I mean, it is ambitious due to my educational and professional background, being an electrical engineer, working as a software engineer practically all my life, I know that I lack both math and physics knowledge to be able to grasp all that this theory is about, although I love both these areas, and try to catch up on my own in the spare time.

Anyway, the point about digesting complex foods was good, by both Frotunes and 420mindfulness, as this is exactly the distinction between being able (=know how?) to do something, and being able to explain how you do it, ie being able to pass that knowledge. So, there are two interesting cases (at least to me) in which there is know how, not followed by explain how in satisfactory way. First one is about creating the artificial ribosome, that is about grasping the knowledge from molecules, because the best way to show that you know how something works (protein synthesis in this example) is to produce it by your self in a lab. This is a great success because these molecules kept that secret from us for a long time, not explaining much to us by themselves. The other is the case of Alpha Zero, in which superior knowledge of playing various strategic games is created automatically by an algorithm, and stored in a an artificial neural network. However, grasping that knowledge, is not easy for human players, as playing power is not followed by explanatory power. So, even if Alpha Zero can destroy you 1000 times out of 1000 games played, it cannot teach you how to become a better player, the way human coach can. So, another type of software, that interprets that knowledge in humanly understandable way is needed.

I managed to exchange a few e-mails with him, sent him a few of my essays and he responded. I respect him also, but I am a little bit more ambitious, trying to understand his constructor theory as much as possible, having a background that I have, and even to question some of his views.

Information doesn't exist in non-material things, you always need a memory of a dna or a tape or sth, — Frotunes

Exactly, there always must be some material substrate that carries or stores information, but the information itself transcends it. Think of the flow of some idea from one brain to the other, and all possible routes it may follow, and all possible converters on its path.

If you do know how, tell me how to digest complex foods, because I don't know. However even though I don't know, I can also. — 420mindfulness

Good point, I can't explain exactly how I walk, even though it is a voluntary conscious activity, unlike digestion. I can say that I move my legs in front of me, alternately, but this doesn't really explain much, or even if it does, I can't explain how I manage to move my leg, or maintain the balance when I am standing, although I can do it.

Another thought: the distinction between 'information' and 'knowledge'. I think these words should apply to somewhat different concepts: 'information' is the reduction of uncertainty. One can have 'information ;which is not yet turned into 'knowledge'. I don't want to quibble about the meaning of words, which don't have inherent meaning anyway. But it seems that these words refer to different although overlapping concepts. Knowledge is brought into being when patterns are spotted in information, and generalizations are made on that basis. — Doug1943

The same guy, David Deutsch, came up with the following distinction: knowledge is information with causal power:

https://twitter.com/DavidDeutschOxf/status/1055180893483081729

That is his current working definition of knowledge, before that he used to have these:

'Information that is the same across many universes'
'Useful information'
'Information which, once physically instantiated, tends to cause itself to remain so.'
'Information that can program a programmable constructor'

So, he must have thought a lot about knowledge throughout his life. Here is his TED interview in which he mentions that definition:

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-ted-interview/e/56853300

Other theories of information that I know of, are Shannon, and Kolmogorov/Chaitin/Solomonoff (Algorithmic information theory).

Well, I come up with such questions as in original post by reading this:

http://constructortheory.org/portfolio/the-philosophy-of-constructor-theory/

and more specifically, this:

http://constructortheory.org/portfolio/the-constructor-theory-of-information/

Check this out and tell me what you think.

Totally agree with your comments. The question is how sustainable is that knowledge communism. This reminds me of open source software. Everyone can give away his or her knowledge freely, but in the end, a dude gotta eat.

Yes, that is it, another example would be the task of synthesizing a protein, based on the information stored in DNA, done by enzymes which are constructors in that process, compared to the work that spring can do based on the potential energy stored in it by winding.

Yes, thank you for responding, but, for example, the genetic information is also discrete, otherwise it could not be a subject of DNA repair mechanisms, if it was not so, and it produces body plans that are perfectly symmetric, however bodies of animals are not perfectly symmetric. The interior of body, and the exterior appearance.

And since for k=1, the basis for induction, it is also divisible by 9, then if sum of digits is divisible by 9, then the number is also.

Although it may be a result of cooperation, not neccesssarily adversarial competition.

I agree that sexual selection is form of, or result of intraspecific competition, and as such does not need to be singled out, regardless of the question how much esthetics and fitness correlate. That is just another argument pro my proposition.

OK, we went astray a bit, because I didn't envisage this discussion to be primarily about defining clear cut difference between artificial and natural, selection, production, processing, or any other kind of acting in general. I wanted to emphasize that for evolution, it doesn't matter who or what produces selective pressure: human, monkey, virus, or a climate change due to a fallen meteorite. These are all natural agents, their rationality is irrelevant, and there is no reason to single out man as something different, or unnatural, as Darwin actually did, when he theorized about the difference between natural and artificial selection. This is not linguistic objection, it is more essential than that.

OK, so by your definition, natural is something that is performed by non reasonable agents, like non-living things, and we still have to decide what living things qualify as reasonable?

OK, all other technology (apart from AI) is distancing people a bit from nature, since the invention of fire. So, maybe provoking in controlled way such a process that naturally arises uncontrolled, could be another definition of artificiality. Or producing a device, that only a human can assemble, could be another. But that does not mean that only a human is capable of purposeful selection.

I agree that artificiality may have some kind of meaning. For example, artificial smile, artificial lake, artificial insemination, all things that happen in a not usual, "natural", way. But "usual" is very imprecise word in a scientific context, as well as "natural" in the same context. The only artificial thing that I admit gives any right to human kind to think we are above nature, is artificial intelligence, and more generally, artificial life. If and when both of these things happen, only that can justify our anthropocentrism.

I don't agree that farmer (ie homo sapiens) is the only being capable of purposeful actions, and that elsewhere in nature only unconscious processes can make selection.

OK, do you think that human beings, along with all of the "artificial" things which they create, need "bringing into the realm of nature"? Aren't we already there, always were, and always will be part of nature? Maybe our anthropocentric views are the real problem here, and just an illusion, what criteria justifies them? If we are as natural as the rest of nature, how come the selection that we do is not natural, so that it deserves special attribute, ie "artificial"? Maybe that is the only thing here that is artificial, our notion of artificiality?

No I don't, and I thought that is what naturists or nudists do. I think naturalist means something else. :lol:

And can you please bring back the discussion "Review of my essays", I think it hit some limit of posting without replies by other members, or maybe there was manual intervention, I don't know. You can delete my last post in there, but please leave the post from Boethius, it was a nice post.

Wisdom is one part of the answer, that is a general knowledge one collects through all its life, mostly not systematically, either by trying and failing, or by believing others who experienced it before.

The other part of the answer is that there is a negative selection acting on knowledge domains that human kind tries to investigate systematically, and present to children and young adults through formal school education. And as soon as something manages to get investigated systematically, it gets removed out of philosophy domain, and it becomes science, either "hard" or "soft".

The difference between the two is that the latter is limited to empirical analysis, collecting data, categorizing it, but without being able to produce the exact mathematical/logical theory which explains collected data in a general and abstract form, and which is able to predict something based on that data.

What that means, is that when one has ambition to describe something generally and abstractly, but has no power to produce exact "hard" scientific theory, one must step back and say "it's just a philosophy", as I did with my 4 essays, or resort to pseudoscience, which is something that no honest person does intentionally.

The proof that this is true, is Isaac Newton's example. He is now considered a "founding father" of hard science, and as such, he considered himself at that time a philosopher, calling the new science he invented "principia mathematica philosophiae naturalis". Because, at that time, noone would go around saying: "I am a scientist, I have no interest in philosophy.", such a sentence at that time would sound really awkward, because the distinction was not yet established.
And by the way, he spent more of his life in things we consider today pseudoscientific researches, than in scientific ones, but he honestly believed in what he was doing, so noone considers him pseudoscientist because of that.

Thanks again, I posted without seeing your answer.

It's OK now, it somehow got sorted. Thanks.