Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information
Let´s say that what we call information is an extended form of sensory input. What makes this input information is the usability of this input for reducing the internal entropy of the receiver or increase the internal order. The receiver can be a machine, a cell, a person or a society for example. If the input do not produce this effect in the receiver, then that input is not information. 2013/3/2 William R. Buckley bill.buck...@gmail.com Thinking about how information content of a message Big mistake. Information is never contained with but exactly one exception, an envelope. I made this point with Jesper Hoffmeyer regarding a statement in his book Biosemiotics, that information is represented but not contained in that representation. That marks of chalk upon slate may be taken to represent information at a meta level above the reality of streaks of a deformed amorphous solid has nothing to do with the information represented by that deformation, nor the increase of entropy associated with the greater disorder obtained from that deformation; these are but three of the *informations* to be found upon review of those streaks. Entropy is how nature sees information (not yet an established fact but I think the tea leaves read clear enough) but that has (presumably) nothing to do with how intelligent individuals see information, or as von Uexküll called such phenomena, signs. Most definitely the information is not to be found within the material of its expression, its representation. Rather, the information is already to be found within the interpreter. That which is information is so by virtue of the acceptor of that information; else, it is noise. And, write the information on a piece of paper and seal the paper within an envelope and you may justifiably claim that the information is contained; else, you are deluding yourself. has an inversely proportionate relationship with the capacity of sender and receiver to synchronize with each other. snip wrb -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Generalized Löb's Theorem
On Sunday, January 27, 2013 2:53:12 PM UTC+2, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi Stephen, On 25 Jan 2013, at 18:06, Stephen P. King wrote: Have you seen this? What implications does it have? http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1301/1301.5340.pdf If the result is correct (which I think it is) it is a nice generalization of Löb's theorem. It makes it somehow more solid, and valid for a large set of consistent extension. I avoid the need of this by making the strong soundness assumption; + the comp assumption. But it confirms the feeling that Löb's works also on many divine entities. Other results by Solovay gives similar suggestions. Bu I have to study it closely to be verify what I say here in the detail. Thanks for the link. Best, Bruno -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript:. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript: . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ *AMS Sectional Meeting AMS Special Session* http://www.ams.org/meetings/sectional/2210_program_ss17.html#title Spring Western Sectional Meeting University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO April 13-14, 2013 (Saturday - Sunday) Meeting #1089 *Special Session on Set Theory and Boolean Algebras* *An posible generalization of the Löb's theorem.*/amsmtgs/2210_abstracts/1089-03-60.pdf *Jaykov Foukzon**, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel (1089-03-60) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Generalized Löb's Theorem
On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 1:16:15 PM UTC+2, advanced...@list.ru wrote: On Sunday, January 27, 2013 2:53:12 PM UTC+2, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi Stephen, On 25 Jan 2013, at 18:06, Stephen P. King wrote: Have you seen this? What implications does it have? http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1301/1301.5340.pdf If the result is correct (which I think it is) it is a nice generalization of Löb's theorem. It makes it somehow more solid, and valid for a large set of consistent extension. I avoid the need of this by making the strong soundness assumption; + the comp assumption. But it confirms the feeling that Löb's works also on many divine entities. Other results by Solovay gives similar suggestions. Bu I have to study it closely to be verify what I say here in the detail. Thanks for the link. Best, Bruno -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ *AMS Sectional Meeting AMS Special Session* http://www.ams.org/meetings/sectional/2210_program_ss17.html#title Spring Western Sectional Meeting University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO April 13-14, 2013 (Saturday - Sunday) Meeting #1089 *Special Session on Set Theory and Boolean Algebras* *An posible generalization of the Löb's theorem.*http://amsmtgs/2210_abstracts/1089-03-60.pdf http://www.ams.org/amsmtgs/2210_abstracts/1089-03-60.pdf *Jaykov Foukzon**, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel (1089-03-60) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Ectopic Eyes Experient: Supports my view of sense, Invalidates mechanistic assumptions about eyes.
On Monday, March 4, 2013 11:27:21 PM UTC-5, Pierz wrote: Really Craig? It invalidates mechanistic assumptions about eyes? I'm sure the researchers would be astonished at such a wild conclusion. All the research shows is brain plasticity in interpreting signals from unusual neural pathways. How does that invalidate mechanism? It's not that wild of a conclusion. The experiment shows that we cannot assume that vision is the result of a passive process that relies on a one-way path leading from light to eye to optic nerve to brain. The brain actively shows that there is a path leading the other way as well, as the whole organism seeks to see through the eye. This shows that there is sensory-motor activity going on within the micro-level of the tadpole as the rather under-signifyingly termed plasticity knows exactly what the eyeball is, and finds a way to use it. Try that with your computer. See what happens when you try plugging a microphone into a DRAM slot, or listening to your car radio through the transmission. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Ectopic Eyes Experient: Supports my view of sense, Invalidates mechanistic assumptions about eyes.
On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 2:43:26 AM UTC-5, jessem wrote: On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 11:27 PM, Pierz pie...@gmail.com javascript:wrote: Really Craig? It invalidates mechanistic assumptions about eyes? I'm sure the researchers would be astonished at such a wild conclusion. All the research shows is brain plasticity in interpreting signals from unusual neural pathways. How does that invalidate mechanism? Yes, I was confused at first by the statement in the first paragraph that the eyes can confer vision without a direct neural connection to the brain (maybe Craig was confused by this too?), but it seems that by direct neural connection they just mean an optic nerve wired directly to the brain, bypassing the spinal cord like the optic nerve normally does, since later in the article they do mention the eyes were connected (indirectly) to the brain via the spinal cord: No one would have guessed that eyes on the flank of a tadpole could see, especially when wired only to the spinal cord and not the brain. Jesse I don't think it was confusing, just that it suggests that biological sensory systems are robust and independent, not relying on a single fragile mechanism that has evolved. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information
On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 2:06:20 AM UTC-5, William R. Buckley wrote: There is information (I take information to be a manifestation of entropy) and it is always represented in the form of a pattern (a distribution) of the units of mass/energy of which the Universe is composed. I can agree that information could be considered a manifestation of entropy, to the extent that entropy is necessary to provide a contrast space for a distribution. To string an ellipses together, you need one dot, repetition, space, and a quality of measurement which yokes together the three dots aesthetically. Beyond that, you also need human observer with human visual sense to turn the distribution into a 'pattern'. Without that, of course, even distribution cannot cohere into a distribution, as there is no scale, range, quality, etc to anchor the expectation. If we are a microbe, we may not ever find our way from one dot to the next. I think that semiotic signs are simply specific bits of information; I will use the terms synonymously. Information has meaning only within context. For many people, context is taken to mean one piece of information as compared to another piece of information. I do not take this meaning of context when I discuss semiotics. Instead, I take semiotic context to be the acceptor of the information. Hence, all meaning resides a priori within information acceptors. Agree. Well, transmitters form the signs from their own sense of meaning as well. That's how we are having this discussion. What you know you have always known; the sign merely serves to bring that knowledge to your conscious mind. Right. I mean it might be a bit more complicated as far as novelty goes. I don't know if the state of unconscious information is really what I have always known but that this particular constellation of meanings reflects the Totality in a way that it is only trivially novel. Like if you hit a jackpot on a slot machine - that may not have happened before, but the slot machine is designed to payout whenever it does. The jackpot already exists as a potential and sooner or later it will be realized. That you may have intention and so comport your delivery of information to another acceptor has not bearing upon the subsequent acceptance or rejection of that information by the target acceptor. Acceptance or rejection of information is determined solely by the accepting or rejecting context (acceptor). Agree. But the converse - the acceptor can only accept information which has been included for delivery by intention (or accidentally I suppose). Your mere presence sends information regardless of some conscious intent. Indeed, your absence does equally deliver information, for the target acceptor will see a definite difference in available information sources whether you are present or not. Consider a line worker in a bean processing plant where the task is to cull *bad* dried beans from *good* dried beans as they go by on a conveyor belt; the *bad* beans are removed by hand, so the line worker is constantly looking for *bad* beans while constantly being aware of the fact that not many of the beans are *bad*. The consciousness is aware of both that which is present and that which is not present. Yes, the expectation is key. I call that the perceptual inertial frame. There is an accumulated inertia of expectations which filters, amplifies, distorts, etc. Further, what any information that you emit means to you is irrelevant to the meaning that another may take for that information. Then how does art work? Music? Certainly it is pretty clear that what emitting Iron Man meant to Black Sabbath is different from what emitting the Four Seasons meant to Vivaldi. I agree that the receiver bears the brunt of the decoding, but why deny that the broadcaster can do intentional encoding, when they know the audience? Indeed, it is via reliance upon -Cultural Norms- that your point regarding Morse Code becomes relevant. It is perfectly reasonable for an ornery person to simply reject such norms and act otherwise; your expectation originates in you, not the targets of information you broadcast. The truth of your statement is no reply to my claim, that how another receiver of signs responds is irrelevant to your knowledge, save the one case of conveyance of knowledge between semiotic units; where you intend for knowledge to be conveyed. In that case, it is behooving of the sender to ensure that the receiver can receive and understand the message. I'm not sure what you are bringing up here, but I would say that my point is that all messages have multiple levels of reception, perhaps as many levels as their are receivers in the universe. At the same time, if we are assuming human senders and receivers and a content range which is highly normative and
Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 1:54 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Monday, March 4, 2013 8:11:12 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 6:02 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: I am responsible for my actions because I know what I am doing and I choose to do it. If I break the law I will be punished because the fear of punishment will deter me and others who are thinking of doing the same thing. This is all consistent with determinism. Why would any of that be consistent with determinism? Because it all still holds if determinism holds: I know what I am doing - yes. I choose to do it - yes. In what way do you choose to do it? What does choose mean? To choose between two options is to consider each one and to decide on the one you think is best. You can do this whether your brain is deterministic or probabilistic. In fact, people and animals have been doing this for a long time without the faintest idea what deterministic or probabilistic mean. If I break the law I will be punished - yes. The fear of punishment will deter me and others - yes. What does it mean to be deterred? In a deterministic universe, it doesn't matter how you feel about what you do, you are simply along for the ride, witnessing yourself doing it. So you say, but I don't care if the universe is deterministic or not. All I know is I don't want to go to prison. Maybe I don't want to go to prison because that's the way my brain is wired, but I still don't want to go there. What difference would it make how you feel about what is determined to be done. There is no choice - it is simply done. If you are deterred by fear that is still your choice, still up to you, not something which is literally determined *for you* by extra-personal conditions. I chose to drink coffee today because my brain is a particular way. In a deterministic universe, your brain would have made that decision without you. There would just be a brain coordinating a body's access to coffee. There could be no conceivable phenomenon of a choice, only a process in a queue of unconscious actions being executed. There is a choice, even if it's determined. You can define choice as no choice if determined, but most people don't care. If tomorrow the coffee is no good, my brain will be different and I may choose tea instead. Why would you choose anything? Your body will simply drink tea if that is the action which scores highest on whatever statistical model has been established. That's right, and that is what a choice is. Most people would remain quite happy and go about their lives normally if it is explained to them this way. To me, that's a choice. I doubt that there are many people in the world who, if they believed that their brain functioned deterministically, would decide they didn't have a choice in anything and become depressed. Huh? Why would they become depressed because of an unmet expectation which could not possibly exist in a deterministic world. Well, it seems that you would become unhappy, if not actually depressed, if it were demonstrated to you that contrary your current beliefs the world is in fact deterministic. I don't think that the term 'deterministic' is meaningful to describe the brain is all. A system is deterministic if its future behaviour is fixed by its current state, and random or probabilistic otherwise. Yes. Since many of states of the brain are driven by intention directly, there is no way to entirely determine its future behavior. It's no different than trying to predict the stock market by precisely modeling the workings of a standard stock ticker. But intention is determined by chemistry, and so to the extent that chemistry is deterministic, so is intention. Intention does not change chemistry, as you think it does, since that would be magic and we would see evidence of it. I didn't finish the paragraph, sorry. What you are saying is that you know that you feel free. I've no objection to that. But then you go on to say that because of this feeling, you know that the brain cannot be deterministic, It's not because of the feeling, it's because the feeling makes no sense as a phenomenon in a deterministic universe. I'm not saying I like chocolate, therefore chocolate must be real.', I am saying that the fact that I like anything is not compatible with a universe in which liking has no causal efficacy. The post Libet experiments on free will go further to suggest that how much people like chocolate actually influences how much chocolate brown residues are found in their teeth. What you KNOW is that you have the feeling of free will. What you CONCLUDE from this knowledge is that the world cannot be deterministic. The ONLY fact you use to conclude this is that you have the feeling of free will. For if the conclusion were based on other, empirical facts such as scientific experiments, these facts could by
Re: Generalized Löb's Theorem
On 3/5/2013 6:23 AM, advancedguida...@list.ru wrote: On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 1:16:15 PM UTC+2, advanced...@list.ru wrote: On Sunday, January 27, 2013 2:53:12 PM UTC+2, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi Stephen, On 25 Jan 2013, at 18:06, Stephen P. King wrote: Have you seen this? What implications does it have? http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1301/1301.5340.pdf http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1301/1301.5340.pdf If the result is correct (which I think it is) it is a nice generalization of Löb's theorem. It makes it somehow more solid, and valid for a large set of consistent extension. I avoid the need of this by making the strong soundness assumption; + the comp assumption. But it confirms the feeling that Löb's works also on many divine entities. Other results by Solovay gives similar suggestions. Bu I have to study it closely to be verify what I say here in the detail. Thanks for the link. Best, Bruno *AMS Sectional Meeting AMS Special Session* http://www.ams.org/meetings/sectional/2210_program_ss17.html#title http://www.ams.org/meetings/sectional/2210_program_ss17.html#title Spring Western Sectional Meeting University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO April 13-14, 2013 (Saturday - Sunday) Meeting #1089 *Special Session on Set Theory and Boolean Algebras* /_An posible generalization of the Löb's theorem._/ http://amsmtgs/2210_abstracts/1089-03-60.pdf http://www.ams.org/amsmtgs/2210_abstracts/1089-03-60.pdf *Jaykov Foukzon**, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel (1089-03-60) Hi advancedguidance, Same paper... -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Ectopic Eyes Experient: Supports my view of sense, Invalidates mechanistic assumptions about eyes.
Hi Craig, On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 1:44 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Monday, March 4, 2013 11:27:21 PM UTC-5, Pierz wrote: Really Craig? It invalidates mechanistic assumptions about eyes? I'm sure the researchers would be astonished at such a wild conclusion. All the research shows is brain plasticity in interpreting signals from unusual neural pathways. How does that invalidate mechanism? It's not that wild of a conclusion. The experiment shows that we cannot assume that vision is the result of a passive process that relies on a one-way path leading from light to eye to optic nerve to brain. No, it just shows that we cannot assume that the eye has to be connected to the optic nerve specifically. The brain actively shows that there is a path leading the other way as well, as the whole organism seeks to see through the eye. The brain is always looking for patterns in its inputs that could be useful. This shows that there is sensory-motor activity going on within the micro-level of the tadpole as the rather under-signifyingly termed plasticity knows exactly what the eyeball is, and finds a way to use it. Or, the brain is just capable of recognising old patterns from a new source. Try that with your computer. See what happens when you try plugging a microphone into a DRAM slot or listening to your car radio through the transmission. We know of many algorithms (possibly equivalent) that could be used to achieve something like that. They could require human assistance -- is this what you want me to do? -- but so do humans. This, of course, provided you are willing to disregard interface incompatibilities that are outside of the control of a normal computer. But I can't see why hardware without such incompatibilities could not be built. It's just that there isn't any incentive to do it at the moment. Notice that I'm not attacking your theory, I don't grok it well enough for that. I'm just objecting to this specific argument, because I find there are simple explanations within the realms of we already know about the brain. For example, we know that entire sectors of the brain can be repurposed after an injury. Best, Telmo. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 8:27:29 AM UTC-5, stathisp wrote:
On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 1:54 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com
wrote:
On Monday, March 4, 2013 8:11:12 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote:
On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 6:02 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com
wrote:
I am responsible for my
actions because I know what I am doing and I choose to do it. If I
break the law I will be punished because the fear of punishment will
deter me and others who are thinking of doing the same thing. This is
all consistent with determinism.
Why would any of that be consistent with determinism?
Because it all still holds if determinism holds:
I know what I am doing - yes.
I choose to do it - yes.
In what way do you choose to do it? What does choose mean?
To choose between two options is to consider each one and to decide on the
one you think is best. You can do this whether your brain is deterministic
or probabilistic. In fact, people and animals have been doing this for a
long time without the faintest idea what deterministic or probabilistic
mean.
Uh, yes, people and animals do it because they have intention. It baffles
me how I can ask you what choosing is and you respond that it's just
choosing ('deciding') and not notice that such a thing is utterly
incompatible with determinism. Does a stone choose to role down a hill?
Does it decide? All you are doing is clinging to a completely arbitrary
assumption that the universe is deterministic and then begging the question
of determinism by claiming that anything which obviously contradicts
determinism must not be a contradiction, because we already know the
universe is deterministic. But my point all along is that we don't know
that at all, and what's more, I have a better way of understanding
*exactly* how intention and determinism relate to each other.
If I break the law I will be punished - yes.
The fear of punishment will deter me and others - yes.
What does it mean to be deterred? In a deterministic universe, it doesn't
matter how you feel about what you do, you are simply along for the ride,
witnessing yourself doing it.
So you say, but I don't care if the universe is deterministic or not. All
I know is I don't want to go to prison.
How could you prefer anything in a deterministic universe? What would be
the point of preferring some condition over another in a universe where
nothing has any say in what happens?
Maybe I don't want to go to prison because that's the way my brain is
wired, but I still don't want to go there.
Want makes no sense in a deterministic universe. Things happen because they
have no choice, and that's it. They are determined to happen. Nothing can
have an opinion about it. It's ironic to talk about prison especially,
since prison has no meaning except to constrain free will. There is no
punishment for prison in a deterministic universe, since there is nothing
which needs to be or can be imprisoned - everything just does what it is
determined to do.
What difference would it make how you feel about what is determined to
be
done. There is no choice - it is simply done. If you are deterred by
fear
that is still your choice, still up to you, not something which is
literally
determined *for you* by extra-personal conditions.
I chose to drink coffee today because my brain is a particular way.
In a deterministic universe, your brain would have made that decision
without you. There would just be a brain coordinating a body's access to
coffee. There could be no conceivable phenomenon of a choice, only a
process in a queue of unconscious actions being executed.
There is a choice, even if it's determined. You can define choice as no
choice if determined, but most people don't care.
No, choice and determination are mutually exclusive. A rock has no choice
rolling down a hill, and nothing can give it a choice. A person's body can
be put in prison, but they are still free to choose what to think.
If
tomorrow the coffee is no good, my brain will be different and I may
choose tea instead.
Why would you choose anything? Your body will simply drink tea if that is
the action which scores highest on whatever statistical model has been
established.
That's right, and that is what a choice is. Most people would remain quite
happy and go about their lives normally if it is explained to them this way.
That's not a choice, that's a rock rolling down a hill - ricocheting off of
different bumps depending on the speed of its roll./
To me, that's a choice. I doubt that there are
many people in the world who, if they believed that their brain
functioned deterministically, would decide they didn't have a choice
in anything and become depressed.
Huh? Why would they become depressed because of an unmet expectation
which
could not possibly exist in a deterministic
Re: Comp: Geometry Is A Zombie
On 04 Mar 2013, at 17:06, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Mar 1, 2013 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: As I've said before it's important not to confuse levels, a simulated flame won't burn your computer but it will burn a simulated object. No, that argument is bogus. There is only one physical level. HOW THE HELL DO YOU KNOW?! And even if there is a ultimate reality level and not a infinite number of nested realities how the hell do you know that you've been living your like at that foundational physical level and not at another one? Nick Bostrom at Oxford wrote an interesting paper on this subject and concludes that there is a strong likelihood that we're already living in a simulation: This is from the abstract: This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed. For the entire paper goto: http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html Not bad. This is based on computationalism. It is not original, and it is not entirely correct. With comp we are in an arithmetical emulation, no matter what, AND in a simulation made by our descendant, but the probability to wake up there, from here depends on what we will do now. If we blow up the planet, it is will be small, if we teach comp and computer science to the kids, it will be higher, for example. It is entirely up to the programmer's whim how the laws of physics will work, Exactly. or indeed if they are lawful at all in any given sim, Yes, although a sim without laws would be a very dull simulation indeed and I don't see the point of making one. Keep in mind that the Universal Dovetailer, or if your prefer the arithmetical laws entails the existence of all simulations, even the very dull one. Simulated flame can work for 10,000 levels of simulation, but not a single one of those simulated flames can access the physical level True again, but that would matter little to you if you did not exist at the foundational physical level, and you might not. ...because they aren't real - But you may not be real either, whatever that means. they are figures..symbols...facades engineered to fool our body's public senses. And what makes you think something hasn't been fooling your body's senses from the day you were born? There is no such thing as real arithmetic. I detect a pattern, whenever fact X contradicts your ideas you simply say There is no such thing as X. It's all a simulation. Could be. The word simulation is ambiguous. Bostrom use it for a simulation made by us in some physical reality that he assumes. That makes sense with comp, but we are in all case in the simulations existing by virtue of the arithmetical truth, that we need to assume to even talk about computation and simulation. Bruno Only an eye or ear made of meat will be 100% satisfying - which is why the quality of the implants are crap. When electronic ears improve and deaf people report that they are as good or better than meat ears will you admit your ideas were wrong? No of course you won't, you'll just dream up some new excuse for your ideas making incorrect predictions. Nobody has found anything in the human brain that didn't strictly follow the laws of physics either. That has nothing to do with the dependence of computer programs on a script. Your brain's operation, that is to say your mind, cannot depart from the script that the laws of physics has written. we control physics directly and consciously. Right, that's why I can fly, I just tell the law of conservation of momentum and gravity to stop working while I take my flight. I can predict that if that program doesn't work, it will never fix itself. More than 20 years ago when my first computer's hard drive was not working properly the computer's defragmentation program would fix it. I can predict that if you don't write the program, one will not sprout from the realms of Platonia to fill the void. For years computer programs have been able to write programs (compilers, assemblers and interpreters) in machine code after telling the program what you want using English words and a simplified grammar. I can judge that the quality among human experience varies widely and idiosyncratically. No you can not, you have no way of knowing the quality of experience of your
Re: Generalized Löb's Theorem
On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 3:33:28 PM UTC+2, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 3/5/2013 6:23 AM, advanced...@list.ru javascript: wrote: On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 1:16:15 PM UTC+2, advanced...@list.ru wrote: On Sunday, January 27, 2013 2:53:12 PM UTC+2, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi Stephen, On 25 Jan 2013, at 18:06, Stephen P. King wrote: Have you seen this? What implications does it have? http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1301/1301.5340.pdf If the result is correct (which I think it is) it is a nice generalization of Löb's theorem. It makes it somehow more solid, and valid for a large set of consistent extension. I avoid the need of this by making the strong soundness assumption; + the comp assumption. But it confirms the feeling that Löb's works also on many divine entities. Other results by Solovay gives similar suggestions. Bu I have to study it closely to be verify what I say here in the detail. Thanks for the link. Best, Bruno *AMS Sectional Meeting AMS Special Session* http://www.ams.org/meetings/sectional/2210_program_ss17.html#title Spring Western Sectional Meeting University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO April 13-14, 2013 (Saturday - Sunday) Meeting #1089 *Special Session on Set Theory and Boolean Algebras* *An posible generalization of the Löb's theorem.*http://amsmtgs/2210_abstracts/1089-03-60.pdf http://www.ams.org/amsmtgs/2210_abstracts/1089-03-60.pdf *Jaykov Foukzon**, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel (1089-03-60) Hi advancedguidance, Same paper... -- Onward! Stephen Yes. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Generalized Löb's Theorem
On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 4:48:10 PM UTC+2, advanced...@list.ru wrote: On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 3:33:28 PM UTC+2, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 3/5/2013 6:23 AM, advanced...@list.ru wrote: On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 1:16:15 PM UTC+2, advanced...@list.ru wrote: On Sunday, January 27, 2013 2:53:12 PM UTC+2, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi Stephen, On 25 Jan 2013, at 18:06, Stephen P. King wrote: Have you seen this? What implications does it have? http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1301/1301.5340.pdf If the result is correct (which I think it is) it is a nice generalization of Löb's theorem. It makes it somehow more solid, and valid for a large set of consistent extension. I avoid the need of this by making the strong soundness assumption; + the comp assumption. But it confirms the feeling that Löb's works also on many divine entities. Other results by Solovay gives similar suggestions. Bu I have to study it closely to be verify what I say here in the detail. Thanks for the link. Best, Bruno *AMS Sectional Meeting AMS Special Session* http://www.ams.org/meetings/sectional/2210_program_ss17.html#title Spring Western Sectional Meeting University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO April 13-14, 2013 (Saturday - Sunday) Meeting #1089 *Special Session on Set Theory and Boolean Algebras* *An posible generalization of the Löb's theorem.*http://amsmtgs/2210_abstracts/1089-03-60.pdf http://www.ams.org/amsmtgs/2210_abstracts/1089-03-60.pdf *Jaykov Foukzon**, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel (1089-03-60) Hi advancedguidance, Same paper... -- Onward! Stephen Yes. Stephen Paul King wrote: What implications does it have? Post reply [image: More message actions] Jan 25 Other recipients: -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On 04 Mar 2013, at 20:16, meekerdb wrote: On 3/4/2013 4:23 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 03 Mar 2013, at 20:35, meekerdb wrote: On 3/2/2013 11:56 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: So you admit that what you say contradicts the fact that you are intentionally saying it? Intentional, as far as I can understand its use in philosophy, is more or less equivalent to mental or conscious. You seem to take it as an a priori fact that something that is either deterministic or random cannot have intentionality. This seems to me obviously wrong. Me too. Intentionality just consists in having a hierarchy of goals which drive actions. To say something is done intentionally just means it is done pursuant to some goal. When the Mars rover steers around rock it does so intentionally in order to reach some place beyond which is a higher level goal. I agree too, but of course some non-computationalist will argue that intention needs consciousness (which i think is wrong), and that goal driven algorithm can be non conscious (which i think is possible). I am a bit astonished that some people still believe that indeterminacy can help for free will. Some randomness can be useful, if only to solve the problem of Buridan's ass. I see what you mean, but some could argue that when you use a random device (like a coin) to make a decision, you abandon free will. Indeed you let a coin decide for you, when free will meant more that you are the one making the free decision. But effective randomness is easy to come in the complex environment of life. On the contrary, deterministic free will make sense, because free will comes from a lack of self-determinacy, implying hesitation in front of different path, and self-indeterminacy follows logically from determinism and self-reference. First person indeterminacy can be used easily to convince oneself that indeterminacy cannot help for free will. Iterating a self- duplication can't provide free-will. As Dennett says deterministic free will is the only free will worth having. I agree with him on that. My pint above illustrate that. Random choice are not really free choice. Why would anyone want to make decisions that were not determined by their learning and memories and values. Indeed. But even more when they feel such value as being universal or close to universal. But based on your experience with salvia, Bruno, you seem to think there is a you which is independent of those things. Not just salvia. The 8 hypostases describes already a you (with 8 views), which are more (semantically) and less (bodily or syntactically) than memory. The value are not necessarily part of the memory (as opposed to their instantiations). Salvia can help to illustrate this in a vivid way, by an hallucination of remembering having been that kind of things for all time. It is comparable to the realization that you don't die when you stop doing something which was part of what you take as an important personality trait, like when people succeed in stopping tobacco. They can remind how they felt and were before taking tobacco, for example. Isn't it more likely that the drug simply makes your narrative thoughts less able than usual to trace their sources? So it is like the Poincare' effect writ large? I am not sure. Perhaps. If you make that idea more precise, I might concur. Is it consistent with what I just say here? Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Ectopic Eyes Experient: Supports my view of sense, Invalidates mechanistic assumptions about eyes.
On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 8:39:37 AM UTC-5, telmo_menezes wrote: Hi Craig, On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 1:44 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: On Monday, March 4, 2013 11:27:21 PM UTC-5, Pierz wrote: Really Craig? It invalidates mechanistic assumptions about eyes? I'm sure the researchers would be astonished at such a wild conclusion. All the research shows is brain plasticity in interpreting signals from unusual neural pathways. How does that invalidate mechanism? It's not that wild of a conclusion. The experiment shows that we cannot assume that vision is the result of a passive process that relies on a one-way path leading from light to eye to optic nerve to brain. No, it just shows that we cannot assume that the eye has to be connected to the optic nerve specifically. Yes, but I think that's only part of what it shows. It also shows that the brain and spinal cord have the general intelligence to recognize and integrate the eye as an eye. It's an active system. It's not just a matter of saying that you can receive mail at more than one address, it is that your mail will figure out where you are living without having instructed the post office. The brain actively shows that there is a path leading the other way as well, as the whole organism seeks to see through the eye. The brain is always looking for patterns in its inputs that could be useful. a computer is always scanning its ports and slots for activity also. That doesn't mean you can just solder a DRAM card somehwere on the motherboard and expect to use it. This shows that there is sensory-motor activity going on within the micro-level of the tadpole as the rather under-signifyingly termed plasticity knows exactly what the eyeball is, and finds a way to use it. Or, the brain is just capable of recognising old patterns from a new source. When you say that the brain is just capable of recognizing, that is already sense. You're not saying that this capability is just luck or telepathy, you are saying that there is a particular sense interaction in which neural tissue initiates ephaptic or other contact. It's not like the patterns are leaking out of the eye in some formless way, it has to be recognized that this organ as something which can be used as a sense organ before it can get any signals out of it. This brings up the question also of 'why have sense organs at all'? If the brain can just recognize old patterns from new sources, why not just use anything you can touch as an eye or an ear? Try that with your computer. See what happens when you try plugging a microphone into a DRAM slot or listening to your car radio through the transmission. We know of many algorithms (possibly equivalent) that could be used to achieve something like that. They could require human assistance -- is this what you want me to do? -- but so do humans. This, of course, provided you are willing to disregard interface incompatibilities that are outside of the control of a normal computer. But I can't see why hardware without such incompatibilities could not be built. It's just that there isn't any incentive to do it at the moment. Sure, yes. The assumption of mechanism however, should lead us to expect that primitive organisms would be like the early machines that humans have built so far. Just as we have no incentive - why would biology have any different incentive? The opposite seems to be the case - human machines are founded on a rigid, unambiguous ontology, whereas biological organisms are founded on flexibility and ambiguous relation between generality and specialization. Notice that I'm not attacking your theory, I don't grok it well enough for that. I'm just objecting to this specific argument, because I find there are simple explanations within the realms of we already know about the brain. For example, we know that entire sectors of the brain can be repurposed after an injury. A brain repairing itself is a little easier to explain computationally (basically like RAID 5 drive rebuild.. data is stored in such a way that it can be reconstructed through triangulation of a missing drive). The idea of a new drive being inserted into some random slot directly and having the computer begin using it is a little different. The eye could be a tumor or some foreign object, it would have to have some way of recognizing what it is first before it could be useful. This doesn't make sense under the assumption of visual sense as a passive machine in which photons strike the retina, signals, travel to the brain, brain interprets. The brain has to be interpreting the eye itself, as a organ which it collaborates with, not just an abstract source of signals, as it would be in a computer. Thanks, Craig Best, Telmo. Craig -- You received this message because you are
RE: Messages Aren't Made of Information
Craig: You statement of need for a human to observe the pattern is the smoking gun to indicate a misunderstanding of semiotic theory on your part. Specifically, you don't need a human; a machine will do. Not all machines are man-made. wrb From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Craig Weinberg Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2013 5:24 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 2:06:20 AM UTC-5, William R. Buckley wrote: There is information (I take information to be a manifestation of entropy) and it is always represented in the form of a pattern (a distribution) of the units of mass/energy of which the Universe is composed. I can agree that information could be considered a manifestation of entropy, to the extent that entropy is necessary to provide a contrast space for a distribution. To string an ellipses together, you need one dot, repetition, space, and a quality of measurement which yokes together the three dots aesthetically. Beyond that, you also need human observer with human visual sense to turn the distribution into a 'pattern'. Without that, of course, even distribution cannot cohere into a distribution, as there is no scale, range, quality, etc to anchor the expectation. If we are a microbe, we may not ever find our way from one dot to the next. I think that semiotic signs are simply specific bits of information; I will use the terms synonymously. Information has meaning only within context. For many people, context is taken to mean one piece of information as compared to another piece of information. I do not take this meaning of context when I discuss semiotics. Instead, I take semiotic context to be the acceptor of the information. Hence, all meaning resides a priori within information acceptors. Agree. Well, transmitters form the signs from their own sense of meaning as well. That's how we are having this discussion. What you know you have always known; the sign merely serves to bring that knowledge to your conscious mind. Right. I mean it might be a bit more complicated as far as novelty goes. I don't know if the state of unconscious information is really what I have always known but that this particular constellation of meanings reflects the Totality in a way that it is only trivially novel. Like if you hit a jackpot on a slot machine - that may not have happened before, but the slot machine is designed to payout whenever it does. The jackpot already exists as a potential and sooner or later it will be realized. That you may have intention and so comport your delivery of information to another acceptor has not bearing upon the subsequent acceptance or rejection of that information by the target acceptor. Acceptance or rejection of information is determined solely by the accepting or rejecting context (acceptor). Agree. But the converse - the acceptor can only accept information which has been included for delivery by intention (or accidentally I suppose). Your mere presence sends information regardless of some conscious intent. Indeed, your absence does equally deliver information, for the target acceptor will see a definite difference in available information sources whether you are present or not. Consider a line worker in a bean processing plant where the task is to cull *bad* dried beans from *good* dried beans as they go by on a conveyor belt; the *bad* beans are removed by hand, so the line worker is constantly looking for *bad* beans while constantly being aware of the fact that not many of the beans are *bad*. The consciousness is aware of both that which is present and that which is not present. Yes, the expectation is key. I call that the perceptual inertial frame. There is an accumulated inertia of expectations which filters, amplifies, distorts, etc. Further, what any information that you emit means to you is irrelevant to the meaning that another may take for that information. Then how does art work? Music? Certainly it is pretty clear that what emitting Iron Man meant to Black Sabbath is different from what emitting the Four Seasons meant to Vivaldi. I agree that the receiver bears the brunt of the decoding, but why deny that the broadcaster can do intentional encoding, when they know the audience? Indeed, it is via reliance upon -Cultural Norms- that your point regarding Morse Code becomes relevant. It is perfectly reasonable for an ornery person to simply reject such norms and act otherwise; your expectation originates in you, not the targets of information you broadcast. The truth of your statement is no reply to my claim, that how another receiver of signs responds is irrelevant to your knowledge, save the one case of conveyance of knowledge between semiotic units; where you intend for knowledge to be conveyed. In that case, it is
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On Monday, March 4, 2013 7:23:32 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 03 Mar 2013, at 20:35, meekerdb wrote: On 3/2/2013 11:56 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: So you admit that what you say contradicts the fact that you are intentionally saying it? Intentional, as far as I can understand its use in philosophy, is more or less equivalent to mental or conscious. You seem to take it as an a priori fact that something that is either deterministic or random cannot have intentionality. This seems to me obviously wrong. Me too. Intentionality just consists in having a hierarchy of goals which drive actions. To say something is done intentionally just means it is done pursuant to some goal. When the Mars rover steers around rock it does so intentionally in order to reach some place beyond which is a higher level goal. I agree too, but of course some non-computationalist will argue that intention needs consciousness (which i think is wrong), Individually, one might carry out an intention without being personally conscious of it, but ontologically, a world without consciousness can have no intention - why would it? What would it mean for something to be intentional or unintentional in a universe which contains no possibility of conscious participation? and that goal driven algorithm can be non conscious (which i think is possible). An algorithm can be non conscious (it always is IMO), but an algorithm has no intention to pursue a goal. What drives an algorithm is not a goal but the mechanics of whatever it is executed on. Whether it is the force of water dripping on a scale, or current winding through a circuit, pendulum swinging, etc - that sensory-motor expectation is the only intention. Everything that we place in the line of that intention - water wheels, dominoes, etc, is unintentional to the process completing. I can make a Rube Goldberg machine which drops a mallet on a bunny's head at the end, but that doesn't mean that the machine intentionally hurts animals. This is what it seems like you don't see or are denying. Just because an algorithm is designed purposefully doesn't mean that purpose is carried into the algorithm. I am a bit astonished that some people still believe that indeterminacy can help for free will. On the contrary, deterministic free will make sense, because free will comes from a lack of self- determinacy, Why do you conceive of free will as emerging from an absence? That's like saying that white comes from not-black. Why would something develop free will just because it has a lack of self-determinacy? Jellyfish drift. Craig implying hesitation in front of different path, and self- indeterminacy follows logically from determinism and self-reference. First person indeterminacy can be used easily to convince oneself that indeterminacy cannot help for free will. Iterating a self-duplication can't provide free-will. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Ectopic Eyes Experient: Supports my view of sense, Invalidates mechanistic assumptions about eyes.
On 05 Mar 2013, at 08:43, Jesse Mazer wrote: On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 11:27 PM, Pierz pier...@gmail.com wrote: Really Craig? It invalidates mechanistic assumptions about eyes? I'm sure the researchers would be astonished at such a wild conclusion. All the research shows is brain plasticity in interpreting signals from unusual neural pathways. How does that invalidate mechanism? Yes, I was confused at first by the statement in the first paragraph that the eyes can confer vision without a direct neural connection to the brain (maybe Craig was confused by this too?), but it seems that by direct neural connection they just mean an optic nerve wired directly to the brain, bypassing the spinal cord like the optic nerve normally does, since later in the article they do mention the eyes were connected (indirectly) to the brain via the spinal cord: No one would have guessed that eyes on the flank of a tadpole could see, especially when wired only to the spinal cord and not the brain. Even that would not be conceptually astonishing. My computer is not wired to anything, and I can still send you a mail. It would have meant only that optic cells have some wifi systems. Cute, without doubt, but still not a threat for computationalism. Improbable also, but who knows. Bruno Jesse -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information
On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 12:03:28 PM UTC-5, William R. Buckley wrote: Craig: You statement of need for a human to observe the pattern is the smoking gun to indicate a misunderstanding of semiotic theory on your part. I don't think that it has to be humans doing the observing at all. Specifically, you don’t need a human; a machine will do. A machine can only help another non-machine interpret something. I don't think that they can interpret anything for 'themselves'. Not all machines are man-made. True, but what we see as natural machines may not be just machines. Man-made machines may be just machines. Craig wrb *From:* everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript: [mailto: everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript:] *On Behalf Of *Craig Weinberg *Sent:* Tuesday, March 05, 2013 5:24 AM *To:* everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript: *Subject:* Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 2:06:20 AM UTC-5, William R. Buckley wrote: There is information (I take information to be a manifestation of entropy) and it is always represented in the form of a pattern (a distribution) of the units of mass/energy of which the Universe is composed. I can agree that information could be considered a manifestation of entropy, to the extent that entropy is necessary to provide a contrast space for a distribution. To string an ellipses together, you need one dot, repetition, space, and a quality of measurement which yokes together the three dots aesthetically. Beyond that, you also need human observer with human visual sense to turn the distribution into a 'pattern'. Without that, of course, even distribution cannot cohere into a distribution, as there is no scale, range, quality, etc to anchor the expectation. If we are a microbe, we may not ever find our way from one dot to the next. I think that semiotic signs are simply specific bits of information; I will use the terms synonymously. Information has meaning only within context. For many people, context is taken to mean one piece of information as compared to another piece of information. I do not take this meaning of context when I discuss semiotics. Instead, I take semiotic context to be the acceptor of the information. Hence, all meaning resides a priori within information acceptors. Agree. Well, transmitters form the signs from their own sense of meaning as well. That's how we are having this discussion. What you know you have always known; the sign merely serves to bring that knowledge to your conscious mind. Right. I mean it might be a bit more complicated as far as novelty goes. I don't know if the state of unconscious information is really what I have always known but that this particular constellation of meanings reflects the Totality in a way that it is only trivially novel. Like if you hit a jackpot on a slot machine - that may not have happened before, but the slot machine is designed to payout whenever it does. The jackpot already exists as a potential and sooner or later it will be realized. That you may have intention and so comport your delivery of information to another acceptor has not bearing upon the subsequent acceptance or rejection of that information by the target acceptor. Acceptance or rejection of information is determined solely by the accepting or rejecting context (acceptor). Agree. But the converse - the acceptor can only accept information which has been included for delivery by intention (or accidentally I suppose). Your mere presence sends information regardless of some conscious intent. Indeed, your absence does equally deliver information, for the target acceptor will see a definite difference in available information sources whether you are present or not. Consider a line worker in a bean processing plant where the task is to cull *bad* dried beans from *good* dried beans as they go by on a conveyor belt; the *bad* beans are removed by hand, so the line worker is constantly looking for *bad* beans while constantly being aware of the fact that not many of the beans are *bad*. The consciousness is aware of both that which is present and that which is not present. Yes, the expectation is key. I call that the perceptual inertial frame. There is an accumulated inertia of expectations which filters, amplifies, distorts, etc. Further, what any information that you emit means to you is irrelevant to the meaning that another may take for that information. Then how does art work? Music? Certainly it is pretty clear that what emitting Iron Man meant to Black Sabbath is different from what emitting the Four Seasons meant to Vivaldi. I agree that the receiver bears the brunt of the decoding, but why deny that the broadcaster can do intentional encoding, when they know the audience? Indeed, it is via
Re: Comp: Geometry Is A Zombie
On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: No software can be run without being grounded in physical hardware, And no human mind can exist without a physical brain. and no software can be completely sequestered from any other software And human ideas cannot no that's not right let me start again. Human ideas should not be sequestered from other human ideas; but the sad fact is the people have no problem with huge glaring contradictions in their central belief system. How do you think religion exists? Even if there were other physical levels, we could never have any contact with them by definition, Not so, the Master Programer could make His existence obvious to everyone anytime He wished. But of course the Master Programer may not exist at the ultimate reality level either. there is no independent reality at all. So when you use one of your favorite phrases but they aren't real or X doesn't exist, you mean nothing; or at least whatever X is it has no deficiency that everything else, including you, doesn't have. if we are trying to figure out about the cosmos in general, what difference does it make if we are the lucky/unlucky ones that happen to live on the ground floor or if it's someone else? I think you're getting ahead of yourself, the first step in figuring out how the multiverse works is to figure out how our universe works. What I think that real means is that sense of accessing an experience which is anchored into a larger significance.It's an intuitive feeling - a gravitas which is supported by numerous sensory, cognitive, and probably super-personal cues. That is exactly what happens when a teenage boy becomes obsessed with a video game, you may feel that lacks gravitas but he certainly doesn't, and it's personal experience we're talking about. When electronic ears improve and deaf people report that they are as good or better than meat ears will you admit your ideas were wrong? No of course you won't, you'll just dream up some new excuse for your ideas making incorrect predictions. I would expect 'Better than meat' by some measures, but not every measure. And when electronic ears improve (and they will) and deaf people report that they are as good or better than meat ears by every measure (and they will) will you then admit your ideas were wrong? No of course you won't, you'll just dream up some new excuse for your ideas making incorrect predictions. I only see biological organisms as being likely much better technology than you might guess. Considering that Evolution has been working on it for nearly 4 billion years it's very crappy technology indeed, we've been working on it for less than a century and already we're producing things that do better in some ways than what Evolution came up with. One instant from now (from Evolution's timescale) we will have things that are superior in EVERY way. The experience of mind seems to have nothing to do with the laws of physics you are thinking of. Chemistry is based on physics and It would be easy for me to change the chemistry of your brain, and if I were to do so you would experience ENORMOUS differences in consciousness; and when you report changes in your conscious experience I can detect changes in your brain chemistry. Certainly access control to our experience supervenes on physics, like access to TV programs supervenes on a TV set In this analogy what corresponds to the TV station? Heaven, Santa Claus's workshop? we control physics directly and consciously. Right, that's why I can fly, I just tell the law of conservation of momentum and gravity to stop working while I take my flight. We don't have to be able to change the laws of physics to make direct physical changes. We don't break the law of gravity, we build a plane to get around it. Fine, but that means we DO NOT control physics directly and consciously. I can predict that if that program doesn't work, it will never fix itself. More than 20 years ago when my first computer's hard drive was not working properly the computer's defragmentation program would fix it. Was the defragmentation program written by the computer to fix itself, Did you construct your brain from scratch? And even if you did if you were already smart enough to be able to make all those neurons why did you need a brain? I can speak Chinese phonetically if it is spelled out for me. That doesn't mean I can start writing Chinese. True, but you can't listen to questions in Chinese and give answers to them in Chinese that a native speaker would regard as coherent and sometimes even brilliant. Watson can. you have no way of knowing the quality of experience of your fellow human beings, all you can do is observe behavior and the same thing is true of a smart computer. Not true. Like hell its not! Sense is transparent. I don't know what that means. We can see and feel some of the
Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information
On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 3:53:31 AM UTC-5, Alberto G.Corona wrote: Let´s say that what we call information is an extended form of sensory input. What makes this input information is the usability of this input for reducing the internal entropy of the receiver or increase the internal order. The receiver can be a machine, a cell, a person or a society for example. If the input do not produce this effect in the receiver, then that input is not information. The increase of internal order of the receiver is a symptom of an experience of being informed but they are not the same thing. It's not really even relevant in most cases. I would not call it an extended form of sensory input, but a reduction of sensory experience. Input is not a physical reality, it is a conceptual label. Consider Blindsight: I hold up two fingers and ask how many fingers? I don't know.' Guess 'two'. This example tells us about information without tying it to decreased entropy. My two fingers are a form. I am putting them into that form, so the process of my presenting my fingers is a formation of a sign. The sign is not information at this point. It means something different to an ant or a frog than it does to a person looking at it. If you can't see, there is no formation there at all unless you can collide with my fingers. When the patient responds that they don't know how many fingers, it is because they personally have no experience of seeing it. They are not being informed personally by the form of my fingers in front of their face because they have blindsight. When they guess correctly, they still have not been informed. Only we know that the information is correct. At this point you could say that there is some decrease in information entropy of the receiver as far as we are concerned, but in fact, for the receiver themselves, they have not increased any internal order. A machine has blindsight about everything. They can be queried and produce valid responses to inform us, but they are never informed themselves. There is no 'in' in a machine, it is an organization of forms which treat other forms in a proscribed way. Forms are copied, transformed, and presented in a context that it has no experience of. My computer sees nothing that I see on this screen. It reads nothing that I type here. It doesn't know what the Everything List is - not even Google knows what it is - only that the string of characters in the name is to be associated with an ip address. Craig 2013/3/2 William R. Buckley bill.b...@gmail.com javascript: Thinking about how information content of a message Big mistake. Information is never contained with but exactly one exception, an envelope. I made this point with Jesper Hoffmeyer regarding a statement in his book Biosemiotics, that information is represented but not contained in that representation. That marks of chalk upon slate may be taken to represent information at a meta level above the reality of streaks of a deformed amorphous solid has nothing to do with the information represented by that deformation, nor the increase of entropy associated with the greater disorder obtained from that deformation; these are but three of the *informations* to be found upon review of those streaks. Entropy is how nature sees information (not yet an established fact but I think the tea leaves read clear enough) but that has (presumably) nothing to do with how intelligent individuals see information, or as von Uexküll called such phenomena, signs. Most definitely the information is not to be found within the material of its expression, its representation. Rather, the information is already to be found within the interpreter. That which is information is so by virtue of the acceptor of that information; else, it is noise. And, write the information on a piece of paper and seal the paper within an envelope and you may justifiably claim that the information is contained; else, you are deluding yourself. has an inversely proportionate relationship with the capacity of sender and receiver to synchronize with each other. snip wrb -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group
Re: Ectopic Eyes Experient: Supports my view of sense, Invalidates mechanistic assumptions about eyes.
On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 12:45:11 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 05 Mar 2013, at 08:43, Jesse Mazer wrote: On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 11:27 PM, Pierz pie...@gmail.com javascript:wrote: Really Craig? It invalidates mechanistic assumptions about eyes? I'm sure the researchers would be astonished at such a wild conclusion. All the research shows is brain plasticity in interpreting signals from unusual neural pathways. How does that invalidate mechanism? Yes, I was confused at first by the statement in the first paragraph that the eyes can confer vision without a direct neural connection to the brain (maybe Craig was confused by this too?), but it seems that by direct neural connection they just mean an optic nerve wired directly to the brain, bypassing the spinal cord like the optic nerve normally does, since later in the article they do mention the eyes were connected (indirectly) to the brain via the spinal cord: No one would have guessed that eyes on the flank of a tadpole could see, especially when wired only to the spinal cord and not the brain. Even that would not be conceptually astonishing. My computer is not wired to anything, and I can still send you a mail. It would have meant only that optic cells have some wifi systems. Cute, without doubt, but still not a threat for computationalism. Improbable also, but who knows. Bruno If they were wireless from the start though, why use an optic nerve? Craig Jesse -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Messages Aren't Made of Information
Craig, You build an automaton, place it and turn it on, and from that point in time forward the automaton reacts to acceptable information all on its own. You contradict yourself - - I don't think it has to be human - machines only help non-machines to interpret - - and if the human point is important, then surely you will accept your definition to be that it must be biological life, for a machine cannot be alive. A machine is either a machine or it is not a machine - a machine cannot be both a machine and not a machine at the same time. wrb From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Craig Weinberg Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2013 10:14 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 12:03:28 PM UTC-5, William R. Buckley wrote: Craig: You statement of need for a human to observe the pattern is the smoking gun to indicate a misunderstanding of semiotic theory on your part. I don't think that it has to be humans doing the observing at all. Specifically, you don't need a human; a machine will do. A machine can only help another non-machine interpret something. I don't think that they can interpret anything for 'themselves'. Not all machines are man-made. True, but what we see as natural machines may not be just machines. Man-made machines may be just machines. Craig wrb From: everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript: [mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript: ] On Behalf Of Craig Weinberg Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2013 5:24 AM To: everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript: Subject: Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 2:06:20 AM UTC-5, William R. Buckley wrote: There is information (I take information to be a manifestation of entropy) and it is always represented in the form of a pattern (a distribution) of the units of mass/energy of which the Universe is composed. I can agree that information could be considered a manifestation of entropy, to the extent that entropy is necessary to provide a contrast space for a distribution. To string an ellipses together, you need one dot, repetition, space, and a quality of measurement which yokes together the three dots aesthetically. Beyond that, you also need human observer with human visual sense to turn the distribution into a 'pattern'. Without that, of course, even distribution cannot cohere into a distribution, as there is no scale, range, quality, etc to anchor the expectation. If we are a microbe, we may not ever find our way from one dot to the next. I think that semiotic signs are simply specific bits of information; I will use the terms synonymously. Information has meaning only within context. For many people, context is taken to mean one piece of information as compared to another piece of information. I do not take this meaning of context when I discuss semiotics. Instead, I take semiotic context to be the acceptor of the information. Hence, all meaning resides a priori within information acceptors. Agree. Well, transmitters form the signs from their own sense of meaning as well. That's how we are having this discussion. What you know you have always known; the sign merely serves to bring that knowledge to your conscious mind. Right. I mean it might be a bit more complicated as far as novelty goes. I don't know if the state of unconscious information is really what I have always known but that this particular constellation of meanings reflects the Totality in a way that it is only trivially novel. Like if you hit a jackpot on a slot machine - that may not have happened before, but the slot machine is designed to payout whenever it does. The jackpot already exists as a potential and sooner or later it will be realized. That you may have intention and so comport your delivery of information to another acceptor has not bearing upon the subsequent acceptance or rejection of that information by the target acceptor. Acceptance or rejection of information is determined solely by the accepting or rejecting context (acceptor). Agree. But the converse - the acceptor can only accept information which has been included for delivery by intention (or accidentally I suppose). Your mere presence sends information regardless of some conscious intent. Indeed, your absence does equally deliver information, for the target acceptor will see a definite difference in available information sources whether you are present or not. Consider a line worker in a bean processing plant where the task is to cull *bad* dried beans from *good* dried beans as they go by on a conveyor belt; the *bad* beans are removed by hand, so the line worker is constantly looking for *bad* beans while constantly being aware of the fact that not many of the beans are *bad*. The consciousness is aware of both that which is
RE: Messages Aren't Made of Information
The fact that a machine can act in a discriminatory based upon some signal (sign, information) input is demonstration of value judgment. Just as there is no *in* in a machine, so to there is no *in* in a biological organism; they both, machine and organism, are forms that treat other forms in certain proscribed ways. You cannot demonstrate otherwise. wrb From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Craig Weinberg Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2013 10:37 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 3:53:31 AM UTC-5, Alberto G.Corona wrote: Let´s say that what we call information is an extended form of sensory input. What makes this input information is the usability of this input for reducing the internal entropy of the receiver or increase the internal order. The receiver can be a machine, a cell, a person or a society for example. If the input do not produce this effect in the receiver, then that input is not information. The increase of internal order of the receiver is a symptom of an experience of being informed but they are not the same thing. It's not really even relevant in most cases. I would not call it an extended form of sensory input, but a reduction of sensory experience. Input is not a physical reality, it is a conceptual label. Consider Blindsight: I hold up two fingers and ask how many fingers? I don't know.' Guess 'two'. This example tells us about information without tying it to decreased entropy. My two fingers are a form. I am putting them into that form, so the process of my presenting my fingers is a formation of a sign. The sign is not information at this point. It means something different to an ant or a frog than it does to a person looking at it. If you can't see, there is no formation there at all unless you can collide with my fingers. When the patient responds that they don't know how many fingers, it is because they personally have no experience of seeing it. They are not being informed personally by the form of my fingers in front of their face because they have blindsight. When they guess correctly, they still have not been informed. Only we know that the information is correct. At this point you could say that there is some decrease in information entropy of the receiver as far as we are concerned, but in fact, for the receiver themselves, they have not increased any internal order. A machine has blindsight about everything. They can be queried and produce valid responses to inform us, but they are never informed themselves. There is no 'in' in a machine, it is an organization of forms which treat other forms in a proscribed way. Forms are copied, transformed, and presented in a context that it has no experience of. My computer sees nothing that I see on this screen. It reads nothing that I type here. It doesn't know what the Everything List is - not even Google knows what it is - only that the string of characters in the name is to be associated with an ip address. Craig 2013/3/2 William R. Buckley bill.b...@gmail.com javascript: Thinking about how information content of a message Big mistake. Information is never contained with but exactly one exception, an envelope. I made this point with Jesper Hoffmeyer regarding a statement in his book Biosemiotics, that information is represented but not contained in that representation. That marks of chalk upon slate may be taken to represent information at a meta level above the reality of streaks of a deformed amorphous solid has nothing to do with the information represented by that deformation, nor the increase of entropy associated with the greater disorder obtained from that deformation; these are but three of the *informations* to be found upon review of those streaks. Entropy is how nature sees information (not yet an established fact but I think the tea leaves read clear enough) but that has (presumably) nothing to do with how intelligent individuals see information, or as von Uexküll called such phenomena, signs. Most definitely the information is not to be found within the material of its expression, its representation. Rather, the information is already to be found within the interpreter. That which is information is so by virtue of the acceptor of that information; else, it is noise. And, write the information on a piece of paper and seal the paper within an envelope and you may justifiably claim that the information is contained; else, you are deluding yourself. has an inversely proportionate relationship with the capacity of sender and receiver to synchronize with each other. snip wrb -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript: . To post to this
Re: Comp: Geometry Is A Zombie
On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 1:16:59 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote: On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:wrote: No software can be run without being grounded in physical hardware, And no human mind can exist without a physical brain. I wasn't trying to differentiate machines from people here though, I was trying to show how the level on which the machine physically runs is completely different from every other layer. Layer 10 doesn't have to run on layer 5, but every layer has to run on layer 1. and no software can be completely sequestered from any other software And human ideas cannot no that's not right let me start again. Human ideas should not be sequestered from other human ideas; but the sad fact is the people have no problem with huge glaring contradictions in their central belief system. How do you think religion exists? Again, not talking about people here - just about the physical reality vs all forms of simulation. Everything simulated is physical ultimately, but the physical has no signs of being a simulation, as far as the relation to the physical layer is not like any relation between simulated layers. Even if there were other physical levels, we could never have any contact with them by definition, Not so, the Master Programer could make His existence obvious to everyone anytime He wished. But of course the Master Programer may not exist at the ultimate reality level either. In either scenario, what does taking the idea of other physical levels seriously offer us? If the MP unveils those levels, then we worry about it then, no? there is no independent reality at all. So when you use one of your favorite phrases but they aren't real or X doesn't exist, you mean nothing; or at least whatever X is it has no deficiency that everything else, including you, doesn't have. Real has different meanings in different contexts. If I say that photons don't exist, I am saying it in the sense that money doesn't exit. It's real enough as a concept, but the object that the concept refers to has no independent experience or body of its own. There is no actual thing that physically is money or a photon. if we are trying to figure out about the cosmos in general, what difference does it make if we are the lucky/unlucky ones that happen to live on the ground floor or if it's someone else? I think you're getting ahead of yourself, the first step in figuring out how the multiverse works is to figure out how our universe works. Aren't you getting ahead of yourself claiming there is a multiverse at all? Before we try to figure out how our universe works, shouldn't we first figure out what it is? What I think that real means is that sense of accessing an experience which is anchored into a larger significance.It's an intuitive feeling - a gravitas which is supported by numerous sensory, cognitive, and probably super-personal cues. That is exactly what happens when a teenage boy becomes obsessed with a video game, you may feel that lacks gravitas but he certainly doesn't, and it's personal experience we're talking about. Gravitas is relative. If the video game is all that there is, then it's as real as real can get. If you go look at Bryce Canyon and can't tell that its more real than a video game, then that would be alarming. A computer can't tell the difference though. It knows no realism, no sense of gravitas between assisting you kill real people in the army or graphic sprites on Call of Duty. When electronic ears improve and deaf people report that they are as good or better than meat ears will you admit your ideas were wrong? No of course you won't, you'll just dream up some new excuse for your ideas making incorrect predictions. I would expect 'Better than meat' by some measures, but not every measure. And when electronic ears improve (and they will) and deaf people report that they are as good or better than meat ears by every measure (and they will) I think you are in the wrong century for that kind of overconfidence in technology. I think that it is very likely that the quality of electronic ears will improve modestly but never will approach that of natural hearing,. just as the Google search algorithm has not improved in 20 years. More than likely, all prosthetics will always be inferior to natural equipment except in special cases, as they always have been. You know that all of those things on TV - the super glue, the amazing spot removers, and all of the other treatments to make something 'good as new' don't really work as advertised, right? will you then admit your ideas were wrong? No of course you won't, you'll just dream up some new excuse for your ideas making incorrect predictions. I doubt I'll ever in that position, since technological progress will likely continue to be be buried by the politics of
Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information
On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 3:03:31 PM UTC-5, William R. Buckley wrote: Craig, You build an automaton, place it and turn it on, and from that point in time forward the automaton reacts to acceptable information all on its own. Reacts, yes, but it isn't informed by the reaction. You contradict yourself – - I don’t think it has to be human – machines only help non-machines to interpret - Where was the contradiction? - and if the human point is important, then surely you will accept your definition to be that it must be biological life, for a machine cannot be alive. A living being can be used as a machine, but it is not defined by that function. A machine is either a machine or it is not a machine – a machine cannot be both a machine and not a machine at the same time. A creature can be more than a machine, but still act as a machine in many ways. Craig wrb *From:* everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript: [mailto: everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript:] *On Behalf Of *Craig Weinberg *Sent:* Tuesday, March 05, 2013 10:14 AM *To:* everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript: *Subject:* Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 12:03:28 PM UTC-5, William R. Buckley wrote: Craig: You statement of need for a human to observe the pattern is the smoking gun to indicate a misunderstanding of semiotic theory on your part. I don't think that it has to be humans doing the observing at all. Specifically, you don’t need a human; a machine will do. A machine can only help another non-machine interpret something. I don't think that they can interpret anything for 'themselves'. Not all machines are man-made. True, but what we see as natural machines may not be just machines. Man-made machines may be just machines. Craig wrb *From:* everyth...@googlegroups.com [mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf Of *Craig Weinberg *Sent:* Tuesday, March 05, 2013 5:24 AM *To:* everyth...@googlegroups.com *Subject:* Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 2:06:20 AM UTC-5, William R. Buckley wrote: There is information (I take information to be a manifestation of entropy) and it is always represented in the form of a pattern (a distribution) of the units of mass/energy of which the Universe is composed. I can agree that information could be considered a manifestation of entropy, to the extent that entropy is necessary to provide a contrast space for a distribution. To string an ellipses together, you need one dot, repetition, space, and a quality of measurement which yokes together the three dots aesthetically. Beyond that, you also need human observer with human visual sense to turn the distribution into a 'pattern'. Without that, of course, even distribution cannot cohere into a distribution, as there is no scale, range, quality, etc to anchor the expectation. If we are a microbe, we may not ever find our way from one dot to the next. I think that semiotic signs are simply specific bits of information; I will use the terms synonymously. Information has meaning only within context. For many people, context is taken to mean one piece of information as compared to another piece of information. I do not take this meaning of context when I discuss semiotics. Instead, I take semiotic context to be the acceptor of the information. Hence, all meaning resides a priori within information acceptors. Agree. Well, transmitters form the signs from their own sense of meaning as well. That's how we are having this discussion. What you know you have always known; the sign merely serves to bring that knowledge to your conscious mind. Right. I mean it might be a bit more complicated as far as novelty goes. I don't know if the state of unconscious information is really what I have always known but that this particular constellation of meanings reflects the Totality in a way that it is only trivially novel. Like if you hit a jackpot on a slot machine - that may not have happened before, but the slot machine is designed to payout whenever it does. The jackpot already exists as a potential and sooner or later it will be realized. That you may have intention and so comport your delivery of information to another acceptor has not bearing upon the subsequent acceptance or rejection of that information by the target acceptor. Acceptance or rejection of information is determined solely by the accepting or rejecting context (acceptor). Agree. But the converse - the acceptor can only accept information which has been included for delivery by intention (or accidentally I suppose). Your mere presence sends information regardless of some conscious intent. Indeed, your absence does equally deliver information, for the target acceptor will see
Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information
Dear Bil B. you probably have thought in these lines during similar long periods as I did. It was ~2 decades ago when I defined i n f o r m a t i o n as something with (at least) 2 ends: 1. the notion (in whatever format it shows up) - and 2. the acceptor (adjusting the notion in whatever context it can be perceived - appercipiated (adjusted). I have no idea how to make a connection between information (anyway how one defines it) and the (inner?) disorder level of anything (entropy?). I dislike this thermodynamic term alltogether. Later on I tried to refine my wording into: RELATIONS and the capability of recognizing them. That moved away from a 'human(?)' framework. E. g. I called the 'closeness of a '(+)' charge to a '(-)' potential an information so it came close to SOME consciousness (=(?) *response to relations*), no matter in what kind of domain. Do you feel some merit to my thinking? John Mikes On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 2:06 AM, William R. Buckley bill.buck...@gmail.comwrote: There is information (I take information to be a manifestation of entropy) and it is always represented in the form of a pattern (a distribution) of the units of mass/energy of which the Universe is composed. I think that semiotic signs are simply specific bits of information; I will use the terms synonymously. Information has meaning only within context. For many people, context is taken to mean one piece of information as compared to another piece of information. I do not take this meaning of context when I discuss semiotics. Instead, I take semiotic context to be the acceptor of the information. Hence, all meaning resides a priori within information acceptors. What you know you have always known; the sign merely serves to bring that knowledge to your conscious mind. That you may have intention and so comport your delivery of information to another acceptor has not bearing upon the subsequent acceptance or rejection of that information by the target acceptor. Acceptance or rejection of information is determined solely by the accepting or rejecting context (acceptor). Your mere presence sends information regardless of some conscious intent. Indeed, your absence does equally deliver information, for the target acceptor will see a definite difference in available information sources whether you are present or not. Consider a line worker in a bean processing plant where the task is to cull *bad* dried beans from *good* dried beans as they go by on a conveyor belt; the *bad* beans are removed by hand, so the line worker is constantly looking for *bad* beans while constantly being aware of the fact that not many of the beans are *bad*. The consciousness is aware of both that which is present and that which is not present. Further, what any information that you emit means to you is irrelevant to the meaning that another may take for that information. Indeed, it is via reliance upon -Cultural Norms- that your point regarding Morse Code becomes relevant. It is perfectly reasonable for an ornery person to simply reject such norms and act otherwise; your expectation originates in you, not the targets of information you broadcast. The truth of your statement is no reply to my claim, that how another receiver of signs responds is irrelevant to your knowledge, save the one case of conveyance of knowledge between semiotic units; where you intend for knowledge to be conveyed. In that case, it is behooving of the sender to ensure that the receiver can receive and understand the message. I'm not sure what you are bringing up here, but I would say that my point is that all messages have multiple levels of reception, perhaps as many levels as their are receivers in the universe. At the same time, if we are assuming human senders and receivers and a content range which is highly normative and practical (i.e. Morse code alphabet rather than emoticons, inside jokes, etc), then the information entropy is reduced dramatically. Maybe you can give me an example of that you mean by the irrelevance of the receiver's knowledge. Does that include the expectation of the possibility of there being a receiver? In all other cases, the recipient response is irrelevant; all values and measures originate in the sender of the message. I would tend to agree with that, although the expectation of the recipient response informs the motives, values, and measures of the sender - otherwise there would be no message being sent. The receiver of transmitted information is irrelevant to the mechanics of that transmission. I'm not sure what you mean. Again, maybe an example would help. We expect that human audiences can see, so we have TV screens to provide optical stimulation. If we didn't have eyes, there would be no mechanism of TV. The word should have been *reception* - receipt of information (acceptance of a sign) is a function of the value that
RE: Messages Aren't Made of Information
The machine is informed. Acceptance demonstrates the act of becoming informed. The yield of such acceptance is called meaning. Easily, trivially, this language can be applied to machine and organism without concomitant observation of the slightest distinction between them. The definition of a being has nothing to do (imposes no causal consequence) with a sign. Signs can be accepted by organisms and machines (non-organisms?) with equal dexterity to provide equal meaning. A community of machines (like Robbie the Robot) can equally define meaning to things as can a community of beings. That you claim need to impose human interpretation in order to obtain meaning is strictly the bailiwick of anthropomorphism. wrb From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Craig Weinberg Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2013 1:10 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 3:03:31 PM UTC-5, William R. Buckley wrote: Craig, You build an automaton, place it and turn it on, and from that point in time forward the automaton reacts to acceptable information all on its own. Reacts, yes, but it isn't informed by the reaction. You contradict yourself - - I don't think it has to be human - machines only help non-machines to interpret - Where was the contradiction? - and if the human point is important, then surely you will accept your definition to be that it must be biological life, for a machine cannot be alive. A living being can be used as a machine, but it is not defined by that function. A machine is either a machine or it is not a machine - a machine cannot be both a machine and not a machine at the same time. A creature can be more than a machine, but still act as a machine in many ways. Craig wrb From: everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript: [mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript: ] On Behalf Of Craig Weinberg Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2013 10:14 AM To: everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript: Subject: Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 12:03:28 PM UTC-5, William R. Buckley wrote: Craig: You statement of need for a human to observe the pattern is the smoking gun to indicate a misunderstanding of semiotic theory on your part. I don't think that it has to be humans doing the observing at all. Specifically, you don't need a human; a machine will do. A machine can only help another non-machine interpret something. I don't think that they can interpret anything for 'themselves'. Not all machines are man-made. True, but what we see as natural machines may not be just machines. Man-made machines may be just machines. Craig wrb From: everyth...@googlegroups.com [mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Craig Weinberg Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2013 5:24 AM To: everyth...@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 2:06:20 AM UTC-5, William R. Buckley wrote: There is information (I take information to be a manifestation of entropy) and it is always represented in the form of a pattern (a distribution) of the units of mass/energy of which the Universe is composed. I can agree that information could be considered a manifestation of entropy, to the extent that entropy is necessary to provide a contrast space for a distribution. To string an ellipses together, you need one dot, repetition, space, and a quality of measurement which yokes together the three dots aesthetically. Beyond that, you also need human observer with human visual sense to turn the distribution into a 'pattern'. Without that, of course, even distribution cannot cohere into a distribution, as there is no scale, range, quality, etc to anchor the expectation. If we are a microbe, we may not ever find our way from one dot to the next. I think that semiotic signs are simply specific bits of information; I will use the terms synonymously. Information has meaning only within context. For many people, context is taken to mean one piece of information as compared to another piece of information. I do not take this meaning of context when I discuss semiotics. Instead, I take semiotic context to be the acceptor of the information. Hence, all meaning resides a priori within information acceptors. Agree. Well, transmitters form the signs from their own sense of meaning as well. That's how we are having this discussion. What you know you have always known; the sign merely serves to bring that knowledge to your conscious mind. Right. I mean it might be a bit more complicated as far as novelty goes. I don't know if the state of unconscious information is really what I have always known but that this particular constellation of meanings reflects the Totality in a way that it is only trivially novel. Like if you hit
Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information
On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 3:07:00 PM UTC-5, William R. Buckley wrote: The fact that a machine can act in a discriminatory based upon some signal (sign, information) input is demonstration of value judgment. Only in our eyes, not in its own eyes. It's like telling a kid to say some insult to someone in another language. The fact they are able to carry out your instruction doesn't mean that they communicated with judgment. Just as there is no **in** in a machine, so to there is no **in** in a biological organism; they both, machine and organism, But there is an 'in' with respect to the experience of an organism - only because we know it first hand. There would seem to be no reason why a machine couldn't have a similar 'in', but it actually seems that their nature indicates they do not. I take the extra step and hypothesize exactly why that is - because experience is not generated out of the bodies associated with them, but rather the bodies are simply a public view of one aspect of the experience. If you build a machine, you are assembling bodies to relate to each other, as external forms, so that no interiority 'emerges' from the gaps between them. are forms that treat other forms in certain proscribed ways. You cannot demonstrate otherwise. Sure I can. Feelings, colors, personalities, intentions, historical zeitgeists...these are not forms relating to forms. Craig wrb *From:* everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript: [mailto: everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript:] *On Behalf Of *Craig Weinberg *Sent:* Tuesday, March 05, 2013 10:37 AM *To:* everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript: *Subject:* Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 3:53:31 AM UTC-5, Alberto G.Corona wrote: Let´s say that what we call information is an extended form of sensory input. What makes this input information is the usability of this input for reducing the internal entropy of the receiver or increase the internal order. The receiver can be a machine, a cell, a person or a society for example. If the input do not produce this effect in the receiver, then that input is not information. The increase of internal order of the receiver is a symptom of an experience of being informed but they are not the same thing. It's not really even relevant in most cases. I would not call it an extended form of sensory input, but a reduction of sensory experience. Input is not a physical reality, it is a conceptual label. Consider Blindsight: I hold up two fingers and ask how many fingers? I don't know.' Guess 'two'. This example tells us about information without tying it to decreased entropy. My two fingers are a form. I am putting them into that form, so the process of my presenting my fingers is a formation of a sign. The sign is not information at this point. It means something different to an ant or a frog than it does to a person looking at it. If you can't see, there is no formation there at all unless you can collide with my fingers. When the patient responds that they don't know how many fingers, it is because they personally have no experience of seeing it. They are not being informed personally by the form of my fingers in front of their face because they have blindsight. When they guess correctly, they still have not been informed. Only we know that the information is correct. At this point you could say that there is some decrease in information entropy of the receiver as far as we are concerned, but in fact, for the receiver themselves, they have not increased any internal order. A machine has blindsight about everything. They can be queried and produce valid responses to inform us, but they are never informed themselves. There is no 'in' in a machine, it is an organization of forms which treat other forms in a proscribed way. Forms are copied, transformed, and presented in a context that it has no experience of. My computer sees nothing that I see on this screen. It reads nothing that I type here. It doesn't know what the Everything List is - not even Google knows what it is - only that the string of characters in the name is to be associated with an ip address. Craig 2013/3/2 William R. Buckley bill.b...@gmail.com Thinking about how information content of a message Big mistake. Information is never contained with but exactly one exception, an envelope. I made this point with Jesper Hoffmeyer regarding a statement in his book Biosemiotics, that information is represented but not contained in that representation. That marks of chalk upon slate may be taken to represent information at a meta level above the reality of streaks of a deformed amorphous solid has nothing to do with the information represented by that deformation, nor the increase of entropy associated with the greater disorder obtained from that deformation; these are but
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On 3/5/2013 6:53 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Why would anyone want to make decisions that were not determined by their learning and memories and values. Indeed. But even more when they feel such value as being universal or close to universal. But based on your experience with salvia, Bruno, you seem to think there is a you which is independent of those things. Not just salvia. The 8 hypostases describes already a you (with 8 views), which are more (semantically) and less (bodily or syntactically) than memory. The value are not necessarily part of the memory (as opposed to their instantiations). Salvia can help to illustrate this in a vivid way, by an hallucination of remembering having been that kind of things for all time. It is comparable to the realization that you don't die when you stop doing something which was part of what you take as an important personality trait, like when people succeed in stopping tobacco. They can remind how they felt and were before taking tobacco, for example. But you do die a little when you stop doing something significant to you. I raced motorcycles for many years but now at age 73 I have been retired for a couple of years. My knees don't work so well. I'm not competitive at tennis either. And I do feel diminished having stopped doing these things. Isn't it more likely that the drug simply makes your narrative thoughts less able than usual to trace their sources? So it is like the Poincare' effect writ large? I am not sure. Perhaps. If you make that idea more precise, I might concur. Is it consistent with what I just say here? I think it is. Just as Poincare' had a proof spring into his mind we commonly have value judgement spring into mind. In some cases we can trace them back to an experience or what out parents told us; but generally we can't. I can see that drugs might inhibit that tracing back and make it seem that we are who we are independent of any history. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Messages Aren't Made of Information
Craig: The mistake you make is clearly stated in your words: “…doesn’t mean that they communicated with judgment.” You are anthropomorphizing. The value is no more nor no less than the action taken upon signal acceptance. wrb From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Craig Weinberg Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2013 1:27 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 3:07:00 PM UTC-5, William R. Buckley wrote: The fact that a machine can act in a discriminatory based upon some signal (sign, information) input is demonstration of value judgment. Only in our eyes, not in its own eyes. It's like telling a kid to say some insult to someone in another language. The fact they are able to carry out your instruction doesn't mean that they communicated with judgment. Just as there is no *in* in a machine, so to there is no *in* in a biological organism; they both, machine and organism, But there is an 'in' with respect to the experience of an organism - only because we know it first hand. There would seem to be no reason why a machine couldn't have a similar 'in', but it actually seems that their nature indicates they do not. I take the extra step and hypothesize exactly why that is - because experience is not generated out of the bodies associated with them, but rather the bodies are simply a public view of one aspect of the experience. If you build a machine, you are assembling bodies to relate to each other, as external forms, so that no interiority 'emerges' from the gaps between them. are forms that treat other forms in certain proscribed ways. You cannot demonstrate otherwise. Sure I can. Feelings, colors, personalities, intentions, historical zeitgeists...these are not forms relating to forms. Craig wrb From: everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript: [mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript: ] On Behalf Of Craig Weinberg Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2013 10:37 AM To: everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript: Subject: Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 3:53:31 AM UTC-5, Alberto G.Corona wrote: Let´s say that what we call information is an extended form of sensory input. What makes this input information is the usability of this input for reducing the internal entropy of the receiver or increase the internal order. The receiver can be a machine, a cell, a person or a society for example. If the input do not produce this effect in the receiver, then that input is not information. The increase of internal order of the receiver is a symptom of an experience of being informed but they are not the same thing. It's not really even relevant in most cases. I would not call it an extended form of sensory input, but a reduction of sensory experience. Input is not a physical reality, it is a conceptual label. Consider Blindsight: I hold up two fingers and ask how many fingers? I don't know.' Guess 'two'. This example tells us about information without tying it to decreased entropy. My two fingers are a form. I am putting them into that form, so the process of my presenting my fingers is a formation of a sign. The sign is not information at this point. It means something different to an ant or a frog than it does to a person looking at it. If you can't see, there is no formation there at all unless you can collide with my fingers. When the patient responds that they don't know how many fingers, it is because they personally have no experience of seeing it. They are not being informed personally by the form of my fingers in front of their face because they have blindsight. When they guess correctly, they still have not been informed. Only we know that the information is correct. At this point you could say that there is some decrease in information entropy of the receiver as far as we are concerned, but in fact, for the receiver themselves, they have not increased any internal order. A machine has blindsight about everything. They can be queried and produce valid responses to inform us, but they are never informed themselves. There is no 'in' in a machine, it is an organization of forms which treat other forms in a proscribed way. Forms are copied, transformed, and presented in a context that it has no experience of. My computer sees nothing that I see on this screen. It reads nothing that I type here. It doesn't know what the Everything List is - not even Google knows what it is - only that the string of characters in the name is to be associated with an ip address. Craig 2013/3/2 William R. Buckley bill.b...@gmail.com Thinking about how information content of a message Big mistake. Information is never contained with but exactly one exception, an envelope. I made this point with Jesper Hoffmeyer regarding a statement in his book Biosemiotics, that information is represented but not
RE: Messages Aren't Made of Information
I do not hold that the acceptor must exist, for then I am making a value judgment, and I have already scolded Craig for the same thing. Think of it this way. A volume of gas has a measure of entropy. This means that the molecules are found in a specific sequence of microstates, and those microstates constitute an information state of the molecules. Alter that microstate sequence (as by adding or removing entropy) and the description of the microstate sequence changes correspondingly; entropy is information. Acceptors and signals; contexts and signs; . wrb From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Mikes Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2013 1:13 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information Dear Bil B. you probably have thought in these lines during similar long periods as I did. It was ~2 decades ago when I defined i n f o r m a t i o n as something with (at least) 2 ends: 1. the notion (in whatever format it shows up) - and 2. the acceptor (adjusting the notion in whatever context it can be perceived - appercipiated (adjusted). I have no idea how to make a connection between information (anyway how one defines it) and the (inner?) disorder level of anything (entropy?). I dislike this thermodynamic term alltogether. Later on I tried to refine my wording into: RELATIONS and the capability of recognizing them. That moved away from a 'human(?)' framework. E. g. I called the 'closeness of a '(+)' charge to a '(-)' potential an information so it came close to SOME consciousness (=(?) response to relations), no matter in what kind of domain. Do you feel some merit to my thinking? John Mikes On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 2:06 AM, William R. Buckley bill.buck...@gmail.com wrote: There is information (I take information to be a manifestation of entropy) and it is always represented in the form of a pattern (a distribution) of the units of mass/energy of which the Universe is composed. I think that semiotic signs are simply specific bits of information; I will use the terms synonymously. Information has meaning only within context. For many people, context is taken to mean one piece of information as compared to another piece of information. I do not take this meaning of context when I discuss semiotics. Instead, I take semiotic context to be the acceptor of the information. Hence, all meaning resides a priori within information acceptors. What you know you have always known; the sign merely serves to bring that knowledge to your conscious mind. That you may have intention and so comport your delivery of information to another acceptor has not bearing upon the subsequent acceptance or rejection of that information by the target acceptor. Acceptance or rejection of information is determined solely by the accepting or rejecting context (acceptor). Your mere presence sends information regardless of some conscious intent. Indeed, your absence does equally deliver information, for the target acceptor will see a definite difference in available information sources whether you are present or not. Consider a line worker in a bean processing plant where the task is to cull *bad* dried beans from *good* dried beans as they go by on a conveyor belt; the *bad* beans are removed by hand, so the line worker is constantly looking for *bad* beans while constantly being aware of the fact that not many of the beans are *bad*. The consciousness is aware of both that which is present and that which is not present. Further, what any information that you emit means to you is irrelevant to the meaning that another may take for that information. Indeed, it is via reliance upon -Cultural Norms- that your point regarding Morse Code becomes relevant. It is perfectly reasonable for an ornery person to simply reject such norms and act otherwise; your expectation originates in you, not the targets of information you broadcast. The truth of your statement is no reply to my claim, that how another receiver of signs responds is irrelevant to your knowledge, save the one case of conveyance of knowledge between semiotic units; where you intend for knowledge to be conveyed. In that case, it is behooving of the sender to ensure that the receiver can receive and understand the message. I'm not sure what you are bringing up here, but I would say that my point is that all messages have multiple levels of reception, perhaps as many levels as their are receivers in the universe. At the same time, if we are assuming human senders and receivers and a content range which is highly normative and practical (i.e. Morse code alphabet rather than emoticons, inside jokes, etc), then the information entropy is reduced dramatically. Maybe you can give me an example of that you mean by the irrelevance of the receiver's knowledge. Does that include the expectation of the possibility of there
Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information
On 3/5/2013 3:03 PM, William R. Buckley wrote: Craig, You build an automaton, place it and turn it on, and from that point in time forward the automaton reacts to acceptable information all on its own. You contradict yourself -- - I don't think it has to be human -- machines only help non-machines to interpret - - and if the human point is important, then surely you will accept your definition to be that it must be biological life, for a machine cannot be alive. A machine is either a machine or it is not a machine -- a machine cannot be both a machine and not a machine at the same time. wrb Do we have a exact definition of what is a machine? -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information
On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 5:52:32 PM UTC-5, William R. Buckley wrote: I do not hold that the acceptor must exist, for then I am making a value judgment, and I have already scolded Craig for the same thing. Think of it this way. A volume of gas has a measure of entropy. This means that the molecules are found in found by what? a specific sequence of microstates, and those microstates constitute an information state of the molecules. Who is it constituted to though? Empty space? The molecules as a group? Each molecule? What is validating that these molecules exist in some way - that there is a such thing as a microstate which can be detected in some way by something... and what is detection? How does it work? When these things are taken as axiomatic, then we are just reiterating those axioms when we claim that no acceptor must exist. In my understanding, exist and acceptor are the same thing. Alter that microstate sequence (as by adding or removing entropy) and the description of the microstate sequence changes correspondingly; entropy is information. Only if something can detect their own description of the microstate as having changed. We cannot assume that there is any change at all if nothing can possibly detect it. For example, if I take make a movie of ice cubes melting in a glass, even though that is a case of increasing thermodynamic entropy, we will see a lower cost of video compression in a movie of the glass after the ice has melted completely. In that case the image description can be made to follow either increasing or decreasing information entropy depending on whether you play the movie forward and backward. There is no link between microstate thermodynamic entropy and optical description information entropy. Craig Acceptors and signals; contexts and signs; … wrb *From:* everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript: [mailto: everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript:] *On Behalf Of *John Mikes *Sent:* Tuesday, March 05, 2013 1:13 PM *To:* everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript: *Subject:* Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information Dear Bil B. you probably have thought in these lines during similar long periods as I did. It was ~2 decades ago when I defined i n f o r m a t i o n as something with (at least) 2 ends: 1. the notion (in whatever format it shows up) - and 2. the acceptor (adjusting the notion in whatever context it can be perceived - appercipiated (adjusted). I have no idea how to make a connection between information (anyway how one defines it) and the (inner?) disorder level of anything (entropy?). I dislike this thermodynamic term alltogether. Later on I tried to refine my wording into: RELATIONS and the capability of recognizing them. That moved away from a 'human(?)' framework. E. g. I called the 'closeness of a '(+)' charge to a '(-)' potential an information so it came close to SOME consciousness (=(?) *response to relations*), no matter in what kind of domain. Do you feel some merit to my thinking? John Mikes On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 2:06 AM, William R. Buckley bill.b...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: There is information (I take information to be a manifestation of entropy) and it is always represented in the form of a pattern (a distribution) of the units of mass/energy of which the Universe is composed. I think that semiotic signs are simply specific bits of information; I will use the terms synonymously. Information has meaning only within context. For many people, context is taken to mean one piece of information as compared to another piece of information. I do not take this meaning of context when I discuss semiotics. Instead, I take semiotic context to be the acceptor of the information. Hence, all meaning resides a priori within information acceptors. What you know you have always known; the sign merely serves to bring that knowledge to your conscious mind. That you may have intention and so comport your delivery of information to another acceptor has not bearing upon the subsequent acceptance or rejection of that information by the target acceptor. Acceptance or rejection of information is determined solely by the accepting or rejecting context (acceptor). Your mere presence sends information regardless of some conscious intent. Indeed, your absence does equally deliver information, for the target acceptor will see a definite difference in available information sources whether you are present or not. Consider a line worker in a bean processing plant where the task is to cull *bad* dried beans from *good* dried beans as they go by on a conveyor belt; the *bad* beans are removed by hand, so the line worker is constantly looking for *bad* beans while constantly being aware of the fact that not many of the beans are *bad*. The consciousness is aware of both that which is present and that
RE: Messages Aren't Made of Information
The falling tree makes sound, the wind make sound, the . makes sound regardless of your presence (or the presence of others) to hear that sound. To argue anything else is utter nonsense. wrb From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Craig Weinberg Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2013 7:34 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information On Tuesday, March 5, 2013 5:52:32 PM UTC-5, William R. Buckley wrote: I do not hold that the acceptor must exist, for then I am making a value judgment, and I have already scolded Craig for the same thing. Think of it this way. A volume of gas has a measure of entropy. This means that the molecules are found in found by what? a specific sequence of microstates, and those microstates constitute an information state of the molecules. Who is it constituted to though? Empty space? The molecules as a group? Each molecule? What is validating that these molecules exist in some way - that there is a such thing as a microstate which can be detected in some way by something... and what is detection? How does it work? When these things are taken as axiomatic, then we are just reiterating those axioms when we claim that no acceptor must exist. In my understanding, exist and acceptor are the same thing. Alter that microstate sequence (as by adding or removing entropy) and the description of the microstate sequence changes correspondingly; entropy is information. Only if something can detect their own description of the microstate as having changed. We cannot assume that there is any change at all if nothing can possibly detect it. For example, if I take make a movie of ice cubes melting in a glass, even though that is a case of increasing thermodynamic entropy, we will see a lower cost of video compression in a movie of the glass after the ice has melted completely. In that case the image description can be made to follow either increasing or decreasing information entropy depending on whether you play the movie forward and backward. There is no link between microstate thermodynamic entropy and optical description information entropy. Craig Acceptors and signals; contexts and signs; . wrb From: everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript: [mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript: ] On Behalf Of John Mikes Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2013 1:13 PM To: everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript: Subject: Re: Messages Aren't Made of Information Dear Bil B. you probably have thought in these lines during similar long periods as I did. It was ~2 decades ago when I defined i n f o r m a t i o n as something with (at least) 2 ends: 1. the notion (in whatever format it shows up) - and 2. the acceptor (adjusting the notion in whatever context it can be perceived - appercipiated (adjusted). I have no idea how to make a connection between information (anyway how one defines it) and the (inner?) disorder level of anything (entropy?). I dislike this thermodynamic term alltogether. Later on I tried to refine my wording into: RELATIONS and the capability of recognizing them. That moved away from a 'human(?)' framework. E. g. I called the 'closeness of a '(+)' charge to a '(-)' potential an information so it came close to SOME consciousness (=(?) response to relations), no matter in what kind of domain. Do you feel some merit to my thinking? John Mikes On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 2:06 AM, William R. Buckley bill.b...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: There is information (I take information to be a manifestation of entropy) and it is always represented in the form of a pattern (a distribution) of the units of mass/energy of which the Universe is composed. I think that semiotic signs are simply specific bits of information; I will use the terms synonymously. Information has meaning only within context. For many people, context is taken to mean one piece of information as compared to another piece of information. I do not take this meaning of context when I discuss semiotics. Instead, I take semiotic context to be the acceptor of the information. Hence, all meaning resides a priori within information acceptors. What you know you have always known; the sign merely serves to bring that knowledge to your conscious mind. That you may have intention and so comport your delivery of information to another acceptor has not bearing upon the subsequent acceptance or rejection of that information by the target acceptor. Acceptance or rejection of information is determined solely by the accepting or rejecting context (acceptor). Your mere presence sends information regardless of some conscious intent. Indeed, your absence does equally deliver information, for the target acceptor will see a definite difference in available information sources whether you are present or not. Consider a line worker in a bean processing plant where the
