COVID-19: When 900 Bytes Shut Down the World
The COVID-19 virus contains about as much information as a sticker in WhatsApp. Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks and Dr. Daniel Andrés Díaz-Pachón explore a dreadful truth: “Human...
View ArticleWhy Information Theory Is Like a Good Run
Information theory is a deep field that is responsible for our modern internet and satellite TV. The field was pioneered by Claude Shannon to measure our ability to communicate meaning. But besides...
View ArticleAt the Movies: Can AI Restore Blurred Images?
It’s an exciting scene in crime investigation movies. A critical image, like the one on the left below, is blurred by pixelization. The detective commands the technician, “Sharpen it!” and the...
View ArticleWhy is Bell’s Theorem Important for Conservation of Information?
Proving a negative is difficult. Think about it. For example, demonstrating that there are no leafy green crows is hard to do without exhaustively examining every crow in existence. On the other hand,...
View ArticleIs Dembski’s Explanatory Filter the Most Widely Used Theory Ever?
William Dembski created quite a stir in the world of information theory with his book The Design Inference. For the first time, he outlined a rigorous method for identifying design, which he called the...
View ArticleElon Musk Tweet Shows Why Many Doubt Origin of Life Studies
Creating a machine that manufactures or a cell that reproduces is much harder than creating a prototype of either. It’s a search for a search. Source
View ArticleThey Say This Is An Information Economy. So What Is Information?
We know information when we see it. An article contains information. A photograph contains information. The thoughts in our mind contain information. So does a computer program and so do our genomes....
View ArticleNew Book: Our Bodies’ Cells Are a “Third Infinity” of Information
Recently, computer engineer and philosopher Jonathan Bartlett pointed out that Elon Musk has inadvertently highlighted the biggest problem with origin of life studies: How life originated is not as...
View ArticleInformation Today Is Like Water in the Ocean. How Do We Test It?
Examining specific types of bias in our thinking will help us evaluate the information on key issues that inundates us today. Source
View ArticleTo What Extent Does Life Simply Invent Itself As It Goes Along?
According to a popular anti-creationist website Talk Origins, one of the strongest pieces of evidence for evolution and common descent is the phylogenetic signal. In their view, when we look at...
View ArticleDo We Really Have Free Will? Four Things to Know
Free will is a contentious topic in science these days. Theoretical physicists weigh in sharply on one side or the other. Just this month, based on quantum mechanics, mathematician Tim Andersen says...
View ArticleA Neuroscientist on Why We Can Build Human-like Brains
Manuel Brenner, a particle physicist who became a theoretical neuroscientist, made the argument last year that human intelligence is less complex than we make it out to be. Thus, building an artificial...
View ArticleCan We Find Purpose in a Universe With No Underlying Purpose?
British science writer Philip Ball offers us a guide to a very interesting project: an attempt to “naturalize” the idea of agency, that is, make the desire to do things—the mouse’s desire to escape the...
View ArticleInformation Is the Currency of Life. But What IS It?
At first, “What is information?” seems like a question with a simple answer. Stuff we need to know. Then, if we think about it, it dissolves into paradoxes. A storage medium—a backup drive, maybe—that...
View ArticleComplexity Is Not Always a Bad Thing
In a recent podcast, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor and engineering prof Robert J. Marks discussed the difference between a bag of jigsaw puzzle pieces and a text message like “The city will get your car...
View ArticleBut Do “Hidden Webs of Information” Really Solve Life’s Mystery?
Last year, State University of Arizona’s cosmologist Paul Davies won a Best Book award from Physics World for Demon in the Machine: The book’s subtitle is “How hidden webs of information are solving...
View ArticleIs Technology Always Progress? Let’s Talk About That
We often make a sharp distinction between “traditional” and “modern.” We view tradition with distrust, assuming that we are simply latching ourselves onto arbitrary decisions from yesteryear....
View ArticleDoes Information Just Happen? Or Does the Universe Have Meaning?
Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor, a frequent contributor to Mind Matters News, interviewed our Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks, a computer engineer, on the nature of information. Information...
View ArticleWhat If, Condemned, You Had 12 Friends on the Firing Squad?
Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor, a frequent contributor to Mind Matters News, interviewed our Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks on the nature of information. In this second part of the...
View ArticleIs GMO Detection an Application of Dembski’s Explanatory Filter?
Have you ever heard people say that intelligent design (ID) theory has never been applied to biology? They are wrong! In fact, it is applied frequently in the very important field of detecting...
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