John,
I'm glad that you agree that a real physical field can be viewed as an 'analog' computer that "computes" the behavior of the physical world. Many seem to think that some imaginary 'digital' computer (hardware plus program) that exists 'outside of our universe' (in another dimension?) is the source of the physics we observe. Yet if the analog field computes its own behavior, and that behavior produces our world, it is beyond me why anyone would seriously consider (and I do believe they're serious!) an otherworldly 'digital computer' plus associated algorithms.
Part of the problem, as I see it is that the so-called 'violation' of Bell's inequality, which has caused many to give up any belief in local realism, has so confused people that they now think that instead of physical reality being real, somehow information is real, and this has only been worsened by a completely unnecessary treatment of 'information' as the surface area of a black hole. I say unnecessary because the exact same area relation can be derived using only the concept of energy and never bringing the concept of information into the picture.
Because of this confusion, which has produced not a thing besides more confusion, [well, it may have produced a few grant dollars] I am adamantly opposed to all attempts to muddy the water with ideas that information is 'physical'. It is descriptive and contextual and requires interpretation.
The confusion of descriptive information, of meaning only to certain observers, with substantial reality that exists for all observers, leads to problems. In another thread it was suggested that "Watch out for the bus!" has real physical consequences and so this information should be considered 'real'. But if you only speak Chinese, "Watch out for the bus" means nothing. Yet the energy of the moving bus is real in all cases. Information has reality only with respect to an observer and interpreter. To deny the substantial reality one should stand in front of the bus and argue this point.
Similarly, DNA has encoded 'information' only because there is a biological cell to "interpret" this information. Otherwise, DNA is just a long string of four bases strung together. If the cell and the protein-building interpretative machinery did not exist, DNA would have no meaning, and there would be no reason to speak of DNA 'information', only DNA structure. There are certainly crystals and amorphous materials that provide such variegated structure and have no meaningful interpretation as 'information'.
Because we can, as humans, provide context, and therefore interpretation, we can create, store, retrieve, transmit, receive, communicate, transform and otherwise make good use of information. We're capable, as conscious beings, of abstracting physical behaviors in such a way that coded 'laws' can be derived that effectively generate an infinite amount of information, in the same way that the relation y=x^2 generates an infinite amount of information. I have developed the theory of such 'evolution of theories' in The Automatic Theory of Physics.
But do the 'laws' exist 'out there' governing what's happening 'in here' or are we simply part of a self-evolving, self-interacting 'substance' (for lack of a better word) that behaves according to Marcel's "law of non-contradiction". If the latter, then we have a unitary universe, complete in itself, and capable of eventually 'observing itself'. Otherwise, we have a dualistic universe where we have not only to figure out what 'reality' is, but where and how the 'laws' came to be. It's an easy choice for me.
I hope these remarks clarify why I am so fussy about the proper use of the term information. I reject all claims that physical reality arises or emerges from some underlying 'information'.
You ask, "What is information derived from, if not interaction and motion? Spins, polarities, etc."
The answer is that extremely complex contexts are created by experimenters, and are arranged to capture physical events. These captured events are then interpreted in the context of appropriate theories, and at this point it is valid to speak of information, since these events can answer 'yes/no' questions which is basically what information does. But without the physically real complex context of the experimental apparatus, and the theoretical interpretative 'apparatus', there is no inherent physical 'information' that has the slightest reality associated with 'spins' and 'polarities'.
Edwin Eugene Klingman
