Beyond information: A bit of meaning. by Olaf Dreyer

Hello Olaf,

A good presentation. My comments...

I cannot fault and I agree with your tower of layers and the direction of emergence. I think through this hierarchical arrangement meaningful descriptions of the reality we can apprehend will emerge.

But I wish you allowed layer 0 objects, RETAIN properties we think of as fundamental rather than coming to lack them in interacting with other layers. If that were so, layer 0 objects will resemble objects I described in my essay, especially as you also regard position as a fundamental property.

Permit me to rephrase your statements thus: " ... there is something fundamentally wrong with this suggestion... that information should be seen as the basis of our description of the world".

Yes, but I believe you are open to the idea of 'It coming from Bit' and may have a change of mind, IF as you also say we adhere to your admonition or conviction that 'the bit-part is improved'.

I very much agree to this. It appears better understood than Bit. And one of my suggested improvements in Bit is a more comprehensive list of the available binary choices on our list of Bits. Appropriate layering can then be used to build Its.

Deserving of a good score. All the best and well done.

Akinbo

Olaf,

I don't doubt there are variations in and on the "meanings." I just think it important to distinguish between their somewhat different functions. You might say meaning is a coming together. Not just distillation, but coalescing as well. Purpose is more the contextual connections. It is more the dynamic relationships, than the static focus or answer. As I alluded to, the reason I find this important is because western culture is focus oriented and we are constantly looking for that deeper meaning or value within all this chaotic reality, but when we are done, have turned the forest into a stack of 2x4s and some furniture and the earth into slag heaps and some metal. When we look at it in terms of purpose, there is the inclination to understand value as it is and how it fits into and supports its environment.

In my own very short essay,

I go into the relationships between focused knowledge and broad knowledge and why knowledge is inherently fragmentary. So when we become too focused on the particular, it is time to step back and contextualize.

Dear Olaf,

I agree with your above example. When the structure of the magnetic coating changes, the information comes into existence and is registered. But the interpretation or 'meaning' of the information is external. (Lorraine Ford, in her essay, goes further, and does not consider the registered data to be 'information' until it is apprehended. The magnetic recording, in her terms, only 'represents' information. I tend to agree with her, but common usage is based on considering the stored local structure as information.) My point about energy transfer is to emphasize that there is no physical entity "information" being transmitted, only energy that can 'convey' information, if it finally crosses some threshold and is apprehended at some future time.

I will look at your essay again and try to understand your sense of internal information. I think you are saying that the meaning is implicit in the structure, such as moth and proboscis, and need not be interpreted externally, as Darwin did, whereas there simply is no meaning to the 1001 until and unless it is interpreted externally. Is this close?

Best,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Hi Olaf,

I really enjoyed reading your essay. Maybe, I feel the same philosophy in my essay http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1836 if you are interested in this, please read it.

As the same question to my essay, how to resolve the mathematical treatment "a bit"? Do you have any idea?

Best wishes,

Yutaka

Dear Olaf

Warren McCulloch an American neurophysiologist and cybernetician, known for his work on the foundation for certain brain theories and his contribution to the cybernetics movement once told:"Greatest riddle of the World "What is "the same information?"

That is modern version question of Plato.

Do you agree with him?

Regards

Yuri

Dear Olaf,

I found your essay very deep and well written. I like the new definition of information you propose, and I agree in particular that the meaning should be internal in the sense you use it, and layered. Also, that computation is emergent, hence includes random elements and is approximate. We agree that the view that particles should have well-defined position and momentum is at the origin of the dichotomous view promoted by the wave-particle duality and related puzzles. Maybe they are explained on a deeper layer. Could you please develop your proposal "that some of the puzzling features of quantum mechanics can be understood with our new view of information.".

Best regards,

Cristi Stoica

Thanks Olaf - now that you explain it, I agree there is a difference. For Adler the emergent statistical thermodynamics is equivalent to a nonlinear quantum mechanics [= linear quantum mechanics nonlinear fluctuations]. When the fluctuations are negligible, the emergent nonlinear quantum mechanics reduces to standard linear quantum theory. When the fluctuations are significant, the nonlinear quantum mechanics reduces to classical mechanics. In this sense both quantum mechanics and classical mechanics are emergent from the matrix models.

In your work, can one form a mathematical picture as to how emergent randomness is responsible for the quantum to classical transition?

Best,

Tejinder

ciao Olaf

so here it is!!

Reading it through I find your thesis even more intriguing than when you explained it to me before you started working on the essay.

I would claim that your line of reasoning here on it from bit is to some extent similar in spirit (in spite of the many difference in context and perspective) to the thesis put forward on time in the recent book by Lee Smolin.

And I think the complementarity between your essay and the one by Mauro D'Ariano is one of the most interesting aspects of this essay competition.

Congratulations!!

Giovanni

Dear Olaf,

Nice approach. Defining Bit is difficult as you suggest and I think you've re-categorised it well. When you look at it this way, it does indeed suggest It is more fundamental. It also seems to she'd light on the measurement problem of Quantum Mechanics, as you say.

My essay concludes that Bit and It are equally fundamental perhaps revealing the Fibonacci sequence as an entropic arrow of time - hope you take a look.

Well done and best wishes for the contest,

Antony

Dear Dreyer,

I am absolutely in agreement with your arguments. Absolutely so, because I think I have secured some data that back them!

Will you agree with me that your six characteristics of meaning is capture naturally by defining the "bit" as I have done namely:"...the "bit" is by definition no more than the harmonics (perturbation or amplitude or inverse-length) of the "it" while by definition the "it" is in turn only the fundamental frequency or namely phase-space of any spectrum/path/amplitude of "bits". And in being so the fundamental is not in fact a frequency, it is rather by definition the period (i.e. wavelength) if "superposition". This little difference is most crucial. It follows we can now call a fundamental the entity. The harmonics we call the observables (information) specific to it."

In other words: "...information (in the sense of a "meaning") is not actual the physical material exchanged; information consists in the interference pattern that an exchange forms on/with the observer/exchange points (possibly why conventionally it is not directly the amplitude of a wave function that counts but the squares, and we add now also the logs, of the amplitude that counts). So consciousness (the mind) might as well be thought of as Huygens's wave fronts or as the "phase velocity" from/on which Huygens's wavelets (wave packets) emerge as per se the information."

In fact I argue that all "symmetries" break forth from the "observer" ("observer" signifying in fact the "superposition" if "uncertainty" or Markov property).

If you can spare your precious time to actually read through What a Wavefunction is as I have read through your fine essay I will be most grateful to have your questions.

In the spirit of collaboration please investigate meanwhile if Philip Gibb's Necklace Lie Algebras and Iterated Integration (in "An Acataleptic Universe") might fit your idea of an "emergent computation".

All the best,

Chidi

Dear Olaf,

What a beautiful essay you have written! The six characteristics of meaning could have been fleshed out some more, but I realize that the length requirement puts a limit on how much you can say about each.

In the caption for fig. number 3 you wrote:"The tower of layers. The arrows indicate the direction of emergence. We pose the following question: How does layer 0 look like to someone who's lowest level meaningful objects are from layer 1?"

This is essentially the question with which I have occupied myself the last few years. I mention a principle that guides an answer to this question in the second half of my contribution to this contest. I really hope that you will take a look at it, and if you find it sufficiently interesting to want to know more, would be willing to discuss further.

All the best,

Armin

Dr. Dreyer,

I thought that your exceptionally well written essay was fascinating to read and absorbingly interesting. As a decrepit old realist, I would like to comment on it, however, I fear you might take my comment the wrong way, I do hope you are as gifted in tolerance as you are in writing skill.

In my essay BITTERS, I emphasize the importance of real uniqueness,once. Unfortunately, abstraction is not unique. All information is abstract.

Interaction is not unique, once.

Dynamic is not unique, once.

Internal is not unique, once.

Approximate is not unique, once.

Random is not unique, once.

Layered is not unique, once.

Wheeler ought to have asked:

Is the real Universe simple? Yes.

Is the abstract universe simple? No

I wish you luck in the contest,

Joe

Dear Olaf,

I'm confused, but my best wishes to your road. It will be a long one.

Ideas in your foregoing articles were brilliant, but bit from it I think is a way to hell.

David

PS What about cogitation - there are no informations involved ?

Dear Olaf,

You have been off your blog for a while, but no matter. I commented above. Nevertheless...

As the contest in Wheeler's honor draws to a close, leaving for the moment considerations of rating and prize money, and knowing we cannot all agree on whether 'it' comes from 'bit' or otherwise or even what 'it' and 'bit' mean, and as we may not be able to read all essays, though we should try, I pose the following 4 simple questions and will rate you accordingly before July 31 when I will be revisiting your blog.

"If you wake up one morning and dip your hand in your pocket and 'detect' a million dollars, then on your way back from work, you dip your hand again and find that there is nothing there...

1) Have you 'elicited' an information in the latter case?

2) If you did not 'participate' by putting your 'detector' hand in your pocket, can you 'elicit' information?

3) If the information is provided by the presence of the crisp notes ('its') you found in your pocket, can the absence of the notes, being an 'immaterial source' convey information?

Finally, leaving for the moment what the terms mean and whether or not they can be discretely expressed in the way spin information is discretely expressed, e.g. by electrons

4) Can the existence/non-existence of an 'it' be a binary choice, representable by 0 and 1?"

Answers can be in binary form for brevity, i.e. YES = 1, NO = 0, e.g. 0-1-0-1.

Best regards,

Akinbo

Hi Dreyer,

Thanks for your nice essay, well done

I enjoy reading it and gave it high rate

my essay may interest you Bit: from Breaking symmetry of it

Hope you enjoy it

Regards,

Xiong

Hi Dear Olaf,

I welcome your essay not for only it is written well and in attractive form, but mostly because you saying - ,,something is wrong here!,, Personally, I think the wrongness is too much that just enough to stop examine such topics at all. It is easy to realize if we go a little bit ahead and put next question. Let say the majority of people have voted ,,it from bit,, (or vs.) then what next? I mean nobody have seen actually ,,it,, and ,, bit,, waking himselfs separate each from others, but these are together always. The ,,it,, is a physical reality, which is characterized by some group of information (as example: value of mass, coordinates, impulse, forms, colour, laws of its behavior, and many others) I.e. we have actually the physical object with its attributes/properties, which is meaningless to divide each from others. The concept of ,,information,, (and its binary encoded form ,,bits,,) it is a abstract human's creations only (as well as the ,,language,, ,,mathematics,, and other abstract tools that can have the significance for us only, destined to use by our brains and not as himself existing kinds of things.)

My dear, in nowadays reality the physicists are confused so deeply; they already have just mixing totally different concepts and categories each with others (that is why we plying now such ,,it - bit,, games!) I have trying to show in my works that the problem has began much early and the way - how to solve it. Check please link text, if you find time! I am hopeful when I saw the some of professionals are doubtful and they thinking already that ,,something is wrong!,, I hope get your comments in my forum. I inclined to count your work as one valuable for me.

Regards,

George k.

Dear Olaf,

Delightful reading. We particularly agree with the statement:

"Naked bits require a dictionary that gives them meaning. Such a dictionary is necessarily external to the bits themselves and a description of the world that focuses solely on the bits will be incomplete."

And this:

"One of the perennial problems in philosophy is the problem of consciousness. One reason consciousness is puzzling is that there seems to be an infinite regression present."

If we simply accept this infinite regression as the necessary condition in which all meaning in the external "dictionary" is compressed into a continuum of meaning, all internal meaning invested in ordered bits of information maps 1 to 1 as uncompressed meaning that we can identify with measured phenomena.

Thanks for a great essay, and I do hope you find time to visit my essay as well.

Tom

Olaf,

Excellent essay, beautifully presented with some very important insights compatible with an ambitious ontology I build in mine.

Your six part description is well considered, in fact although I agree and use that; "meaning arises through interaction" in particular I propose may be reduced to "action" as you can then have the acronym "RADIAL".!

Far more important for me is the characteristic of your new notion of information; "that it is layered", and I have not only agreed but I hope shown that; "some of the puzzling features of quantum mechanics can be understood with our new view of information."

I'm truly sorry I didn't get to yours earlier as our agreement on such important issues has lifted my spirits. I am scoring yours very high and I prevail on you to read, comment on and score my own apparently radical essay which I hope you will agree confirms the power of your proposal. I discuss the 'layers' mainly as as higher order 'sample spaces' and degrees of freedom in a hierarchical model. I even identify analogies to Kalusa's additional spaces.

Very well done, thank you and good luck in the final run in.

Best wishes.

Peter

Dear Olaf,

I have down loaded your essay and soon post my comments on it. Meanwhile, please, go through my essay and post your comments.

Regards and good luck in the contest,

Sreenath BN.

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1827