Re: Information: a basic physical quantity or rather emergence/supervenience phenomenon

[Russell Standish]

On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 07:16:23PM +0100, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
> On 20.01.2012 05:59 Russell Standish said the following:
> >On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 08:03:41PM +0100, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
> 
> ...
> 
> >>and since information is measured by order, a maximum of order is
> >>conveyed by a maximum of disorder. Obviously, this is a Babylonian
> >>muddle. Somebody or something has confounded our language."
> >>
> >
> >I would say it is many people, rather than just one. I wrote "On
> >Complexity and Emergence" in response to the amount of unmitigated
> >tripe I've seen written about these topics.
> >
> 
> Russel,
> 
> I have read your paper
> 
> http://arxiv.org/abs/nlin/0101006
> 
> It is well written. Could you please apply the principles from your
> paper to a problem on how to determine information in a book (for
> example let us take your book Theory of Nothing)?
> 
> Also do you believe earnestly that this information is equal to the
> thermodynamic entropy of the book? 

These are two quite different questions. To someone who reads my book,
the physical form of the book is unimportant - it could just as easily
be a PDF file or a Kindle e-book as a physical paper copy. The PDF is
a little over 30,000 bytes long. Computing the information content
would be a matter of counting the number 30,000 long byte strings that
generate a recognisable variant of ToN when fed into Acrobat
reader. Then subtract the logarithm (to base 256) of this figure from
30,000 to get the information content in bytes.

This is quite impractical, of course, not to speak of expense in
paying for an army of people to go through 256^30,000 variants to
decide which ones are the true ToN's. An upper bound can be
found by compressing the file - PDFs are already compressed, so we
could estimate the information content as being between 25KB and 30KB (say).

To a physicist, it is the physical form that is important - the fact
that it is made of paper, with a bit of glue to hold it together. The
arrangement of ink on the pages is probably quite unimportant - a book
of the same size and shape, but with blank pages would do just as
well. Even if the arrangement of ink is important, then does
typesetting the book in a different font lead to the same book or a
different book? 

To compute the thermodynamic information, one could imagine performing
a massive molecular dynamics simulation, and then count the number of
states that correspond to the physical book, take the logarithm, then
subtract that from the logarithm of the total possible number of
states the molecules could take on (if completely disassociated).

This is, of course, completely impractical. Computing the complexity
of something is generally NP-hard. But in principle doable.

Now, how does this relate to the thermodynamic entropy of the book? It
turns out that the information computed by the in-principle process
above is equal to the difference between the maximum entropy of the
molecules making up the book (if completely disassociated) and the
thermodynamic entropy, which could be measured in a calorimeter.


> If yes, can one determine the
> information in the book just by means of experimental
> thermodynamics?
> 

One can certainly determine the information of the physical book
(defined however you might like) - but that is not the same as the
information of the abstract book.

> Evgenii
> 
> P.S. Why it is impossible to state that a random string is generated
> by some random generator?
> 

Not sure what you mean, unless you're really asking "Why it is
impossible to state that a random string is generated by some
pseudorandom generator?"

In which case the answer is that a pseudorandom generator is an
algorithm, so by definition doesn't produce random numbers. There is a
lot of knowledge about how to decide if a particular PRNG is
sufficiently random for a particular purpose. No PRNG is sufficiently
random for all purposes - in particular they are very poor for
security purposes, as they're inherently predictable.

Cheers

-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: Intelligence and consciousness

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 22.01.2012 19:52 John Clark said the following:

On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 1:04 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi
wrote:

"I would say though that "something does not happen for a reason"
and

"something happens for no reason" are two completely different
statements. Don't you agree?"



What the hell are you talking about?

John K Clark



I am not sure I understand you. Do you mean that "something does not 
happen for a reason" is equivalent to "something happens for no reason"? 
These have been your two statements in your previous messages. Let me 
contrast them


On 20.01.2012 18:21 John Clark said the following:
...
> but we also know that everything, absolutely positively everything,
> happens for a reason OR it does not happen for a reason.


On 22.01.2012 18:39 John Clark said the following:
...
> What the hell are you talking about? The Big Bang happened for a
> reason OR the Big Bang happened for no reason.

In my understanding the statement "something does not happen for a 
reason" means that there is a reason according to that something does 
not happen. For example, fire in my computer does not happen because the 
isolation and thermal management are good.


On the other hand in my view, "something happens for no reason" means 
completely a different thing, that it just happenes without a reason.


Evgenii

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Re: Intelligence and consciousness

[Stephen P. King]

Hi John,

On 1/21/2012 2:54 PM, John Clark wrote:
On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 3:47 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi > wrote:


" It [the Big Bang] has also happened for a reason?"


" I have no idea, but I do know it happened for a reason or it
did not happen for a reason."


"Well, then you have an infinite progression" 



Yes, but there is nothing illogical about infinite progressions; or 
maybe the Big Bang happened for no reason, nothing illogical about 
that either.


A chain of "why" or "how" questions eventually comes to a end or they 
do not, and there is nothing illogical about either possibility.


"I guess that this contradicts with the whole idea of the Big Bang." 



How do you figure that?

"Or you do not believe in the Big Bang?"


I will passionately believe in the Big Bang with all my heart until 
the instant somebody comes up with a better theory.


  John K Clark

How would you recognize the better theory if you are such a strong 
"believer" in the Big Bang? Any attempt to show you that the current 
theory contains contradictions will only be met with derision, derision 
that will prevent any understanding of an alternative...


Onward!

Stephen

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Re: Intelligence and consciousness

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 1:04 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi  wrote:

"I would say though that "something does not happen for a reason" and
> "something happens for no reason" are two completely different statements.
> Don't you agree?"
>

What the hell are you talking about?

John K Clark

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Re: Information: a basic physical quantity or rather emergence/supervenience phenomenon

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 20.01.2012 05:59 Russell Standish said the following:

On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 08:03:41PM +0100, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:


...


and since information is measured by order, a maximum of order is
conveyed by a maximum of disorder. Obviously, this is a Babylonian
muddle. Somebody or something has confounded our language."



I would say it is many people, rather than just one. I wrote "On
Complexity and Emergence" in response to the amount of unmitigated
tripe I've seen written about these topics.



Russel,

I have read your paper

http://arxiv.org/abs/nlin/0101006

It is well written. Could you please apply the principles from your 
paper to a problem on how to determine information in a book (for 
example let us take your book Theory of Nothing)?


Also do you believe earnestly that this information is equal to the 
thermodynamic entropy of the book? If yes, can one determine the 
information in the book just by means of experimental thermodynamics?


Evgenii

P.S. Why it is impossible to state that a random string is generated by 
some random generator?



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Re: Intelligence and consciousness

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 22.01.2012 18:39 John Clark said the following:

On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 4:09 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi
wrote

"  Yes, but there is nothing illogical about infinite progressions;
or

maybe the Big Bang happened for no reason, nothing illogical
about that either."



" This would contradict with your previous statement: "but we also
know that everything, absolutely positively everything, happens for
a reason OR it does not happen for a reason."




What the hell are you talking about? The Big Bang happened for a
reason OR the Big Bang happened for no reason.


I would say though that "something does not happen for a reason" and 
"something happens for no reason" are two completely different 
statements. Don't you agree?


If however you accept that "something happens for no reason", then I do 
not understand your problems with free will. In the latter case, I 
freely for no reason just do something, what is the problem then?


Evgenii





" A chain of "why" or "how" questions eventually comes to a end or
they do

not, and there is nothing illogical about either possibility."



" Well, it would be good if you explain how such a statement agrees
with

your previous statement, quoted above. In my view, they contradict
with each other.



What the hell are you talking about? Only 2 things can happen to a
chain of "what is the reason for this?" questions, the chain comes to
a end OR the chain does not come to a end. If it doesn't come to a
end then everything in the chain happened for a reason, if it does
come to a end then something happened for no reason. Come on now this
isn't rocket science.

" I thought that the Big Bang theory implies that the Universe is
not

eternal, that is, there was the time zero when everything has
started."



Maybe, maybe not. Most think the Big Bang existed but there is debate
if there was anything before that; that controversy is at the very
frontiers of science thus although many may be certain about the
answer nobody knows; at least not yet.

John K Clark



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Re: Turing Test and Female Hormones

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

> When Jaron Lanier suggests that we are not gadget, he shows that he
> has a reductionist conception of machine. Turing, Post, and others
> have been the pioneer in the research which shows that such a
> reductionist view of machine cannot be rationally defended.

Lanier's book is not a scientific book in the strict sense. He discusses 
rather what our society should look like in the future. He claims that 
open code/open culture leads to cybernetic totalism and fights against it.


Evgenii


On 22.01.2012 18:06 Bruno Marchal said the following:


On 22 Jan 2012, at 14:10, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:


On 16.01.2012 10:24 Bruno Marchal said the following:

...



Note also that Turing invented his test to avoid the
philosophical hard issue of consciousness. In a nutshell Turing
defines "consciousness" by "having an intelligent behavior". The
Turing test is equivalent with a type of "no zombie" principle.



On 16.01.2012 11:20 Bruno Marchal said the following:


On 15 Jan 2012, at 09:13, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:


What about the Turing test for a person in that state to check
if he still has consciousness?


As I said in another post, the very idea of the Turing test
consists in avoiding completely the notion of consciousness. I do
disagree with Turing on this. We can build a theory of
consciousness, including, like with comp, a theory having
refutable consequences. Turing was still influenced by
Vienna-like positivism.

Bruno


Bruno, below there are quotes from Jaron Lanier on Turing Test from
 his book You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, 2010
(http://www.jaronlanier.com/)

Evgenii

From a chapter The Apple Falls Again.

"The second thing to know about Turing is that he was gay at a time
 when it was illegal to be gay. British authorities, thinking they
were doing the most compassionate thing, coerced him into a quack
medical treatment that was supposed to correct his homosexuality.
It consisted, bizarrely, of massive infusions of female hormones."


I have still some problem finding reliable information of what they
exactly did to Turing. But it was obviously not a kind treatment.




"In order to understand how someone could have come up with that
plan, you have to remember that before computers came along, the
steam engine was a preferred metaphor for understanding human
nature. All that sexual pressure was building up and causing the
machine to malfunction, so the opposite essence, the female kind,
ought to balance it out and reduce the pressure. This story should
serve as a cautionary tale. The common use of computers, as we
understand them today, as sources for models and metaphors of
ourselves is probably about as reliable as the use of the steam
engine was back then."


I think that we are steam engine. It is not a metaphor. We are also
Universal Turing Machine. Being a steam engine is just a matter of
implementation, and of working in a thermodynamically driven
environment. Being universal is a deeper feature of our existence. We
might be more than that, but we still cannot even define what that
would mean, precisely. We don't find any evidence for the needed
special sort of infinities making our mind non Turing emulable
locally.





"Turing developed breasts and other female characteristics and
became terribly depressed. He committed suicide by lacing an apple
with cyanide in his lab and eating it. Shortly before his death, he
 presented the world with a spiritual idea, which must be evaluated
 separately from his technical achievements. This is the famous
Turing test. It is extremely rare for a genuinely new spiritual
idea to appear, and it is yet another example of Turing"s genius
that he came up with one."


I love Turing. But Jaron seems to exaggerate a bit. My reading of it
is that it is just a non zombie assumption, and that's nice FAPP. But
it is still a naturalist escape of the mind-body problem on the
conceptual level. I am not astonished, I have met all my life a frank
animosity by variate scientists even just on the word "mind". It
takes time for humans to get a scientific attitude on that. Turing's
paper is a progress in that direction, but the Turing test is far
from being a last answer in the debate, even if it is the last answer
in practice. Emil Post did see the shadow of the reversal
physics/theology, and the failure of naturalism, but in a footnote to
his "mystical" anticipation paper/notes (that you can find in Davis'
The Undecidable) he told us that he changed his mind on this after
discussing with Turing, which defended naturalism.





"Turing presented his new offering in the form of a thought
experiment, based on a popular Victorian parlor game. A man and a
woman hide, and a judge is asked to determine which is which by
relying only on the texts of notes passed back and forth."

"Turing replaced the woman with a computer. Can the judge tell
which is the man? If not, is the computer conscious? Intelligent?
Does it deserve equal rights?"

"It"s impossible for us to know what role

Re: Intelligence and consciousness

[John Clark]

On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 4:09 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi  wrote

"  Yes, but there is nothing illogical about infinite progressions; or
>> maybe the Big Bang happened for no reason, nothing illogical about that
>> either."
>>
>
> " This would contradict with your previous statement: "but we also know
> that everything, absolutely positively everything, happens for a reason OR
> it does not happen for a reason."



What the hell are you talking about? The Big Bang happened for a reason OR
the Big Bang happened for no reason.


 " A chain of "why" or "how" questions eventually comes to a end or they do
> not, and there is nothing illogical about either possibility."
>

" Well, it would be good if you explain how such a statement agrees with
> your previous statement, quoted above. In my view, they contradict with
> each other.


What the hell are you talking about? Only 2 things can happen to a chain of
"what is the reason for this?" questions, the chain comes to a end OR the
chain does not come to a end. If it doesn't come to a end then everything
in the chain happened for a reason, if it does come to a end then something
happened for no reason. Come on now this isn't rocket science.

" I thought that the Big Bang theory implies that the Universe is not
> eternal, that is, there was the time zero when everything has started."
>

Maybe, maybe not. Most think the Big Bang existed but there is debate if
there was anything before that; that controversy is at the very frontiers
of science thus although many may be certain about the answer nobody knows;
at least not yet.

 John K Clark

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Re: Turing Test and Female Hormones

[Bruno Marchal]

On 22 Jan 2012, at 14:10, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:


On 16.01.2012 10:24 Bruno Marchal said the following:

...

>
> Note also that Turing invented his test to avoid the philosophical
> hard issue of consciousness. In a nutshell Turing defines
> "consciousness" by "having an intelligent behavior". The Turing test
> is equivalent with a type of "no zombie" principle.
>

On 16.01.2012 11:20 Bruno Marchal said the following:
>
> On 15 Jan 2012, at 09:13, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>>
>> What about the Turing test for a person in that state to check if
>> he still has consciousness?
>
> As I said in another post, the very idea of the Turing test consists
> in avoiding completely the notion of consciousness. I do disagree
> with Turing on this. We can build a theory of consciousness,
> including, like with comp, a theory having refutable consequences.
> Turing was still influenced by Vienna-like positivism.
>
> Bruno

Bruno, below there are quotes from Jaron Lanier on Turing Test from  
his book You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, 2010 (http://www.jaronlanier.com/ 
)


Evgenii

From a chapter The Apple Falls Again.

"The second thing to know about Turing is that he was gay at a time  
when it was illegal to be gay. British authorities, thinking they  
were doing the most compassionate thing, coerced him into a quack  
medical treatment that was supposed to correct his homosexuality. It  
consisted, bizarrely, of massive infusions of female hormones."


I have still some problem finding reliable information of what they  
exactly did to Turing. But it was obviously not a kind treatment.





"In order to understand how someone could have come up with that  
plan, you have to remember that before computers came along, the  
steam engine was a preferred metaphor for understanding human  
nature. All that sexual pressure was building up and causing the  
machine to malfunction, so the opposite essence, the female kind,  
ought to balance it out and reduce the pressure. This story should  
serve as a cautionary tale. The common use of computers, as we  
understand them today, as sources for models and metaphors of  
ourselves is probably about as reliable as the use of the steam  
engine was back then."


I think that we are steam engine. It is not a metaphor. We are also  
Universal Turing Machine. Being a steam engine is just a matter of  
implementation, and of working in a thermodynamically driven  
environment. Being universal is a deeper feature of our existence.
We might be more than that, but we still cannot even define what that  
would mean, precisely. We don't find any evidence for the needed  
special sort of infinities making our mind non Turing emulable locally.






"Turing developed breasts and other female characteristics and  
became terribly depressed. He committed suicide by lacing an apple  
with cyanide in his lab and eating it. Shortly before his death, he  
presented the world with a spiritual idea, which must be evaluated  
separately from his technical achievements. This is the famous  
Turing test. It is extremely rare for a genuinely new spiritual idea  
to appear, and it is yet another example of Turing"s genius that he  
came up with one."


I love Turing. But Jaron seems to exaggerate a bit. My reading of it  
is that it is just a non zombie assumption, and that's nice FAPP. But  
it is still a naturalist escape of the mind-body problem on the  
conceptual level. I am not astonished, I have met all my life a frank  
animosity by variate scientists even just on the word "mind". It takes  
time for humans to get a scientific attitude on that. Turing's paper  
is a progress in that direction, but the Turing test is far from being  
a last answer in the debate, even if it is the last answer in practice.
Emil Post did see the shadow of the reversal physics/theology, and the  
failure of naturalism, but in a footnote to his "mystical"  
anticipation paper/notes (that you can find in Davis' The Undecidable)  
he told us that he changed his mind on this after discussing with  
Turing, which defended naturalism.






"Turing presented his new offering in the form of a thought  
experiment, based on a popular Victorian parlor game. A man and a  
woman hide, and a judge is asked to determine which is which by  
relying only on the texts of notes passed back and forth."


"Turing replaced the woman with a computer. Can the judge tell which  
is the man? If not, is the computer conscious? Intelligent? Does it  
deserve equal rights?"


"It"s impossible for us to know what role the torture Turing was  
enduring at the time played in his formulation of the test. But it  
is undeniable that one of the key figures in the defeat of fascism  
was destroyed, by our side, after the war, because he was gay. No  
wonder his imagination pondered the rights of strange creatures."


Sure.



"When Turing died, software was still in such an early state that no  
one knew what a mess it would inevitably become as it g

Turing Test and Female Hormones

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 16.01.2012 10:24 Bruno Marchal said the following:

...

>
> Note also that Turing invented his test to avoid the philosophical
> hard issue of consciousness. In a nutshell Turing defines
> "consciousness" by "having an intelligent behavior". The Turing test
> is equivalent with a type of "no zombie" principle.
>

On 16.01.2012 11:20 Bruno Marchal said the following:
>
> On 15 Jan 2012, at 09:13, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>>
>> What about the Turing test for a person in that state to check if
>> he still has consciousness?
>
> As I said in another post, the very idea of the Turing test consists
> in avoiding completely the notion of consciousness. I do disagree
> with Turing on this. We can build a theory of consciousness,
> including, like with comp, a theory having refutable consequences.
> Turing was still influenced by Vienna-like positivism.
>
> Bruno

Bruno, below there are quotes from Jaron Lanier on Turing Test from his 
book You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, 2010 (http://www.jaronlanier.com/)


Evgenii

From a chapter The Apple Falls Again.

"The second thing to know about Turing is that he was gay at a time when 
it was illegal to be gay. British authorities, thinking they were doing 
the most compassionate thing, coerced him into a quack medical treatment 
that was supposed to correct his homosexuality. It consisted, bizarrely, 
of massive infusions of female hormones."


"In order to understand how someone could have come up with that plan, 
you have to remember that before computers came along, the steam engine 
was a preferred metaphor for understanding human nature. All that sexual 
pressure was building up and causing the machine to malfunction, so the 
opposite essence, the female kind, ought to balance it out and reduce 
the pressure. This story should serve as a cautionary tale. The common 
use of computers, as we understand them today, as sources for models and 
metaphors of ourselves is probably about as reliable as the use of the 
steam engine was back then."


"Turing developed breasts and other female characteristics and became 
terribly depressed. He committed suicide by lacing an apple with cyanide 
in his lab and eating it. Shortly before his death, he presented the 
world with a spiritual idea, which must be evaluated separately from his 
technical achievements. This is the famous Turing test. It is extremely 
rare for a genuinely new spiritual idea to appear, and it is yet another 
example of Turing"s genius that he came up with one."


"Turing presented his new offering in the form of a thought experiment, 
based on a popular Victorian parlor game. A man and a woman hide, and a 
judge is asked to determine which is which by relying only on the texts 
of notes passed back and forth."


"Turing replaced the woman with a computer. Can the judge tell which is 
the man? If not, is the computer conscious? Intelligent? Does it deserve 
equal rights?"


"It"s impossible for us to know what role the torture Turing was 
enduring at the time played in his formulation of the test. But it is 
undeniable that one of the key figures in the defeat of fascism was 
destroyed, by our side, after the war, because he was gay. No wonder his 
imagination pondered the rights of strange creatures."


"When Turing died, software was still in such an early state that no one 
knew what a mess it would inevitably become as it grew. Turing imagined 
a pristine, crystalline form of existence in the digital realm, and I 
can imagine it might have been a comfort to imagine a form of life apart 
from the torments of the body and the politics of sexuality. It's 
notable that it is the woman who is replaced by the computer, and that 
Turing's suicide echoes Eve's fall".


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Re: Information: a basic physical quantity or rather emergence/supervenience phenomenon

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 21.01.2012 22:03 Evgenii Rudnyi said the following:

On 21.01.2012 21:01 meekerdb said the following:

On 1/21/2012 11:23 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 21.01.2012 20:00 meekerdb said the following:

On 1/21/2012 4:25 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:




...


2) If physicists say that information is the entropy, they
must take it literally and then apply experimental
thermodynamics to measure information. This however seems
not to happen.


It does happen. The number of states, i.e. the information,
available from a black hole is calculated from it's
thermodynamic properties as calculated by Hawking. At a more
conventional level, counting the states available to molecules
in a gas can be used to determine the specific heat of the gas
and vice-verse. The reason the thermodynamic measures and the
information measures are treated separately in engineering
problems is that the information that is important to
engineering is infinitesimal compared to the information stored
in the microscopic states. So the latter is considered only in
terms of a few macroscopic averages, like temperature and
pressure.

Brent


Doesn't this mean that by information engineers means something
different as physicists?


I don't think so. A lot of the work on information theory was done
by communication engineers who were concerned with the effect of
thermal noise on bandwidth. Of course engineers specialize more
narrowly than physics, so within different fields of engineering
there are different terminologies and different measurement
methods for things that are unified in basic physics, e.g. there
are engineers who specialize in magnetism and who seldom need to
reflect that it is part of EM, there are others who specialize in
RF and don't worry about "static" fields.


Do you mean that engineers use experimental thermodynamics to
determine information?

>
> Evgenii

To be concrete. This is for example a paper from control

J.C. Willems and H.L. Trentelman
H_inf control in a behavioral context: The full information case
IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control
Volume 44, pages 521-536, 1999
http://homes.esat.kuleuven.be/~jwillems/Articles/JournalArticles/1999.4.pdf

The term information is there but the entropy not. Could you please 
explain why? Or alternatively could you please point out to papers where 
engineers use the concept of the equivalence between the entropy and 
information?


Evgenii




Brent



Evgenii







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