bogus comments on Information theory and FOOM - Less Wrong

6 Post author: PhilGoetz 14 October 2009 04:52PM

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Comment author: PhilGoetz 14 October 2009 05:29:10PM *  0 points [-]

What's your justification for the claim that "almost all of the information content of an organism resides in the amino-acid sequence of its domains"?

The paragraphs before that claim, plus the fact that the fraction of DNA devoted to regulation, such as promoter sequences, is a small fraction of that devoted to coding, and is also much more redundant. In short: That is the result you find when you measure it.

For your claims about "speed of evolution" to make any sense, it must be the case that we could get rid of the information content which does not reside in these sequences with minimal losses in evolutionary fitness.

I see no reason to think that. You can often kill an organism by changing 1 bit in its genome.

Comment author: bogus 14 October 2009 05:39:38PM *  0 points [-]

the fraction of DNA devoted to regulation, such as promoter sequences, is a tiny fraction of that devoted to coding

Given that most of DNA is junk, considering "information" in raw storage terms makes little sense. It may be a tiny fraction, but is it an important contributor to genetic fitness? If it is, then it's hard to argue that evolution has slowed down.

I see no reason to think that. You can often kill an organism by changing 1 bit in its genome.

ETA: I'm not disputing that, but see above. I'm trying to qualify the information's overall contribution to genetic fitness.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 14 October 2009 05:41:24PM 0 points [-]

I'm only arguing about the speed at which information is produced, and the speed at which intelligence is produced.

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