On 26 Mar 2017, at 16:30, Bob Logan wrote:
Hello Krassimir - I agree with the sentiments you expressed - they
seem to parallel my thoughts.
I am often puzzled by the use of the term ‘information’ in the way
it is often used by physicists re the info of material objects . The
way the term information is used in physics such as Wheelers its
from bits does not conform to my understanding of information as a
noun describing the process of informing.
Wheeler used "information" in the sense of Shannon. It is a
quantitative measure of something, a degree of of surprise, where a
subject can be informed of one bit of information by letting it able
to distinguish two things, like 0 and 1. It is a sort of "atom" of
digital information, and it has today a sort of cousin in quantum
mechanics. It occurs also in arithmetic, because classical universal
machine, nor the quantum one, can know which universal machine emulate
them.
How can abiotic matter be informed as it cannot make any choices
and hence cannot be informed.
Why? It can imprint the difference which makes the difference. Choice
are relative to our ability to predict ourself, which we can't. "We"
are not that abiotic matter, but abiotic matter can support
determinatically "our" choices. But "our" is fuzzify by belonging to
infinitely many histories. Consciousness, the first person experience
is a selector.
Living organisms make choices and use information to make those
choices for all living creatures from bacteria to humans including
physicists :-).
And very plausibly mathematicians too :)
And the numbers too, and all objects in any Turing universal system.
The only information involved in the uses by physicists describing
our universe of the word information is that associated with
physicists becoming informed of what is happening in the universe
they observe.
Becoming informed in what happens in their brain, and assuming there
is some most probable universal computation or neighborhood. But
assuming mechanism, below our substitution level, there is an infinity
of universal computations "in competition".
I am happy that they want to discuss this info but I believe there
is a need to distinguish between info (biotic) and info (abiotic) as
used in physics.
Is that not the difference between un code i and the function phi_i
that it describes for some universal machine u?
The use of a single word information for both categories is
confusing, at least it is for me.
It is a problem in the interdisciplinary fields. The solution consists
in making clear which notion we use, and be careful in not mixing the
different meaning of the terms. They can sometimes be related. In
computer science: information is used in Shannon sense most of time,
and information with meaning is handled by mathematical semantic,
where a reality (alas called "model" by logicians) is "modeled" by
mathematical structures, like groups, fields, (N, +, *), Hilbert
space, but in AI it can be the plausible neighborhood of a robot.
This ambiguity reminds me of Shannon's use of the term entropy to
define his notion of information having taken the advice of Von
Neumann. A story is told that Shannon did not know what to call his
measure and von Neumann advised him to call it entropy because
nobody knows what it means and that it would therefore give Shannon
an advantage in any debate (Campbell, Jeremy 1982, p. 32
Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language, and Life. New York:
Simon and Schuster. ). Shannon defined information in such a way
that he admitted was not necessarily about meaning. Information
without meaning has no meaning for me.
I agree with you, sometimes "information" is used ambiguously. But I
think we can solve that issue in making clear which sense we use in
this or that context.
Information without meaning has some meaning for Shannon, though, and
for me too. In my approach, it plays some role, as you get one bit of
Shannon information in a self-duplicating experience, but I use al lot
information-with-meaning too. "meaning " refers to some reality we, or
the machine/number in consideration, bet on. We can define it for
simpler machine than us, but can't for machine like us, of or
equivalent complexity. Computer science (mathematical logic) seems to
explain why the meaning of "meaning" might be necessary deluding,
preventing the machine from some reductionist theories.
Note that the term machine is ambiguous. Sometimes it refers to the
body, sometimes to the behavior, sometimes to the possible subjecst
which that machine-body makes it possible for him/her to manifest
itself relatively to the possible universal machines emulating
them.The can can't drink the beer, indeed.
Kind regards to everybody, ... er ... no, to every-soul :)
Bruno Marchal
ULB-IRIDIA
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
______________________
Robert K. Logan
Prof. Emeritus - Physics - U. of Toronto
Fellow University of St. Michael's College
Chief Scientist - sLab at OCAD
http://utoronto.academia.edu/RobertKLogan
www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Logan5/publications
https://www.physics.utoronto.ca/people/homepages/logan/
On Mar 26, 2017, at 5:39 AM, Krassimir Markov <mar...@foibg.com>
wrote:
Dear Brian, Arturo, Karl, Alex, Lars-Goran, Gyuri, and FIS colleagues,
Thank you for your remarks!
What is important is that every theory has its own understanding of
the concepts it uses.
For “foreigners”, theirs meaning may be strange or unknown.
Some times, concepts of one theory contradict to corresponded
concepts from other theory.
For years, I have met many different definitions of concept
“information” and many more kinds of its use.
From materialistic up to weird point of view...
To clear my own understanding, I shall give you a simple example:
CAN THE CAN DRINK BEER ?
CAN THE CAN EXCHANGE BEER WITH THE GLASS ?
The can is used by humans for some goals, for instance to store some
beer for a given period.
But the can itself “could not understand” its own functions and what
the can can do with beer it contains.
All its functionality is a human’s consciousness model.
Can cannot exchange beer with the glass if there are no human
activity or activity of additional devices invented by humans to
support this.
Further:
CAN THE ARTIFICIAL LEG WALK ?
You know the answer ... Human with an artificial leg can walk ...
All functionality of artificial leg is a result from human’s
consciousness modeling and invention.
In addition:
IS THE “PHYSICAL INFORMATION” INFORMATION ?
If it is, the first question is how to measure the quantity and
quality of such “information” and who can do this?
I prefer the answer “NO” – “physical information” is a concept which
means something else but not “information” as it is in my
understanding.
From my point of view, “physical information” is a kind of
reflection (see “Theory of reflections” of T.Pavlov).
Every reflection may be assumed as information iff (if and only if)
there exist a subjective information expectation to be resolved by
given reflection.
For physical information this low is not satisfied. Because of this,
I prefer to call this phenomenon simply “a reflection”.
And so on ...
Finally:
Human been invented too much kinds of prostheses including ones for
our intellectual functionalities, i.e. many different kinds of
electronic devices which, in particular, can generate some
electrical, light, etc. impulses, which we assume as “information”;
usually a combination of impulses we assume as s structure to be
recognized by us as “information”.
A special kind of prostheses are Robots. They have some autonomous
functionalities but are still very far from living consciousness.
The level of complexity of robot’s consciousness is far of human’s
one. Someone may say that robots understand and exchange
“information”, but still they only react on incoming signals
following the instructions given by humans. Theirs functioning is
similar to human ones but only similar. They may recognize some
structures of signals and exchange such ones with other robots or
living creatures. Maybe someone wants to call this “information
exchange”, but, after Shannon, I call this “sending and/or receiving
signals”. And automatic reaction to signals.
One may say, the Robot (Computer) memory contains information but
really it does not contain anything – it has its own structure which
can be changed temporally of permanently by external electrical
impulses.
Is the human memory the same – a structure which can be changed
temporally of permanently by external or internal signals? I think –
yes, It is!
What is the difference? Why we may say that the living creatures
process information but not living couldn’t?
The answer is: because the living creatures may create and resolve
the “information expectation” with very high level of complexity.
Maybe in the future robots will can do it ...
Such robot I call “INFOS”. It will be artificial living creature.
Possibly with some biological elements.
It will be very interesting and amazing to see how the can can drink
beer :-) And very dangerous – where the beer will be kept if the can
can drink it?
I hope, now it is clear why I assert that (now!) non-living objects
COULD NOT “exchange information”.
Friendly regards
Krassimir
From: Karl Javorszky
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2017 8:24 PM
To: Alex Hankey
Cc: Krassimir Markov ; Arturo Tozzi ; FIS Webinar
Subject: Re: [Fis] non-living objects COULD NOT “exchange information”
1) Let me second to the point Alex raises:
machines, computers, do exchange information. It would be against
cultural conventions to say that the notification that the
refrigerator sends to your phone's app "to-do-list" of the content
"milk only 0.5 liter available" is not an information.
The signals my car's pressure sensor sends to my dashboard, saying
"tire pressure front right wheel is critically low" is a clear case
of information, whether I read it or not.
2) Let me add to the point Alex states, namely that the "form of
information that I presented to FiS a year ago offers the only
scientifically based,mathematical physics form of 'information' that
I have personally seen in the scientific literature", (Alex, will
you please restate in the present context, for the present
discussion, your formulation) the following:
I have given in my work "Natural orders - de ordinibus
naturalibus" (ISBN 9783990571378) the following definition of the
term "information":
8.3.3.3 Information is a description of what is not the
case. [Let x = ak. This is a statement, no information contained.
Let x = ak and k <symbol for is_included_in> {1,2,...,k,...,n}. This
statement contains the information k <symbol for
is_not_included_in>{1,2,...,k-1,k+1,...,n}.]
(Sorry for the included & not-included symbols not making it thru
the simplified text editor in use here.)
Karl
2017-03-24 18:51 GMT+01:00 Alex Hankey <alexhan...@gmail.com>:
BUT, in common parlance, computers and mobile phones 'exchange
information' (in the abstract, digital sense) all the time.
Including this email.
If you wish to cleanly restrict yourself to semantic content, the
the form of information that I presented to FiS a year ago offers
the only scientifically based,mathematical physics form of
'information' that I have personally seen in the scientific
literature.
Best wishes,
Alex Hankey
On 24 March 2017 at 15:25, Krassimir Markov <mar...@foibg.com> wrote:
Dear Arturo and FIS Colleagues,
Let me remember that:
The basic misunderstanding that non-living objects could
“exchange information” leads to many principal theoretical as
well as psychological faults.
For instance, photon could exchange only energy and/or reflections !
Sorry for this n-th my remark ...
Friendly greetings
Krassimir
From: tozziart...@libero.it
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2017 4:52 PM
To: fis@listas.unizar.es
Subject: [Fis] I: Re: Is information truly important?
Dear Lars-Göran,
I prefer to use asap my second FIS bullet, therefore it will be
my last FIS mail for the next days.
First of all, in special relativity, an observer is NOT by
definition a material object that can receive and store incoming
energy from other objects.
In special relativity, an observer is a frame of reference from
which a set of objects or events are being measured. Speaking of
an observer is not specifically hypothesizing an individual
person who is experiencing events, but rather it is a particular
mathematical context which objects and events are to be evaluated
from. The effects of special relativity occur whether or not
there is a "material object that can recieve and store incoming
energy from other objects" within the inertial reference frame to
witness them.
Furthermore, take a photon (traveling at speed light) that
crosses a cosmic zone close to the sun. The photon
"detects" (and therefore can interact with) a huge sun surface
(because of its high speed), while we humans on the Earth
"detect" (and can interact with) a much smaller sun surface.
Therefore, the photon may exchange more information with the sun
than the humans on the Earth: both the photon and the humans
interact with the same sun, but they "detect" different surfaces,
and therefore they may exchange with the sun a different
information content.
If we also take into account that the photon detects an almost
infinite, fixed time, this means once again that it can exchange
much more information with the sun than we humans can.
In sum, once again, information does not seem to be a physical
quantity, rather just a very subjective measure, depending on the
speed and of the time of the "observer".
Arturo Tozzi
AA Professor Physics, University North Texas
Pediatrician ASL Na2Nord, Italy
Comput Intell Lab, University Manitoba
http://arturotozzi.webnode.it/
----Messaggio originale----
Da: "Lars-Göran Johansson" <lars-goran.johans...@filosofi.uu.se>
Data: 24/03/2017 14.50
A: "tozziart...@libero.it"<tozziart...@libero.it>
Ogg: Re: [Fis] Is information truly important?
24 mars 2017 kl. 13:15 skrev tozziart...@libero.it:
Dear Fisers,
a big doubt...
We know that the information of a 3D black hole is proportional
to its 2D horizon, according to the Bekenstein-Hawking equations.
However, an hypotetical observer traveling at light speed (who
watches a black hole at rest) detects a very large black hole
horizon, due to Einstein's equations.
Therefore, he detects more information from the black hole than
an observer at rest, who sees a smaller horizon…
An observer is by definition a material object that can recieve
and store incoming energy from other objects. Since it requires
infinite energy to accelerate even a slighest object to the
velocity of light, no observer can travel at the speed of light.
That means that your thought experiment is based in inconsistent
assumptions and no vaild conclusions from them can be drawn.
Lars-Göran Johansson
In sum, information does not seem to be a physical quantity,
rather just a very subjective measure...
Arturo Tozzi
AA Professor Physics, University North Texas
Pediatrician ASL Na2Nord, Italy
Comput Intell Lab, University Manitoba
http://arturotozzi.webnode.it/
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lars-goran.johans...@filosofi.uu.se
0701-679178
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