Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA19381 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 2 May 2001 15:14:13 +0100 Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 15:05:46 +0100 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Information Message-ID: <20010502150546.A1044@ii01.org> References: <20010502130909.AAA21908@camailp.harvard.edu@[128.103.125.215]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.15i In-Reply-To: <20010502130909.AAA21908@camailp.harvard.edu@[128.103.125.215]>; from wade_smith@harvard.edu on Wed, May 02, 2001 at 09:08:58AM -0400 From: Robin Faichney <robin@ii01.org> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On Wed, May 02, 2001 at 09:08:58AM -0400, Wade T.Smith wrote:
> On 05/02/01 04:49, Robin Faichney said this-
>
> >between physical
> >information, which exists for its own sake, and the more usual sort,
> >information that's about something.
>
> If I understand this (and I must rephrase to understand, it's a
> peccadillo) - physical information is what is needed by an entity for
> existence - that necessary sufficiency of its fullness - the universals,
> if you will - the fact that hydrogen and oxygen can combine to form water.
Think of the form of any physical thing, say, the shape of a PC monitor.
Now widen that concept to include not just external shape, but all
the internals, with their mass, density, colour, electrical resistance,
temperature at any given instant, etc, etc. That's physical information,
and it's stored within the thing itself, ready to be read off whether by
simple observation or by any kind of experiment. Of course there are
differences between the necessarily complete and accurate information
that's in there, and the incomplete and inaccurate versions we can
extract. And it is our attempt to minimise these differences that
generates the laws of physics, according to Roy Frieden. I'm not making
this up, you know! :-)
> The problem is, I don't see any _information_ as being there, but
> formulation and organization, determined by physical constants and
> properties.
Of course you don't see information as being inherent in every physical
thing until you realise this is an extension of the way the word has
previously been used -- there are differences, but also similarities,
and some of us consider the latter to be much more significant than the
former, which is why we use the word this way.
> It's not information, to me, until someone can use it.
Isn't the information in every physical thing just waiting to be used?
> And evolution is the information about the way things happened....
Evolution *is* the way (some) things happened. Genetic information is
part of that story. Or isn't that information either, because it's only
used by biological processes?
I have to say, Wade, I find it very funny that, in an argument with you,
given the sort of things you tend to say about philosophy and about
science, I have the hardest of hard sciences on my side.
-- Robin Faichney Get your Meta-Information from http://www.ii01.org (CAUTION: contains philosophy, may cause heads to spin)=============================================================== 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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed May 02 2001 - 15:17:44 BST