Something about Information by Georgina Parry

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

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.

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

sorry I forgot to give my title : "THE QUEST FOR THE PRIMAL SEQUENCE" topic 1810

and even to make it more easier :

click on this link

Wilhelmus

Dear Georgina . Hello, hoping this finds you well and apologies if this does not apply to you. I have read and rated your essay and about 50 others. If you have not rated my essay The Cloud of Unknowing please consider doing so. With best wishes.

Vladimir