age of the earth.

This is virtually a paradox. Processes that are driven by natural selection are
*not* random. If evolution was a mere random process then I am sure your
probability is correct. Fortunately this is not so. 

> Since the information
>content of the known laws of physics, and of simple organic molecules,
>is relatively small, whereas the information content of living cells is
>quite large, [...] there is the question of how a system of low information
 ^^^^^^^^^^^ 
>content can "evolve" into one of high information content without there
>being a pre-existing source of high information content to draw from.


How much information do you think a pure random signal contains? Intuitively one
would say that it contains little information, but according to information
theory it contains max. information! an infinite sequence of 01010101010101...
contains very little information. An infinite random sequence, however, contains
an infinite amount of information. Compared to a random signal a biological
system contains relatively little information. 



>[...] there is the question of how a system of low information
>content can "evolve" into one of high information content without there
>being a pre-existing source of high information content to draw from.

Take a cup of tea. Map the speed,direction and position of every single molecule 
at one instant. Surely you agree that the information content in the physical laws
that govern the cup of tea is low. Therefore, according to your argumentation,
the information in the system must be low as well, right? Not so. You will need
three numbers per molecule to describe its velocity [A,B,C] and three
numbers to describe its position (x,y,z). Without going into detail it is easy to
see that the resulting information will be horrendously large since there are
about 10^20 molecules in a cup of tea. What you would find striking is that this
very cup of tea contains MORE information than any cell. In fact, the entire
human genome consists of merely 4 billion base pairs, and each base pair can only
have 4 different states. This adds up to a to a mere Gigabyte of information.

Yes, if one allow packing techniques I dare say that a cup of ordinary Earl Grey 
contains more information than ALL living species today! Would you still say that
biological systems have a high information content? Would you still say that
simple laws cannot produce vast amount of information? If you do then please
explain why. 
 (PS: to pack the information in the tea won't help. All values will be random and
thus cannot be packed)




One thing, I need to justify the intuitive notion that random noise contains
no information. Why does information theory state quite the opposite of
intuition? Because intuition looks at *structures*, not information. And quite
right, noise has NO structure. This means that the property of noise is totally
independent of the information in it. Listen to two completely different samples
of noise and compare them. They will sound identical. Subtract one of the samples
from the other. What do you get? Noise. 






Onar.