Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id JAA11952 (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 09:24:01 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 08:26:00 +0000 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.0.21] Content-Type: text/plain References: <200003050759.CAA04522@mail6.lig.bellsouth.net> Message-Id: <00030508480302.00439@faichney> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On Sun, 05 Mar 2000, Joe E. Dees wrote:
>> 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)?
>>
>If they think so, then they're wrong; obviously the presence or
>absence of information in such a context means something to
>them...
That is precisely the point. Your claim about information amounts to saying
"this is the only way the word may be used", and it is fatuous. Moreover,
physicists are not stupid, having very good reasons for using "information" in
this way. In particular, there are connections between Shannon/Weaver
information theory and thermodynamics, which you might find very interesting,
if you ever get around to looking into it.
(And, by the way, Shannon and Weaver explicitly stated that their work was
*not* concerned with meaning.)
>> 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.
>>
>You are referring to pattern.
You may prefer that word, but your preference has no significance for the rest
of us, and in fact those of us who seek consilience between disciplines (I'm
sure you know of Wilson's work) know that "information" is much, much more
useful.
>Pattern is distinguishable from
>nonpattern or from a different pattern only because we are here to
>so differentiate them. You could say, well, that pattern was here
>before we were, but it did not exist AS PATTERN, which is a word
>with a meaning.
So we come back to words again. I prefer to break out of such tiny circles.
Was it here someone recently talked about widening tautologies? If you could
just accept that "information is out there", your mental world would open up
immeasurably.
>The presence of a structure to atoms and
>molecules is not on the same wavelength as the communication if
>ideations between mental environments which share a common
>physical one.
Can't parse that.
>You will not ever be able to break down the concept
>of forbearance (an eminently replicable meme - see "Let It Be"), for
>instance, into constituent molecules; there are several layers of
>emergence in between, which add properties (at each level) that
>are not present in the isolated constituents.
Obviously so. I never made any such claim.
>In fact, the very effort
>destroys pattern itself. OF COURSE the ideation is encoded in
>some neural synaptic pattern or other; but it is encoded as it is
>rather than other ways due to many factors, such as the genetics
>which permits the growth of a brain large and complex enough to
>develop the self-conscious awareness necessary to allow for the
>(complex) ideational representation of the meme, the other
>experiences and ideas there stored which shape in a gestalt
>referential fashion its encoding form (in other words, define its
>meaning relative to other meanings), the particular arbitrarily
>created rather than instinctually mandated human language in
>which it may be thought, expressed and apprehended, and so on.
I don't deny all these things happen. But science is about the compression of
information, seeking the simplest possible valid (or useful) model of reality,
and I say that the spread of behaviours can usefully be studied without
worrying about their mental representations. I doubt that your rehashed
continental philosophy will ever convince anyone to the contrary.
-- 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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