Dear Prof Carlo Rovelli,

I very much enjoyed your essay and rated it very highly. I think you do an excellent job of narrowing in on the subject, as I have tried to do in my less formal entry. Perhaps you could take a look at this, I wonder what you think of Leslie Valiant's idea of ecorithms and there potentiall 'internal role'. You seem to present an alternative way in which meaning or intention arises from just physical relata. From my reasoning I couldnt determine a way in which this math of intention (information by your account) could be used to reveal consciousness.

Best,

Jack

"The definition of 'meaningful' considered here does not directly refer to anything mental. To have something mental you need a mind and to have a mind you need a brain, and its rich capacity of elaborating and working with information. The question addressed here is what is the physical base of the information that brains work with. The answer suggested is that it is just physical correlation between internal and external variables affecting survival either directly or, potentially, indirectly."

7 days later

Carlo, although your essay is highly intricate, I fail to see any link or bridge between what you define as meaningful information and processes involving agency, purpose, or intentionality. Certainly, "downright crude physical correlation" can be compared with the cognitive interpretation of information, but to call a physical response to a stimulus a meaningful event, or to regard survival reflexes as purposeful behavior, is to trivialize what needs to be explained.

Intentionality involves a resourceful purpose to effect some end, which significantly, profoundly, does not yet exist - it precedes the end. The challenge here is to somehow reconcile intentionality with "mindless mathematical (physical) laws." The correlation of stimulus and response is not adequate even to ground such a task.

Mr Rovelli,

I see that you work about quantum gravity.I search also answers,I beleive in all humility that I found but of course I must formalise and test ,experiment.All this to tell you that we arrive so at what are the main gravitational codes of evolution.Of course we arrive at a debate about what is the meaning of informations and of our consciousness.The debate is also about what is the main cause,gravitational.So we arrive at a philosophical analyse.The sciences community is divided in two roads, a road considering a main cause creating an intelligent design if I can say and we have the atheists utilising the emergence of consciousness and lifes with others causalities.Personally I beleive strongly that a real understanding of what is infinite entropy above our physicality and gravitation is essential.We cannot encircle these steps of encoded particles waves énergies without this foundamental, but it is just my opinion of course.The main codes are gravoitational and our singularities are not approachables.The quantum gravitation does not seem to be an emergent electromagnetic force.The standard model is not sufficient in fact.We can so invent an AI but never a consciousness.It is due to our main gravitational codes.The electromagnetic encodings are just a step.We can try to formalise these informations and encodings with maths and variables but it is just electromagnetic.In all case it is a big puzzle, thanks still for sharing your work and good luck also in this contest.Best Regards from Belgium.

6 days later

Dear Carlo Rovelli

A good essay nicely analyzing the information, meaning, signal, intentionality and these are not covered in Physics. And you are correct again...as in your words..."We are undoubtedly limited parts of nature, and we are so even as understanders of this same nature"

The real question is who programmed us to try to understand the nature itself........?

Hi Carlo

nice thoughtful essay. I need to cogitate on how much I buy it, but it is a thoughtful piece of work that is useful to reflect on.

Best regards

George

Hello Carlo, I am enjoying studying your essay. Two of your books are by me, and I have taken a quote from "Seven Brief Lessons" as a subtitle for my own submission. Thanks for the inspiration.

Dear Carlo Rovelli

I agree with you that there is a difference between meaning information and pure data. Meaning information is of the type of information that exists in the ratio (correlation) between two existants, where the information holds at least one mode of action (non action is also an action) to at least one existent in the relation. If there is no potential action associated with the meaning information there is no relations between the 2 existants. I do see the phenomenon occurs in ever changing present maintaining its uniqueness of its self organization. The meaning base information allows to choose an action which is potentially in the relation and convert it to a subjective action with the unique attributes it has in its movement. (see my essay) causality is a special case in the occurrence of the phenomenon.

Thanks for the fine essay.

yehuda atai

Dear Prof. Carlo Rovelli:

I enjoyed reading your thoughtful essay and was particularly impressed with your approach liking the meaningful information with Darwin's Evolutionary survival as you say......."The idea put forward is that what grounds all this is direct meaningful information, namely strictly physical correlations between a living organism and the external environment that have survival and reproductive value. The semantic notions of information and meaning are ultimately tied to their Darwinian evolutionary origin. The suggestion is that the notion of meaningful information serves as a ground for the foundation of meaning. That is, it could cover the link between the purely physical world and the world of meaning, purpose, intentionality and value. It could bridge the gap. "

What if your idea is extended from Darwin to the Universe evolution and survival? How could such an extended model be represented in an integrated physical theory of the matter, species, mind, and consciousness? This is described in my contest paper - " FROM LAWS TO AIMS & INTENTIONS - A UNIVERSAL MODEL INTEGRATING MATTER, MIND, CONSCIOUSNESS, AND PURPOSE by Avtar Singh. My paper investigates the physical reality of consciousness via integrating matter and consciousness described as the free-willed mechanism of the spontaneous decay of quantum particles that leads to the ultimate survival of consciousness in a fully-dilated space-time as a constant universal field (Zero-point State) of Oneness or connectivity that exists as a complimentary relativistic state to the matter dominated states within the unity of a single physical model that also predicts the observed empirical universe.

I would greatly appreciate it if you could please provide your comments on my paper and let me know if it gainfully and properly extends Darwin's limited survival in a universal or cosmic sense rather than species on earth.

Best Regards

Avtar Singh

Carlo,

An excellent essay and analysis. Much is very close to my own which I hope you'll read and comment on.

I agree and expand your N/S pole example, with only left (L) OR right (R) 'curl' and hope you'll consider; If you encounter a sphere at it's equator and have to decide if the momentum is L or R can you decide? Yet a tangentially linear momentum is maximised there, tending to ZERO at the poles. Of course as Maxwell the rotation couples with both the Elec. and Mag. of EM.

But where did that second state go in QM's 'spin' (QAM) assumption!? I identify it as hidden before our eyes, re-appearing in actual findings as Diracs complementary 'offset' state, so included in QM's formulation. The classical analogue of QM then re-appears to remove a tranche of bizarre interpretations and allow logical teleological complexities. My essay analyses consequences.

But thank you for yours, which I found in wide fundamental agreement.

Best

Peter

I am quite impressed with your standing in the scientific community and thoughts you expressed in your essay. May I ask you a question? There are many like myself (some on this website) that find ourselves powerless when trying to contribute in some small way. For example, I disagree with the WMAP and PLANCK conclusions regarding dark matter and dark energy. Is there any way to interact with them?

Dear Sir,

Your paper was quite thought provoking. You have rightly described Shannon's "relative information" as "correlation" or as you say "downright crude physical correlation". In a previous contest here in our paper "INFORMATION HIDES IN THE GLARE OF REALITY", we had written "Information Theory is based on the concept of writing instructions that will make the computer follow and run a program based on those instructions or matching perceptions of the transmitter with the receiver. Perception is the processing of the result of measurements of different but related fields of something with some stored data to convey a combined form 'it is like that', where 'it' refers to an object (constituted of bits) and 'that' refers to a concept signified by the object (self-contained representation)". Your examples and definition at the end conform to this view. But we fail to understand why you distinguish it from "meaningful information"?

All information is meaningful to the receiver. Otherwise it will be data only. Firstly, Darwin dealt with biological evolution. Part of biology can be related to physics, but "intentionality" (we presume it is the same as freewill) is not a part of it. It can be dealt with cognitive sciences, and partially in psychology and linguistics. Secondly, the same information can have multiple meanings for multiple systems or persons. To that extent, it is relative. But each such information is correlated to something in the system and person, to make it meaningful. The "intentionality" is an outcome of that information - making it meaningful.

Darwinian evolution is still a postulate and there are many contra views to contest his concept of selection. You have rightly pointed out that "A dead organism decays rapidly to thermal equilibrium, while an organism which is alive does not". But this does not flow from Darwinian evolution. Also we fail to understand how "we can legitimately reverse the causal relation between the existence of the mechanism and its function"? Can a chicken be converted back to an egg? It is true that the mechanism exhibits a purpose. But is mechanism independent of the system, within which it functions? Why is the digestive system different in different species? Are our digestive system made for us or are we what we are because of our digestive system? Certainly our digestive system regulates our food habit. But we are not the product of our food habit.

The Darwinian concept of "life on Earth may be the result of random happening of structures, all of which perish except those that happen to survive, and these are the living organisms" cannot explain why the uni/multi cellular organisms are still the same as they were at the beginning millions of years ego? Why the monkeys are still there? The role of variability and selection in the evolution of structures are different. While there is no dispute over variability to explain divergences, the role of selection is questionable.

It is true that "surviving mechanisms survive by using correlations" and "mechanisms that lead to survival and reproduction are adapted by evolution to a certain environment". In fact only in that way they become "meaningful", as your example with bacteria shows. But here we land into a sort of chicken and egg problem. We find similar species with slight variations in different geo-climatic locations. Did the geo-climatic conditions varied the species or the species varied the geo-climate? Obviously the answer is geo-climatic conditions varied the species. A snake anywhere cannot move in a straight line and the only way to escape from a rampaging elephant is to run zig-zag. Here physics of biological structures gets precedence over earthly terrain. But this cannot explain the differences between a tropic goat and a mountain goat. The meaningfulness comes from geo-climatic adaptation.

There is nothing as "accidental correlations that are ubiquitous in nature" and there is nothing that "have no effect on living beings, no role in semantic, no use, and correlations that contribute to survival". Nature is highly ordered and economical. We fail to understand its elegance. True, "today's newspaper is not likely to directly enhance mine or my gene's survival probability", but newspaper is not a creation of Nature. And we avoid many problems due to the information we get from today's newspaper.

Truth and meaningful are related concepts. If something motivates us in a certain way or induces a reaction that remains invariant in all similar perceptions/encounters, the commonality arising from such perception is truth. In such cases, our reaction is meaningful.

Regards,

basudeba

Hi Carlo,

I greatly enjoyed this essay. I think that incorporating survival potential as a measure of fitness yields a good approximation of how useful or meaningful the information conveyed really is. I liked very much that you could adapt Wolpert's formulation to treat the essay question, and I agree that having a concrete definition for meaningful information could serve as a basis for future advances applying information theory to cognition.

Kudos for readability and making the technical concepts understandable. I think you communicated the meaning better than the last contest essay, and you show an increasing command of the English language. As with George's comment above; I am on the fence as to whether your formulation flies - but it certainly offers some valuable food for thought. I hope you fare well, this time around.

All the Best,

Jonathan

Dear Dr. Rovelli,

Thank you so much for your well-written and insightful essay. My own essay on complexity will be published soon and I suggest many of the same points that you do, although admittedly, not in such a polished and professional way. It's actually quite astounding to me, that the ideas about information and meaning that you touch upon are not common knowledge, i.e. their elegance and simplicity seems so apparent. My only suggestion for your work is to keep going. That is, I believe that there are lower levels of complexity/information that you might describe with equal eloquence. I wish you luck in the competition and would appreciate any comments you might share about my own essay.

Yours,

Kigen William Ekeson

Quite impressive, Carlo. You say "the structure could be generated precisely by the structure of the very "meaningful information" we have been concerned with here." Wolpert and Kolchinsky speak of a correlation between the state of the organism and its environment and it's this information that helps the organism stay out of equilibrium. What if the information breaks down in your equation: Meaning and Intentionality = info evolution. The organic source of information, DNA, has errors over time and the renewal process yields flawed copies, especially after organisms and a flawed environment interact. What does this do to your equation?

Jim Hoover

    Dear Carlo Rovelli,

    The essay correctly identifies the difference between probabilistic correlation with an information, and the semantic value (meaning) of the information, and that it is the correlation with the specifics of information that is central. It also brings out the distinction that dealing with the quantity of information as per Shannon, is not the same as description of the semantics of the information. While, it correctly places bounds on the domain of information, yet it does not go all the way to specify or quantify the semantics of the same information. I do agree with the importance of information as a link between different structures in science, but the first level task is to lay down a general method of expressing the semantics of universally all possible expressions that convey information.

    With respect to a DNA encoding the information on the structure of the organism, I suppose, at best, DNA can be said to encode the function and processes in highly specific contexts. It is entirely possible that in a different environment, different structure and phenotype may emerge. That is, the code is just one of the necessary elements for a specific structure to emerge.

    I restate that the path Carlo Rovelli identifies to describe the meaning of information is in the right direction.

    Rajiv

    5 days later

    This is an interesting essay that introduces a way of quantifying the notion of meaningful information. It is not clear to us that quantifying the notion of striving for survival in terms of comparisons of entropies will help with the problem of how organisms endowed with intentionality arise.

      I have two questions:

      Your essay describes a connection between mathematics and certain characteristics of agency (purpose and meaningful function). The mathematics is intended to parallel our knowledge that biochemical mechanisms facilitate, through their function, a meaningful and informational relation to or "about" the environment. The complexity of this relation inevitably increases over generations at the behest of survival pressures.

      Q1. Are you not tempted, therefore, to suggest further that over generations biochemical mechanisms become increasingly inclined to delineate environmental particulars in qualitative terms? In other words, if there is a value to be place on environmental particulars--expressed in the functions of an organism's physiology--are you not tempted to propose that the merit of any delineation towards environmental particulars will lead to physiologies that express a range of qualitative attributions towards those particulars (attributions that are qualified by their survival relevance); that such attributions might evince a 'qualitative feel' in the organism towards particular environmental characteristics as qualified by their comparative merits and relevance?

      Q2. If one then factors into an affirmative answer to Q1. the idea that such qualitative mechanisms might be assimilated, evaluated and prioritized through the operations of neural networks, can your mathematics serve to provide the foundations to solving Chalmers' (1995 - Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness) Hard Problem?

      If this sounds reasonable to you, I can provide you with the model which will successfully guide the application of your mathematical foundations to this end.

      Stefan,

      I think you make an important point here.

      What I would say in response is that the individual organism does not, itself, discriminate when interacting with the environment. Rather, the discrimination occurs over a generational timeline as the replicating lineage presents its templates (i.e., its individual organisms) to the environment. To explain... the consequences of survival pressures on the survival of a lineage's individuals make each individual, effectively, an interactive mechanism that serves to measure the merits of that individual's functional template in respect to the survival of the lineage. The discrimination is a generational process instituted by replication over a generational timeline. The consequences are physiological adaptations in which the lineage evolves increasingly complex discriminatory mechanistic individuals.

      Of course, Carlo did not say this, but I am suggesting a solution to this issue.

      Conscious agency in individuals is a feature of more complex interactive mechanisms which the mathematics does not address but I do believe that the mathematics can be extrapolated to do so.

      My essay comparing the dimensions of meaning in physics, biology and human communication is now available here.

      Congratulations, this is an excellent essay, truly original. I have 2 questions:

      - would it be right to formulate darwinian evolution as: Species evolve by modifying p(x|y) in such a way as to guide the joint distribution p(x, y) in the direction of increasing M? This makes sense to me, at least, when considering a single species evolving in a static environment. When many species are coupled, and the environment of each species is defined by the state of all the others, recursiveness may abolish the existence of a global landscape to maximize. For example, it could happen that by adjusting p(x|y) in the direction of increasing M, a species may end up changing y, and producing a catastrophic effect on itself.

      - P and P-tilde have been defined in terms of the probability of not surviving (S > Sthr), which makes the theory adequate to describe natural selection in living organisms. But could it be extended to more broad-directed behavior, encompassing all systems (not necessarily biological) that decrease their entropy as time goes by? Could the condition inside the integrals of Eqs. 7 and 8 be (Sinitial - Sfinal)? It seems to me that the meaningful information would in this case measure the degree up to which correlations contribute to a generalized goal, not necessarily survival. Or am I missing something?