Re: [Fis] To FIS, Francesco and Bob - the concept of "reflection".

[Krassimir Markov]

Caro Francesco,

Ho letto la tua lettera con grande attenzione e comprensione. Io accettare 
completamente la sorveglianza, che l'informazione è diversa in sistemi diversi. 

Questo è esattamente l'essenza della teoria di riflessione, che descrive i 
molti livelli di riflessione - fisici, chimici, meccanici, biologici, 
psicologici, sociali ... 

Quindi a volte c'è fraintendimento del concetto di "riflessione". 

Tutto apposto. Pensiamo allo stesso modo.

Distinti saluti

Krassimir



Dear Francesco,

I read your letter with great care and understanding. I accept fully the 
surveillance, that the information is different in different systems. 

This is exactly the essence of the theory of reflection, which describes many 
levels of reflection - physical, chemical, mechanical, biological, 
psychological, social ... 

So, sometimes there is misunderstanding of the concept of "reflection".  

Alright. We think the same way!

With best regards
Krassimir



Dear Bob,

Thank you for your remark and especially – for the book!

It is very interesting. 

The answer of you remark is just in my answer to Francesco – in reality there 
are many different kinds of reflection. 

Because of this we have many different kinds (types) of information.

But the common is that the reflection became information only in the 
consciousness of recipient and only in the context which is already stored in 
his/her memory. 

In other words, the Information is a reflection for which the recipient can 
recognize what the reflection reflects.

Kind regards

Крассимир














From: Francesco Rizzo 
Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2016 5:20 PM
To: Krassimir Markov 
Subject: Re: [Fis] _ Re: _ Closing lecture

Caro Krassimir, 
come ho scritto altre volte l'informazione ha un solo contenuto-dare o prendere 
forma- che può essere oggetto di definizioni diverse:
- in termodinamica questa forma consiste del gradiente termico o differenza tra 
molecole calde e veloci da un lato e fredde e lente dall'altro lato;
- in matematica o cibernetica corrisponde al numero delle alternative 
possibili, misurabili in bit di entropia: quello che in termodinamica è 
dis-informazione (entropia), in matematica è informazione;
- nella teoria della comunicazione è improbabilità o incertezza: la ricchezza 
dell'informazione matematica si riduce quando si sovrappone su di essa un 
s-codice per avere una significato semantico;
- in biologia è la sequela DNA-RNA-proteine che consente la comunicazione 
dell'informazione genetica;
-in economia il contenuto-informazione conferisce il valore ai beni o servizi: 
da qui la forma del valore o il valore della forma; etc.
Il discorso potrebbe continuare chiamando in causa la logica "fuzzy", ma non 
credo che sia il caso.
Una cosa è certa: l'informazione, comunque definita, è preceduta dalla 
significazione e seguita dalla comunicazione. La comunicazione, non è una 
trasmissione di segnali, ma un dialogo di segni che implica il codice di chi 
trasmette e il codice di chi riceve.
Sempre, con molta umiltà, un abbraccio.
Francesco.

2016-02-02 12:44 GMT+01:00 Krassimir Markov :

  Dear Howard,

  Thank you very much for your great effort and nice explanation!
  I like it!

  Only what I needed to see is a concrete answer to the question “what it the 
Information?”
  You absolutely clearly described it and I totally agree with your 
considerations.
  Only what is needed is to conclude with a short definition.
  I think it may be the next:

  The Information is a reflection which may be interpreted by its receiver in 
the context the receiver has in his/her memory.

  From this definition many consequences follow. In future we may discuss them.

  Friendly regards
  Krassimir

  PS:
  Dear FIS Colleagues,

  1. At the ITHEA web side, the conferences for year 2016 have been announced.
  One of them is the XIV-th International Conference on “General Information 
Theory”.
  Please visit link:
  http://www.ithea.org/conferences/conferences.html
  Welcome in Varna, Bulgaria !

  2. May be it will be interesting to read the paper, published in our 
  International Journal “Information Theories and Applications” ( 
http://www.foibg.com/ijita/ ) :
  Formal Theory of Semantic and Pragmatic Information - a Technocratic Approach
  by Venco Bojilov
  http://www.foibg.com/ijita/vol22/ijita22-04-p05.pdf
  Please send your remarks to the author to e-mail: off...@ithea.org 

  Krassimir







  From: howlbl...@aol.com 
  Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2016 8:46 AM
  To: pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es 
  Cc: fis@listas.unizar.es 
  Subject: [Fis] _ Closing lecture


  First, a few responses.  I agree with Hans von Baeyer.  Pedro’s kindness is 
magic.  

  I agree with Gyorgy Darvas that quarks communicate.

  I also agree with Jerry Chandler.  Brute force is not the major mover of 
history.  Values and virtues count.  A lot.  In fact, a culture organizes 
itself by calling one way of doing things evil—brute force—and another way of 

[Fis] _ Otto--re closing lecture

[HowlBloom]

 
Otto, an interesting call, for a theory that  brings together the brute 
force of an abiotic universe and  information. 
Here's a short timeline that pulls the  brute force elements together as 
informational exchange: 
The evolution of  information, sociality, social structure, and the 
emergent properties of  societies 
(all dates ABB, After the Big  Bang) 
10(-31) ABB  primitive communication between quarks via the strong force.  
The  first informational language: attraction and  repulsion. 
10(-31) ABB the first social groups, threesomes of quarks, produce two  
shocking emergent  properties—protons and  neutrons 
10,000 ABB massive social dances, pressure  waves, ring the cosmos like a 
gong.  With, yes, music.  What communicative force organizes trillions of  
trillions of particles into pressure waves—into rhythmically coming together 
in  aggregations that span the universe?  Do information exchange and  
communication choreograph pressure waves in which masses of particles  
rhythmically separate just a tiny bit, then come together  again? 
380,000 ABB  emerging from a plasma, slowing down, and giving each other a 
bit of  breathing room, elementary particles use the electromagnetic force 
to  communicate.  And they discover something odd.  Tiny  particles have an 
inanimate longing.  And their inanimate longing precisely  fits the inanimate 
longing of particles 1,800 times their size.  The  tiny particles join with 
the hulking monsters.  The  result?  Another emergent property, another 
supersized  surprise: atoms.  Hydrogen, helium, and lithium, properties wildly 
unpredictable from just  the properties of an electron and a proton.  
Properties that emerge from a  communicative exchange.  An informational 
exchange 
between protons and  electrons. 
380,000 ABB the atom reveals a basic of cosmic structure—hierarchy.  
Protons dominate.  They  determine where the team goes.   Electrons subjugate 
themselves.  They meekly go along.  They subordinate.  They humbly circle the 
proton  nucleus. 
380,000 ABB atoms communicate via gravity. 
400,000 ABB more communication via gravity, but mass communication.  The  
result?  Competition.  The era of the great gravity crusades.  Wisps,  
plumes, and clots of atoms have showdowns, faceoffs in which the  bigger 
swallows 
the smaller whole.  Then the winner goes off to another  showdown, another 
competitive confrontation.  In  which it either eats or is eaten.  The result 
of these showdowns between  gravity balls?  Galaxies, stars, planets, and 
moons.  A  galaxy is, guess what, a social swirl organized in a hierarchy—
black holes at  the center, stars circling the black holes, planets circling 
the stars, and  moons circling the planets.  All via communication and  
information.  All via receivers interpreting the messages of  senders and 
acting 
on them. 
one bottom line: communication,  information, music, competition, and 
hierarchy are not the products of  post-agricultural, post industrial, or post 
capitalist societies.  they are  at work even in dead stuff.  even pre-living 
nature. 
hope that helps. 
thanks again for letting me parade such  strange ideas in such august 
company. 
Dear all,
Just a quick reply to Howard's fascinating account of  cosmic history. 
It seems what is crucially needed is a theory that brings together  "brute 
force" on the one hand - laws of nature "blindly" colliding and  colluding, 
from quarks to planets - and "information" on the other - from  pre-human 
codes (perhaps including quantum computation) and communication to  advanced 
human and cybernetic networks. 
The former seems to be able to do away with everything except a few  simple 
rules of operation (gravity, natural selection, will-to-power),  everything 
more complex being the unfolding of the interaction between these few  
simple rules (eternal or emergent is beside the point here). The latter seems 
to 
 depend upon subjective interpretation, the retention of systems memory, 
symbolic  coding-decoding, and other processes that compose only a subset of 
the  (creatures and processes) of the universe. Never the twain shall meet. 
Or perhaps brute force can be analyzed as equivalent to information? Or  
vice versa? Or as two sides of the same coin? 
Best, 
Otto  Lehto,
Tampere, Finland 
On  2 Feb 2016 13:46, "Krassimir Markov" <_markov@foibg.com_ 
(mailto:mar...@foibg.com) > wrote:


 
 
Dear Howard,
 
Thank you very much for your great effort and nice  explanation!
I like it!
 
Only what I needed to see is a concrete answer to the  question “what it 
the Information?”
You absolutely clearly described it and I totally agree with  your 
considerations.
Only what is needed is to conclude with a short  definition.
I think it may be the next:
 
The Information is a reflection which may be interpreted by  its receiver 
in the context the receiver has in his/her memory.
 
>From this definition many consequences follow. In future we  may discuss 
them.
 

Re: [Fis] Fw: Information Conservation in black holes

[Bruno Marchal]

Dear Joseph,


On 30 Jan 2016, at 19:31, Joseph Brenner wrote:


Dear John,

Sorry you have been ill.

I agree fully with your statement: All of these explanations, and  
even stating the problem, require information notions, not just  
energy as in classical physics.


What I object to are statements or implications that information,  
whether in boundaries or not, is ontologically prior to and/or  
independent of energy.


I beg to differ on this. I consider Shannon information as given  
freely by the numeration of natural numbers in base two or higher, or  
sequence of them.


The interesting things is not information/number, but the  
interpretation of such information, and this can be defined at first  
by what the universal machines do when given such information/number.




This is how the positions of people like Lloyd and Tegmark come out,  
giving 'computation' an agential, anthropomorphically flavored role  
at the ground of the universe.


Lloyd and Tegmark seem not really aware of the importance of the  
discovery of the universal machine, by Emil Post, Alan Turing, Alonzo  
Church, and some others. That is mainly a discovery in arithmetic, as  
a very weak segment of arithmetic is already Turing universal, and so  
emulate all Turing universal system.


This is not anthropomorphically flavored, it is Turing-machine, or  
universal number-morphically flavored. A concept definable in  
elementary arithmetic. That concept generalizes both human, bacteria,  
and the physical computer.


It is also a theorem of arithmetic, accessible to the universal  
machine themselves, and once they "believe" in enough induction axiom,  
they get the cognitive ability to deduce their own limitation, and to  
begin to measure the gap between provable and true. A gap which  
entails many modal nuances in the ways the machine can refer to  
itself, and what she can prove and expect, and hope or fear with  
respect to some universal goal (like "help yourself").





The establishment by Wu Kun and others of information as a  
categoryimplies separation only in classical logic and category  
theory, which are just as limiting as the classical physics John  
refers to.



Classical logic is the simplest logic, and so the more polite to use  
to describe the other logics.
None of the internal logics of the universal machine is classical  
logic. It oscillates between intuitionist logic and quantum logic,  
with some intuitionist quantum logic and quantum intuitionist logic.









A basic problem is the inability of people to keep in mind the  
operation of two aspects of phenomena, cooperative and antagonistic,  
at the same time.


I can agree with this. My favorite exemple is that intelligence is  
needed to develop competence, but competence has a negative feedback  
on intelligence.







Computers work according to algorithms.


Not really. They work according to data, number, information, that  
they interpret at some level like an algorithm, or like data.






The ground of the universe, in my view, is in the tension, not the  
separation, between being and non-being, and no algorithm can handle  
that (now who is being anthropomorphic?!)



Tegmark and Lloyd miss that elementary arithmetic is Turing complete.  
So we don't know really if there is a physical universe.


We know only that there is an infinitely complex reality of all  
computations, in arithmetic. Complex, as most relations between form  
and function are not algorithmically decidable.


Yet, the self-reference ability of the universal machine suggests to  
define the physical reality by what makes some number dream stable and  
sharable, and apparently it is not much more than self-referential  
correctness and consistency.
The (full) arithmetical reality, the one which contains all prime  
numbers and "can decide" the Riemann hypothesis, is also full of  
relative number experience/dream, some stable and sharable. In a  
testable way, at least for precise version like classical  
computationalism.


Mechanism predicts the multi-verse apparent empiric structure by a  
more general multi-experiences structure. But it is not human  
experience, it is the universal machine experience.
If we are not machine, this provides the tool to measure the degree of  
(local) non-computationalism. In that case I would bet we are in a  
(physical, in the computationalist sense described above) simulation.


Best,

Bruno





Cheers,

Joseph






- Original Message -
From: John Collier
To: fis
Sent: Saturday, January 30, 2016 4:58 PM
Subject: [Fis] Information Conservation in black holes

List,

Sorry I haven’t been able to respond to the interesting remarks on  
my last post, but it took a while to digest them, and my current  
health concerns take up a lot of my time, so I haven’t had time to  
come up with responses that are properly thought out.


In the meantime, here is an interesting Nature news report about  
Hawking’s (and 

[Fis] _ Closing lecture

[HowlBloom]

 
First, a few responses.  I agree with Hans von Baeyer.  Pedro’s kindness is 
magic.   
I agree with Gyorgy Darvas that  quarks communicate. 
I also agree with Jerry  Chandler.  Brute force is not the  major mover of 
history.  Values and  virtues count.  A lot.  In fact, a culture organizes 
itself by  calling one way of doing things evil—brute force—and another way 
of doing things  a value  and a virtue.  Our way is the value and the  
virtue.  The ways of others are  brute force and evil.  We see  cooperation  
and 
warmth among  us.  But only enmity  and destruction among them.   
The  brute force is not  within groups, where values, virtues, and 
compassion  prevail.  It’s  between groups.  It’s in the pecking order battles 
between groups.   
Which means, in answer to Marcus  Abundis, yes, groups struggle for 
position in inter-group hierarchies like  chickens in a barnyard.  For  
example, 
America and China are vying right now for top position in the barnyard  of 
nations.  Russia’s in that  battle, too.  On a lower level, so  are Saudi 
Arabia and Iran, whose proxy war in Syria for pecking order dominance  has cost 
a 
quarter of a million lives.  That’s brute force.  Between  groups whose 
citizens are often lovely and loving to each other.  Whose citizens are proud 
of their values  and virtues. 
Now for a final  statement. 
Information exists in a  context.  That’s not at all  surprising.  
Information is all  about context.  As the writings of  Guenther Witzany hint.  
And 
as  Ludwig Wittgenstein also suggested.  Information is relational.  
Information does not exist in a vacuum.  It connects participants.  And it 
makes 
things happen.  When it’s not connecting participants,  it’s not information 
FIS gets fired up to a high  energy level when discussing the definition of 
information and its relationship  to Shannon’s entropic information 
equation.  Alas, these discussions tend  to remove the context.  And context is 
what gives information  its indispensable ingredient, meaning. 
There are two basic approaches  in science:   
·the abstract mathematical;  
·and the observational empirical.   
Mathematical abstractionists  dwell on definitions and equations.  
Empirical observers gather facts.  Darwin was an observational empiricist. I’d 
like 
to see more of Darwin’s  kind of science in the world of information theory. 
One of Darwin’s most important  contributions was not the concept of 
natural selection.  It was an approach that Darwin got from  Kant and from his 
grandfather Erasmus.  That approach?  Lay out the  history of the cosmos on a 
timeline and piece together its story.  In chronological order.  Piece 
together the saga of how this  cosmos has created itself.  Including the 
self-motivated, self-creation of life. 
Communication plays a vital role  in this story.  It appears in the  first 
10(-32) of a second of the cosmos’ existence, when quarks communicated  
using attraction and repulsion cues.  OK, it’s not quite right to call the cues 
attraction and repulsion  cues.  When two quarks sized each  other up, they 
interpreted the signals of the strong force differently.  If you were a 
quark, another quark might  size you up and promptly speed away.  But a quark 
of 
a different variety might detect the same signals, find  them wildly 
attractive, and speed in your direction.  One quark’s meat was another’s 
poison,  
even in that first form of communication in the cosmos.   
Information is not a  stand-alone.  Again, it’s  contextual.  It’s ruled 
by what  Guenther Witzany calls syntax, semantics, and, most important of 
all,  pragmatics.  Its meaning comes from  where it fits in a bigger picture. 
Were the signals quarks  exchanged information?  Not  according to many of 
the definitions in FIS.  Some of those definitions say that to be  regarded 
as information, a sender must deliberately signify something  symbolically.  
She must, for  example, want to warn you about a poisoned apple.  She must 
put that message in symbols,  like the words “poisoned apple,” then convey 
that signal to a receiver.  If she doesn’t want to see you poisoned,  she 
might text you, “watch out for poisoned apples.”  I’m not sure whether the 
definitions  extant in FIS demand that you look at her text or not.  Much less 
whether you act on  it. 
In my latest book, The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos  Creates, I 
propose a different definition of information.  Information is anything a 
receiver 
can  decode, anything he can decipher.  How do you know a receiver has 
decoded a message?  Through the decoder’s actions.  If you are a quark and you 
detect my  strong force, you either scoot away or you rush over and join me.  
You act.  If you are a neurosurgeon looking at an  mri, you make internal 
decisions, mental decisions.  You don’t move physically.  Not at first.  But 
you move mentally.  You imagine your scalpel poised over a  different spot 
than you might have picked 

[Fis] _ Re: _ Re: _ Closing lecture

[Bob Logan]

Krassimir - I enjoyed your post and your definition of information. For more 
definitions of information especially the notion of the relativity of 
information you might wish to see my book
What is Information? - Propagating Organization in the Biosphere, the 
Symbolosphere, the Technosphere and the Econosphere which is available for free 
on the following Web sites 

demopublishing.com  or at  
demopublishing.com/book/what-is-information

Since I am offering this book for free this shameless promotion of my book is 
not done for commercial gain although I will mention the book is available in a 
printed codex format through Amazon.


Here is the excerpt on the relativity of information from What Is Information? 
for those that might be interested in this idea

The Relativity of Information

Robert M. Losee (1997) in an article entitled A Discipline Independent 

Definition of Information published in 
the Journal of the American Society for 
Information Science defines information as follows:

Information may be defined as the characteristics of the output of a process, 
these being informative about the process and the input. This discipline 
independent definition may be applied to all domains, from physics to 
epistemology.
The term information, as the above definition seems to suggest, is generally 
regarded as some uniform quantity or quality, which is the same for all the 
domains and phenomena it describes. In other words information is an invariant 
like the speed of light, the same in all frames of reference. The origin of the 
term information or the actual meaning of the concept is all taken for granted. 
If ever pressed on the issue most contemporary IT experts or philosophers will 
revert back to Shannon’s definition of information. Some might also come up 
with Bateson definition that information is the difference that makes a 
difference. Most would not be aware that the Shannon and Bateson definitions of 
information are at odds with each other. Shannon information does not make a 
difference because it has nothing to do with meaning; it is merely a string of 
symbols or bits. On the other hand, Bateson information, which as we discovered 
should more accurately be called MacKay information, is all about meaning. And 
thus we arrive at our second surprise, namely the relativity of information. 
Information is not an invariant like the speed of light, but depends on the 
frame of reference or context in which it is used.

We discovered in our review of POE that Shannon information and biotic or 
instructional information are quite different. Information is not an absolute 
but depends on the context in which it is being used. So Shannon information is 
a perfectly useful tool for telecommunication channel engineering. Kolmogorov 
(Shiryayev 1993) information, defined as the minimum computational resources 
needed to describe a program or a text and is related to Shannon information, 
is useful for the study of information compression with respect to Turing 
machines. Biotic or instructional information, on the other hand, is not 
equivalent to Shannon or Kolmogorov information and as has been shown in POE is 
the only way to describe the interaction and evolution of biological systems 
and the propagation of their organization.

POE refers to the following paper:   Kauffman, Stuart, Robert K. Logan, Robert 
Este, Randy Goebel, David Hobill and Ilya Shmulevich. 2007. Propagating 
organization: an enquiry. Biology and Philosophy 23: 27-45.
 

__

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.physics.utoronto.ca/Members/logan
www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Logan5/publications










> On Feb 2, 2016, at 6:44 AM, Krassimir Markov  wrote:
> 
> Dear Howard,
>  
> Thank you very much for your great effort and nice explanation!
> I like it!
>  
> Only what I needed to see is a concrete answer to the question “what it the 
> Information?”
> You absolutely clearly described it and I totally agree with your 
> considerations.
> Only what is needed is to conclude with a short definition.
> I think it may be the next:
>  
> The Information is a reflection which may be interpreted by its receiver in 
> the context the receiver has in his/her memory.
>  
> From this definition many consequences follow. In future we may discuss them.
>  
> Friendly regards
> Krassimir
>  
> PS:
> Dear FIS Colleagues,
> 1. At the ITHEA web side, the conferences for year 2016 have been announced.
> One of them is the XIV-th International Conference on “General Information 
> Theory”.
> Please visit link:
> http://www.ithea.org/conferences/conferences.html 
> 
> Welcome in Varna, Bulgaria !
>  
> 2. May be it will be interesting to read the paper, published in our
> 

[Fis] _ Re: _ Closing lecture

[Krassimir Markov]

Dear Howard,

Thank you very much for your great effort and nice explanation!
I like it!

Only what I needed to see is a concrete answer to the question “what it the 
Information?”
You absolutely clearly described it and I totally agree with your 
considerations.
Only what is needed is to conclude with a short definition.
I think it may be the next:

The Information is a reflection which may be interpreted by its receiver in the 
context the receiver has in his/her memory.

>From this definition many consequences follow. In future we may discuss them.

Friendly regards
Krassimir

PS:
Dear FIS Colleagues,

1. At the ITHEA web side, the conferences for year 2016 have been announced.
One of them is the XIV-th International Conference on “General Information 
Theory”.
Please visit link:
http://www.ithea.org/conferences/conferences.html
Welcome in Varna, Bulgaria !

2. May be it will be interesting to read the paper, published in our 
International Journal “Information Theories and Applications” ( 
http://www.foibg.com/ijita/ ) :
Formal Theory of Semantic and Pragmatic Information - a Technocratic Approach
by Venco Bojilov
http://www.foibg.com/ijita/vol22/ijita22-04-p05.pdf
Please send your remarks to the author to e-mail: off...@ithea.org 

Krassimir







From: howlbl...@aol.com 
Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2016 8:46 AM
To: pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es 
Cc: fis@listas.unizar.es 
Subject: [Fis] _ Closing lecture


First, a few responses.  I agree with Hans von Baeyer.  Pedro’s kindness is 
magic.  

I agree with Gyorgy Darvas that quarks communicate.

I also agree with Jerry Chandler.  Brute force is not the major mover of 
history.  Values and virtues count.  A lot.  In fact, a culture organizes 
itself by calling one way of doing things evil—brute force—and another way of 
doing things a value  and a virtue.  Our way is the value and the virtue.  The 
ways of others are brute force and evil.  We see cooperation  and warmth among 
us.  But only enmity  and destruction among them.  

The  brute force is not within groups, where values, virtues, and compassion 
prevail.  It’s between groups.  It’s in the pecking order battles between 
groups.  

Which means, in answer to Marcus Abundis, yes, groups struggle for position in 
inter-group hierarchies like chickens in a barnyard.  For example, America and 
China are vying right now for top position in the barnyard of nations.  
Russia’s in that battle, too.  On a lower level, so are Saudi Arabia and Iran, 
whose proxy war in Syria for pecking order dominance has cost a quarter of a 
million lives.  That’s brute force.  Between groups whose citizens are often 
lovely and loving to each other.  Whose citizens are proud of their values and 
virtues.

Now for a final statement.

Information exists in a context.  That’s not at all surprising.  Information is 
all about context.  As the writings of Guenther Witzany hint.  And as Ludwig 
Wittgenstein also suggested.  Information is relational.  Information does not 
exist in a vacuum.  It connects participants.  And it makes things happen.  
When it’s not connecting participants, it’s not information

FIS gets fired up to a high energy level when discussing the definition of 
information and its relationship to Shannon’s entropic information equation.  
Alas, these discussions tend  to remove the context.  And context is what gives 
information its indispensable ingredient, meaning.

There are two basic approaches in science:  

·the abstract mathematical; 

·and the observational empirical.  

Mathematical abstractionists dwell on definitions and equations.  Empirical 
observers gather facts.  Darwin was an observational empiricist. I’d like to 
see more of Darwin’s kind of science in the world of information theory.

One of Darwin’s most important contributions was not the concept of natural 
selection.  It was an approach that Darwin got from Kant and from his 
grandfather Erasmus.  That approach?  Lay out the history of the cosmos on a 
timeline and piece together its story.  In chronological order.  Piece together 
the saga of how this cosmos has created itself.  Including the self-motivated, 
self-creation of life.

Communication plays a vital role in this story.  It appears in the first 
10(-32) of a second of the cosmos’ existence, when quarks communicated using 
attraction and repulsion cues.  OK, it’s not quite right to call the cues 
attraction and repulsion cues.  When two quarks sized each other up, they 
interpreted the signals of the strong force differently.  If you were a quark, 
another quark might size you up and promptly speed away.  But a quark of a 
different variety might detect the same signals, find them wildly attractive, 
and speed in your direction.  One quark’s meat was another’s poison, even in 
that first form of communication in the cosmos.  

Information is not a stand-alone.  Again, it’s contextual.  It’s ruled by what 
Guenther Witzany calls syntax, semantics, and, most 

[Fis] _ Re: _ Re: _ Closing lecture

[Otto Lehto]

Dear all,
Just a quick reply to Howard's fascinating account of cosmic history.

It seems what is crucially needed is a theory that brings together "brute
force" on the one hand - laws of nature "blindly" colliding and colluding,
from quarks to planets - and "information" on the other - from pre-human
codes (perhaps including quantum computation) and communication to advanced
human and cybernetic networks.

The former seems to be able to do away with everything except a few simple
rules of operation (gravity, natural selection, will-to-power), everything
more complex being the unfolding of the interaction between these few
simple rules (eternal or emergent is beside the point here). The latter
seems to depend upon subjective interpretation, the retention of systems
memory, symbolic coding-decoding, and other processes that compose only a
subset of the (creatures and processes) of the universe. Never the twain
shall meet.

Or perhaps brute force can be analyzed as equivalent to information? Or
vice versa? Or as two sides of the same coin?

Best,
Otto Lehto,
Tampere, Finland
On 2 Feb 2016 13:46, "Krassimir Markov"  wrote:

> Dear Howard,
>
> Thank you very much for your great effort and nice explanation!
> I like it!
>
> Only what I needed to see is a concrete answer to the question “what it
> the Information?”
> You absolutely clearly described it and I totally agree with your
> considerations.
> Only what is needed is to conclude with a short definition.
> I think it may be the next:
>
> The Information is a reflection which may be interpreted by its receiver
> in the context the receiver has in his/her memory.
>
> From this definition many consequences follow. In future we may discuss
> them.
>
> Friendly regards
> Krassimir
>
> PS:
> Dear FIS Colleagues,
> 1. At the ITHEA web side, the conferences for year 2016 have been
> announced.
> One of them is the XIV-th International Conference on “General Information
> Theory”.
> Please visit link:
> http://www.ithea.org/conferences/conferences.html
> Welcome in Varna, Bulgaria !
>
> 2. May be it will be interesting to read the paper, published in our
> International Journal “Information Theories and Applications” (
> http://www.foibg.com/ijita/ ) :
> Formal Theory of Semantic and Pragmatic Information - a Technocratic
> Approach 
> by Venco Bojilov
> http://www.foibg.com/ijita/vol22/ijita22-04-p05.pdf
> Please send your remarks to the author to e-mail: off...@ithea.org
>
> Krassimir
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* howlbl...@aol.com
> *Sent:* Tuesday, February 02, 2016 8:46 AM
> *To:* pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
> *Cc:* fis@listas.unizar.es
> *Subject:* [Fis] _ Closing lecture
>
>
>
> First, a few responses.  I agree with Hans von Baeyer.  Pedro’s kindness
> is magic.
>
> I agree with Gyorgy Darvas that quarks communicate.
>
> I also agree with Jerry Chandler.  Brute force is not the major mover of
> history.  Values and virtues count.  A lot.  In fact, a culture organizes
> itself by calling one way of doing things evil—brute force—and another way
> of doing things a value  and a virtue.  Our way is the value and the
> virtue.  The ways of others are brute force and evil.  We see cooperation
> and warmth among us.  But only enmity  and destruction among them.
>
> The  brute force is not *within* groups, where values, virtues, and
> compassion prevail.  It’s *between* groups.  It’s in the pecking order
> battles between groups.
>
> Which means, in answer to Marcus Abundis, yes, groups struggle for
> position in inter-group hierarchies like chickens in a barnyard.  For
> example, America and China are vying right now for top position in the
> barnyard of nations.  Russia’s in that battle, too.  On a lower level, so
> are Saudi Arabia and Iran, whose proxy war in Syria for pecking order
> dominance has cost a quarter of a million lives.  That’s brute force.  Between
> groups whose citizens are often lovely and loving to each other.  Whose
> citizens are proud of their values and virtues.
>
> Now for a final statement.
>
> Information exists in a context.  That’s not at all surprising.  Information
> is all about context.  As the writings of Guenther Witzany hint.  And as
> Ludwig Wittgenstein also suggested.  Information is relational.  Information
> does not exist in a vacuum.  It connects participants.  And it makes
> things happen.  When it’s not connecting participants, it’s not
> information
>
> FIS gets fired up to a high energy level when discussing the definition of
> information and its relationship to Shannon’s entropic information equation.
> Alas, these discussions tend  to remove the context.  And context is what
> gives information its indispensable ingredient, meaning.
>
> There are two basic approaches in science:
>
> ·the abstract mathematical;
>
> ·and the observational empirical.
>
> Mathematical abstractionists dwell on definitions and equations.  Empirical
>