A coded system is always the result of a mental process… It should be emphasized that matter as such is unable to generate any code. All experiences indicate that a thinking being voluntarily exercising his own free will, cognition, and creativity, is required… There is no known natural law through which matter can give rise to information, neither is any physical process or material phenomenon known that can do this
Werner Gitt, In the Beginning Was Information, CLV, Bielenfeld, Germany, pp. 64-7, 79
2 comments:
In the Beginning Was Information is a flawed book. Young Earth believer Gitt offers "extensions" on the Shannon model of information theory. Gitt offers fourteen "theorems"... then fails to demonstrate them.
In SC2 Gitt notes that Chaitin showed randomness cannot be proven, and that the cause of a string of symbols must be therefore be known to determine information is present; yet in SC1 he relies on discerning the "ulterior intention at the semantic, pragmatic and apobetic levels." In other words, Gitt allows himself to make guesses about the intelligence and purpose behind a source of a series of symbols, even though he doesn't know whether the source of the symbols is random. Gitt is trying to have it both ways here. He wants to assert that the genome fits his strictly non-random definition of information, even after acknowledging that randomness cannot be proven.
Mak wants to talk about codes, I want to talk about coders.
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