Wanted to reply to Glen’s reading below, which is also the way I see it. I don’t worry about keeping track of signs and factors of 2 in drafting-stages of these conversations; that is a tedious chore to be done later if one thinks there is something to say that warrants it.
But if one did want to keep track of signs, I think in several sentences below where Glen is talking about the presence of limitations’ reducing the allowed variability in some distribution, we could say we use one or another _entropy_ measure to quantify the reduction in likely variability. To the extent that one tries to characterize _information_ as Shannon did — a measure of how much ambiguity in a sample is reduced by having some bit of knowledge that rules out variations — then the reductions in entropy of the constrained ensemble relative to its prior would be called a gain of information in moving to the posterior from the prior. So without worrying about the zero-point for either of these measures, or their resulting absolute signs, in many settings one would talk of the change of information’s being positive when the change of the corresponding entropy is negative. Best, Eric > On Jul 21, 2020, at 12:32 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <[email protected]> wrote: > > I don't know quite how to parse this. By "original gen-phen distinction", do > you simply mean DNA->RNA? What do you mean by "original"? And would reverse > transcription imply information flow from phen to gen? > > FWIW, when I talk about downward causation, I'm not assuming irreducible > phenomena (strong emergentism). Mostly, I think of landscape change. Just to > prove I am reading it [⍢], I'll cite EricS' (and Morowitz') hierarchy of > matter phases, wherein as the temperature goes down, prior freezes set the > context for what *could* be the case for future freezes. That's a macro thing > constraining the micro thing. It doesn't seem so much to me like "information > traveling" as limited freedom ... a weak kind of forcing structure. But if we > talk in terms of variability/uncertainty/wiggle, then it sounds a bit like a > *loss* of information. Downward causation from macro to micro might map well > to a reduction in the information content of the micro. There would have to > be some transient, though. Before the macro constraints were strong enough, > the information content was high. After they are strong enough, the micro > content is lower. Is a reduction in information, itself, information? 2nd > order information? > > > [⍢] [In]Comprehension notwithstanding. > > On 7/17/20 5:35 PM, [email protected] wrote: >> Notice, FWIW, that the original gen-phen distinction was understood to >> forbid any information traveling from phen to gen. > > -- > ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > un/subscribe > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fmailman%2flistinfo%2ffriam_redfish.com&c=E,1,ZNP1tz-0Z0qfd4-CCh71GqWpYp61K4uZ8t9wpGe-Uc-LQeoM_4mIX2IyLW4b4mGRkXxkMgW1syTOt9AimS_o1KUwB4uGP52fbZjjAPPyEhQQ90p1G5pW6DhXMAA,&typo=1 > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2ffriam-comic.blogspot.com%2f&c=E,1,E4pFyMPspcF2ph5UrxoU61AuOpepqpChIhN0GRI9eik3tgvZI5jbRAqf8DeXGmzzDkBEzKFMYWOhkzb1C7c2dBg_81_GFdx2F84i_tJAilwrlkYhx5s,&typo=1 > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
