Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id UAA03171 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 8 May 2001 20:43:42 +0100 From: <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Tue, 8 May 2001 14:45:22 -0500 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Information Message-ID: <3AF80682.23077.573E30@localhost> In-reply-to: <20010505134707.C1058@ii01.org> References: <3AF2D123.1951.78C244@localhost>; from joedees@bellsouth.net on Fri, May 04, 2001 at 03:56:19PM -0500 X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On 5 May 2001, at 13:47, Robin Faichney wrote:
> On Fri, May 04, 2001 at 03:56:19PM -0500, joedees@bellsouth.net wrote:
> > On 3 May 2001, at 18:52, Robin Faichney wrote: > > > 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". > > > The
> spatiotemporal location of any particular particle is a matter of >
> its extension and duration, properties of its existence. Information
> > is what we actually or hypothetically can derive concerning these >
> existential properties given actual or ideal conditions. The
> reviewer, > who was NOT Friedan, just missed this. J is the
> information that > one could extract if there were no Heisenbergian
> constraints > imposed by the interaction-effect between observer and
> observed...
>
> Please explain any difference between the meanings of "the information
> that one could extract if there were no Heisenbergian constraints"
> (what you said) and "the information that exists in any given thing or
> system" (quoted from the article).
>
The difference is that information requires an apprehender to exist
(the extractor), and since such an entity is absent in the second
quote, the reviewer misspoke.
>
> Then, given that there is none, tell us why the "reviewer" (it wasn't
> actually a review) was wrong to use that phrase, when physicists treat
> the structure of matter as information in the context of the
> application of communication theory to thermodynamics.
>
Well, as I pointed out, there is not only a difference, but a crucial
one, the one that makes information possible, i.e. someone it may
INFORM. For physicists, their knowledge of the observed structure
of matter is indeed information, but they are physicists, not
philosophers or phenomenologists or psychologists, and therefore
misattrribute information to the object simpliciter when it is actually
a function of the observational interaction between subject and
object, that is, observationally derived knowledge of the structure,
and not the structure itself.
> --
> 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
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> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
>
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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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