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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.
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.
"...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
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.
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.
As they say, "If the only thing you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
I fully agree. However, I must point out that sometimes the thing you're looking at actually is a nail
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
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.
As they say, "If the only thing you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
I fully agree. However, I must point out that sometimes the thing you're looking at actually is a nail
And all too often, that nail is a thumbnail.
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.
If the universe recycles, the laws of nature will be the same, and will output the same universe, any idiot savant knows that information.
If what you say is true, then the universe must not recycle because according to physicists much smarter than me, the laws of nature did change from what they were at the moment the universe came into existence and what they are now (or even a few nanoseconds after it came into existence).
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.
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."
Well, I am not a physicist but I am pretty sure I can hold my own in such a discussion if, by holding my own, I'm allowed to admit that there is much that I do not know.
Having said that - what are you calling a law of nature? Assuming the laws of physics are what you're calling the laws of nature then I don't think any of them really changed at the conception of the universe - at least not in commonly accepted theories. Now, I could be mistaken and this intentionally discounts theories that are not widely held to be true or similar.
As for the post you are addressing. I'm reasonably certain that their comment, that the results will be the same, is inaccurate and misleading. I suspect it's from a general misunderstanding of an actually difficult topic: Probabilities. This, too, may be a difficult subject to consider: Chaos theory and models.
Now, inasmuch as I understand, there is a high probability that the results would have been similar. Given the chaotic nature, it's a near certainty that the results would not have been identical. The statistical likelihood of our own universe existing is significant enough to be considered mathematically impossible, a cyclic-similarity would be so improbable that I'd have to even approach that level of mathematics. An exact replication would be so unlikely that, frankly, nobody who isn't stoned would do the math and the stoned would be incapable of doing the math.
I'm actually kind of hoping that they are just misunderstanding something or have articulated it poorly. What are the chances of a new cycle creating this solar system, in this locality, with this particular planet, with this level of development, having this same discussion, at this particular time? (I'm going with; "It's not even worth doing the maths involved.") If they wish to exclude such particulars from the definition of "the same galaxy" and remove other particulars while simply stating that the new galaxy will have the same rules as the first then, by all means, I'm likely to submit that I'd expect that to be true.
In fact, I'm actually hoping the latter is true. I'm hoping it was simply poorly communicated. The existence of our universe is improbable at a point where it's so unlikely as to be mythical except we can see it and measure it. The existence of our universe in the configuration it has is orders of magnitude (how many, I do not know) less likely - to the point of being mathematically impossible but, here we have it. The odds of it being cyclical are, from my layman's understanding, pretty good. The odds of it having the same rules each time, if it is cyclical, is actually a near certainty. However, the odds of it resulting in the same universe are really not even worth computing. So, for 'some definitions of same' then, sure. But for the actual definition of 'same' then no. I'm hoping they meant similar.
In closing, I could be unaware of something and I am not a physicist. I do understand some physics at a level greater than the vast majority of people. At the same time, there are people on this very site who have a far greater understanding than I and the vast majority of those people that I mention do not frequent this site. The vast majority of people is not really a huge barrier with this. Simply understanding a goodly amount of General Relativity Theory puts on at that level. Hell, even having heard the term "spooky action at a distance" probably puts on at a level greater than 50% of the population. So, my claim is no great shakes - in other words, I may be mistaken.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
http://science.slashdot.org/co...
I don't feel like typing it all out again. You may be interested in it. Feel free to tear it apart, poke at it, ponder it, whatever. It's just something that's been stuck in my head for 30 years or so - it's likely wrong but it does make for some interesting thoughts.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
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 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.