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  • Post #16

Karl

OK, so if that is the case, then photons do not constitute what we mean by the label elementary particle (see my post over in JCN's blog). The definition of that being a 'substance' (and there may be various types) which physically, in generic terms, persists in the same physically existent state over time. In other words, some innate properties which comprise the 'substance' are always existent. Their value, or what they manifest as, at any given point in time may well vary from circumstance to circumstance.

But another point here is that, in simple terms (and I really wish-like everybody else-that we knew what was actually happening), any given light can be characterised as a physical effect in a physical photon (or definitive number thereof). It is the physical result of a physical reaction with a physically existent state (ie the reality which can now be ultimately seen if that light, and others that follow, come into contact with an eye when travelling). Precisely how it works....but that is sufficient to reveal a key point, ie light, more or less, is able to retain its existent state over time (ie as it travels). Meanwhile, the reality which it 'represents' (ie from the perspective of the sensory system) has ceased to exist.

Paul

Karl,

How about "evolutionary collective tautology?" Then you avoid the implications of a solipistic creature contemplating only itself. Wheeler's famous drawing of the "eye" includes an interval, suggesting the underlying objectivity of a world made of information.

Great reading! I hope you get around to reading my own essay which is also based on Wheeler's it from bit philosophy. Good luck in the contest.

Tom

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    • Post #18

    Tom

    Yep, what we can know is what we can know.

    Paul

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    • Post #19

    Karl H Coryat,

    Could you please explain what is information in the context that you are applying the word? Does it have a physical explanation or representation in your context or is it pre-existing understanding without origin? By understanding, I mean does the information have meaning? If so, is it information that understands information? If it does have an origin and that origin is not physical, then is it its own cause? If it is its own cause, did it begin from something before the first bit. Was there a first bit that gave existence to other bits? Is there a state where information does not have meaning? If not, then what is the origin of meaning? Do you assume that information arrives with meaning intact. When it does arrive what receives it? Is it received by information? Would you use the words arrive and receive? If so, what do they mean in your context? If not, then what is the information doing?

    James

      Hi James, thank you for taking the time to read my essay. I'm afraid I can't answer all of your questions; no one can. It seems as if we are only now figuring out what information is. I refer you to "Information and the Nature of Reality," co-edited by Paul Davies, for the state of the art as to our understanding of what information is, from various perspectives. The book was largely the inspiration for my essay.

      Does information have meaning? Only in relation to other information. Information accumulates, to use a crude analogy, somewhat like compound interest in the bank: as money accumulates in the presence of other money, so does information in the context of other information. (We don't really have the equivalent of a bank or a customer here.) Information is clearly physical in some sense -- but if by "physical" you seek an underlying object or objects from which this information derives, then my essay would suggest instead adjusting what is meant by the word "physical." It refers merely to the automorphism invariance of systems, not necessarily to objects obeying absolute laws.

      "Interact" is perhaps a more general word than arrive or receive, which carry unnecessary connotations. Information has no meaning as a closed system, and therefore information does not appear with meaning intact. The very reason why we can even have a concept such as "meaning" is that we are sitting atop a mountain of information and have this rich contextual history to draw from. The spirit of my essay is that it may be difficult or impossible to understand ultimate reality if one assumes that objects or physical laws (or meaning for that matter) necessarily appear in the world intact and absolute, irrespective of anything else.

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      • Post #21

      Thank you Karl,

      I enjoyed reading your essay. It is just that in the transition to information, it appears that the theory borrows the attributes of a physical world while denying it. By the way, I do think that information is primary. It is what we use. Everything else we think exists or does results from our interpretation of information. However, so far as I understand it, empirical evidence consists of information about changes of distance and time. So, I accept distance and time as the two fundamental indefinable properties. Anyway, that is just what I think. I do have a question?

      "The very reason why we can even have a concept such as "meaning" is that we are sitting atop a mountain of information and have this rich contextual history to draw from. The spirit of my essay is that it may be difficult or impossible to understand ultimate reality if one assumes that objects or physical laws (or meaning for that matter) necessarily appear in the world intact and absolute, irrespective of anything else."

      What are we that we can assign meaning to information? Thats pretty much what I was getting at, by questioning where or when meaning comes into existence or use. Where does the intelligence reside?

      James

      I would say that meaning is evolutionary. A mouse or a flatworm do not contemplate meaning per se, but they are spectacular at processing information, and this is always done in the context of other information (which is laid out in detail in the Davies book I mentioned). For humans, a species that has fairly recently acquired language and high-level reasoning faculties, it may be tempting to think that what we call "meaning" has always existed in more or less the same form. I'd suggest that the ability to contemplate meaning -- and ultimately meaning itself! -- emerged as a very slow process. It's similar to something I call the comb-over effect: When we see someone with a bad comb-over, we wonder how he could go out thinking this makes him look like he has hair. But we forget that he's been parting his hair like that ever since it began to thin. It has been a long and gradual process but eventually leads to the person looking ridiculous.

      The idea of "borrowing the attributes of a physical world while denying it" sounds a bit like the historical opponents to Copernican theory. That idea was considered absurd by many, because the Earth was, by its very definition, that which did not move. So it seemed as if Copernicus was invoking something that was both the Earth (clearly a non-moving object), and yet moves! Crazy talk, right? Only when you throw out the assumption that the Earth is stationary does the picture make any sense.

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      • Post #23

      Thank you Karl,

      I feel that I have gained some understanding of your reasons for the ideas you present in your essay. Like I said, I enjoyed your essay. Thank you for your responses to my questions.

      James

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      • Post #24

      Karl

      Information is not physically existent. Some physically existent phenomena are only potentially 'information' in the context of sensory systems which have evolved to utilise them. So, if and when, any such given physical phenomenon interacts with (ie their lines of travel coalesce) the receiving organ of a sensory system which can process it, then it becomes information in respect of that functional role in that sensory system, and indeed ceases to exist. Its physically existent state is unaffected by the subsequent activity.

      In other words, if light hits a brick wall, it is not utilised because brick walls are not the front end of a sensory system. However, if that light had hit an eye, then.....The physical existence is the same in both cases. What the mouse or the flatworm can then do is irrelevant. That is just a discussion about physiology, biology, sociology, etc. This all wraps in with my point about 'aliens' above.

      Paul

      6 days later

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      • Post #25

      Hi Karl,

      I really enjoyed your essay. Its very clearly written and very interesting and thought provoking.

      It seems to me there has to be a source of the information rather than it just existing. It makes sense, for me, for there to be a source, information/potential sensory data, and output. Having the objects as well does not prevent string like histories, or EM information in the environment being on spherical surfaces. Just data and output doesn't work for me. Which may be my inability to get my head around the alternative. Does the orphan information just exist in the way that we might think of an object just existing? If a blind cave shrimp feels its environment it is obtaining information from the objects,it seems to me. Were is the information in the environment if there is no object to feel?

      Really liked your explanation of chipping away at many histories to make the reality that is known. It is an interesting idea though again one that I cannot say I think is correct. I think there is a lot more information in the environment than is selected and a fabricated reality is formed from that. So from the Multiverse of possibilities originating at the source events that occurred, not many (different)histories.

      Also really liked what you were saying about Aliens having a very different perception of the universe because of their different sensory capabilities.They might also process information differently, being adapted to their environment and way of life.

      Well done. Good luck in the competition.

        Hi Georgina, thank you for the kind words. I realize that the ideas in this essay are a bit out there, and I understand why people may not be getting their heads around it on first look.

        The orphan information exists in the same way we think of objects as existing -- the primary difference is its history. A fundamental object is generally assumed to have existed in that absolute state since shortly after the Big Bang. In the informational scenario, data is constantly being generated in relation to existing data, and it accumulates in this way as an ongoing evolutionary process. There is one and only one fundamental entity, the bit; the particles of the Standard Model emerge to us complex systems and our technology. Wheeler described this emergence process: we hear our detector make a click, and we say, "Aha! A particle did that." But perhaps it was just the appearance of a new bit in the world, and in the very rich context of the situation and everything we've learned about the laws of physics, we interpret the bit as a fundamental object speeding through space and hitting the detector.

        Think of the blind cave shrimp as a bundle of bits, like us, only simpler. However, we don't see bits when we interact with this bundle. A cave shrimp, an object, is what appears to us. It is like a projection that we are biologically equipped to create in our mind (which itself consists of numerous interacting bit-bundles), and these projections are what make up much of the human experience. This is a phenomenon that has evolved over billions of years. As for the cave shrimp itself, it's hard to imagine what experience is like for such an animal, but in some sense, objects emerge in its mind as well. Though more crude, the shrimp is similarly equipped to create these internal projections so as to enhance its fitness.

        The hardest part of this scenario, as you've noticed, is trying to envision the environment as information rather than objects. Space-with-objects seems "normal" to us, and standalone information seems very abstract. But, I claim we should be skeptical of a reality consisting of objects, because it might be unnecessarily extravagant. While it's true the universe may contain ~10^90 objects carrying their accompanying bits of information, perhaps we could have the same identical experience in a universe containing only ~10^60 bits and zero fundamental objects. If that's the case, I claim that Occam's razor points toward the latter. The universe might be much simpler and more elegant than we intuitively assume, and having just one type of fundamental entity, in a compact, self-driven system of mutually relational subsystems, may be all that's needed to account for what we see. To me, an unknowably vast landscape of spacetime with various bosons and fermions obeying seemingly disjointed physical laws of mysterious provenance -- let alone multiple universes out there! -- seems ugly in comparison, like the hilarious building in Vladimir Tamari's essay.

        I've been struggling with various approaches to explaining these ideas. Thank you for the opportunity, and for your time.

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        • Post #27

        Hi Karl,

        thank you for explaining.

        I can't help thinking that the process of perception is being taken for the foundational physics in the "it from bit" view. Yes images or ideas of objects, that we name, are formed from received data, after learning has occurred.

        The learning component is important. I watched an interesting video, I think it was TED one, about people who were born blind learning to see.For most people this learning would occur in very early infancy. Interestingly it was the relative motion that allowed them to identify separate objects rather than just object outlines. The vital information for differentiation was not concerning the objects themselves but the relationships.

        Without motion overlapping portions of shapes could be misinterpreted as separate objects, and separate objects could be considered the same object.So it seems to me, the "it" comes from knowing it is a separate "it". ie.requires the pattern of neuron connections in the brain of the observer and the received "bits". You seem, to me, to be implying the same in your reply.

        That processing is all on the internal side of a reality interface by my way of thinking.It is producing the observer's Image reality. A fabrication of what exists externally. On the other side of the interface is the existence and change of material objects and sensory data; and ongoing production of data; the observer independent Object reality. To deny the source of the information seems to be doing away with a large part of reality.

        I do appreciate the challenge to think about things differently and the time you have taken explaining your viewpoint to me.

        Good luck.

        24 days later

        Karl

        As I understand you, 'If the world is informational...' then we don't have to focus so much on the physical theories, and may instead hope to find an information-first theory based on observation context.

        It is an intriguing thought. How does one approach a problem like that...are the existing informational methods up to it yet?

        Thank you

        Dirk

          Dirk: That's exactly right. The physical theories and their mathematical representations are excellent approximations, but their inadequacy to fully describe nature was revealed by quantum mechanics and its multitude of interpretations. By assuming that mysteriously created objects obey mysteriously created laws, QM and GR appear to be incompatible, for example. We need to develop a theory based on what actually is fundamental, which I argue is information and not objects/laws.

          Alas, our current informational theories are only skeletal at this point, but that's what intrigued me about Bob Coecke's graphical system. By graphing the flow of information, we can at least get an idea of how informational context can gradually evolve from simpler to more complex. KC

          4 days later

          Karl

          I really like the focus of this essay on informational mechanics as a ``generalization of quantum mechanics that embeds contextual data into descriptions of subsystem interactions''. This is completely in line with the idea of top-down causation associated with contextual effects. You suggest that "all a theory really needs to address is the beautiful world of automorphism-invariant information." That is rather similar to the emphasis Auletta, Jaeger, and I have put on how equivalence classes as characterising top-down action. I also applaud your sensible take on quantum measurement.

          George Ellis

            George, thank you for your comment. I'm seeing several threads common among many of the essays this time, for example arguments against reductionism and against particles-as-ontological-objects -- ideas that are clearly related.

            I checked out your paper with Auletta and Jaeger. I especially appreciated the sentence, "Mechanical devices, like a thermostat, are able to implement information control without any intervention of biological elements and in purely mechanical terms. This is however an erroneous point of view, since such devices have been built by humans to act in a certain way. Therefore, the functional element (and the goal) is already inbuilt." This rather obvious aspect of technology tends to be overlooked when discussing quantum measurement and measuring devices. Similarly, even the simplest living organism seems not to be just a bottom-up collection of matter particles doing complex things, but rather is an informational entity whose complex interactions derive out of a legacy of evolving context. No wonder it's so hard to create a living system by putting together a bunch of inorganic molecules.

            10 days later

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            • Post #32

            Dear Karl

            You might find very interesting that there is an informational derivation of quantum theory . The assumption of a relational and informational reality seems very interesting and it would be nice to study all its consequences.

            I have also thought of ways of conceiving the world without the primitive notion of ''an object''. It is a natural extension of Machian thoughts on the foundations of dynamics, and I have developed this in my essay Absolute or Relative Motion...Or Something Else?, which you might find interesting.

            Good luck in the competition,

            Daniel

              Daniel -- I am interested in reading both the paper and your essay; thank you for the links. As my essay argues, I suspect that the world is only as complex as the system or systems (within) that measure its complexity; thus, complexity in the world becomes a relational function of biological and technological evolution. Superficially that may sound like a facile "philosophical" statement, one that escapes falsifiability. However, if the world is in fact fundamentally informational and relational, then there would be no other accurate way to describe complexity except in those purely relational, informational terms. And it should be possible to demonstrate this in experiments of sufficient sophistication.

              19 days later

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              • Post #34

              Hi Karl,

              I really liked your essay a lot. Your writing covers a lot of ideas and possibilities in a way that is interesting to read.

              In particular, I like how your essay draws the distinction between data and information. That string of randomly-generated bits is taken to exist as a single datum, and without the existence of other such datum there is no chance for information to be had -- information is an entirely relational concept that involves multiple data. This is no ephemeral concept devoid of realism -- the vast majority of us rely on fully-implemented relational databases every day when we interact with banks, websites, etc.

              I do wonder though if the distinction between data and information is still tripping other people up. For instance, I see phrases like "information compression" in some of the literature. Of course, in actuality, it is the data that is compressed/decompressed, and the information content of the data is what governs the compression limit -- information-poor data is very compressible, information-rich data not so much. Again, this is no ephemeral concept -- it is the core principle used in relational databases and really any lossless dictionary-based compression algorithm (ZIP, RAR).

              From this perspective, if a blue photon always imparts X momentum upon absorption, and we repeat that observation over and over, we will never gain information. In fact, the law that we derive (constancy of momentum per photon frequency) springs directly from exactly how information-poor the data is. I take this to mean that even if such an observation leads to one type of information-rich chain of events (ie. saying "It's blue!" via sound waves and then giving each other a high five) versus another (ie. aliens making some equivalent statement via pheromones, etc), the root event is still the same no matter what. To me, it is the root data that really counts here, and that leaves little or no room for mysticism. I think this is what you are trying to say too?

              - Shawn

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                • Post #35

                To be fair, not all is lawful, and perhaps this is precisely why quantum mechanics is information-based. I am considering the probability cloud that represents an electron's possible position. If one repeatedly performs an experiment in which they make a measurement to gain a datum about an electron's actual position, then one will come to find that over time the data are non-repetitious -- the angular components of the position are fully random, and the radial component partially random (still random, but the probability drops off based on radial distance). I suppose that one could call this the "law of lawlessness" (since it is a constant kind of random), but no one seems to explicitly say it and stick to it, which is why I think that we get varied opinions on what information really is (and isn't) -- none of this gives credence to the phrase "information compression", and I doubt that anything would.