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

[Bob Logan]

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

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

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


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

The Relativity of Information

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

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

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

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

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

__

Robert K. Logan
Prof. Emeritus - Physics - U. of Toronto 
Fellow University of St. Michael's College
Chief Scientist - sLab at OCAD
http://utoronto.academia.edu/RobertKLogan
www.physics.utoronto.ca/Members/logan
www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Logan5/publications










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

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

[Otto Lehto]

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

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

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

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

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

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