Talk:Complexity doesn't come from simplicity

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203.206.109.136 wrote in Fallacies: "#Completely ordered systems contain less information that messy ones. Entropy increases the amount of information in a system. It requires complexity to arise from simplicity. Life does not represent a an increase in complexity. It represents a decrease in complexity. (This still leaves it apparently opposed by the 2nd law of thermodynamics, but the not-a-closed-system argument holds)." I can't really tell what he's trying to make out with that paragraph, and it just doesn't seem right being in Fallacies.--Mr A. 16:53, 15 April 2006 (BST)

Just some comments to the above, if that's ok? Entropy doesn increase or decrease anything, it's not a mechanism, but a measurement. In information theory, entropy measures uncertainty. For instance, at each position in a DNA string there are four possible bases (Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine, and Thymine). Assuming these to have the same probability, the entropy is 2 (= log₂(4)). Say you are told that the base is a pyrimidine (Cytosine and Thymine), then you have halved the number of possibilities. That is, you have decreased your uncertainty with 1 bit, the entropy is now 1 (= log₂(2)), since there are still two, equally likely candidates. In the process you have gained 1 bit of information. The frequent confusion of information and entropy is due to that a decrease in entropy is an increase in information - you can therefore say that the information content of something is equal to the amount of entropy decreased by the information.

--FreezBee 13:00, 10 May 2006 (BST)