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Author
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Topic: What information is not.
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Zarathustra
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Member # 3407
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posted 26. December 2006 20:53
If I ask Matt: "Does yesterday exist?", any answer other than "No" would be a serious affront to what rational people consider to be a useful interpretation of the word "exist". It is as well that I tested Matt on this little conundrum, since it demonstrates the facility with which he can misrepresent other people's statements in order to provide glib answers to points that were never presented.
Some arguments resemble rubber balloons. Although adding more air can make them appear larger, the truth of the matter is that they are simply becoming more empty, a feat achieved by virtue of their being stretched thinner. Only one or two more puffs will lead to the inevitable result, and see Matt holding on to a useless scrap of damp rubber, I fear.
Matt's "brilliant idea" relies on blurring the distinction between a number of things.
a) entities that exist in the real world
b) observations made of those things using perception
c) the mental models we use to manipulate said observations
d) the representations we make of those models.
Any discussion of "information" must be absolutely rigorous with respect to the above, in order to avoid erroneous conclusions.
"Information" does not exist in the absence of a being with the cognitive ability to interpret a representation of it. How could it?
My friend Tim has a blind dog called Betty. It was rescued while wandering aimlessly on a freeway, and ended up with his wife, a vet. Now here's the interesting thing, which surprised even me. Betty runs around the house and plays with the other two (sighted) dogs outside. Occasionally, she will run into a post (ouch!), but she normally avoids most obstacles. It doesn't take much thinking to figure out how she does this. She has a representation of the geometry of her environment in her brain, and uses it to make decisions about where she will scamper. It is reasonable to say that the "information" is in her brain. It would be going too far to suggest that Betty's model of her world exists anywhere else.
The notion of information somehow being "transcendental" is fatuous. It cannot be so, since the universe is finite in extent. There simply isn't enough room for all the information that could conceivably exist. It is amusing, nonetheless, to think of the Mars Rovers "hoovering up" all that information that has been lying around for millions of years, just waiting to be collected.
Consider three objects. The distance between them cannot be "perceived" using any of the human senses. It can only be inferred, clearly. Nonetheless, the distance between them can be considered to be a piece of information. What is the size of the smallest sphere that could contain all of them? That's another morsel of information. Does that piece of information exist in the absence of the objects' locations being observed by a being with cognitive abilities? I will leave it to the cleverer among you to expand on the implications of answering "yes" to that question.
[Note to Matt: please don't take my caustic tone to heart, since no offense is meant. It is purely stylistic. This is a jolly good topic for discussion, and you are to be commended for taking the time to raise the issue here.]
[ 26. December 2006, 21:10: Message edited by: zarathustra ]
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Zarathustra
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posted 26. December 2006 21:24
quote:
Z: "Four and a half billion years ago, when the Earth did not even exist, there was no "information", since there were no brains to interpret and/or abstract any observations."
Smith: "The only way the above statement can be true is if information only exists in our brains. Since we already know this to be false (information exists with or without us), your position on the matter does not merit serious consideration."
It's a good thing that serious consideration does not depend on dubious statements becoming true merely because Daniel asserts them, then.
Your earlier statements relating to the potential explosion of information, Daniel, give us a clue as to the real nature of information.
[ 26. December 2006, 21:36: Message edited by: zarathustra ]
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Bruce Fast
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posted 26. December 2006 21:51
zarathustra: quote:
"Information" does not exist in the absence of a being with the cognitive ability to interpret a representation of it. How could it?
I'll take up your challenge. Let me start with "How could it be?" A rhetorical definitive. Matt is describing a phenomenon that exists, and that has existed before the arrival of "a being with the cognitive ability" (unless you concede that "a being with cognitive ability" existed prior to man's arrival on the scene. You then are attempting to demand that the term he uses to describe this phenomenon, "information", cannot be used to describe the phenomenon because it doesn't fit your grid. You then claim that the phenomenon somehow doesn't exist.
However, lets consider two factors -- lets use your definition of information, secondly lets consider, though it probably isn't true, that there is no external "higher intelligence" that has access to the details of DNA. Even in this case, I suggest that there actually is "a being with the cognitive ability to interpret a representation of it." That being is the organism which contains the DNA of consideration. The process of cell division involves interpreting a representation of the information (the information is represented as a string of DNA in a specific, and informative order.) Therefore as long as there is a living cell capable of converting specific patterns within DNA into functional DNA, your requirement of "a being with the cognitive ability to interpret..." has been met.
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Zarathustra
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posted 26. December 2006 22:47
quote:
Bruce: I'll take up your challenge. Let me start with "How could it be?" A rhetorical definitive. Matt is describing a phenomenon that exists, and that has existed before the arrival of "a being with the cognitive ability" (unless you concede that "a being with cognitive ability" existed prior to man's arrival on the scene.
Matt's original post does not in any way describe a phenomenon. Matt is characterizing information in terms of what we know it is not. Am I the only person to have understood his first post? Matt's subsequent conclusions are worthy of closer scrutiny, since they do not necessarily follow from his initial proposition.
quote:
Bruce: You then are attempting to demand that the term he uses to describe this phenomenon, "information", cannot be used to describe the phenomenon because it doesn't fit your grid. You then claim that the phenomenon somehow doesn't exist.
I don't really have the time to defend claims that I have never made, Bruce, especially such stupid ones.
quote:
Bruce: However, lets consider two factors -- lets use your definition of information, secondly lets consider, though it probably isn't true, that there is no external "higher intelligence" that has access to the details of DNA.
Why don't you remind all our readers of my "definition of information"? I, for one, would be most interested to see it.
quote:
Bruce: Even in this case, I suggest that there actually is "a being with the cognitive ability to interpret a representation of it." That being is the organism which contains the DNA of consideration. The process of cell division involves interpreting a representation of the information (the information is represented as a string of DNA in a specific, and informative order.) Therefore as long as there is a living cell capable of converting specific patterns within DNA into functional DNA, your requirement of "a being with the cognitive ability to interpret..." has been met.
DNA is a mechanism. A wheel cannot be said to "interpret" the location of its axle. This is "Humpty-Dumptyism" at its worst. Words cannot mean just what you choose them to mean, Bruce, no matter how much you would like it to be so.
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Matt Connally
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posted 27. December 2006 00:08
Zarathustra,
Well I guess I didn’t pay enough heed to verb tense regarding the existence of yesterday. Whatever all that means, I’ll be thrilled to drop it. And of course no offense taken at your caustic tone; I just took it as a desire for hardball.
Now as for information being objective, instead of an abstract debate about a definition of information let me just give an example of it being objective. Let’s keep it as simple as possible and just deal with math. (After all, I’d argue that any and all information can be translated mathematically.) You talked about 3 ducks swimming in a pond as a piece of information, and let’s just talk about that number. If ducks swim in a pond and no one is there to count them, does any particular number of ducks swim in the pond?
The only coherent answer is yes.
What if one person counted 32 ducks and another person counted 33? As long as there is an objective answer, then the two of them can disagree. If, however, there is no correct answer; if the number of ducks is not an objective fact; if we are the authors of mathematical information…then there could be nothing to disagree about. We would have no context for determining which one of them, if either, counted “correctly.” Nor would we have any reason to average the amount. Instead we would conclude that there are 32 ducks swimming in the pond and also 33 ducks swimming in the pond. That equals incoherence.
The only coherent conclusion is to say that regardless of whether anyone counts them there is at any one time a specific number of ducks—whether zero or five or 5,000—swimming in the pond. The number is just there, waiting to be comprehended and translated (for example, into English). If mathematical information is not objective then the scientific concepts of “proof,” “fact,” and “bottom line” are rendered totally meaningless. But to the extent that the concept “100% accurate” (or “87% accurate”, etc.) is coherent we can be certain that that coherence pervades the universe.
All scientists have faith that such information is objective. Granted, it’s a rock-solid faith; but faith nonetheless. What exactly is, for example, the number seven? This much we know for certain: it is not a little bitty piece of grey matter. None of mathematics is. Yet the math used to send robots to Mars was just as "real" as the rocket ship that took them there.
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Matt Connally
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posted 27. December 2006 00:19
Zarathustra:
quote:
Matt's original post does not in any way describe a phenomenon. Matt is characterizing information in terms of what we know it is not. Am I the only person to have understood his first post? Matt's subsequent conclusions are worthy of closer scrutiny, since they do not necessarily follow from his initial proposition.
quote:
DNA is a mechanism. A wheel cannot be said to "interpret" the location of its axle. This is "Humpty-Dumptyism" at its worst. Words cannot mean just what you choose them to mean, Bruce, no matter how much you would like it to be so.
You’re playing with semantics. At the very least, with this line of arguing you’ll relentlessly be begging these questions: What is a “phenomenon”? What is a “mechanism”?
Such rhetorical tricks are the reason I prefer to deal with examples instead of your attempt at a vigorous definition of information with your four distinctions. What is an “entity”? What is “existence”? What is an “observation”? What is a “representation”? In every single case you want to take for granted exactly what I am insisting we do not take for granted: the meaning of these words is immaterial. You’ll keep begging the question till the penguins come home and we ask, “Well what is a word?”
We do not know what a word is, but we do know for certain what it is not.
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Bruce Fast
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posted 27. December 2006 01:18
z: "DNA is a mechanism. A wheel cannot be said to "interpret" the location of its axle."
I have frequently used a Visual Basic Interpreter. It too is a mechanism, yet what it does is described as "interpreting". In truth, however, DNA is not a mechanism, a bunch of RNA and protein machines combine together to make a mechanism. Anything that I do, to the best of scientific knowledge, is purely the product of such a mechanism. If I am capable of interpreting, then a mechanism can interpret.
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Bruce Fast
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posted 27. December 2006 01:51
Matt Connally, in general I fully agree with you that mathematics is discovered, not invented. I think we must conclude that our choice of base 10 is a bit unusual, but we have gone beyond that anomoly, and can work math in any base.
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Matt Connally
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posted 27. December 2006 17:30
Bruce, that is curious. But then there's a lot to be said for having ten fingers. I suppose God could have given us 16 but, hmmm, perhaps that’d be getting a bit ungainly. (It might be harder to fit such a hand in the cookie jar.) Regardless, by the time our computations were elaborate enough for a different base to make much difference, we weren’t using our fingers anymore anyway.
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Bruce Fast
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posted 27. December 2006 19:03
However, Matt, though mathematics is discovery, not invention, mathematics is not information. At lease it isn't information as I understand information.
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Daniel Smith
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posted 27. December 2006 20:41
Zarathustra,
Your contention that information does not exist, unless there are brains to utilize it, makes me think that perhaps you have 'information' confused with 'knowledge'.
I define information as "all that can be known". Knowledge on the other hand, I would define as "all that is known".
One (knowledge) requires the act of 'knowing', the other does not. Knowledge requires a "knower", (theoretically at least - we don't know if our consciousness [knowledge] terminates at death).
Information on the other hand, is something that has the potential to be known, but if no one is around to know it, it never-the-less remains. As such, information (as I define it at least) exists apart from brains.
==============
Stephen,
At first blush, I'm tempted to believe that information exists in both 'true' and 'false' forms. In my mind, I can see a parallel with real and imaginary numbers (I'm no mathemetician however, so my analogy may be way off!).
On the other hand, 'false information' would seem to require some agent to distort 'true information' - which would bring it more in line with my definition of 'knowledge' above. If that's the case, then only that which is true would qualifiy as 'information'.
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Matt Connally
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posted 27. December 2006 22:17
Bruce,
Well if any information can be translated mathematically, does that not make math a type of information. In fact, language and math go hand in hand. Math is not a medium of communication; it is communication itself. We use media, like newspapers or television, to transfer communication. Math does not transfer but is instead transferred through such media—also computers, abacuses, books, clocks, etc. Numbers are nothing more than words—pure meaning. In infinite supply. So why say it's not information?
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Bruce Fast
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posted 28. December 2006 01:43
Hmmm. Information can be created, duplicated, and destroyed. At least, when I write this text I have created information. Once I press "Add Reply", it is duplicated. The information I have created, if done in a non-duplicating medium, can be readily destroyed.
Mathematics cannot be destroyed. It must have been created at some time, but it is not I who is creating it, yet I can create information. Mathematical models can certainly be generated to represent any information, however changing the information held therein does not change the fact that 2 + 2 = 4. Though mathematics does have some of the properties you describe for information -- no mass, no volume, etc., I still don't see it to be information.
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Martin
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posted 28. December 2006 07:51
Bruce Fast:
quote:
However, Matt, though mathematics is discovery, not invention, mathematics is not information.
Reading Immanuel Kants Prolegomena I hit on the thoughts that contradict to the notion that mathematics is discovery:
Kant:
quote:
First of all, we must observe that all proper mathematical judgments are a priori, and not empirical, because they carry with them necessity, which cannot be obtained from experience.
According Kant mathematical judgments are not empirical hence mathematics is independent from experience. Kant notion is that mathematics make apodictic judgments and hence it must be using apriori cognition. Apriori means that it is independent from experience.
I suppose that we can create mathematical rules that are valid and yet such rules can never be observed to occur in Nature.
So when mathematics is product of pure reason its hard to say if it is information. Accordning Kant we cannot judge about things "an sich".
I agree personally with Kant division of reality "fuer uns" and "an sich". It is well documented in Lands experiment of color perception. We can percieve color frquency that is not entering the eye.
Is in such case a percieved color information?
So I would say that "infromaion" is also a word which meaning and definition is as complicated as is the meaninig and definition of the word "life".
[ 28. December 2006, 08:06: Message edited by: Martin ]
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Martin
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posted 28. December 2006 08:05
Bruce Fast:
quote:
I have frequently used a Visual Basic Interpreter. It too is a mechanism, yet what it does is described as "interpreting".
I would say that without "interpreter" information does not exist at all. Having for instance DNA from marsupial wolf we would never be capable recreate one because we do not have interpreter - maternal cell, zygote.
Same for a text from some unknown language. Before translation its only scholastic debate if information is there or not.
And Bruce we should not forget that we can also compile a program instead if interpret it. In such case we translate program into assembler and nobody will underestand it (if it is complicated at the beginning). Such situation remind me of our situation in DNA research. We are wading through assembler having no source.
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