"Formal Accounts of Information" That Do Not Account for Information

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Yup you read that title correctly- this is about "formal accounts of information" that do not account for information.

The word information in this theory is used in a special mathematical sense that must not be confused with its ordinary usage. In particular, information must not be confused with meaning.- Warren Weaver, one of Shannon's collaborators

Why is what Weaver said so difficult to understand?

Kolmogorov complexity deals with, well, complexity. From wikipedia:

Algorithmic information theory principally studies complexity measures on strings (or other data structures).

Nothing about meaning, content, functionality, prescription. IOW nothing that Information Technology cares deeply about, namely information. Not only Information Technology but the whole world depends on Information Technology type of information.

And both Creationists and IDists make it clear, painfully clear, that when we are discussing "information" we are discussing that type of information.

And without even blinking an eye, evotards always, and without fail, bring up the meaningless shit when trying to refute the meaningful.

from Kirk K. Durston, David K. Y. Chiu, David L. Abel, Jack T. Trevors, “Measuring the functional sequence complexity of proteins,” Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling, Vol. 4:47 (2007):

[N]either RSC [Random Sequence Complexity] nor OSC [Ordered Sequence Complexity], or any combination of the two, is sufficient to describe the functional complexity observed in living organisms, for neither includes the additional dimension of functionality, which is essential for life. FSC [Functional Sequence Complexity] includes the dimension of functionality. Szostak argued that neither Shannon’s original measure of uncertainty nor the measure of algorithmic complexity are sufficient. Shannon's classical information theory does not consider the meaning, or function, of a message. Algorithmic complexity fails to account for the observation that “different molecular structures may be functionally equivalent.” For this reason, Szostak suggested that a new measure of information—functional information—is required.

Here is a formal way of measuring functional information:

Robert M. Hazen, Patrick L. Griffin, James M. Carothers, and Jack W. Szostak, "Functional information and the emergence of biocomplexity," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, Vol. 104:8574–8581 (May 15, 2007).

See also:

Jack W. Szostak, “Molecular messages,” Nature, Vol. 423:689 (June 12, 2003).

Hopefully evotards have keyboard protectors as I am sure this entry will cause quite a bit of drooling and spewage.