Bruce says:
Until the ("sound" or "mechanical") wave in the
slinky propagates down
to lower parts of the hanging slinky, there is no reason/cause for the
lower parts of the slinky to change position, and they don't. And as
long as the lower parts of the slinky are stretched, they will
continue to support the load below them just as they had been doing
before the top of the slinky was released. Hence the bottom of the
slinky will not move until the wave has propagated down far enough
that the slinky just above the bottom is no longer stretched.I says: Yes, exactly! Why would you want to take that perfectly good explanation and insert things like "The bottom part of the slinky doesn't know to move until it gets information indicating that the top part is falling." The idea that you enhance the physical description of the slinky by anthropomorphizing it in that way is weird. (Note, this clearly isn't a Shannon 'information' thing either... at least not as far as I can tell. I cannot see anything analogous to a decision being made after a clarification of uncertainty. There is no analog to signal and noise.)
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