Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id TAA22737 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 3 May 2001 19:37:39 +0100 Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 18:52:45 +0100 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Information Message-ID: <20010503185245.C1419@ii01.org> References: <20010502183712.AAA20344@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: <20010502183712.AAA20344@camailp.harvard.edu@[128.103.125.215]>; from wade_smith@harvard.edu on Wed, May 02, 2001 at 02:37:01PM -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 02:37:01PM -0400, Wade T.Smith wrote:
> On 05/02/01 12:54, Robin Faichney said this-
>
> >> Information about something is hardly relevant _until_ it _can_ be used,
> >> and for all purposes and intent, has no existence until it _is_ used.
> >
> >So you agree with Joe that unapprehended things cannot be said to exist?
> >This is more like philosophical idealism than scientific rationalism.
>
> I agree that until the information is _derived_ from whatever system that
> process is resident within, it is without value and irrelevant.
>
> That is far from saying it is not there.
Considering the following quote from the same article, do you still
insist that intrinsic information (J) is of no significance?
To derive each law--or, more accurately, each Lagrangian--we have
to ask an incredibly simple yet fundamental question, such as
"what is the precise location of a particle in space and time?"
Any attempt to answer such questions requires the same two
quantities: the information that exists in any given thing
or system, J, and the information we can acquire, I. Frieden
has developed methods of calculating both for a wide range of
phenomena in physics. Subtracting J from I then leads straight
to the appropriate Lagrangian, and when this is made as small
as possible, the appropriate law of physics "emerges".
-- 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
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