Dear colleagues,
I read your paper with interest. Since my interest is “information”, I focused on this concept. 1. If I correctly understand, you define information as the 2-log of the number of options. I would be inclined to call this the maximum information content of an act, using H(max) = 2log(N); in which N is the number of options. You do so too at the top of p. 29 (line 1). You organize this under the subtitle “Obervation of information”, whereas I would be inclined to consider this as the specification. An observation of the number of options used in an act would lead to a number lower than the “pure information value”, since not all options are always used. 2. If the information value is equal to the logarithm of the number of options, the concept of information only serves analytically as a transformation rule for expressing the number of options in bits. The two (N of options and n of bits) are coupled to each other in terms of the logarithmic transformation. 3. At several places, one parameter is not logarithmically transformed while others are. For example, at the bottom of p. 25, the 106 people are whole-number counted in the multiplication under Presentation 19. One could argue that who of the one million people acts, adds another dimension to the possible combinations, and should therefore also be brought under the logarithm. Are options exclusively individual, and never social? 4. Is the computational rule in this formula correct given that log(a*b) = log(a) + log(b). You compute 16 bits * log(10); but 16 bits is also the result of taking a logarithm. (The 16 bits represent the number of options of a human body.) Should not you compute the 2log([2^16] * 10)? Or alternatively (16 + log(10))? 5. On p. 28, you move from the conversation of information in isolated systems (line 11) to “the rule of the conversation of information for multiple acts”. But human agency is not an isolated system, in my opinion. We are coupled through our communications which generate non-linear loops. For example, one can expect the other to entertain expectations about oneself like one entertains expectations about the other (Parsons; Luhmann). In sum, the argument that action is only bodily and in relation to artifacts (as isolated systems) seems questionable to me. Or is this your “materialistic” assumption (p. 1: “Matter is potentiality;” …). Why would not the potentiality of matter contain a plurality (multiplication?) of options? It may be difficult to communicate given different starting points. Please, correct me if I misunderstood you. Best, Loet On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 1:33 PM, Pedro C. Marijuan <pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es> wrote: The informational foundation of the act Fernando Flores Lund University fernando.flo...@kultur.lu.se Luis de-Marcos University of Alcalá luis.demar...@uah.es See the whole text at: http://fis.sciforum.net/resources/ Our introducing paper (35 pages) presents a theory that quantifies the informational value of human acts. We argue that living is functioning against entropy and following Erwin Schrödinger we call this tendency “negentropy”. Negentropy is for us the reason behind “order” in social and cultural life. Further, we understand “order” as the condition that the world reaches when the informational value of a series of acts is low. Acting is presented as a set of decisions and choices that create order and this is the key concept of our understanding of the variation from simplicity to complexity in human acts. The most important aim of our theory is to measure non-economic acts trying to understand and explain their importance for society and culture. In their turn such a theory will be also important to understand the similarities and differences between non-economic and economic acts. We follow the classical concept according to which informational value is proportional to the unlikelihood of an act. To capture the richness of the unlikelihood of human acts we use the frequency theory of probability developed by Ludwig von Mises and Karl Popper. Frequency theory of probability allows us to describe a variety of acts from the must most “free” to the least “free” with respect to precedent acts. In short, we characterize human acts in terms of their degree of freedom trying to set up a scale of the information and predictability carried out in human decisions. A taxonomy of acts is also presented, categorizing acts as destructive, mechanical, ludic or vital, according to their degree of freedom (complexity). A formulation to estimate the informational value in individual and collective acts follows. The final part of the paper presents and discuss the consequences of our theory. We argue that artifacts embed information and that modernization can be understood as a one-way process to embed acts of high levels of complexity in simple devices. However, our theory assumes that the total amount of information in the social and cultural world is constant and that Modernity only enables us to redistribute our informational potential. We also advocate for the development of a new science named “agnumetry”, the science that quantify Modernity, measuring the obsolescence of an environment (from agnumy the Greek word for “break”). In our study of human acts we found that acting can also be classified as productive, consumptive and as acts of exchange or economical. The informational value of acts can be the expression of any or all of these acting forms. We outline the relation between the informational value of production and the informational value of consumption (which we call “operative information”), and conclude that these acts define the non-economic value. Sometimes, and depending on the social level of informational value, the acts of exchange emerge defining the informational value of an item at the market, an informational value that assumes the shape of “price” justifying the use of money. -- ------------------------------------------------- Pedro C. Marijuán Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA) Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X 50009 Zaragoza, Spain Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 <tel:%2B34%20976%2071%203526> (& 6818) pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/ ------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis -- Dr. Mark William Johnson Phone: 07786 064505 Email: johnsonm...@gmail.com Blog: http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com
_______________________________________________ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
