Cap'n Refsmmat

You were talking about entropy. Was my answer incorrect with respect to entropy?

So you agree that your are using the term "functional information" in a way inconsistent with the scientific literature. Hence my understandable confusion. So "functional information" is merely a red herring, and we can discard that part of the discussion and continue. Yes? My issue is that you have still not provided a definition that mathematically defines "function." You have defined "information," but not "functional information." But you say it doesn't matter, so we can move on. After all inputs and outputs are considered, there is no net decrease in entropy. The Sun is a great provider of net entropic increase. A local system can decrease entropy so long as the global system increases it, and the Sun certainly provides for us. I know you've claimed we need to account for the "source of low entropy information" delivered to organisms, but you have not established that this is even necessary. The Sun does not have to deliver us low-entropy bricks of magical Entropilite. It merely delivers energy, while increasing net entropy.

By "securing the credits," do you mean verifying that you receive credit for your idea, rather than others? The typical way to do that is to publish your work in a journal or other medium that has a date attached. If your work is in the March 2011 issue of a journal, you'll receive credit over someone who publishes the same work a few years later. If you don't receive credit, you can point to that March 2011 issue as evidence that you should.

You said intent was necessary for function, back in post #219. It's only logical that something cannot be a function if it was not the original intent of the designer. Or is intent not necessary for function? How can you determine a change in information entropy if you don't know the multitude of functions for which that information can be used? For example, a change in the information might harm certain functions, but significantly improve other, unknown functions. This is all very interesting, but it contradicts the very first scholarly definition of "functional information" that I found. http://www.pnas.org/content/104/suppl.1/8574.full "Degree of function" is a component of the formula. The formula is not the same as the general formula for quantity of information. And most importantly, the formula only measures functional information with respect to a specific function, not all possible functions. One cannot describe how much functional information a system has without specifying which function we are talking about. You're using non-standard terminology. If you wish for us to understand your arguments, use accepted terminology, and be precise and specific with your explanations. If you want to use your own personal definitions and hypotheses, please be aware of rule 10.

But the poetry wasn't part of the original intent of the designer of the system. Does this mean we'd have to discover every possible function of a piece of information before we could quantify how much functional information it contains? That seems impossible. Also, how constrained is "function"? We could say that "functional" information creates a functional system... but how functional must it be? For example, the human genome encodes certain functional information that results in allergic reactions, which can kill you. Also, suppose a gene that metabolizes something important is mutated and now merely uses up the cell's energy. Couldn't we call that its "function"? If not, why not? We can't argue that it's not functional because it doesn't benefit the cell, because the genes that cause your anaphylactic shock certainly are functional, but they kill you. We can't argue that it's not functional because it doesn't make anything, because it could quite possibly be making some complex protein the cell doesn't need. So, who draws the barrier for function? So then the amount of functional information is equal to the amount of regular information? That doesn't make sense. I want a peer-reviewed article that discusses the nature of functional information. One that merely discusses what is required for information to be "functional" would be a great starting point. Anyway... aren't weather reports functional, since they serve the function of presenting specific information to my eyes that make me aware of the weather?

cypress, could you point me to some peer-reviewed literature in which the definition of "functional information" is discussed? Perhaps that will answer our questions.

I dunno. Have you given me a definition clear enough to tell? I can't know if I'm changing the definition until I know exactly what the definition states. You will find that the program re-uses information (novels, the Bible, etc) for a different function. Do you think that "functional information," properly defined, cannot be used for more than one function? Can it only be used for the one function the designer intended? How broad must the "function" be? I mean, I could say "this has the function of creating this specific protein to metabolize this one chemical to create energy for this cell," or I could say "this has the function of generating food," or I could say "it has the function of keeping this cell alive." If we choose the most specific definition, what if it can also do something slightly different -- like, say, metabolize something else, just less efficiently. How narrowly defined is "intent"? What is in question is whether the arguments are, in fact, false. If they are not, then your thesis is falsified.

I'm sure we've all used objects for a dramatically different function than their original designer's intent. Similarly, I can use information to perform a function significantly different from its original purpose. For example, for making poetry. http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/46413-computer-generated-poetry/

Right, but that doesn't answer the question. Suppose, perhaps, I have milling machine instructions that can also function as rather excellent poetry, or descriptive text that also functions as the key to an encryption algorithm. The amount of "functional" information is different depending on the purpose for which I use the information; for example, some of the milling machine instructions might make terrible poetry, but a large chunk in the middle has won several awards from literary journals. You'll have to adequately define functional information if you want to argue about how it can be increased or decreased. Given the vagueness of your definition, I'd suggest a formula. Could you perhaps try?

Indeed. Could you mathematically define "functional information", cypress? You stated, This leaves many unanswered questions, such as "what kind of processing are we talking about?", "whose intention do you mean?", "what constitutes 'functional'?", and "can it be a functional system that performs a different function than intended?" This is why information theorists use mathematical descriptions.

Thanks

Indeed. We use commercial software, but the hosting costs end up being far more than the software cost in the long run.

You can open .doc files in OpenOffice and Google Docs, but they have significant bugs. Their importers have to reverse-engineer the .doc format, which is rather difficult. You often get messed-up formatting. Importers for the .docx format are being developed, and the existence of a standard makes that much easier. Microsoft's gotten better about this. When Office 2007 was released with a totally new file format, they released a free upgrade for older Office versions that allows them to read .docx files. You have to install it manually, but it's useful.

If you're a user, you can't use anything else than Microsoft Office. You can't switch to another competitor or use third-party software to manage your Office files, no matter how good it might be. If you're a third-party developer, you're extremely limited in what you can do with Office files. As an example: My mother is a professional translator. There is a wealth of software to aid translators; most systems store phrases and their translations, and suggest an old translation when a similar phrase is found. (This is exceedingly useful in repetitive texts, like computerized phone menu systems or pharmaceutical brochures.) Such software has to interface with Microsoft Word so the translator can use it while editing a Word document. However, in our experience the integration can be terrible -- the translation software has to insert formatting to keep track of its progress, but it interacts badly with Word's unpredictable proprietary formatting and often results in a mess. If the Word format were standardized, computer aided translation could be easier.

That's not what the argument is. For years, until Office 2007 came out, Microsoft Office used a proprietary binary file format to store its documents. There were no published standards for how to read the formats, they changed frequently between Office versions, and competitors wishing to read Office documents had to reverse-engineer the files to determine how to read them. This is why OpenOffice and others have a hard time preserving formatting when opening old Office files. Microsoft's market dominance meant that companies could not easily move away from Office, since no other software could open Office files. Microsoft then put together Office Open XML, their new "standard" XML-based format for Office documents. The standard is several thousand pages long, and Microsoft's own products produce documents that violate the standard. Writing software to read the format is difficult due to the standard's length and vagueness in places; I believe parts of the standard had settings for, say, "emulate Word 97 page break behavior" without defining what Word 97's behavior was, as one example. Office Open XML was then accepted as a standard by ISO, although there were allegations that Microsoft paid off standards committee members to get their format standardized. OpenDocument, a competing standard developed by OASIS, had already gotten ISO standardization. The issue is less important now, since Office 2010 more strictly follows the ISO standards, and other software makers are adding Office Open XML support to their products. There is significant pressure on Microsoft to follow open standards now that many governments have made a commitment to open standards -- else they may find they can't read their own important documents in ten or twenty years. I think the important part to Berners-Lee is that nearly all of the data from this forum can be extracted easily. Each post has its own URI, and since we serve (nearly) standard XHTML, any interested party can scrape all of our posts, discussions, profiles, and so on. The software also provides features to let you download your personal conversations, for example, and it wouldn't be hard to write a robot to save all of your posts. The same can't be said of Facebook, where you can't easily scrape data. Not that you'd want to, anyway, considering how inane it all is... This forum isn't particularly proprietary, either; you could say that the database schema is proprietary, since it's commercial software, but the database uses MySQL, which is open-source, and I can inspect the database schema with any free utility. In fact, I often debug issues by looking through the raw data. We serve (nearly) valid XHTML and CSS, specifically optimized so that search engines can scrape the text easily. There's not really a proprietary file format behind any of SFN.

Well, since the format was closed for many years, they could change the format for any reason without explaining it to anyone else. It's impossible to know what the true motives were. And yes, there were allegations that Microsoft representatives bought votes on the ISO standardization committee so Office Open XML could become a standard.

Migrating to any other system is nearly impossible, because converting documents to any other format is exceedingly difficult. Office Open XML changes some of that, but it's a gigantic standard and Microsoft products do not fully comply. They have quirks that cannot easily be converted.

You're not going to get better by waiting for that to happen.

Ad hominem tu quoque. Regardless, the problem is not criticizing a religion; the problem is when you extend those criticisms to all members of that religion and commit the composition fallacy. I wasn't aware burqas were "mainstream," and I wasn't aware that outrage over body searches was limited to Muslims. You still have not demonstrated that Muslims want an exception to any law, because of their faith or any other reason. To reiterate: they wish to opt out of body scanners, as everyone is legally permitted to do, and instead get full-body pat-downs. This is not an exception to any rule. It is a mechanism already allowed for all passengers. i.e. Muslim leaders suggest Muslims take advantage of an option already available. What is so controversial about this? How can it be classified with the other "mainstream struggles" you list? How does it support the claim that they advocate a separate society with separate rules? (Although the notion of a "Muslim leader" is rather silly, since there's no organized church structure like in Catholicism or the various Protestant churches. Which is why it's so hard to lump Muslims together into one group.)

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/11/adam-savage-tsa-saw-my-junk-missed-12-razor-blades.ars Adam Savage goes through a new body scanner... with two 12-inch razor blades in his pockets. Nobody notices.

Explosives hidden in a body cavity have already happened. Remember a year ago when a guy hid a pound of explosives in his rectum to try to blow up a Saudi prince? http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/28/eveningnews/main5347847.shtml

What lab report?

What exactly do we mean by a "proprietary standard"? Most things we call "proprietary" are closed systems; that is, there's no standard for anyone to attempt to adopt, because the company keeps such information secret. Systems like Windows Live Messenger (aka MSN Messenger) are proprietary standards because Microsoft has not released the details of the communications protocol. Is that what you mean by "proprietary standard"? Or do you mean a standard that is released but subject to license terms? I mean, it's not entirely true to refer to a specification that is never released or specified as a "standard"...

It might help if you'd answer a fundamental question. That appears to be pioneer's point, actually. No, they don't. They begin with a random configuration. All of the genetic algorithm examples I have given do so. (The clocks example, the antenna example, etc. Also Dembski's systems.) You speak as though they import all of the information they generate. This is not what Dembski states in his papers. They generate information at a rate proportional to the information provided in the beginning; that is, given enough time, they will generate more information than they were provided with. They do so with the No Free Lunch theorems... which don't apply to natural selection. It is my understanding that animals tend to reproduce quite often, and mutations tend to occur during reproduction. Some examples might include Lenski's bacteria. They began as nearly identical E. coli, but after many generations, a small portion of the population diverged from the initial population with a mutation in a select few genes. These mutations gave the genes new or altered function, and they now metabolized citrate. Other E. coli samples in different containers made no such changes. As a result, there are now two versions of the genes: one with the original function, and one with a modified function that allows metabolization of external citrate. It does not matter if you believe metabolization of external citrate is not a significant or "new" function, so long as it is different from the original function. Similar processes occur in any population that exhibits a new trait, no matter how trivial. Can you propose a physical mechanism to prevent reproduction and mutation from creating two different versions of the same gene that have slightly different functions?

I suppose it could work like the old gold-backed US money. Bills would represent an obligation of the government to supply you with a certain amount of energy, rather than a certain amount of gold.