🚀 go-pugleaf

Titus Brown <t@chabry.caltech.edu> wrote:
> In article <04p40a.db1.ln@linuxsys.ii01.org>,
> Robin Faichney  <robin@ii01.org> wrote:
>>Titus Brown <t@chabry.caltech.edu> wrote:
>>> In article <j9gtv9.tg.ln@linuxsys.ii01.org>,
>>> Robin Faichney  <robin@ii01.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>Don't know about "concrete work", but a serious theoretical issue is
>>>>this: genes are not DNA sequences, but are encoded in such sequences.
>>>>The decoding mechanism is the cellular machinery that interacts with
>>>>the DNA.  Anyone who doubts that needs to read Darwin's Dangerous Idea
>>>>by Dan Dennett.  And it's the gene, actually an abstraction, that carries
>>>>the information.
>>
>>> Actually, the concept of gene itself is a bit tough to pin down.  [munch]
>>
>>You miss the point.  This is a conceptual truth, with which philosophers
>>like Dennett (and myself, as an amateur) deal.  Any secondary school level
>>text provides all the biology we need to understand this.  DNA on its
>>own is not enough.  It requires the machinery of the cell to interpret
>>its code.  Thus, genes are abstractions, being encoded in the DNA,
>>as decoded by the cellular machinery.  Discussion of different kinds
>>of sequences is irrelevant, in this particular context -- that's just
>>arguing about the form of encoding, when that point is that genetic
>>information is encoded -- anyhow.

> Could you point out to me a system in which information exists but no decoding
> is required?

Why should I?

> All information is conditional.  What is information to one system may be noise
> to another.

> At any rate, "concrete work" and this "conceptual truth" stuff don't mix ;).

You have to understand the relationship between them.  Though it's
basically just theory and practice, and any scientist should know these
are equally important.

> Any information theoretic work that deals with a genetic system is going to
> have to deal quite closely with the exact mechanism of encoding and decoding,
> as well as the mechanisms of transmission and alteration.

My point precisely.

-- 
"A prime source of meta-memes" -- inside information -- http://www.ii01.org/
Robin Faichney