> Brad,
>
> I would say that complex information about anything can be conveyed in
ways
> outside of your current thinking, but if you ask me to prove it, I cannot.
> There is evidence of it in things like the ERP experiment which show the
> existence of a possible substrate that we have not yet measured or
> verified...
>
> Question: the big bang occured in a closed system, yet the "information"
for
> every phenomena we witness was the result of that occurance. How was that
> information stored? How did it get promulgated?
>
> Kevin
>
All of the comments on this thread are based on the assumption that
information is a fixed quantity at some level, either the organism, the
ecology, the ecosystem, or the universe.
What if it's not? I have not the training or background to make an
academic, formal case for this, but I would submit that the universe, and
many parts of it, generate information and complexity. In part it is due to
the resolution of real events from the indeterminacy of quantum states
(decoherence). In part it may be due to the creation of pattern from
deterministic chaos. In part it may be due to some manner or other of
evolutionary action -- biological, yes, but not just that, as Lee Smolin has
proposed. Or just think of the process of the growth of knowledge by the
one intelligent species we know of.
Thus, the answer to the question of where complexity comes from is, it is
generated by complex systems getting more complex as time goes by. And, as
Stuart Kauffmann has shown, the initial complexity doesn't have to be that
great to start the ball rolling. Think of it as a feedback loop, or
whatever you're compfortable with, but there is merit in thinking that the
sum total of information grows over time. Information isn't energy; it's
organization (with or without a center).
There are those who think that wealth is a fixed sum, and that if any
individual or group becomes rich, it must be because he/she/they have stolen
or extracted that wealth from others, making them poor. There are others
who believe that wealth is created, that Bill Gates (whatever else we think
of him) has generated his wealth, and that the personal computer,
information technology, and communications technology have made lots of
people richer without taking away from anyone.
Same thing. We know more than Aristotle did. We may not be smarter than he
was, but we understand a hell of a lot more. Life and civilization may
collapse, but that isn't an entropic phenomenon, just the application of a
lot of stupidity or maybe even dumb bad luck.
We could even say that information growth -- by the measure or at the behest
of all the processes mentioned earlier -- defines the arrow of time that is
left without direction in a purely deterministic universe.
P.S.: That's one reason, by the way, that we can't build, even
theoretically, an AGI capable of holding all knowledge.
C. David Noziglia
Object Sciences Corporation
6359 Walker Lane, Alexandria, VA
(703) 253-1095
"What is true and what is not? Only God knows. And, maybe, America."
Dr. Khaled M. Batarfi, Special to Arab
News
"Just because something is obvious doesn't mean it's true."
--- Esmerelda Weatherwax, witch of Lancre
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