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Author
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Topic: Farewell
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Melvin H. Fox
Member
Member # 1684
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posted 19. May 2008 14:26
I would like to thank all those who have participated here over the past three years. Brainstorms has been a valuable source of information, insight, and inspiration. I would like to thank all of you for your words of encouragement and instruction. May God be with all of you as you continue to endeavor to discover His hand at work in the universe.
In the love of Christ,
-Mel http://foxat.blogspot.com
[ 19. May 2008, 14:26: Message edited by: Melvin H. Fox ]
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Christopher D. Beling
Member
Member # 723
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posted 24. May 2008 08:36
Dear Mel and William,
Yes those were great times weren't they - and I learnt so much from our discussions. I guess we have just been too busy of late or having no fresh ideas (actually I really dont know why iscid is not still thriving?) I want to thank you especially (and others like Sal who participated) for you helped me understand more about the nature of the 4th law. Indeed much of what I present in Oxford in July is a direct result of our discussions - so your input will have had some impact. I think I should post the paper here in the not so distant future - so do keep tuned in. Chris
[ 26. May 2008, 05:17: Message edited by: Christopher D. Beling ]
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Stephen Wright
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Member # 195
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posted 01. June 2008 12:50
Gentlemen,
I miss the activity that was here in years past. It was stimulating and I learned much.
Chris - I hope there is a way to read your complete paper. Please let me know.
I see another of my favorite thinkers - Steven Horst is also presenting.
Stephen
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William Brookfield
Member
Member # 565
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posted 10. June 2008 22:26
Hi Christopher and Steven,
Great to hear from you both and yes those were indeed great times. Thank you both for your contributions. Nowadays I am spending more time in music. Music makes money for me and unfortunately ID science doesn't (at least, not at this time). I do have a number of ideas for possible ISCID threads however…
#1. Complex Specified "Holism"?
In the new book the "Design of Life" William Dembski describes “Specified Complexity” as both "probabilistically complex"(improbable) and "descriptively simple." It is the "descriptively simple" part that I have trouble with. As far as I can tell, SCi can be both descriptively simple (say, an obelisk on moon) and complex (DNA). Shouldn't "descriptively simple" be replaced with "holistic" or "whole-istic?"
Randomness can only produce independent, uncoordinated fortuitous events, not coordinated/integrated functional wholes. The letters in "monkey shakespeare" for instance, are but independent (disconnected) fortuitous events -- utterly devoid of any Shakespearean holism (interconnections). The reason that random mutation, random variations, random gene duplications, random drift, random environmental contingencies (drought, cold, heat etc,) are all worthless (in the Darwinian formulation) is that these are all devoid of the holism (connected-ness) required for the development/coordination of new species (new organic wholes). Wrt holism, randomness provides an empty set and NS is powerless to weed any holism from a set devoid of holism.
Notice also that Dembski's third criteria (probabilistic resources) is no longer required. "Randomness" has no "holistic resources" and neither does "Natural Selection."
#2. Black Hole Spread-ularities. An Info-Dynamic model of BH Dynamics. The "Black Hole" as a “Singularized SPREADularity.”
This is my model of the core of a Black hole. Discrete spacetime and mass are spread into each other, attaining equilibrium at the core threshold/horizon. In this model "spacetime" consists of four outward projection vectors that can be bundled into one vector (for black-hole-dynamic purposes) and "mass" consists of four inward projection vectors that can be bundled into one BH-dynamic vector also. These two "super-vectors" produce a two dimensional "subspace" under our normal space. Under normal conditions the supervectors are intact and almost orthogonal to each other (think of an X Y axis). When an object (a star or galactic core) is too massive however, these supervectors are bent back into alignment, canceling each other out and producing what I call the "flat mass" of a black hole spreadularity/singularity.
2D Subspace and Supervectors
The Beckenstein - Hawking - Penrose equation (top) shows only the “flat mass” or “entropy” as “M2.”
#3. Targeting/fine tuning Does it exist. If so, what is the name of nature’s targeting force -- in what unit is targeting itself to be measured?
Roger Penrose Diagram -- Not drawn to scale!!
Toward a unified, Randomness, Order, Information continuum/scale. We have a thermal scale and "thermometers" but no "infometers" or "orderometers" -- why not? Is targeting immeasurable? Doesn't the Second Law of Thermodynamics track/measure de-targeting? What we need is a unified approach to order and information that permits it to be quantified. I am proposing informational K-complexity as a good general unit measure of order and information -- but I could be wrong.
We already have a thermal energy scale (on left) but do we have a generalized order/information scale (on right)? For starters, I am proposing that "randomness" represents the absence of order, just as zero degrees Kelvin represents the absence of thermal energy.
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William Brookfield
Member
Member # 565
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posted 31. July 2008 13:33
I have noticed that "information" as I define it, is not the same as Shannon entropy/information -- nor is it the same as Kolmogorov complexity (randomness). For starters information is not disorder, entropy, or randomness. It is instead a complex form of order. "In-form-ation" is a correlational (ordered/formed) datatype. Information is always "information about something." It is therefore always in a specified, orderly correlated matrix of itself, and that with which it is about. Shannon and Kolmogorov seem to have merely quantified the endpoints (bits) of information while missing the information's correlational nature. Information is a holistic, trans-binary dataform. Theorists and technicians need not be concerned however because the trans-binary component is linear and can be non-destructively included in the formalism by taking the log of the product of Shannon's improbability and the correlational improbability.
By "correlational Improbability" I am referring to the chance (improbability) of tossing a coin at one time (with many tosses) and having a sequence emerge and then later tossing a coin and having exactly the same sequence appear by chance a second time. Such a chance correlation is highly improbable and the measure of this is what I call the "correlational improbability." With the correlational improbability factored in, Shannon's entropy/information becomes not "entropy" (randomness) but in-FORM-mation - order.
"Correlation" is a critical component of information. If there is no correlation between the email your friend receives and the email you sent him then the information has been lost. When I claim that the universe is an information structure I am claiming that it possesses a holistic, correlational form. Information can also be understood in terms of "surprisal" value. It was an enormous surprise that the universe (a finely tuned, holistic, trans-binary, correlational form) popped out of a formless cosmic singularity. This "surprisal" is only made more acute by the study of black hole dynamics (gravitationally induced information/correlation loss) and the study of prescriptive information theory (ID).
[ 31. July 2008, 15:10: Message edited by: William Brookfield ]
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