I think that like light, being composed of two propagating waves, we should find sound to be composed of propagating
pressure waves regardless of media. wrb From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Craig Weinberg Sent: Thursday, March 07, 2013 8:10 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 10:55:31 PM UTC-5, William R. Buckley wrote: The falling tree makes sound, the wind make sound, the . makes sound regardless of your presence (or the presence of others) to hear that sound. Regardless of my presence, of course, but to make sound, you need an ear and a medium which vibrates that ear. If you take the atmosphere away, then of course the falling tree could not make a sound to anyone. For the same reason, if you take all of the ears away, then there can be no such thing as sound. To argue anything else is utter nonsense. To the contrary. To assume that physics can simply 'exist' outside of a context of detection and participation is a statement of religious faith. We have never experienced an unexperienced world, so it would be unscientific to presume such a thing. This has nothing to do with human experience, its ontology. Craig wrb From: everyth...@googlegroups.com <javascript:> [mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com <javascript:> ] On Behalf Of Craig Weinberg Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2013 7:34 PM To: everyth...@googlegroups.com <javascript:> Subject: Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 5:52:32 PM UTC-5, William R. Buckley wrote: I do not hold that the acceptor must exist, for then I am making a value judgment, and I have already scolded Craig for the same thing. Think of it this way. A volume of gas has a measure of entropy. This means that the molecules are found in found by what? a specific sequence of microstates, and those microstates constitute an information state of the molecules. Who is it constituted to though? Empty space? The molecules as a group? Each molecule? What is validating that these molecules exist in some way - that there is a such thing as a microstate which can be detected in some way by something... and what is detection? How does it work? When these things are taken as axiomatic, then we are just reiterating those axioms when we claim that no acceptor must exist. In my understanding, exist and acceptor are the same thing. Alter that microstate sequence (as by adding or removing entropy) and the description of the microstate sequence changes correspondingly; entropy is information. Only if something can detect their own description of the microstate as having changed. We cannot assume that there is any change at all if nothing can possibly detect it. For example, if I take make a movie of ice cubes melting in a glass, even though that is a case of increasing thermodynamic entropy, we will see a lower cost of video compression in a movie of the glass after the ice has melted completely. In that case the image description can be made to follow either increasing or decreasing information entropy depending on whether you play the movie forward and backward. There is no link between microstate thermodynamic entropy and optical description information entropy. Craig Acceptors and signals; contexts and signs; . wrb From: everyth...@googlegroups.com [mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Mikes Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2013 1:13 PM To: everyth...@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information Dear Bil B. you probably have thought in these lines during similar long periods as I did. It was ~2 decades ago when I defined i n f o r m a t i o n as something with (at least) 2 ends: 1. the notion (in whatever format it shows up) - and 2. the acceptor (adjusting the notion in whatever context it can be perceived - appercipiated (adjusted>). I have no idea how to make a connection between information (anyway how one defines it) and the (inner?) disorder level of anything (entropy?). I dislike this thermodynamic term alltogether. Later on I tried to refine my wording into: RELATIONS and the capability of recognizing them. That moved away from a 'human(?)' framework. E. g. I called the 'closeness of a '(+)' charge to a '(-)' potential an information so it came close to SOME consciousness (=(?) response to relations), no matter in what kind of domain. Do you feel some merit to my thinking? John Mikes On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 2:06 AM, William R. Buckley <bill.b...@gmail.com> wrote: There is information (I take information to be a manifestation of entropy) and it is always represented in the form of a pattern (a distribution) of the units of mass/energy of which the Universe is composed. I think that semiotic signs are simply specific bits of information; I will use the terms synonymously. Information has meaning only within context. For many people, context is taken to mean one piece of information as compared to another piece of information. I do not take this meaning of context when I discuss semiotics. Instead, I take semiotic context to be the acceptor of the information. Hence, all meaning resides a priori within information acceptors. What you know you have always known; the sign merely serves to bring that knowledge to your conscious mind. That you may have intention and so comport your delivery of information to another acceptor has not bearing upon the subsequent acceptance or rejection of that information by the target acceptor. Acceptance or rejection of information is determined solely by the accepting or rejecting context (acceptor). Your mere presence sends information regardless of some conscious intent. Indeed, your absence does equally deliver information, for the target acceptor will see a definite difference in available information sources whether you are present or not. Consider a line worker in a bean processing plant where the task is to cull *bad* dried beans from *good* dried beans as they go by on a conveyor belt; the *bad* beans are removed by hand, so the line worker is constantly looking for *bad* beans while constantly being aware of the fact that not many of the beans are *bad*. The consciousness is aware of both that which is present and that which is not present. Further, what any information that you emit means to you is irrelevant to the meaning that another may take for that information. Indeed, it is via reliance upon -Cultural Norms- that your point regarding Morse Code becomes relevant. It is perfectly reasonable for an ornery person to simply reject such norms and act otherwise; your expectation originates in you, not the targets of information you broadcast. >>The truth of your statement is no reply to my claim, >>that how another receiver of signs responds is >>irrelevant to your knowledge, save the one case of >>conveyance of knowledge between semiotic units; >>where you intend for knowledge to be conveyed. In >>that case, it is behooving of the sender to ensure >>that the receiver can receive and understand the >>message. > >I'm not sure what you are bringing up here, but I >would say that my point is that all messages have >multiple levels of reception, perhaps as many levels >as their are receivers in the universe. At the same >time, if we are assuming human senders and receivers >and a content range which is highly normative and >practical (i.e. Morse code alphabet rather than >emoticons, inside jokes, etc), then the information >entropy is reduced dramatically. > >Maybe you can give me an example of that you mean >by the irrelevance of the receiver's knowledge. Does >that include the expectation of the possibility of >there being a receiver? > >>In all other cases, the recipient response is >>irrelevant; all values and measures originate in >>the sender of the message. > >I would tend to agree with that, although the >expectation of the recipient response informs the >motives, values, and measures of the sender - >otherwise there would be no message being sent. > > >>The receiver of transmitted information is >>irrelevant to the mechanics of that transmission. > >I'm not sure what you mean. Again, maybe an example >would help. We expect that human audiences can see, >so we have TV screens to provide optical stimulation. >If we didn't have eyes, there would be no mechanism >of TV. > The word should have been *reception* - receipt of information (acceptance of a sign) is a function of the value that the acceptor puts on that sign. That value is most certainly not tied to the delivery mechanism, even if some delivery mechanisms are preferred over others. What matters to information acceptance is disposition of the acceptor to that acceptance. If the acceptor does not *like* the sign, it will reject the sign; of course, this means that all signs are accepted just long enough to decide if they are sufficiently meaningful or not; if so, they are accepted else they are rejected. >Craig > >>wrb > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com. 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