Jeffrey Shallit takes down creationist nonsense about information theory in Stephen Meyer's latest creationist offering, Signature in the Cell:
In Signature in the Cell, Meyer talks about three different kinds of information: Shannon information, Kolmogorov information, and a third kind that has been invented by ID creationists and has no coherent definition. I'll call the third kind "creationist information"...
Creationist information, as discussed by Meyer, is an incoherent mess. One version of it has been introduced by William Dembski, and criticized in detail by Mark Perakh, Richard Wein, and many others (including me). Intelligent design creationists love to call it "specified information" or "specified complexity" and imply that it is widely accepted by the scientific community, but this is not the case. There is no paper in the scientific literature that gives a rigorous and coherent definition of creationist information; nor is it used in scientific or mathematical investigations....
For most of Meyer's readers, the incoherence of 'creationist information' is beside the point: it's technical-sounding stuff coming from someone with a fancy degree. Therefore, readers can choose to believe whichever 'expert' most appeals to their feelings about how the world should be.
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