What is Information by John Brodix Merryman

John

We only have knowledge. The issue is ensuring its correspondence with what is knowable to us. The subsequent processing of physical input received having no effect on the physical circumstance (ie what is knowable to us), because this has already occurred.

"So we have the classic reality that somehow seems separate from the quantum

foundations on which it rests. Obviously the connection must exist, yet there seems to

be a missing link."

There is no connection. The 'classical' (intuitive) depiction has been misunderstood. If followed through properly then one gets to the type of physical circumstance that QM is attempting to depict, but without the incorrect concept that physical existence involves some form of indefiniteness.

Paul

Paul,

"We only have knowledge. The issue is ensuring its correspondence with what is knowable to us."

So what is knowable to us is a finite set? That is basically one of my points, that knowledge is inherently limited by its very function of definition.

"If followed through properly then one gets to the type of physical circumstance that QM is attempting to depict, but without the incorrect concept that physical existence involves some form of indefiniteness."

Then what about quantum probabilities?

John,

What on earth possessed you that caused you to actually write something sensible about the suggested theme of this contest? As I have thoughtfully pointed out in my essay BITTERS, one real Universe can only be eternally occurring once, because one real Universe can only deal in absolutes. If that is true, life must be immortal. While I may think of myself as a free thinking individual capable of accepting or rejecting scientific knowledge, the fact is in order for me to persist; I have to continually consume material that was once alive. Eventually, I in my turn will be consumed by some other insects or maggots or even by the earth. I will then be transformed into some other form of life. I am merely a continuing part of an immortal life form.

It is an absolute, so it can be Universal in scope. Bit is not an absolute. The Universe is not made of bits, especially not of man-made particles.

John,

"It is received wisdom to say that the physical world is not intuitively accessible to a mind evolved for basic survival."

It's more than "received wisdom". I've had this repeated to me so often it sounds like a catechism. It certainly has the force of sincere belief behind it, but no factual backup. It is probably a comment on the intuition of the person making the statement, extending the limits of his own intuition to everyone else.

E. T. Jaynes notes, "no argument is stronger than the premises that go into it, and [...] those who lay the greatest stress on mathematical rigor are just the ones who, lacking a sure sense of the real world, tie their arguments to unrealistic premises and thus destroy their relevance."

What is "a sure sense of the real world" if not intuition?

Edwin Eugene Klingman

The funny thing with the "intuition" is that it works *after* we have gotten to the point in our understanding, which also includes the appropriate formal developments, when it (the intuition) can kick in, but not before that point.

Joe,

I agree it's a futile effort, but since I'm outside the approved circle, my only recourse is to use the perspective on that circle to comment on its contents. Had I thought there was a shot in hell of affecting the thinking of those inside that circle, I may have devoted more than two pages to the topic. As it is, I thought I would do a favor to those willing and able to think outside the box and keep it as to the point as possible.

I agree there is only the one, infinite universe, but I think you are misusing the term "absolute." Absolute is a universal state, like absolute zero, lacking any distinguishing features or actions. Either it is nothing, the flatline on the universal heart monitor, or it is everything, which then cancels everything out to a state of equilibrium. Information and knowledge necessarily are a consequence of that intermediate state of relationships. The situation then, is there cannot be any such thing as "objective knowledge." Without some position within that matrix of relations, you go to either of the extremes and the desired knowledge is either lost(nothing), or canceled(everything). So there can be no all-knowing being, or theory of everything. If one were to go to the most elemental state of the fluctuating vacuum/CMBR/whatever, then all that can be said, the final theory of everything, is, "Stuff happens." Sounds stupid, but we are talking elemental. Why? Because.

As for consciousness, I'm something of the Nietzschian void, staring back. At its source, it is neither good, or evil, which are just the biological binary code of attraction and repulsion, to the open and closed circuits of continued life, or death, but is simply aware. To the extent it manifests as biology, there is a definite upward pattern that suggests human civilization is the nascent central nervous system of an emerging planetary organism, but we will necessarily go through a trial by fire before getting there and might be stillborn in the process. That being doesn't care. It has eternity to try again. Like energy, it will just go onto the next form.

Edwin,

It is a catechism. I think the underlaying cause has to do with that the rational linear cause and effect logic of the left brain simply isn't designed to effectively process the the cumulative scalar workings of the right brain and so the subset of people most concentrated on such linear thinking have a natural bias against not having that clear line of evidentiary process. There is nothing wrong with this, because the two sides are designed to balance out the other's shortcomings and it's becoming quite clear the linear projections of the current model have gone off into lalaland. The blowback will result a greater reset than if such nonsense hadn't got out of hand. Hard on the individuals involved, but better for science in the long run.

Lev,

True, but there is that chicken/egg cycle. For example, one needs years of professional experience before really having that deep sense of what is going on within the profession, but babies come loaded with an enormous amount of software. I think human civilization is only repeating what biology did hundreds of millions of years ago. Ecosystems and organisms pretty much explain all of society.

When I see those rockets headed off to other worlds, I'm reminded of the fungi that come together to form a tube and then shoot out a few as floating seeds.

John

"So what is knowable to us is a finite set?"

Yes, but not in the way you mean, ie it is 'inherently subjective', which implies there is something against which we can effect that judgement. Which there is not. Physical existence is the equivalent of all we can potentially know. There is no 'direct access' to existence. We can only know what we can know, and that is determined by a physical process, not philosophical or metaphysical ramblings. And if we get it correct, which becomes proven by default, ie nothing new arises to countermand it, then we can assert that as being the equivalent of physical existence as knowable to us. Logically, there may be an alternative, but we cannot know it, so that is irrelevant, unless you want to do religion rather than science.

"Then what about quantum probabilities?"

Whether some of the content concepts in QM are valid or not, ie correspond with physical existence, I do not know. The point is that there is no form indefiniteness in existence, as knowable to us. Neither does observation (measurement) affect the physical circumstance. But given the sheer complexity of physical existence at the existential level, and the vanishingly small degree of alteration and duration involved in differentiating one physical state from another, really we are only going to be able to conceptualise what is actually happening (not that there is anything wrong with that, if done properly it is valid knowledge), and in experimentation, invoke probabilities based on understanding to depict the whole event.

Paul

John

This incorrect assertion has nothing to do with how the brain works. It is a failure to understand that we can only know, and that knowing is determined by a physical process. And therefore, physical existence can only be the equivalent of what we can know.

In practical terms, ie within the confines of that existentially closed system, there is some validity in the assertion. But that is not what is meant. That is, certainly in experimentation, differentiating physically existent states is impossible. Our awareness system evolved for the purposes of survival. However, if we gain enough valid knowledge from direct sensing, then we can hypothesise the 'gaps', ie effectively, virtual sensing.

Paul

Paul,

I'm not quite sure how your point ties into what I said, but a cumulative scalar process would be more like a thermostat, or a pressure gauge, as opposed to the vector of a clear chain of cause and effect. In other words, the ideas that just "bubble up" from our minds are due to an internal weighing process, much as how our consciousness naturally tends to switch gears and refocus on what gains its attention, as opposed to being locked in one train of thought, as so often seems to be the case with some people. It is good, at times, to have a "one track mind," but it should be balanced by that broader awareness.

Paul,

We have been around these arguments before. What you describe as only knowing what we can know, I would describe as the finite and subjective nature of knowledge.

Also your strobe-like description of reality flashing from one state to another lacks any conceptual underpinnings, other than your insistence it can be the only way. As I see it, knowledge of motion is necessarily fuzzy, as with the uncertainty principle. As an analogy, its like deciding on the shutter speed of a camera, whether we use a faster speed and precisely locate an object in action, but lose the information of its motion, or leave it open longer to catch more action, but blur the details.

Now physicists are trying all sorts of measurements to get around this issue, but their efforts only emphasize the inherent dichotomy. Information is borne by energy and we have to abide by the rules of energy in order to extract the information.

Respectfully John, when I see those rockets shooting off to other worlds, I become convinced of our scientific suicidal inevitability. See, there used to be an atmospheric membrane that encircled the earth that fully protected it from the sun's radiation. Those rockets punctured holes in the membrane and it is now collapsing allowing some of our gases to escape and more toxic emanations from the sun to invade our planet.

Why is it that kids with spray cans are accused of being graffiti vandals, but scientists who go around daubing toxic radioactive materials on everything they can are revered?

Joe,

There is blowback from everything. As Newton pointed out, "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In order for new information to be created, old information is erased, since the medium, the energy is neither created or destroyed. I no doubt we are burning through significant resources, but they are ultimately finite anyway. It is easy to see what is wrong, since the mind is designed to focus on what might cause us injury, but there are always lots of other processes going on and the game is to balance the various forces in ways that sustain life on this planet. I don't think space exploration will amount to much more than observation for longer than we care to think and whether we manage to seed some distant planet will not have much bearing on life on this planet, but it is one collective effort that is not as immediately destructive as many others.

Science is about finding out what reality is and how it might be harnessed to the benefit of those doing the exploring. There are pitfalls to this, but the alternative is to do nothing and that is worse than trying and failing. The purpose of life is to have purpose. Without that, you don't get out of bed and eventually become food for some other, more motivated life. No immortality without motivation.

John

"What you describe as only knowing what we can know, I would describe as the finite and subjective nature of knowledge"

You can describe it as such, but are wrong to do so. You cannot know its status, because you cannot externalise yourself from it in order to access another reference and make such a judgement. All you do know is that there is a possibility of an alternative.

"Also your strobe-like description of reality flashing from one state to another lacks any conceptual underpinnings"

What is existence and difference then? And please tell me how both occur if it is not through sequence.

"As I see it, knowledge of..."

This does not follow on. The previous sentence was about the nature of physical existence. My opening point was that, whilst that exists, independently oif our awareness systems, we can only have knowledge of it, because how that potential knowledge is available to us is governed by a physical process. We cannot in any sense have 'direct access' to reality. The relationship between knowledge and reality is another matter. It is certainly not "necessarily fuzzy". We can clarify it by understanding the subsequent processing of what is physically received, in order to discern what was actually received, as opposed to the resultant perception thereof. And with an understanding of how what we physically received works (light being one type of such physical phenomena), we can extrapolate what occurred. Nothing is inherently 'uncertain'. What is difficult is our ability to effect that process, but this is a practical problem, not an existential one. There is this relentless desire to attribute out inabilities to quirks in physical existence.

"Information is borne by energy"

In a sense you could say everything involves 'energy', so this is a meaningless statement. Information, as in light for example, is captured and conveyed by an arrangement of a feature of photons, vibration is..., noise is...

Paul

John

"I'm not quite sure how your point ties into what I said"

You wrote "I think the underlaying cause has to do...". How the brain works, or indeed how the sensory systems work, has nothing whatsoever to do with the physical circumstance. This had already occurred before those systems were made aware of it.

I would hazard a guess that the psychological/sociological reasons for this concept, ie that physical existence inherently involves some form of non definitiveness, being 'received wisdom' is because it appears 'sexier/more dynamic' than the alternative. And of course then once established, ego, wages, jobs, peer pressure, etc, come into play. Had the original view been properly understood in the first place, or this alternative properly examined when first conceived, then this incorrect view would never have got a hold, except amongst some fringe cliques.

Paul

Paul,

The question is whether reality is information, or is information of reality; bit is it, or it is bit. My point is we process two kinds of information, scalar and vector. Forward direction through the sequence of events, but also weighing, balancing, etc. the various options. Whether we have "free will," or everything is decided throughout eternity is actually irrelevant, since we exist as part of this process and our actions affect our environment, as it affects us.

Paul,

"You can describe it as such, but are wrong to do so. You cannot know its status, because you cannot externalise yourself from it in order to access another reference and make such a judgement. All you do know is that there is a possibility of an alternative."

We are arguing over terms, as what you describe is what I call subjectivity. There is no external, "objective" view.

" There is this relentless desire to attribute out inabilities to quirks in physical existence."

Have you actually read what I wrote, because this is the one of the themes of my entry?

"could say everything involves 'energy', so this is a meaningless statement. "

It is the dichotomy of medium and message. You can't have one without the other, but the difference is that energy is conserved and information changes. As energy, the light is conserved, but the form of it, the information transmitted into your brain is affected, as it affects the content of your thoughts.