Dear Basudeba Mishra,

thank you for reading my essay and for your extensive response. I agree with you that language is very important for clear communication and that "information" is one of the problem words that has different meanings, which can lead to misunderstandings. I usually try to avoid the word but it was unavoidable given the topic of the essay this year.I thought it was a good idea to try and pin down what I was attempting to talk about at the outset.

I think it would have been better if I had said - it is about communication of *the outcomes* of binary choices. The sentence you question was not a direct quote from the book and it would take me some time to locate the precise wording that the author used, so any inadequacy is my probably entirely my own and not Hans Christian von Baeyer's. I extended the definition given because I wanted to capture the concepts of function and meaning which are important aspects of information,i.e. what it can do.

You say noise can not be information and can not be communicated. Perhaps I am straying into another meaning of information but I will argue that noise can be information. For example consider transmission of a conversation at a railway station or air terminal, the noise in the background can convey useful information about location and time of the conversation, even though it is not a part of the meaningful message. The way in which a message is corrupted by noise might give important information about the conditions under which the message was sent, such as type of, or particular piece of, equipment or atmospheric conditions at that time and/or place.

I would also argue that the form of an object does encode the information necessary to produce every Image reality manifestation of it. (Though there can also be distortion of the information which will affect the manifestation observed.) I use the term "Manifestation" to refer to what is observed, the output of data processing by an observer, rather than material forms that can be output by material deciphering of encoding information, like transcription of mRNA.

I wrote "*Relative to an observer* an object-form's top, bottom, front, back ...." I was trying to convey the dichotomy between what an observer observes and what a form *might* be observed to be. I.e the difference between a multitude of potential manifestations and a singular manifestation.

Glad you think I reached the right conclusion at the end. That's a relief : )

Thanks for your time, Georgina

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

Dear Basudeba Mishra,

I do understand your point about noise, it is not the message but something that happens, like entropy, which can affect the message. Nevertheless noise can also be informative. It was just something that I found entertaining to consider. As I have not yet read your essay I do not know how you define information but I have not included anything about the intention of the sender.

What if the sender chose a specific location because they wanted to communicate incidental information within the noise? Also the DNA example was making a point about how it is not just the code for protein encoding RNAs that are meaningful. What might have been considered junk or noise among the code has been found to have a metabolic function, so it too is informative.

I will read your essay. No apology needed, it was just an unexpectedly long report, but welcome, and it was nice to end on something that you thought I had right.

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)!

    As my essay plummets I should perhaps add that present/absent was just one particular kind of information that I thought worth considering as to me it was an interesting category with an important role in nature.

    Hi Antony,

    thanks for taking a look at my essay. I hope to reciprocate.

    Regards Georgina

    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.

      Hi Georgina,

      No worries - there are so many to read on here, but I'm enjoying the variety. Some great and new ideas.

      Best wishes for contest,

      Antony

      Hi John,

      Thanks for sharing your thoughts. An interesting point you make about physics "insisting on exactitude but recognizing duality and ambiguity". I was quite pleased when the topic was announced but then found it wasn't as easy as I had contemplated to put something coherent together. Didn't want to base the essay entirely on observation and just continue on the same old hobbyhorse. I've also been very unwell and so am pleased to have put together anything at all, and I've learned some stuff doing it. So all good whatever the outcome.I can't be so involved with the competition discussions this time,(or the blogs), not just because of the subject but because I'm still not 'firing on all cylinders'.

      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 Edwin,

        thank you for reading my essay and good wishes.

        Yes I am a realist, Object reality that I talk about is all the "really real" stuff. Though I'm also *something like* a presentist, only it isn't the experienced present that is "really real" because of 1. the time delay for transmission of data through the external Object reality from the source and 2.the internal processing time. The object reality precedes the experience of it. One might regard that as being in the future but output Image reality and Object reality both co-exist at the same and only time.

        That is possible because they are different facets of reality, the Image reality being emergent from received and processed information. Usually we are considering things in our vicinity and so the delay is extremely small but when we are thinking about astronomical distances the delay is huge. So the seen universe and existing Object universe are very different. The Object reality is what exists out there in space , the Image reality is fabricated as space-time.That is the key to overcoming the temporal paradoxes. That's my hobbyhorse which I have tried not to make the basis of this essay, taking Brendan's advice.

        Re.your comment, Quote: "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." I agree with the bit about record of the energy, it makes me think of ripples and furrows in the wet sand of a beach. I also agree that energy is required for transformation of matter BUT information 'tells' the matter how to transform. I gave an example of a cake tins structure and a river's form, the existing structure dictates the structure of the cake mix or future structure of the river banks via control of the river's flow. For a very different example consider metabolic processes, energy (as ATP) is required but just ATP will not allow the process to occur, there has to also be the required chemicals, with particular structures (a kind of information) that will react in certain ways.

        Thinking about it the river really isn't a good example, not even an example of what I was trying to convey. I think I had just got "into the flow" talking about liquid things. Never mind, I'll put it down to not feeling 100% when I wrote it, though I should have picked it up sooner.

        5 days later

        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

        Dear Basudeba Mishra,

        Do we *live* in the present or just see the present? We are using the word "present" differently. I explain it this way :it is the manifestation that we observe that is *called* the present. Yes there is a time delay between information being produced and being received and between receipt and manifestation output of processing.We therefore *live* ahead of the fabricated and experienced present at what I call uni-temporal-Now. (Not the future...Nor the present or past.) Past, present and future are all terms that belong to space-time and space-time relates to information distributed in uni-temporal (same time everywhere) space, from which manifestations can be produced.

        I will try to read your essay and comment soon.

        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.

        Hi Georgina,

        It is always good to meet such an active participant on FQXi with explicit ideas. Like your earlier essays I liked this one too, although the former was more mindbending (with its 3-D illustration that you made later).

        After the O of INFO you stopped , perhaps the RMATION became too long, just an idea to continue:

        R for Reason

        M for Moral

        A for Artificial Intellgence

        T for TIME

        I for Intelligence

        O for Ohmega

        N for Noether...

        Something came to my mind when I read your essay, the information as it is processed by a machine is only processed when a button is pushed by a human being, while with the human being the buttons are his five senses...

        I hope that will also take some of your time to read my entrance and perhaps rate and comment it, As your essay inspired me I also rated it satisfactory.

        good luch and best regards

        Wilhelmus