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Author
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Topic: What information is not.
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Matt Connally
Member
Member # 3076
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posted 04. January 2007 22:40
2ndclass,
Thanks, I appreciate the questions. We've discussed these issues some (especially the second one) but the more we do, hopefully the more things are clarified.
quote:
1) There are several formal definitions of "information". You need to tell us which of them you mean when you say the word, or come up with a formal definition of your own.
I’ll offer a definition, but first I want to say that so far any definition will work. So far all the examples of information from philosophy or science will fit into the argument. Furthermore, although I said in the beginning that “it can be tricky to define or describe exactly what information is…” I’m now inclined to say it is actually not possible to have a complete definition, if for no other reason than both the question and its answer are themselves pure information. Which means we’ll always, inevitably be begging the question.
That said, here is my first actual shot at a working definition (and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I read it somewhere else): Information is that which can be translated mathematically. This doesn’t necessarily mean that information is math (and Melvin may be able to elaborate on that more); for example, this post will be translated into binary code and back again, but I don’t think that code will state any mathematical facts. Nevertheless, the grammar, syntax, and vocabulary will all be based in numbers and mathematical rules. Math and language go hand in hand; if we could not do one, we could not do the other.
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2) You say that humans can perceive information but computers cannot. You need to tell us how to go about determining whether something "perceives information" or not.
If information is immaterial then nothing material can “perceive” it. (How can the brain use the five senses…how can a computer use any input device…to perceive something immaterial?) Both the author and perceiver of information must be as immaterial as information itself. (And again, trying to define what a “source” or “perceiver” are will always beg the question.)
I think perhaps the best indicator of whether something perceives information is the ability to use it creatively. Now of course the creation is jam packed with creative information, but that does not necessarily mean the creatures are the authors of it. They may just be machines authored by (a) creator(s). Chimps, for example, although they have shown a remarkable ability to be trained in sign language, have never demonstrated the ability to use it creatively. Similarly dolphins may not have the capacity to create communication, only to process it (i.e. in principle the same way our communications satelites process information). Etc.
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Zarathustra
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posted 04. January 2007 22:43
StephenThis declaration is interesting in that it asserts mental work produces a specific output or an artifact. Please advise HOW this is done, in your view. Can we understand you to define these artifacts as new information?
This is two questions.
I do not pretend to know how human cognition works. It is, however, capable of conceiving things that have no analogue in the physical world, including those things that can never exist. That mental work can be done is beyond doubt. My reticence to give a description of the mechanism because of my ignorance does not grant a licence for anyone to indulge in any kind of wild speculation, obviously.
If I play a game of chess tomorrow, both the outcome and the transcript of the moves are new pieces of information, as far as I am concerned. Who would disagree?
Possible answer: A mechanistic determinist. If all future events are predictable from the current state of the universe, then there are no new games of chess, since they are already knowable.
What is your position on this, Stephen?
quote:
Stephen If the same information exists in a form that can be realized as negentropy within a system and is useful in identical ways in that system - even though the physical substrate can be transferred from multiple formats - it indicates some property of the information (formal) is stable. There must be some realized criteria involved so as to have "abstract" information be constant in its causal effect!
A farmer in Mesapotamia decides to make an inventory of all his chattels, and records it using a tool with a triangular imprint to make impressions in the wet mud of an unbaked brick slate: 16 goats, 12 sheep (of which 4 fallow ewes), 8 goats, 3 ducks (unsurprisingly), 2 oxen, 13 cows, 8 calves (1 puny), 2 wives.
Having used the convention of his time, the baked slate is comprehensible to all his peers, since on the viewing of it, they are minded of the exact number of chattels, on recognising the glyphs.
3,000 years later, the slate is unearthed in an archeological dig. No-one alive has any idea what the imprints signified. As a artifact, the amount of information that it could possibly have held can be determined. As for the meaning of the information itself, it no longer exists. I grant that the universe may contain a very large amount of meaningless information, Stephen, but I do have to ask what benefits accrue by knowing this.
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Zarathustra
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posted 04. January 2007 23:07
Thank you Matt, for having taken my previous post with good grace. Only arguments can be attacked in a gentlemen's discussion, as I'm sure you're aware. I was wondering, however, if you would take the "Misunderstood Visionary Thinker" stance (hereabouts known as "Davisonism"), which relies on persecution to validate it. You have not, which stands you in good stead.
It is wrong to consider the state of the universe to be a vast piece of "information" for which our minds are just a conduit. This is for reasons twofold:
1) the state of most of the universe is inaccessible to us, and
2) we "abstract" that state into conveniently economical descriptions.
This latter is the most salient; as beings with cognition, we have the ability to not only manipulate such abstractions, but to apply them to similar observations when it is appropriate to generalize. This is a startling thing about our intellect, and one that for which we should be grateful.
Of ducks, the one thing that is certain is that they will be on the pond irrespective of whether we observe them. If, on the other hand, I were to ask how close they were to each other, that would be a different matter altogether. One could devise a measure of their "closeness", such as to nominate the smallest circle that would enclose them all. This piece of information has to be considered "synthetic", since propinquity is not a physical attribute of groups of objects. Any information relating to the propinquity of objects should not be considered to be pre-existing, even though it is available should we have the means to acquire it.
To accept that this should be otherwise leads to madness, since it would require that the universe maintain a complete set of abstract details about itself, including those that we haven't even thought of.
Matt: We can observe the complete absence of common physical properties
We can not observe the absence of anything. This is the second time I've had to tell you this, Matt.
Matt: But no, I am arguing that information is immaterial.
Everyone agrees with you. In my previous post, I said that you don't have to bang on about it. Repeating the same mantra does not make it any more valid, so why are you doing it?
Matt: Totally, completely beggars the imagination...unless one's imagination has been hijacked by the Darwinists and beaten into submission.
There are no "Darwinists" here, unless you equate "rational thinking" with the "forces of Satan". Your topic is not a religionist soapbox, Matt.
There is an important difference between the representation of information for the purpose of communicating it to someone else, and the "information" itself.
Whoever mentioned "semiotics" earlier needs to take a bow for having identified the source of Matt's confusion.
There's a good index of links on the subject here, spanning a wide range of levels. It goes back as far as Plato, interestingly enough. Why don't you read some of these sources, Matt? Come back and tell us if any of them have helped you gain a clearer grasp of what you are trying to express.
[ 04. January 2007, 23:12: Message edited by: zarathustra ]
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Zarathustra
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posted 05. January 2007 01:38
Matt (re "information"): I’ll offer a definition, but first I want to say that so far any definition will work.
If I define "information" as something you pull out from where the sun don't shine, will that work?
Matt So far all the examples of information from philosophy or science will fit into the argument.
They do fit into the argument, but only to show that you are wrong so far, Matt.
Matt Furthermore, although I said in the beginning that “it can be tricky to define or describe exactly what information is…” I’m now inclined to say it is actually not possible to have a complete definition, if for no other reason than both the question and its answer are themselves pure information. Which means we’ll always, inevitably be begging the question.
Sadly, it also means that you will probably grant yourself license to babble on ad nauseum with meaningless drivel.
Matt: That said, here is my first actual shot at a working definition (and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I read it somewhere else): Information is that which can be translated mathematically.
You can't have read this somewhere else, since most other people are unwilling to publish to such arrant nonsense. If you did copy such an idiotic statement, you would do well to stop viewing websites that cater to the gullible or stupid.
Matt: Math and language go hand in hand; if we could not do one, we could not do the other.
False.
Matt: If information is immaterial then nothing material can “perceive” it.
Zarathustra and his fellow readers here are material. Who does Matt think he is communicating with? I don't even like to speculate, at this point.
Matt: I think perhaps the best indicator of whether something perceives information is the ability to use it creatively
If making up any old bollocks counts as being "creative", then you may have a point here.
Matt: Now of course the creation is jam packed with creative information, but that does not necessarily mean the creatures are the authors of it. They may just be machines authored by (a) creator(s).
Now of course the creation is jam packed with people who are prepared to spout any old religious nonsense. Sadly, it does necessarily mean that the creatures are the authors of it.
Matt: Chimps, for example, although they have shown a remarkable ability to be trained in sign language, have never demonstrated the ability to use it creatively.
False. Do some research.
Matt: Similarly dolphins may not have the capacity to create communication, only to process it.
If Matt and you were in the classic bomb-disposal dilemma, and Matt said "I am absolutely certain that we have to cut the green wire", how many people here would cut the other one just because of his record so far?
I'm a bit puzzled about this website. It was recommended to me by someone who said that it was the one forum that had intelligent posters who dealt with these issues properly. Why am I having to spend my time dealing with rubbish like this? Did I have false expectations?
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Klaus Lange
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posted 05. January 2007 06:19
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?
1. In quantumphysics our universe was seen as a quantum - computer. Every quantum of matter and energy are the qbits of this computer. In that case information need not intelligent beings in the universe for existence. Qbits exists without humans.
2.Then, if that interpretation make sense, "information" could exist without natural intelligent beings (and we have to look for someone who wrotes the software for this quantum computer).
Fundamental quantum - information was created, like space and time, matter and energy and so on (later on another kind of information was "created" by humans in this quantum computer called "Universe"). That fundamental information is the software of the quantum - computer. Space, time, matter, energy are the hardware of the quantum - computer.
In this picture we see parts of fundamental informations as the operating system of the universe and other parts as applications or memory adminstration and so on.
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Klaus Lange
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posted 05. January 2007 09:30
For example:
All our radio signals running into outer space light years far away from earth are information.
If a meteorite kills all human life on earth the radio signals will be still exists and this signals still contains information.
It didn't depends on other intelligent beings to receive this signals.
[ 05. January 2007, 09:30: Message edited by: Klaus Lange ]
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Stephen Wright
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Member # 195
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posted 05. January 2007 10:03
zarathustra,
It helps for us to have common ground and the simple fact that you see “mental work” as a logical conceptualization gives you and I that benefit. The idea can be better visualized as “information objects” being created or refined, as the output of this work. An information object can be seen as having its nature expressable as a computer program. The relational structure of components correspond to the formal information in bits and the functional target of the program the semantic meaning. This may help bring under a single representation several of these conflated terms.
Klaus is correct to suggest to you that there is a strong indication from the use of information theoretic concepts in physics, that information (formal) is fully independent from “knowers”. Think about the CBM and what information it has revealed to us about the early universe. The key is to decode the physical structures of this radiation into the information objects; that lead to data about prior states, right back to the beginning of time.
Your chess game may or may not be new information. It is completely possible that the exact same game was already played by two other folks and transcribed in chess notion. Then your information is a replication. The greatest probability is your game is unique – but the important events are all pieces of general strategy that have been used many, many times. It is possible that during the game a truly creative maneuver was done, in a way never before realized. I think this is the only chance that your output of an information object called the “game just played” is really something new under the sun as manifest new information. It is this component of creativity that would cause a chess master to recognize the newness and review it. Most chess play is iterations of the same old functional strategies.
Your ancient farmer scenario is likewise open to inspection as an information object. The coded message will contain information, which is a measurement, as long as the symbols can be decoded, not if the current observer can decode. Cryptography works because the target output of the object can be inferred readily, from tacit clues and through experience in code breaking. (note to self: add cryptography to the list of information theoretic venues)
Regarding your question to me about predicting future states: I would have a opinion within my own personal worldview; and it would definitely be because I have “indulged in a kind of wild speculation” about the subject. Information objects that can be created in a simulation are “potential” information and not “new” information until the object is manifest in physical reality. On a forum meant for Brainstorming – I feel I have the license to say speculative things as this. I think a reductive process of information changing state - from a logical possibility to being manifest in a functional manner - can be discovered to help us follow information transforms – just like we follow physical transforms.
[ 05. January 2007, 10:15: Message edited by: Stephen Wright ]
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Daniel Smith
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posted 05. January 2007 20:09
Z:
quote:
Any information relating to the propinquity of objects should not be considered to be pre-existing, even though it is available should we have the means to acquire it.
Question: How can something be "available" if it is not "existent"?
Your statement seems irrational to me.
quote:
To accept that this should be otherwise leads to madness, since it would require that the universe maintain a complete set of abstract details about itself, including those that we haven't even thought of.
It really requires no such thing. The pre-existent information and the maintained set of abstract details about that pre-existent information are two seperate things.
I maintain that there is information which can be discovered in everything. Your 3000 year old tablets are a prime example. The correct information is that the tablets contain a head count of livestock. That never changes. We can speculate all we want, but the correct pre-existent information remains unchanged forever.
I also maintain that the universe is built upon the foundation of information. Everything that exists has a blueprint. If we had the technology, we could make anything from it's blueprint. Any time we combine hydrogen and oxygen in the correct ratio and at the right temperature, we'll get water. These blueprints (as with all information) are immaterial and exist apart from any physical, or material representation of them.
[ 05. January 2007, 22:51: Message edited by: Daniel Smith ]
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Zarathustra
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posted 06. January 2007 21:47
It appears that the term "information" is becoming the victim of wilful Humpty-Dumptyism here. In spite of a number of requests from various people (including myself) that the different modes of the word be distinguished, no clarity has been forthcoming. (Stephen is a notable exception, I must add, in that he has been able to express himself accurately with respect to the particular aspect of "information" that he is using at the time that he uses the term.)
A few of you will have spotted the ghastly word "ontological" at the botom of the page, in small print. It relates to what can be reasonably said to "exist". Hiding behind the apron of "what information is not" does not exempt us from having to examine what it actually is, and in what sense it can be said to "exist".
So far, there are a number of major streams of thought here with respect to "information":
A) The state of the physical universe is information
B) Information exists independently from the state of the physical universe
C) Information exists by virtue of its recognisable encoding properties
D) Information exists by agreement on its meaning (i.e. referent), irrespective of its encoding.
One does not like to presume to have covered the field, but one thing is clear, gentle fellows: we have to be clear about which sense of "information" we are using when we attempt to communicate our thoughts on the matter.
Klaus' example crystallizes the issues neatly:
Klaus: All our radio signals running into outer space light years far away from earth are information.
Let's say Klaus sends a message into space that has been converted into a radio signal (using a modulation of the original audio) of him saying: "Greetings to all sentient beings in the cosmos from the people of Earth. Klaus is your friend."
What would a recipient 50,000 light-years away make of this transmission, were it to be received? Would it be information C) or information D) ? If we were to receive an identical radio signal that appeared to come from a source 2 Billion years ago, could we assume that it contained the same information? [see footnote]
Information A) is a degenerate form of the term. The state of the universe exists without any interpretation from us, so it does not need to be re-named as "information". That things in the universe have observable properties is undeniable. What has defeated some of the minds here is that those properties are very few. The position of any two objects in 3-space is observable. The distance between them is not, nor is it one of their physical properties. Were someone to say that information about distances exists other than in our mental model of the world is to grant existence to the imaginary.
quote:
Smith: I also maintain that the universe is built upon the foundation of information. Everything that exists has a blueprint. If we had the technology, we could make anything from it's blueprint. Any time we combine hydrogen and oxygen in the correct ratio and at the right temperature, we'll get water. These blueprints (as with all information) are immaterial and exist apart from any physical, or material representation of them.
This is a good example of information B). Do these blueprints exist in "Plato's Heaven"? Where are they, Daniel? Is there a blueprint for your entire life that you are simply working you way through?
[footnote]In fact, the real content of the message was: "Our giant stellar radio transmitter is running out of control and is about to go unstable. Please send rescue spacecraft as soon as possible." A small super-nova is detected by astronomers in the same part of the sky a week after the transmission is received. Since the red-shift on the signal confirms that it happened 2 billion years ago, we are unlikely to find out if they were ever rescued. We will just have to wait to see if they built any more giant transmitters.
[ 06. January 2007, 22:05: Message edited by: zarathustra ]
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Melvin H. Fox
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posted 08. January 2007 07:19
Zarathustra,
You wrote:
quote:
Zarathustra and his fellow readers here are material. Who does Matt think he is communicating with? I don't even like to speculate, at this point.
What an absurd statement. Speak for yourself. I am certainly not material. I am no more this bag of flesh, blood, and bones than I am the hotel room I stayed in last summer.
When the 2nd law has its way with this earthly tent and my body is flat on its back in the casket and my friends and family pass by, there will be something missing and that something will be me. What’s that? I can’t prove that I exist apart from the material world. True, but you can’t prove that I don’t. My premise is that I do. If you would like to show this to be a false premise, well be my guest. Otherwise, please refrain from calling me names such as “material”.
As far as your puzzled condition is concerned, remember that you are not required to participate and you could have researched the posts on this forum before you spent your $45.
-Mel
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IF
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posted 08. January 2007 14:55
"I can’t prove that I exist apart from the material world. True, but you can’t prove that I don’t."
Therein is the crux of the controversy! Science - Religion, two different "magisteriums" as so eloquently noted by SJG in his writings. Trying to shoehorn theories into beliefs and vice versa is difficult for creatures of habit. Religion/Science, brotherhood/patriotism, etc. evoke all kinds of hobgoblins as someone else has noted.
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Zarathustra
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posted 08. January 2007 22:02
Melvin H. Fox: I am certainly not material. ... Otherwise, please refrain from calling me names such as “material”.
Zarathustra does not like to cause offense, however unwittingly, and so will henceforth refer to you as "Melvin the Immaterial". If there is anyone else here that would like a similar courtesy extended to them, they should raise their hands now.
quote:
Daniel (the insubstantial): Your 3000 year old tablets are a prime example. The correct information is that the tablets contain a head count of livestock. That never changes. We can speculate all we want, but the correct pre-existent information remains unchanged forever.
Incorrect. When the ability to infer the existence of livestock from the markings on the baked clay is no longer available, it is safe to say that that information has ceased to exist (unless one is likewise confident that yesterday still exists, of course). One could still see the clay as an artifact capable of encoding information, or simply as an artwork produced for unknown aesthetic purposes. The "number of goats" is not in the clay markings by themselves, is it?
Melvin the Immaterial: I can’t prove that I exist apart from the material world. True, but you can’t prove that I don’t. My premise is that I do.
Zarathustra makes no claim that Martian Cheese Bicycles exist, even were he to believe that they do. Why? Because it would impose an unsatisfiable burden of disproof on anyone who disagreed with him. That's why he doesn't insult other people's rationality by making claims of that ilk. One cannot disprove that Melvin has an immaterial component, simply because there is no means available for anyone to do so; we'll just have to take his word for it, whether it's true or not.
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Daniel Smith
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posted 08. January 2007 23:14
quote:
Zarathustra (The substantial): When the ability to infer the existence of livestock from the markings on the baked clay is no longer available, it is safe to say that that information has ceased to exist
I'm sure you realize that in order for the "ability to infer" to be "no longer available", there would have to be no intelligence left in the universe. So I guess, as long as the ability to infer is available, the information must still exist.
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Melvin H. Fox
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posted 09. January 2007 14:52
Zarathustra,
You have accepted that information is not a physical property of its subjects. If information is immaterial and exists, then why is my spirit as strange to you as a Martian Cheese Bicycle?
All,
From my perspective it is Zarathustra who is being irrational. He refuses to consider evidence that non-physical dimensions exist in which elements of the human essence could exist, as he states, because he has “no means available” to measure them.
Literally billions of people testify to a spiritual dimension of human existence. Common everyday items such as bits of information, perceived as real, exist outside the physical dimensions. I agree, that while valid, a claim that Martian Cheese Bicycles exist is irrational. However, given my personal relationship with God’s Holy Spirit and a mountain of confirming testimony and evidence, it is not only valid but rational as well to claim: Man is a spiritual being created in the image of God. In fact, irrational it would be, dare I say insulting as well, were I to keep silent.
You do not have to take my word for it. You can choose to bury your head in the sand of four physical dimensions [there are probably even more of those] and maintain the only information that can exist is tied to material objects. This is undoubtedly a valid premise. However, its rationale is debatable.
-Mel
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JT75
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posted 09. January 2007 15:13
I was going to quit posting on this site because the discussion has evolved beyond my areas of interest or, in some instances, the lack of clarity is simply too maddening, however, several posts have provoked this reply.
Mel,
I believe in your zeal to assert an immaterial aspect to your being you have gone so far as to make this aspect the sum total of your identity. This is a reaction against a materialistic view of you (an understanding that would see you as something wholly deducible in terms of physics and chemistry), which is false. I think a better form of dualism (rather than the extreme form you have asserted, in which your mental self and physical body have no relation) is one which views you as a mental physical composite. You are one, unified ontological unit which is composed of two very different substances, one material the other immaterial. After all when you feel a pain in your foot I assume it is your pain and not a pain in the lower portion of the body that I am currently housed in (unless I am mistaken and you truly intend to hold the extreme view, in which case you are mistaken).
Daniel Smith,
This is gross misrepresentation to Zarathustra's reply. For between "ability to infer" and "no longer available" there is a specific object of knowledge mentioned, namely,"the existence of livestock from the markings on the baked clay". Z's reply has something very specific as its object, you represent him as referring to the ability to infer in general. You have moved his argument from something particular to a general, universal statment about "inferability per se," which was never intended. Then in your response you move from the obvious and uncontested fact that the ability to infer exists to the, as yet, unwarranted conclusion that this particular set of information (on the clay tablet) must still exist.
If we are to arrive at truth we must seek, at least, to interact with our interlocutor in a spirit of charity and with a sincere desire to understand. Z's mocking tone may chaff at times, but he does raise important issues as well as insightful rebuttals. If you want to know that what you believe is actually true, then subject your beliefs to the most rigorous debate. If, however, you merely want to believe what you wish, then misrepresent your opponents position and then conclude "well, that's just stupid."
We can only choose for ourselves. I will now climb down off my soap box.
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