Something about Information by Georgina Parry

Dear Madam,

The interconnectedness and interdependence of everything with everything else as cause and effect cannot be denied. But we may come to different conclusions while examining the same thing, like the transmission of a conversation on the platform and noise, which are interconnected. Let us take the example of boarding announcement of a flight. For the passengers, what the announcer says is the only information. The rest is noise. Shannon calls this entropy. But for an investigator who is hearing the recording, this noise may contain information. In both cases, the focuses are different. The investigator is focusing on the entire sound and not only the flight announcement. Thus, noise is the unintended part of communication - hence it is not information.

What we call form, is what we perceive through any one or more of the sense organs. For example, we see color as through ocular perception by electromagnetic interaction. We feel the shape through tactile perception by gravitational interaction from each point of the object, etc. These perceptions are combined in our memory and compared with it to generate a response. This response can be for the body to react in a particular way or to the mind only as is done by the mirror neurons. Similarly, perception of form has two divisions. The electromagnetic interaction by which we "see" relates to the exterior of the particle. The gravitational interaction by which we "touch" belongs to the other "core' part only. Thus, what we see, we can not touch and what we touch, we cannot see. Similarly, when we hear a word, the sounds of the letters of the alphabet come in a sequence, and not at the same time. We combine these impulses and draw an inference on its totality. This inference may be right or wrong. But properties are the total effect of the object that directs all of its interactions and thus, the possible image manifestations of it. The reporting of this interaction or manifestation is information. The properties can exist independently without information. Hence we said so. You can read our essay for better understanding of our ideas that may be mutually beneficial.

The last line of your post (for which you thanked us) gives an impression that our comments are viewed with awe or may be as nuisance. If it be so, it is unintended and we apologize for it.

Regards,

basudeba

Hello Georgina,

I think that you are right that observation is important to the essay question. Also I have concluded likewise in my essay that It from Bit and Bit from It seem more likely.

Great essay.

Best wishes,

Antony

Great point with regard to non existent Bit having corresponding it (or not)!

Georgina,

Thank you for the kind comments over on my entry. I read your essay and it is also a pleasure. The nature of this contest is a bit unintentionally, but fundamentally disconcerting. Deconstructing information has a bit of the feel of the snake swallowing its tail. I understand why, in the context of Wheeler's argument, it is an important topic, but the tendency toward academic self-referentialism is strong. Like many movements these days, from religious fundamentalism to security state insecurities, there is that feel of falling into the rabbit hole of gravitational implosion. With physics these days, there seems to be a bit of schizophrenia, well exemplified in this question, of insisting on exactitude, but recognizing duality and ambiguity as fundamental. As you point out also, it is both it as bit and bit as it. As I use McLuhan's dichotomy of message and medium being two distinct sides of the same coin, there is a basic and comprehensible reality here, it just doesn't fit in our bottom line pigeonholes. If we don't like what nature is telling us, she is quite willing to let us be as complicated as we want, but we are only tying ourselves up in knots. Complexity certainly has its uses, but it can be a trap as well.

It is indeed very interesting. Think you've hit nail on head - there are many ways to describe information.

Georgina,

Sorry to hear about the health problems, but sympathize entirely. This whole life business is like walking on thin ice. I'm only here because parts of my brian like it as entertainment and I can't get too frustrated that few people take me seriously because there isn't a lot I can afford to take seriously, beyond family and work.

I have to say though, I've long felt I am living on borrowed time, for a number of reasons. (Just got smacked on the ground, mostly head first, by a two year old colt yesterday and since I'm epileptic and I was out riding with my daughter and a cardiologist neighbor, it was a lot of stress situation. Fortunately its rainy and the ground is soft.)

Used to do drugs to escape reality. Now I do them to stay in reality.

Best wishes!

Dear Georgina,

It was good to read your essay and realize you are a realist: "Atoms are not imaginary things. They can be seen..." "The information directs the building of the form, but the information is nothing without the thing that carries it," ... "There can be no code without something to embody the code."

I also agree with "the world of quantum mechanics is not the external reality that exists but it is the theoretical 'world' built up from the measurement and counting of many binary choices..." [and] "they must always be probabilities for something." And finally, Barbour's "'bits' are nothing without 'its'. So its are more fundamental."

You conclude that "matter is directed by information and would not exist in that form without it."

I would probably say that "matter is transformed by energy, and the transformation (change in form) becomes a record of the energy in-forming the matter, hence in-form-ation."

Thanks for continuing to participate in these fqxi contests. And for reading and commenting on my essay. Good luck in the contest. Saw your note to John and hope you're soon firing on all cylinders.

Have fun,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Madam,

Regarding your comment: "it isn't the experienced present that is "really real", you must remember that we live in present and experience something about the past. Present is the flitting interface between past and future. Since it is ever shifting, it has no position like space. We have discussed it in our essay as follows:

Experience is the perception of result of measurement (includes observation). The result of measurement is always related to a time t, and is frozen for use at later times t1, t2, etc, when the object has evolved further. All other unknown states are combined together and are called superposition of states. Hence there is an uncertainty inherent in it, which Shannon calls entropy. In perception, the concept remains in a superposition of states and collapses in response to some stimuli. In information technology, the updating is done by an agent. In perception, it is done by the neural network and memory. All information has a source rate (complexity) that can be measured in bits per second (speed) and requires a transmission channel (mode) with a capacity equal to or greater than the source rate (intelligence or memory level). In perception, these are the intelligence level and mind.

Regards,

basudeba

Thanks Madam,

There is only one present - it is the fleeting interface between past and future. We live in present. As you put it - it is the manifestation that we observe that is *called* the present. We take the measurement or observe at present, but by the time we cognize it, the object has evolved further. Thus, we perceive its state as it was in the past.

Regards,

basudeba

Dear Georgina -

I found your biological perspective rare and refreshing. I believe that the It-Bit question needs to be considered in all the fields that affect our interpretation of the Cosmos, including the biological and cognitive fields.

Your section on 'numbers and noise' reminds us that information is determined by the recipient - a concept I extend into a paradigm that defines our Cosmos more precisely as a 'Species Cosmos', something you deal with also - in your treatment of superpositions.

I propose a structure founded on the concept that all is energy, even information and abstractions, and that all perceived energy manifests in physical form (even information). Even though the particles involved in cognition are still elusive, there is much we can say about the physicality of cognitive reality.

This means that, like you, I give information a more tangible definition than mere probabilities. In fact, I describe the cosmos in terms of Inorganic, Organic, and Sensory-Cognitive Vortices of energy, and describe each in physical terms.

I show that these Vortices are correlated but distinct fields, interacting directly with the greater field of energy from which the Cosmos emerges.

These three fields remain distinct from one another - that is, they do not interact directly - and I describe how this creates the correlation of It and Bit (rather than any type of sequential relationship) over the course of evolution. You conclude along similar lines - "'It from Bit' and 'Bit from It', together."

Indeed, It and Bit are continually altering their relationship: information is 'shaping itself' - as do Inorganic and Organic phenomena over the course of evolution. This has an impact on the question of meaning (which you cover most interestingly); since the Inorganic, Organic, and Sensory-Cognitive Vortices are equally fundamental - the Cosmos develops life, and the cognition associated with living things, as inevitably as it develops matter from energy. This in turn imbues all things with direction and meaning, though in the context of a 'Species Cosmos' - which finally is the only context we know.

Yours is a valuable 'real world' interpretation of things, I hope you'll find mine to be of interest to you, too.

All the best,

John.