Lawrence,
Thanks for clarifying what you were saying. I have more to say about that below.
You will have noticed that, in my essay and posts, I have presumptuously redefined the word information: what is generally called information, I call coded information; what is generally called the subjective experience of meaning, I equate to information. This is because I think it is important to make clear the close linkage between coded information and information. The words generally used, i.e. "information" and "meaning", show no linkage - the word "meaning" is a sort of orphan that doesn't quite belong anywhere.
Another reason is that although Information Theories make passing reference to meaning, they carelessly mix up the concepts of information and coded information without proper explanation - it's so disorganised that I call it dishonest. The result seems to be that people find it hard to properly conceptualise the place of subjective experience in the scheme of things. See my new post below.
In your post you talk about the physical properties of the quantum states that occur in a controlled environment that we humans can use to represent logical operations e.g. a CNOT operation.
I can't see any implication here that fundamental physical reality itself is actually performing logical operations. Instead we are utilizing controlled physical reality to REPRESENT our CNOT operation. This is what happens in any computer - we utilize our knowledge of the properties of physical reality to represent logical operations and coded information.
You also say that if physical reality (e.g. a black hole?) were in fact like an idealised quantum Turing machine (inputs a string of qubits, performs logical operations on them, and outputs a different string of qubits) then this might seem to imply that this physical reality had human characteristics.
I would comment that from our point of view, for a computer to be useful to us humans, the input qubit string must be prepared so that it represents in coded form the information we want it to represent; and the output qubit string code must be deciphered, using a code book or knowledge, to extract meaningful (un-coded) information. I emphasize that, from our point of view, the qubits in their controlled environment are utilized to represent what we want them to represent, and in the first level of representation they represent zeroes and ones.
The issue that I attempted to discuss in my essay is whether or not fundamental physical reality itself functions like a computer i.e. does reality itself effectively reduce physical quantum states to zero/one inputs in order to obtain physical outcome outputs for the next moment in time. Another way to put it is: does fundamental particle-level physical reality deal in coded information, or does it deal with un-coded (i.e. meaningful) information? Note that representing physical quantum states as a zeroes or ones is an act of conversion: physical reality is converted into a code and/or physical reality is experienced as a code. If physical reality (e.g. a black hole) functions like a Turing machine, then acts of conversion are required.
You also say that the state transformations that occur when quantum states are manipulated in a controlled environment can be sort of understood as being due to symmetries. However, as above, acts of conversion are required. (I don't think I made a number of the above points clear in my essay)
Cheers,
Lorraine
