Evolutionary Informatics Lab
Peer-Reviewed Scientific Paper Develops New Ways of Measuring Complex and Specified Information in Life
Research by Dembski and Marks Makes Inroads in Technical Literature
Peer-Reviewed Science: There Isn’t “Plenty of Time for Evolution”
William Dembski and Robert Marks Publish (Another) Peer-Reviewed Scientific Paper Supporting No Free Lunch Theorems
A peer-reviewed scientific paper published in 2010 by William Dembski and Robert Marks of the Evolutionary Informatics Lab supports no free lunch theorems. Published in Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics and titled “The Search for a Search: Measuring the Information Cost of Higher Level Search,” the paper’s abstract states that unless one has information about a target, search engines often fail: “Needle-in-the-haystack problems look for small targets in large spaces. In such cases, blind search stands no hope of success.” Their principle of Conservation of Information holds that “any search technique will work, on average, as well as blind search.” However, in such a case “[s]uccess requires an assisted search. But whence the assistance required for a Read More ›
William Dembski, Robert Marks, and the Evolutionary Informatics Lab Take on Dawkins’ “WEASEL” Simulation in New Peer-Reviewed Paper
A new peer-reviewed paper continues the work published by William Dembski, Robert Marks, and others affiliated with the Evolutionary Informatics Lab. (Check out their new revamped website at EvoInfo.org.) The authors argue that Richard Dawkins’ “METHINKSITISLIKEAWEASEL” evolutionary algorithm starts off with large amounts of active information–information intelligently inserted by the programmer to aid the search. This paper covers all of the known claims of operation of the WEASEL algorithm and shows that in all cases, active information is used. Dawkins’ algorithm can best be understood as using a “Hamming Oracle” as follows: “When a sequence of letters is presented to a Hamming oracle, the oracle responds with the Hamming distance equal to the number of letter mismatches in the sequence.” Read More ›
Winston Ewert, William Dembski, and Robert Marks Publish Mainstream Scientific Paper Exposing Flaws in Avida Evolution Simulation
William Dembski and Robert Marks Publish Mainstream Scientific Paper on Conservation of Information
New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Article From William Dembski and Robert Marks Challenges the Creative Mechanism of Darwinian Evolution
A new article titled “Conservation of Information in Search: Measuring the Cost of Success,” in the journal IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics A, Systems & Humans by William A. Dembski and Robert J. Marks II uses computer simulations and information theory to challenge the ability of Darwinian processes to create new functional genetic information. (For a PDF of the article, see here.) Darwinian evolution is, at its heart, a search algorithm that uses a trial and error process of random mutation and unguided natural selection to find genotypes (i.e. DNA sequences) that lead to phenotypes (i.e. biomolecules and body plans) that have high fitness (i.e. foster survival and reproduction). Dembski and Marks’ article explains that unless you start Read More ›
Banned Item of the Year: Dr. Robert Marks’ Evolutionary Informatics Website
Last year John West nominated Of Pandas and People as Banned Book of the Year after the ACLU tried to have it banned from Dover Science Classrooms. We are again celebrating Banned Books Week, and it is fitting to note that Baylor University is also observing Banned Book Week. Baylor’s Banned Books Week events page states, “What do authors Harper Lee, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck and J.K. Rowling have in common? They have all written books that were challenged and banned by libraries in the United States.” Although his work in question here is not a book, Dr. Robert Marks also has something in common with those authors: someone has banned his ideas. As we have recounted extensively here Read More ›