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The Information Theory of Life (quantamagazine.org)
An anonymous reader writes with this story about Michigan State University Professor Cristop Adami and his quest to answer how life arose with mathematics. From the Quanta story: "Christoph Adami does not know how life got started, but he knows a lot of other things. His main expertise is in information theory, a branch of applied mathematics developed in the 1940s for understanding information transmissions over a wire. Since then, the field has found wide application, and few researchers have done more in that regard than Adami, who is a professor of physics and astronomy and also microbiology and molecular genetics at Michigan State University. He takes the analytical perspective provided by information theory and transplants it into a great range of disciplines, including microbiology, genetics, physics, astronomy and neuroscience. Lately, he's been using it to pry open a statistical window onto the circumstances that might have existed at the moment life first clicked into place.
To do this, he begins with a mental leap: Life, he argues, should not be thought of as a chemical event. Instead, it should be thought of as information. The shift in perspective provides a tidy way in which to begin tackling a messy question. In the following interview, Adami defines information as 'the ability to make predictions with a likelihood better than chance,' and he says we should think of the human genome — or the genome of any organism — as a repository of information about the world gathered in small bits over time through the process of evolution. The repository includes information on everything we could possibly need to know, such as how to convert sugar into energy, how to evade a predator on the savannah, and, most critically for evolution, how to reproduce or self-replicate."
To do this, he begins with a mental leap: Life, he argues, should not be thought of as a chemical event. Instead, it should be thought of as information. The shift in perspective provides a tidy way in which to begin tackling a messy question. In the following interview, Adami defines information as 'the ability to make predictions with a likelihood better than chance,' and he says we should think of the human genome — or the genome of any organism — as a repository of information about the world gathered in small bits over time through the process of evolution. The repository includes information on everything we could possibly need to know, such as how to convert sugar into energy, how to evade a predator on the savannah, and, most critically for evolution, how to reproduce or self-replicate."
Overall,, TFA comes off as a well written piece. However, I do have a bone to pick on the following:
I beg to differ
To paraphrase a famous quote from someone: ...
1. There are things that we know we know
2. There are things that we know we don't know
3. There are things that we don't know we know
and then
4. There are things that we don't know we don't know
It is the item #4 that is the most important of all
I was part of some lunchtime discussions with Cristoph Adami back when he was still in California. At a time when much of scientific research has devolved into a bureaucratic exercise of meeting publication quotas, he stood out as being genuinely interested in discovering new things. I was in a more junior position but he always seemed interested in my, and everyone else's, thoughts on their own merit.
On the other hand, he did seem to like to tackle the big questions. And that comes with a certain risk of failure. At Michigan State, he is definitely a big fish in a small pond. But perhaps that gives him more freedom to take risks - than if he were at a more prestigious but competitive institution.
so...if I look at a person and only see them as a big bag of DNA, then really I'm seeing the twisted force of will of their improbability through time. Okay, works for me :)
If the universe recycles, the laws of nature will be the same, and will output the same universe, any idiot savant knows that information.
It's all just mathematics at the end of the day.
I've got a fever and the only prescription is more COBOL.
Probably the best definition of life I've ever heard.
There are still a huge number of line drawing problems--when is life intelligent, when is it permissible to end a life, etc...
But it's a really great way of encompassing pretty much every form of theoretical life.
I thought this is how people already looked at life...
The repository includes information on everything we could possibly need to know, such as how to convert sugar into energy, how to evade a predator on the savannah, and, most critically for evolution, how to reproduce or self-replicate."
It's not true. I'm sure there's plenty of "knowledge" still to come. And I'm also sure there's plenty of information that we used to "know" that we don't anymore. Otherwise he would be arguing that we are the end point of evolution and that nothing has ever gone extinct before.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
"...information theory, a branch of applied mathematics..."
It is not; it is a branch of electrical engineering.
...I can only refer you to this Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal cartoon:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id...
... that the origin of life is spirit. Yes, it's put in different words and there's math behind it to back up the theory, but it's basically the same thing.
I'd argue the same way. Wether I'm close to an ape or close to something else makes no different. A spider, bird or jellyfish posting here on slashdot and joining the discussion would be closer to us that we are to an ape, because it's our consciousness that makes us distinctly human vis-a-vis the (rest of) the animal or plant kingdom.
I'll be glad when we've come full circle with our theory about the origins of life and intelligence and can dismiss religion based on revelation and have a meaningful spiritual/theological discussion again.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
We need to talk about your approach to information theory.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
As they say, "If the only thing you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
To do this, he begins with a mental leap: Life, he argues, should not be thought of as a chemical event. Instead, it should be thought of as information.
I'm sure we're lacking a 'quantum' or two in that sentence. Why is it that every scientific theory and discovery must be presented as a world-shaking sensation? I'm sure the good professor himself will find this article somewhat alien to his no doubt quite sober work. No scientist worth his salt would state categorically (and in the face of obvious evidence to the contrary) that 'life is not chemical, it's information' - what he probably says is 'Would it be useful to consider life from the point of view of information theory?'; which is something entirely different and much more intelligent. Every model of reality is an abstraction, and the benefit of introducing a new abstraction is that it enables us to apply our understanding in one area to another area. This is in fact what most of mathematics is all about.
And it goes both ways - if we can apply information theory to chemistry, we can also apply ideas from chemistry to information theory, or to anything else that information theory applies to, in principle. Perhaps this can be used to discover that the mechanisms of chemical life also operate in other spheres of reality; subatomic particles, stars and galaxies, who knows? We may be about to find out soon.
we are just searching for the question.
The answer is 42.
Science fictions writers. Predicting science long before scientists.
Just saying it like it are.
"The Word" in this context does not refer to the Bible (as a book/collection of words/information); it does refer to Jesus (see Joh 1:14, Rev 19:13).
Using his modelling maybe we can end milk shortages by figuring out how to create spherical cows
From the interview:
Q. But where did that first bit of self-referential information come from?
A. We of course know that all life on Earth has enormous amounts of information that comes from evolution, which allows information to grow slowly. Before evolution, you couldn’t have this process. As a consequence, the first piece of information has to have arisen by chance.
I'm sorry, but this answer is nearly incomprehensible. Information "comes from" evolution, which then "allows" it to "grow", but before evolution, you couldn't have any information? That doesn't even make sense. And, before evolution the first "piece" of information rose by "chance"? What does that even mean?
He's still talking about evolution, which a dead-end theory when you're talking about the origins of life, because you can't "evolve" something that doesn't already exist. Duh.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
It refers to neither as I understand it; is it not mangled retranslation of the greek word 'logos', which means a hell of a lot more than 'word'.
But I'm more interested in whether that blog is a Poe or the work of a genuine crazy.
Man with a hammer spots something that looks a bit like a nice big nail.
I applaud you for being more honest than most about the fact you are willing to let your already reached conclusions influence your feelings about methods of analysis.
Somebody has been watching Morgan Freeman movies again.
"Lucky, I'm home!" Oh, wait. Wrong Lucy.
Wasn't this sort of the meaning of life for Lucy in the film?
please explain your question
church of the better resurrection... https://betterresurrectionchurch.wordpress.com/
We need to talk about your approach to information theory.
Well, if we can redefine the concept of life, from a chemical process to a mathematical process, we can surely redefine what the concept of "first" is, can we not?
Of course he doesn't because he is an atheist. God created life and it will take a long time for this liberal dumbass to figure that out and start using real science.
I am not an atheist, and while I accept that God started it, I don't have a clue as to how God did it.
Lila Gatlin was writing about this in the 1960s and 70s.
"Life may be defined operationally as an information processing system—a structural hierarchy of functioning units—that has acquired through evolution the ability to store and process the information necessary for its own accurate reproduction." --Lila Gatlin, Information Theory and the Living System, 1971
I'd like more insight on how Adami's contributions are especially significant (which they may be, but TFA doesn't make that clear). Or is it just that he's a really good spokesman?
I don't think you can have much of a theory of the origin of life until you have a plausible chemical story.
Adami defines information as 'the ability to make predictions with a likelihood better than chance,'
Seems like everyone has their own pet definition of information. Isn't the above the opposite of Shannon's definition of information ie a random noise high entropy signal has lots of information while a predictable signal has low information.
In "What is Life?" (1944) he claimed that life is nature's answer to the preservation of information in the face of the second law of thermodynamics.
And, before evolution the first "piece" of information rose by "chance"? What does that even mean?
See the definition of information in the summary: "the ability to make predictions with a likelihood better than chance". It doesn't matter where the information came from. As long as you can make predictions, there is information.
That's a key point to understand. It isn't the information that makes predictions. It's you, an outside observer, who makes predictions. If you observe a molecule which has a tendency to reproduce itself, you can immediately make a prediction: that in the future, there will be more molecules like that one. Where did the particular molecule you observed come from? It doesn't matter. Maybe it came into existence just by chance, through a random series of atoms bumping into each other and forming bonds. Or maybe it's the descendant of a long line of self-reproducing molecules. All that matters is that this molecule, the one you just observed, has a tendency to reproduce itself. That fact alone is enough to let you make predictions. That is what "information" means.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
And people coming at it from different angles http://cosmicfingerprints.com/...
It's not really redefining it from a chemical process so much as it is expressing it mathematically. Chemistry is mathematics. It is abstracted, from math, to some extent but it is mathematics, regardless.
I am, of course, biased.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
It does lead to more "God did it", but only because information theory, if used honestly, tends to expose the intractable problems inherent in evolutionary theory (as well as matters involving origins).
Unless, of course, we're supposed to be satisfied with denominators that include Knuth Arrows...
Of course he doesn't because he is an atheist. God created life and it will take a long time for this liberal dumbass to figure that out and start using real science.
God obviously created him to not agree with you.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
The tracing back to when life started and when the universe started. They are the same. You can only go to the same distance in both. It means that you need another explanation another paradigm shift. It's too late to comment, but I do understand this and found an explanation to solve it.
"The Word" in this context does not refer to the Bible (as a book/collection of words/information); it does refer to Jesus (see Joh 1:14, Rev 19:13).
Bird bird bird
Bird is the word
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
In Alive and Human (google groups), one of the Principles valid for all possible lifeforms pass, present and future. Seems Life has been War since I wrote that introduction... which I still think as biochemistry, but anyways...