Tom,
No! All effects include meaning. Your point, that I don't understand meaning; I understand that meaning has nothing to do with meaninglessness, in other words, mechanical ideology. Please disprove me by explaining where meaning comes from? I assume that you are not going to teach me that meaning comes from meaningless?
James
To Anyone Else,
If you are looking in on this conversation please understand that I do not get put off by graffitti. Either give scientific explanations or leave it alone.
James
It's clear that when you assign whatever meaning to phenomena that you please, no one can teach you anything.
Tom or anyone else,
Please give the starting point for existence. Is that starting point mechanical, meaning totally dumb, or what?
James
Tom,
"It's clear that when you assign whatever meaning to phenomena that you please, no one can teach you anything."
No!!! You enterred the arena by your choice now give the empirical evidence for meaning arising from lack of meaning. If there was no lack of meaning, then explain that?
James
Perhaps there is misunderstanding. Let us find out. For me analog means continuity with no exception. Whereas digital means separation among parts. I see no parts and no separation except in degree of effects and our ability to measure effects. All empirical evidence consists of measurements. Those measurements are always about imperfect measurements of changes of velocity of objects. We either go beyond that point of understanding or we accept dumbness as the guiding principle of the operation of the universe. If dumbness rules, then, we will not know it; because, dumbness never even could have gotten started being undumb.
James
By your standard of meaning, if I say that the sun rising and setting means that Apollo is driving his fiery chariot across the sky, it has as much validity as one who says that it means the Earth is following a geodesic caused by the warping of spacetime due to the sun's much greater mass.
Tom
Hi Tom,
You are not making scientific points. What do you have to offer to this thread?
James
Anyone,
Yes, anyone is invited to explain how complexity evolved from simplicity or far worse from lack in meaning, without just restating what you have just read, 'complexity evolved from simplicty. Why is there this obvious major problem with theoretical physics that includes dumbness evolving to smartness?
James
Hi James and Tom,
May I propose to try to define meaning? I think the general sentiment is that meaning is given by the observer as Tom suggests, if one really wants to define meaning in more objective terms one might want to do so in terms of capacity to carry information.
A single bit does not carry any information, so it is meaningless. It is also intrinsically meaningless because there is no context (one cannot interpret a single bit if is not preceded or followed by anything else with nothing more). A string of n same bits (either 1 or 0) may also be regarded as meaningless (unless one is forced to make an arbitrary external interpretation) because even if it carries a 'message' it cannot be rich in information (neither by algorithmic complexity nor by Shannon's entropy standards). At the other extreme, a random string may be or may be not taken as meaningful depending on the measure. What one can certainly say is that definitely something lying in between should represent what we may want to mean by 'meaning'. With the 2 extremes being: 'no information' (trivial) or 'complete non-sense' (random).
Plain algorithmic complexity, places randomness at the level of the highest complexity, but Bennett's logical depth (also based in algorithmic complexity) is able to distinguish between something that looks organized from something that looks random or trivial by introducing time (a parameter that seems unavoidable in reality and therefore the reason to associate this measure to 'physical complexity'). I think logical depth is the measure to be taken into account when it is about mapping complexity or meaning to reality. Unfortunately I couldn't get there in my essay but I'd would have enjoyed to talk about it. If so, we could have discussed about meaning within a better framework.
If you see how I may map information and meaning you may see how can I explain that meaning can come from meaningless in a rather objective, hopefully reasonable way. I think Levin's universal distribution together with Bennett's concept of logical depth are an appropriate informational framework to discuss this and it would have certainly completed my worldview, but I think it explains how simplicity and randomness can lead to organization and structure or, if you prefer, how lack of meaning can lead to meaning in the understanding of my treatment of meaning.
Feel free to focus on attacking my position. Best.
Dr. Hector Zenil,
I prefer learning:
"...but I think it explains how simplicity and randomness can lead to organization and structure or, if you prefer, how lack of meaning can lead to meaning in the understanding of my treatment of meaning."
How any part of this quote is supported without resort to preconditions. The problem with preconditions is that they had to be given by a preconditioner.
James
James,
Definitely there are assumptions. My worldview is by no means a pure logical deduction from nothing, nor I can think of some result with no preconditions at all (think of math, one starts out of a set of axioms, sometimes not even easy to take by granted). If the question is what are my main assumptions, my main assumption is that the world follows an algorithmic distribution. And even if there is ideology in this position what I'm trying is precisely to detach myself from a purely ideological position and tackle the question with the best tools available from information theory to test this digital hypothesis and make my point.
As you may know from my essay, what I do is to compare empirical datasets to data produced by digital (algorithmic by definition) processes in their frequency distributions of patterns. This allows me to see wether patterns are distributed alike (or not) among the real and the simulated worlds.
The conclusion is that there is some resemblance and that differences can also be explained in information terms. Then I argue that because we have no idea how to compare datasets to an analog distribution (mostly because we cannot even agree on what analog means), and because the world definitely seems far to be random, a strong possible explanation is that, if the world is algorithmic then it is likely to be the result of processes similar to the processes matching the empirical data.
My explanation does not rule out the possibility of an algorithmic analog world (no essay here, I think, rules out each other possibility nor are categorical about their claims), but I argue that an algorithmic continuous world actually forces you to assume more preconditions than the digital one (if someone is categorical it shouldn't be taken very serious).
As you may agree, however, assuming too much is undesirable, at least from the point of view of science and how science has worked out for us in order to understand our world. My purpose is precisely to avoid starting from too many (or too strong) preconditions and Levin's universal distribution is, just as it is the uniform distribution in a random world, the one not making any assumptions when no other information about is known, other than assuming that processes are carried out by an algorithm rather than as the result of a truly random interaction.
Thanks.
James,
As I have pointed out to you on numerous occasions, you have a peculiar and nonstandard idea of what constitutes "science." Such a priori assumptions as "smartness does not come from dumbness" is hardly a scientific judgment. Not only is it not true, as complex systems science richly demonstrates, it is simply an assumption that a force or forces external to the universe control and direct events internal to the self interacting system that constitutes the universe in which we live. That violates several physical principles, most notably conservation of energy/information, but more significantly it allows you to assign whatever meaning you wish to "smartness" and "dumbness" so that whatever you propose will never be falsifiable science.
If you want to talk science to scientists, you may not necessarily have to embrace rationalism; you do, however, have to accept that science is a rationalist enterprise.
Tom
Hector,
My definition of meaning in terms of algorithmic complexity and information theory is exactly the same as yours. I've written quite bit on it. Further, though, because meaning is independent of language -- process is not differentiable from reality. In other words, reality is observer dependent only to the limit of language (algorithm in computational terms).
Which makes the point that locality -- an analog, classically real, experience -- does not obviate the digital reality of nonlocal influences. This is entirely consistent with Einstein's characterization of "physically real," i.e., " ... indpendent in its physical properties, having a physical effect but not itself influenced by physical conditions."
The only analogy I can come up with at the moment is that of mapping one point to every point of an independent set of points. We can do it, only if there is sufficient distance between the point and the other set. This independence guarantees nonlocal mapping without obviating local continuity.
Tom
A littel beer from Belgium.....and hop you are friends.hihii
Spherically yours,
ps Hector,still one lol.
Dear Thomas,
Interesting. I'm reading your essay. Could you also point me out to any other work of yours to read about your conception of meaning as you highlight? Do you have a webpage by the way?
Thanks and best.
Definitely you have the Belgium humour Steve. Did you watch Rien à Declarer? You would have fit well in the movie.
Best.
If you're interested enough, I'll email you a copy of my Popper Centennial paper. Abstract online, but not picked up for the proceedings.
Best,
Tom
Correcting the link (I should know better than to try and do this from the bar):
The ICCS 2006 paper deals with the technical significance of the independence of language and meaning.
Thanks for reading my essay.
All best,
Tom
Thanks Tom.
