On 1 July 2014 17:59, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > On 6/30/2014 9:35 PM, LizR wrote: > > ISTM... > > In primitive materialism, what exists are space / time and matter / > energy. Information is an emergent property of the arrangements of those > things, like entropy. Neither of these exist at the level of fundamental > particles, or Planck cells, or strings, or whatever else may be the > primitive mass-energy/space-time) involved. > > There are problems with this view if information has primitive status, > which would indicate that the real picture is something like "it from bit" > or what might be called "primitive informationism". Evidence for PI come > from the entropy of black holes, the black hole information paradox, the > Landauer limit, the Beckenstein bound, the holographic principle, and > (unless I already covered that) the requirement that erasing a bit of > information requires some irreducible amount of energy. (And maybe some > other things I don't know about ... perish the thought). > > That's the Landauer limit, which isn't really relevant at a fundamental > level. It's a thermodynamic law which is reducible to statistical > mechanics. > > Interesting. How is the energy required to erase a single bit reducible to statistical mechanics?
> PI isn't equivalent to comp, but from what you said above PI might be a > necessary consequence of comp, which would give the "ontological chain" > arithmetic -> consciousness -> information -> matter (I think ... this is > all "ISTM" of course). > > OK, except I think the chain is: > > arithmetic -> information -> matter -> consciousness -> arithmetic > That doesn't make sense to me. I mean everything except the last term is OK, but you're apparently claiming that arithmetic is fundamental AND an invention of the human mind. Which at first glance looks suspiciously like fence sitting and having and eating your cake... Unless you have a theory of circular ontology, of course, in which case please fill in a few more details. > > and I'm not so inclined to take it as more than another possible model of > the world. > We aren't in a position to do more than build models of the world. If you think it's a possible model then that's *all* you can ever claim for it, well, unless some evidence comes along that disproves it, when you can't even do that. > I think of it as a way to describe and predict and think about the > world; but without supposing that it's possible to prove or to know with > certainty the world must be that way. > Of course, we can't know for certain what the world is like. > As for A Garrett Lisi, I was under the impression that his particles were > something like a "point in a weight diagram" - or something - which sounds > to me at least like some form of information theoretic entity. But I have > to admit my understanding of how birds and flowers could emerge from the E8 > group or whatever it's called is, well, about like this... > > In a way, all of fundamental physics posits information theoretic > entities. "Particles" are nothing more than "what satisfies particle > equations". Bruno complains about Aristotle and "primitive matter", but I > don't know any physicists who go around saying,"I've discovered primitive > matter." or "Let's work on finding primitive matter." > Well, I think Bruno thinks it's more an unconscious assumption for most physicists, rather than something explicitly stated. For example your statement about your mother implicitly assumes her mind is "nothing but" what her brain does. That's a primitive materialist assumption (and one that may be right, of course) but my point is that no one stops to make it explicit, because nowadays it's deeply ingrained in the thought processes of anyone who isn't strongly religious, and "goes without saying". > They just want a theory that is a little more comprehensive, a little more > accurate, a little more predictive than the one they have now. And they > couldn't care less what stuff is needed in their theory - only that it > works. > So why the century-long kerfuffle about the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics? :-) -- 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-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
