The Universe Is Not Like a Computer by Lorraine Ford

Lorraine

I am also admirer of Jacob D. Bekenstein

"The trouble with codes is that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to get away from them. We seem to need to use codes in almost every sort of communication between people -- it's hard to envision anything that does not involve a type of code."

Very true, and the idea can be expanded. The coding is how you recognize the existence of information. If you can't read a code (e.g. whatever might be "encoded" inside the superposed qubits in a hypothetical quantum computer) you need to infer the existence of such a code. And the qubit's indecipherable encoding need not be binary just because the read-out is necessarily a classical bit. Hans Christian von Baeyer, for instance, gets mystical about qubits. He sees the qubit as a translucent peeled seedless grape, conceivably microcosmic. Then you measure the thing in order to get some use out of it. "And you end up with a lousy classical bit. It's such a waste," he says.

Often overlooked is the fact that energy too comes coded and is recognized only by its coded manifestations. Thermal energy, electrical, mechanical etcetera (potential being a necessary inference but nonetheless real). Although with energy you have known protocols of transduction, which is definitely an advantage energy holds over information (from the perspective of our own understanding, that is). Nobody has a clue how electrochemical codes in the brain convert to the symbolic information we see right here. For example.

Dear Lorraine Ford,

I agree with you 100% that the universe is "not like a computer", certainly not a *digital* computer, and also that it is false, even ridiculous, to say that "the universe is made of bits."

It is possible, I suppose, to see how some physicists (that you quote) can become so confused as to equate information with physical reality and even, as you note, with consciousness.

Information is **always** contextual, and always depends upon the presence of another entity, the decoder, which extracts any meaning that may be contained in messages. With a source, a message, and a decoder required for any sensible discussion of information it is a wonder that some very bright people apparently see information as the basis of reality. They apparently miss the *structure* that is always necessary in order to produce and interpret information.

And the idea that "systems that are sufficiently integrated and differentiated will have some minimal consciousness" is not new. It is simply the basis of the consensus Darwinian "explanation" of consciousness, which has never been backed by a theory, an experiment, or a reasonable example. Despite that, most of those who think about consciousness do so from this simplistic approach.

I agree with you that "pure information is a subjective experience" in the sense that any meaning extracted from messages is subjective:

"One if by land, two if by sea."

As for your conclusion, "Far from reality being like a mathematical space, it's more the case that mathematics represents an artificial reality space!", that is essentially what I wrote about in The Automatic Theory of Physics.

Thanks for a well written essay and good luck in the competition.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

nmann,

Thanks for commenting on my essay.

What I was attempting to say was that information exists independently of code; that code is only used for advanced and sophisticated communication; that to convert code to information or vice versa requires an ability to decipher and/or a codebook; and that at the level of a fundamental particle only "pure" information must exist - there can be no code.

Hi nmann,

You say, "Nobody has a clue how electrochemical codes in the brain convert to the symbolic information we see right here."

That's not quite right as stated, so I assume you meant to say something like:

"Nobody has a clue how electrochemical codes in RNA/DNA are interpreted by neuronal cells to grow a network that is later pruned according to usage in such a way that the structure of the network performs pattern recognition on visual input messages to extract 'symbols' and further how these extracted symbols [recognized patterns] are coupled to awareness and the meaning of the symbols further extracted by a larger(?) network..."

Converting what we see into symbols is probably the best understood aspect of the whole process.

Best,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Edwin Eugene Klingman,

thanks for your compliment and good wishes.

But in my essay I DO, finally, equate "pure" information with experience and physical reality. I was trying to say that coded information, used in computers and for human communication, does not imply "pure" uncoded information (i.e.experience, meaning) - a code book or knowledge of the code is required. When a human being says something, that something is a code. When a human being hears or reads something, that something is a code. The human being is the decoder. When the code is deciphered, what is left is "pure" information, i.e. experience.

The basic physical bits within a computer represent coded information.But a fundamental physical particle cannot represent something else - it is "pure" information.

(I don't like to use the word consciousness because I think it has too much baggage - too many complex ideas hanging off it)

Yo, E.E.K. --

I'm talking about brain function, which involves communication between individual or grouped (not necessarily contiguously grouped) neurons as well as within single cells. Communication implies transfer of information, which I can't separate from messaging, which I can't separate from encoding. You're referring to my Pattee quote, I think, where he was asking "how do molecules become messages in cells?" He goes beyond that to ponder about how symbolic information might emerge from the physical chemistry of the brain. IMO you must have SOME kind of informational transpondence going on there (electrochemical messages ... symbolic messages) otherwise one is kind of getting into ectoplasm (or Descartes) country in which the mind has little or no correspondence with the body/physical brain. I'm confident it does have some, although in nothing like the total reductionist sense of, say, Christof Koch.

Speaking of whom, he kind of misrepresents Giulio Tononi per his (Koch's) statement referenced by Lorraine. Tononi merely declines to say (in the paper and videotaped lecture I'm familiar with) that you CANNOT have in silico consciousness. There are sound political reasons for this fudge and if I were in Tononi's position I'd probably say exactly the same thing even though I wouldn't really believe it. He loses nothing by saying it but if he spake otherwise he'd attract opposition he doesn't need.

Anonymous above is me, Lorraine Ford

Hi Lorraine,

Yes, after I saw your response to nmann I realized that I had misinterpreted your meaning of 'pure' information. Since I'm not exactly sure what you mean by it, I won't comment.

And you are correct that 'consciousness' carries so much baggage that it's a loaded word. In an earlier essay contest I wrote about it and defined the terms as exactly as possible, then used these in a hundred or so comments, but until two parties converge on common terminology it's almost useless to talk about consciousness.

Nevertheless, you've written a nice essay, and I congratulate you.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Yo, nmann --

I assumed that was sorta what you meant. I have strong ideas about what's going on there but this thread is not the place to expand on them. Thanks for correcting the info about Tononi. I tend to agree with the gist of your comments.

Hi Edwin,

Thanks.

What I was trying to say is that after every code has been deciphered, what is left is uncoded information. Uncoded information is "pure" information i.e. experience (this might also be called consciousness, but we agree that consciousness is a loaded word).

I think that fundamental physical reality is different to the physical bits in a computer.We can manipulate these physical computer bits (and maybe even fundamental physical reality) so that from our point of view they represent 0s and 1s. But I contend that from the "point of view" of a particle, there is no code, no 0s and 1s which represent something else. Instead there is "pure" information: this is physical reality. And the content of "pure" information is categories and relationships.

Hi Lorraine,

Thanks for the explanation. I agree that the 'pure' information that we process through our eyes and ears, etc provides subjective experience. Yet this info is derived from a generally structured environment and interpreted by the (learned) structure of our neural networks; regardless of how this enters awareness.

And from the point of view of particles in physics, they are almost never seen except in the context of significant "preparation" (of the 'source' or of the 'channel' or both) and also of significant "detection" by usually sophisticated structural instrumentation, and then further interpretation by sophisticated experimenters.

I pretty much fail to see anything here that is really "information" in any 'pure' sense, independent of the whole ball of wax. To call this pure information is fine, but does it really refer to anything? Why not just call it 'experience'?

Edwin Eugene Klingman

You stated that:

"When physicists and others talk about information, they seem to have difficulty describing what information really is. Information lacks a clear concept."

I would agree that physicists do indeed have this difficulty. Information Theorists do not. The problem is that, what constitutes "information" for one observer, is not necessarily "information" to another, because it depends on the amount of a priori knowledge the observer has. Physicists are not accustomed to dealing with such fundamentally unequal observers, or behaviors that exploit vast quantities of a priori knowledge.

Simply put, information is the minimum amount of "data", that a transmitter needs to send, to enable an intended receiver to reconstruct the message, that the sender intended the receiver to receiver. If this seems a rather unhelpful definition, that is merely because you lack the a priori knowledge needed to successfully receive the message I just sent. So let me download some more of the required knowledge:

First, and foremost, a sender does not have to send anything the intended receiver already knows. It immediately follows, that the more the receiver knows, the less the sender has to send. Think of a JPEG compressed image; If you already know the JPEG decompression algorithm, a sender can send you the compressed image file, but does not have to send you the decompression algorithm.

In the ultimate limit, in which the receiver knows everything there is to know (including all possible messages) "except" which message the sender desires to send, then the sender need only send the "serial number" of the intended message. The message itself was already known. It is "decoded" by simply using the received "serial number" to look it up. Such "serial numbers" are "pure information"; it can be a single, large random number, that is absolutely meaningless to any entity lacking the required a priori knowledge needed to "look up" the message. In effect, each "serial number" is a single "letter" in a huge "alphabet" and each message consists of a single letter. Since no actual receiver possesses all the knowledge required to use such a scheme, all actual communication systems employ smaller alphabets, the smallest being a single bit. Larger alphabets can be constructed from smaller ones, much like in English; sequences of the smallest alphabet (the 26 letters a-z), are used to construct a larger alphabet (all the words in a dictionary), which are used to construct an even larger alphabet (grammatically correct sentences).

One final thought:

Since several early posts mention consciousness, I call your attention to John Searle's "Chinese Room" and the Turing Test for intelligence. It is directly related to the "all knowing" receiver noted above.

The last Anonymous post was from me. This is not the first time the system as logged me out just before I posted a message. I even checked to verify that I was logged in just one second before I clicked the "Submit New Post" button. Oh Well...

Hi Edwin,

Why call it pure information? Because it is necessary to distinguish pure information from code, and also to show pure information's link to code. What is normally called information is in fact code (coded information). Code does not imply meaningful information - you need a code book or knowledge of the code. I contend that it is only when every level of code is deciphered that you are left with pure information; and pure information is experience.

To communicate complex information, you seem to need a physical code. Even at the molecular or the "neural network" level, this physical code must seemingly represent aspects of pure information experienced by molecules. (And presumably the organism as a whole must experience need-to-know type of executive-level summaries of more basic information)

Re particles in physics never being seen except in the context of significant preparation: I think so-called "physical reality" is partly explained by information, information with a point of view. Underneath all the complexity, the content of information seems to be categories and relationships. To greatly simplify the situation, I think that instruments convey category and relationship information to experimenters.

You say "what constitutes 'information' for one observer, is not necessarily 'information' to another". I agree: "pure" information, i.e. experience, has a point of view (see my essay). But I think my definition of "pure" information is different to yours: I don't agree that "...Such 'serial numbers' are 'pure information'".

Re "the sender need only send the 'serial number' of the intended message..." Clearly, after the processing of this serial number, the resultant message is still a code (coded information). Only when a human being deciphers all the layers of code in this resultant coded message, are you left with "pure" information i.e. experience. My essay tries to argue that information at the level of fundamental particles is not a code - it is "pure" information.

I would also like to comment that John Searle's "Chinese Room" is a very clunky explanation.

Your definition of "pure" information is indeed different from mine, and inconsistent with how the term "information" is used in Information Theory. Like the physicists, you are confusing "Information" with the "stuff" that gives "significance" or "meaning" to that "information". As you have said, experience is such "stuff".

For an "ignorant" observer, that has little or no a priori knowledge, information appears like specks of gold dust scattered within a pile of dirt. In a very counterintuitive way, it is the dirt that gives significance and meaning to the gold, precisely because it is not gold. Gold is whatever is let when you remove all the dirt. Physicists have confused the dirt and the gold.

For example, if you observe a physical phenomenon that has a low information rate, you will observe many "constants" and "periodicities" and "predictable" occurrences. Physicists often treat these as the gold. But they are the dirt. Gold is what is left when you remove all that is known, and that includes all that is predictable. That "dirt" is what gives "significance" to the gold, but it is not gold itself. From the perspective of Information Theory, gold is precisely that which you do not yet possess, that which cannot be predicted. That is why it must be sent to you in a message, if you are ever to obtain it. But as soon as you have received it, it ceases to be "information" and becomes part of your accumulated "experience", which may subsequently give meaning and significance to future information bearing messages.

The point that you have missed is that Information Theory is all about how inanimate entities, like radio receivers, deal with "information". Hence, its definition for "information" has nothing whatever to do with what more complex entities, like humans, subsequently do with that information. On the other hand, in a reductionist sense, it has a great deal to say about the behaviors of all the inanimate entities from which humans are constructed. In that sense, it says a great deal about human behaviors.

The "Chinese Room" is not an explanation. It is a phenomenon, and one that can only be exhibited by an entity with a great deal of a priori knowledge regarding the "significance" of the experience of receiving a given serial number. Searle's point is that this phenomenon will pass the Turing Test for intelligence, even though it is not intelligent; it is "merely" very knowledgeable.

Robert,

"Inanimate entities, like radio receivers" deal with coded information only: their input radio waves and output sound waves represent something else. Don't forget that so-called "Information Theory" is actually "Coded Information Theory". Almost every time this theory uses the word "information", it should be replaced with the words "coded information" so that the true nature of what we are talking about is made clear.

Words and sentences are codes (coded information) too. So what is un-coded information? I contend that when every layer of coded information has been deciphered you are left with "pure" (i.e. un-coded) information, and that "pure" information is experience.

Lorraine,

I am highly sympathetic to your view. The problem is, there is no such thing as "uncoded information" in experience. Experience is all about coding, such as sensory coding. For example, you may experience yellow colors, even when no yellow frequency exists in the light entering your eye. Your retina codes a combination of red and green with the same code it uses for yellow only, thereby causing red and green to be experienced as yellow. All sensory outputs are similarly coded. Without such coding, you would experience nothing.