Interesting. Is this something like if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around.....does it make a sound? If nobody experiences the event, what was the event? Was it an event?
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Brad McCormick, Ed.D. Sent: Saturday, April 29, 2006 8:59 AM To: Ed Weick Cc: Karen Watters Cole; Futurework Subject: Re: [Futurework] JKG: Smith vs Darwin and The Predator State Ed Weick wrote: > A recent Scientific American (Special Addition, Feb 20, 2006) contains > an article by physicist by Jacob Bekenstein entitled "Information in > the Holographic Universe". The article begins with: > > Ask anybody what the physical world is made of, and you are likely > to be told "matter and energy." Yet if we have learned anything > from engineering, biology and physics, information is just as > crucial an ingredient. The robot at the automobile factory is > supplied with metal and plastic but can make nothing useful > without copious instructions telling it which part to weld to what > and so on. A ribosome in a cell in your body is supplied with > amino acid building blocks and is powered by energy released by > the conversion of ATP to ADP, but it can synthesize no proteins > without the information brought to it from the DNA in the cell’s > nucleus. Likewise, a century of developments in physics has taught > us that information is a crucial player in physical systems and > processes. Indeed, a current trend, initiated by John A. Wheeler > of Princeton University, is to regard the physical world as made > of information, with energy and matter as incidentals. > > I find this line of argument compelling. But it does raise the > question of where the information that has shaped the universe and > ourselves came from. It was there in the big bang, I suppose. I'm not > arguing intelligent design, but I do wonder how it got there. > Information, so far, is only a part-aspect of the living event of a person entertaining (or at least being beset by...) that information. As Husserl stressed, Descartes' "cogito ergo sum" was a kind of distraction: it is always the cast that: Cogito cogitationes, i.e., I think *something*, and directly relevant here, what is that something? *information*. Show me information without its being part of some person being [mis]informed. The universe as a whole is only one side of the living event of human experience. I [you, he, she, other...] experience the universe. Go try to find an unexperienced universe, i.e., try to experience not experiencing. This bears repeating, because people almost never seem to "get it", even people with PhDs. And it has something to do with work: Work is always the living experience of an experiencing person, even though it can *also* be the object of F.W. Taylor's, Dennis Kosloswki's or anybody else's living experience. Machines do not work, although they obviously can accomplish transformations of energy and material that persons fined useful [or find oppressive]. There is no such thing as information, except as an abstraction (like there are stock market trends, etc.). There are informed persons [an informed person is the living whole of information contents and their attitudes toward/deployments of... said contents]. There are misinformed persons. And, of course, there are also informers and those informed on. \brad mccormick > Ed > > ----- Original Message ----- > *From:* Karen Watters Cole <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > *To:* [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]> > *Sent:* Thursday, April 27, 2006 2:17 PM > *Subject:* [Futurework] JKG: Smith vs Darwin and The Predator State > > Two by James K. Galbraith, first from Winter 2005, the second from > the current issue of Mother Jones. > > *Smith vs Darwin: *Like Intelligent Design, the idea of the > Invisible Hand stubbornly persists in the face of overwhelming > evidence. > > In each generation since Veblen, some economists have fought for > evolutionary ideas, but the ID types keep coming back. Today their > most lethal champions call themselves the "School of Law and > Economics." This group holds that markets are self-policing, that > fraud is really impossible except where publicly provided > insurance creates "moral hazard." Get rid of regulations, they > believe, and we won't much need the SEC, the FTC, and the Justice > Department to protect us from Enron, Tyco, and WorldCom. Now that > John Roberts has taken over at the Supreme Court, we'll see how > this touching faith works out. > > Modern economics resembles religion in other, more prosaic ways. > The American Economic Association (AEA) runs like a priesthood; > its flagship /Review/ is as unreadable as a Dead Sea Scroll. And > when heretics gather in the Association for Evolutionary Economics > and elsewhere, Inquisitors keep after them. (At the annual > academic meetings, the AEA sends seat counters to the heretical > sessions, looking for groups small enough to cut from its rolls.) > To borrow an old line from Robert Kuttner, the evolutionists are > "a tiny and despised sect that stubbornly refuses to disappear." > > Yet we're a threat. For Darwin cannot be erased; his material, > randomized, godless view of change informs every aspect of the way > real scientists investigate physical, biological, and social > problems, from cosmology to the study of political or > technological change. The new mathematics of chaos and complexity > are evolutionary, for they study how simple determinate processes > can give rise to lifelike diversity. These techniques yield many > new insights into the origins of pattern and structure. (For a fun > example, download John Conway's "Game of Life" and have a look at > what it can do.) One day, they may break through even in > economics, and Veblen's long-delayed evolutionary revolution will > be complete. > > http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2005/12/smith_darwin.html > > *The Predator State: *Enron, Tyco, WorldCom... and the U.S. > government? > http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2006/05/predator_state.html > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [email protected] > http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [email protected] > http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework > -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) <![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
