Dear John and colleagues,
Nice to hear that you are OK after that dangerous intoxication --our
best wishes for your complete recovery!
About physical information I think that Landauer clarified the panorama,
at least concerning the relationship between information theory and
thermodynamics. According to his principle, any logically irreversible
transformation of classical information is necessarily accompanied by
the dissipation of at least k T ln(2) of heat per lost bit (about 3 x 10
exp -21 Joules at 300 K temperature), where obviously k is the Boltzmann
constant and T the temperature. Recently this principle has been
verified experimentally (Nature, 8 March 2012, p. 187). By the way, in
his past message Loet enters "Watts" in a similar expression (?). To
insist, Entropy and Information are dimensionless and do not explicitly
incorporate any units... About the quantum management of info theory, it
is another matter, quite more tricky.
Beyond that immediate physicality, things get quite obscure as our
contradictory "meaning" messages witness. The point made by Joseph on an
overarching logic, is rather difficult to be maintained --at least in my
small province of the biological signaling pathways. Too many logics are
used biologically in too many different contexts or niches, either
molecularly or neuronally... I bet that they are not susceptible of
integration in any logical system. Maybe Inbiosa parties would also
disagree with me in this regard.
best wishes to all,
---Pedro
John Collier escribió:
Folks,
I have been in the hospital for almost three weeks due to bleeding
from warfarin. I had to have three blood transfusions and an
operation. I am only now getting my strength back. Some of my
comments, therefore, may be dated.
"Physical" has a variety of overlapping meanings (a Wittgensteinian
family resemblence). For example Quine takes the physical to be
anything accessible to the senses or inferences therefrom. Ladyman,
Ross, Collier an Spurrett take the physical to be the most fundamental
laws of our (part of) the universe. I did not agree with this, among
some other crucial points, so I was not a primary author. Information
is at least physical in both of these senses. Quine's approach might
make it entirely physical. I prefer to relate it to the causal, which
always has physical parametres, as far as we know. But there are many
ways of approaching this issue, and disentangling them will be a major
advance in foundations of information theory.
My Best,
John
Professor John Collier
Philosophy, University of KwaZulu-Natal
Durban 4041 South Africa
T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292
F: +27 (31) 260 3031
email: colli...@ukzn.ac.za <mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za>>>> On
2012/03/16 at 01:19 PM, in message <4f6321c3.5000...@aragon.es>,
"Pedro C. Marijuan" <pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es> wrote:
Dear discussants,
I tend to disagree with the motto "information is physical" if taken
too strictly. Obviously if we look "downwards" it is OK, but in the
"upward" direction it is different. Info is not only physical then,
and the dimension of self-construction along the realization of life
cycle has to be entered. Then the signal, the info, has "content" and
"meaning". Otherwise if we insist only in the physical downward
dimension we have just conventional computing/ info processing. My
opinion is that the notion of absence is crucial for advancing in the
upward, but useless in the downward.
By the way, I already wrote about info and the absence theme in a 1994
or 1995 paper in BioSystems...
best
---Pedro
walter.riof...@terra.com.pe escribió:
Thanks John and Kevin to update issues in information, computation,
energy and reality.
I would like point out to other articles more focused in how
coherence and entanglement are used by living systems (far from
thermal equilibrium):
Engel G.S., Calhoun T.R., Read E.L., Ahn T.K., Mancal T., Cheng Y.C.,
Blankenship R.E., Fleming G.R. (2007) Evidence for wavelike energy
transfer through quantum coherence in photosynthetic systems. Nature,
446(7137): 782-786.
Collini E., Scholes G. (2009) Coherent intrachain energy in migration
in a conjugated polymer at room temperature. Science, vol. 323 No.
5912 pp. 369-373.
Gauger E.M., Rieper E., Morton J.J.L., Benjamin S.C., Vedral V.
(2011) Sustained Quantum Coherence and Entanglement in the Avian
Compass. Phys. Rev. Lett., 106: 040503.
Cia, J. et al, (2009) Dynamic entanglement in oscillating
molecules. arXiv:0809.4906v1 [quant-ph]
Sincerely,
Walter
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Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
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Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Avda. Gómez Laguna, 25, Pl. 11ª
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Telf: 34 976 71 3526 (& 6818) Fax: 34 976 71 5554
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
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