Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id HAA11638 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sun, 5 Mar 2000 07:20:20 GMT From: Robin Faichney <robin@faichney.demon.co.uk> Organization: Reborn Technology To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: new line: what's the point? Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2000 06:37:18 +0000 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.0.21] Content-Type: text/plain References: <200003041951.OAA00029@mail2.lig.bellsouth.net> Message-Id: <00030507010303.00357@faichney> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On Sat, 04 Mar 2000, Joe E. Dees wrote:
>> >> >>
>> >> >There IS NO information in the absence of meaning
>> >>
>> >> You said that before, and I replied "Try telling that to a physicist", to which
>> >> I did not see any response. I'm still interested.
>> >>
>> >And a physicist, Bob Logan, has responded to you.
>>
>> Unfortunately, the only directly relevant sentence in his message was "I'm a
>> physicist and I agree with both statements." Not very helpful. In any case, I
>> wanted your response, not someone else's.
>>
>> >Try reading
>> >Shannon and Weaver also, and Fred Dretske and Norbert Weiner
>> >and John Von Neumann (I know it's useless asking you to read
>> >ANYthing, but I thought I'd try - again! - anyway).
>>
>> Never mind the reading lists. Discuss the issue, if you can.
>>
>How can you discuss issues you never read in?
Sorry, I thought you'd done some reading on these issues. ;-)
>>I recently
>> posted a question on this to sci.physics, and was generally pleased with the
>> response. I suggest you use deja.com to check it out -- the subject line is
>> "Information in physics". And if you still say "there is no information in the
>> absence of meaning" after doing that, perhaps you could drop a line to the list
>> (and the newsgroup?) on the topic "Why the concept of information in the
>> context of thermodynamics is invalid".
>>
>You mean the "concept of information in the context of
>thermodynamics" has no meaning for you? You certainly have
>words for IT.
No, I mean that if there is no information in the absence of meaning (your
claim), then the concept of information in the context of thermodynamics is
invalid, so why don't you explain that to us (and, if you like, to the people
in sci.physics)?
>Also, that information to which you are referring
>means something to whoever comes in contact with it...
Physical information has no meaning, existing "for its own sake", being the form
or structure of physical things. In thermodynamic terms, it is inversely
proportional to entropy. This much is wholly uncontroversial. It can be
said to evolve in that there appears to be a trend towards greater complexity,
though whether that is the result of an intrinsic tendency is highly
contentious. Genes are clearly physical information. I argue that memes are
physical information too, even though they exist "at the level of meaning",
because all that means is that their encoding in the brain is not syntactically
consistent across brains, but the same meme encodes the same behaviour (by
definition, in fact). Perhaps we'd have a more productive discussion if you
tried to understand what I'm saying, rather than rejecting it all out of hand
for ideological reasons.
-- Robin Faichney===============================This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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