Does the Special Rule smuggle information into the Ev program?
This claim, by William Dembski, is answered in the on-line paper Effect of Ties on the Evolution of Information by the Ev program. Basically, changing the rule still gives an information gain, so Dembski’s prediction was wrong. • Has Dembski ever acknowledged this error? Not to my knowledge. • Don’t scientists admit their errors? Generally, yes, by publishing a retraction explaining what happened. • Don’t you make errors too? Do you admit them? Yes and Yes, see: Schneider Lab Errata and Corrigenda. • If you had a different recognition method would you get a different result? No, so long as the recognition function gives a finely graded and ordered response to input sequences. In the Ev program, recognition is done using a numerical matrix of numbers, encoded in the genomes. In nature, DNA is copied to RNA, the RNA is translated into a polypeptide and then the polypeptide folds to make a protein. Finally, the protein recognizes the binding sites by physical interactions with the DNA. We
