On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 9:53 PM, Tom Johnson <t...@jtjohnson.com> wrote: > Yes, but that firecracker -- as data not information -- needs to be > understood in some context of space/time. A firecracker in my backyard on a > 4th of July afternoon is quite different than a firecracker of equal size > throw at cops during a riot. > > Could it be that what you call a "observational/informational gradient" is > what I call context?
No, I don't think so. The notion of "context" exists within the domain of the cognitive, although within that domain, one might imagine that there are domains of gradients of their own which exists in the social sphere. But in this case, I'm talking at the level of raw data. In the same way that potential and kinetic energy reflect or are symmetric each other (in the sense that the total amount at any given time is constant), that, similarly, that the total sum e (energy) + H (information) always stays constant within a closed system. So in the given example, the actual physical, energetic vibrations are turned into data by tickling the fine hairs of the human listener. And, furthermore, it would seem that the brain was the universe's answer to the "entropy problem" as we seem naturally inclined to continue repeating explosion after explosion because at some level deeper than the cognitive, the brain is cataloging all that data and rewarding us (at least boys) for the novelty (in the information-theoretic sense) that it confers with each explosion even though there's hardly anything new at our own cognitive level. Consciousness was nature's way of solving the problem of "the heat death of the universe", or alternately, those universes which didn't have observers simply died out long ago and we're one that remained. marcos ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
