Caro Terry,
le Tue considerazioni sono sempre creative e stimolanti. Per me
l'informazione è in-centrata sulla forma, sullo stato, sulla condizione
topologica di un qualcosa che può considerarsi un "testo" o con-"testo" il
cui significato non può non essere interpretato.Ma esistono cose a questo
mondo che non debbono essere significate o interpretate? La meccanica
quantistica mi spinge a rispondere negativamente. Quindi la relazione tra
in-formazione e significato è strettissima.
Grazie e chiedo scusa per la mia in-form-azione linguistica. Saluti.
Francesco Rizzo.
2015-09-12 22:08 GMT+02:00 Terrence W. DEACON <dea...@berkeley.edu>:
> Reminders of old news.
>
> In defense of Stan: The use of the term "variety" as a generic stand-in
> for Shannon's concept of signal entropy traces to W. Ross Ashby, in his
> excellent effort to demystify information theory and cybernetics for the
> nontechnical reader. It is appropriate, then, to assume that use of the
> term "variety" is agnostic about the form of a particular reference
> distribution being assumed.
>
> About bringing "meaning" into the discussion: As Bob Ulanowicz emphasized
> in his paper "Shannon exonerata" from a couple of years ago, Shannon's
> analysis implicitly includes two complementary ways of understanding
> information: The entropy of a signal channel and the difference or
> reduction of entropy of a received message-bearing signal (that which is in
> effect "missing" in a received message signal). And these have opposite
> signs. This complementarity also indicates the intrinsically relational
> nature of the concept of information. What sign (+/-) to assign information
> became a controversial issue between Shannon and Wiener, especially since
> Wiener wanted to equate information with negentropy. Recognizing this
> complementarity and relationality resolves this. Although what Bob calls
> the "apophatic" aspect of information can be seen to be linked to reference
> and "meaning" these statistical and semiotic properties should not be
> confused. As Loet suggests, we would be wise not to slip into a tendency to
> equate statistical signal features with meaning. Reference, meaning,
> significance, etc. are not intrinsic to a communication medium, but are
> defined relative to an interpretive process, the details of which are for
> the most part entirely bracketed from the analysis. For these reasons,
> although these interpretation-dependent properties are dependent upon
> statistical properties of the medium, they cannot be reduced to them
> without loss.
>
> — Terry
>
> On Sat, Sep 12, 2015 at 7:48 AM, Stanley N Salthe <ssal...@binghamton.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> Reacting to my:
>>
>> S: Well, I have generalized the Shannon concept of information carrying
>> capacity under 'variety'... {variety {information carrying capacity}}.
>> This allows the concept to operate quite generally in evolutionary and
>> ecological discourses. Information, then, if you like, is what is left
>> after a reduction in variety, or after some system choice. Consider dance:
>> we have all the possible conformations of the human body, out of which a
>> few are selected to provide information about the meaning of a dance.
>>
>> Jerry responded:
>>
>> Stan's post is a superb example of how anyone change the semantic meaning
>> of words and talk about personal philosophy in context that ignores the
>> syntactical meaning of the same word such that the exact sciences
>> are generated. Of course, this personal philosophy remains a private
>> conversation.
>>
>> S: I really need a translation of this statement.
>>
>> STAN
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 11:31 AM, Jerry LR Chandler <
>> jerry_lr_chand...@me.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Steven, Pedro and List:
>>>
>>> Two excellent posts!
>>>
>>> Steven: I look forward to your ratiocinations and there connectivity
>>> with symbolic logic.
>>>
>>> It is my view that one of the foundational stumbling blocks to
>>> communication about syntactical information theory (and its exactness!) is
>>> the multi-meanings that emerge from the multiple symbol systems used by the
>>> natural sciences.
>>>
>>> Stan's post is a superb example of how anyone change the semantic
>>> meaning of words and talk about personal philosophy in context that ignores
>>> the syntactical meaning of the same word such that the exact sciences
>>> are generated. Of course, this personal philosophy remains a private
>>> conversation.
>>>
>>> Steven and Pedro (and I), by way of contrast, are seeking a discussion
>>> of public information and the exactness of public information theory.
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>>
>>> Jerry
>>>
>>>
>>> Words to live by:
>>>
>>> *"The union of units unifies the unity of the universe"*
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sep 11, 2015, at 7:22 AM, Pedro C. Marijuan wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear Steven and FIS colleagues,
>>>
>>> Many thanks for this opening text. What you are proposing about a pretty
>>> structured discussion looks a good idea, although it will have to
>>> confront the usually anarchic discussion style of FIS list! Two aspects
>>> of your initial text have caught my attention (apart from those videos
>>> you recommend that I will watch along the weekend).
>>>
>>> First about the concerns of a generation earlier (Shannon, Turing...)
>>> situating information in the intersection between physical science and
>>> engineering. The towering influence of this line of thought, both with
>>> positive and negative overtones, cannot be overestimated. Most attempts
>>> to enlarge informational thought and to extend it to life, economies,
>>> societies, etc. continue to be but a reformulation of the former ideas
>>> with little added value. See one of the last creatures: "Why Information
>>> Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies" (2015), by Cesar
>>> Hidalgo (prof. at MIT).
>>>
>>> In my opinion, the extension of those classic ideas to life are very
>>> fertile from the technological point of view, from the "theory of
>>> molecular machines" for DNA-RNA-protein matching to genomic-proteomic
>>> and other omics' "big data". But all that technobrilliance does not
>>> open per se new avenues in order to produce innovative thought about the
>>> information stuff of human societies. Alternatively we may think that
>>> the accelerated digitalization of our world and the cyborg-symbiosis of
>>> human information and computer information do not demand much brain
>>> teasing, as it is a matter that social evolution is superseding by
>>> itself.
>>>
>>> The point I have ocasionally raised in this list is whether all the new
>>> molecular knowledge about life might teach us about a fundamental
>>> difference in the "way of being in the world" between life and inert
>>> matter (& mechanism & computation)---or not. In the recent compilation
>>> by Plamen and colleagues from the former INBIOSA initiative, I have
>>> argued about that fundamental difference in the intertwining of
>>> communication/self-production, how signaling is strictly caught in the
>>> advancement of a life cycle (see paper "How the living is in the
>>> world"). Life is based on an inusitate informational formula unknown in
>>> inert matter. And the very organization of life provides an original
>>> starting point to think anew about information --of course, not the only
>>> one.
>>>
>>> So, to conclude this "tangent", I find quite exciting the discussion we
>>> are starting now, say from the classical info positions onwards, in
>>> particularly to be compared in some future with another session (in
>>> preparation) with similar ambition but starting from say the
>>> phenomenology of the living. Struggling for a
>>> convergence/complementarity of outcomes would be a cavalier effort.
>>>
>>> All the best--Pedro
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote:
>>>
>>> ...The subject is one that has concerned me ever since I completed my
>>> PhD in 1992. I came away from defending my thesis, essentially on large
>>> scale parallel computation, with the strong intuition that I had disclosed
>>> much more concerning the little that we know, than I had offered either a
>>> theoretical or engineering solution.
>>>
>>> For the curious, a digital copy of this thesis can be found among the
>>> reports of CRI, MINES ParisTech, formerly ENSMP,
>>> http://www.cri.ensmp.fr/classement/doc/A-232.pdf, it is also available
>>> as a paper copy on Amazon.
>>>
>>>
>>> Like many that have been involved in microprocessor and instruction
>>> set/language design, using mathematical methods, we share the physical
>>> concerns of a generation earlier, people like John Von Neumann, Alan
>>> Turing, and Claude Shannon. In other words, a close intersection between
>>> physical science and machine engineering.
>>>
>>>
>>> ...I will then discuss some historical issues in particular referencing
>>> Benjamin Peirce, Albert Einstein and Alan Turing. And finally discuss the
>>> contemporary issues, as I see them, in biophysics, biology, and associated
>>> disciplines, reaching into human and other social constructions, perhaps
>>> touching on cosmology and the extended role of information theory in
>>> mathematical physics...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>>
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>>>
>>> Fis@listas.unizar.es
>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> -------------------------------------------------
>>> 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 (& 6818)
>>> pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
>>> http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
>>> -------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>
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>
>
> --
> Professor Terrence W. Deacon
> University of California, Berkeley
>
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