In my view, it is the essence of both Energy and Matter . . . . and Mind. Some would interpret that datum as proof of a Universal Consciousness — Gnomon
anxiety is part of the stress response - physiological readiness for fight or flight (or even the third strange choice of freezing). Noradrenaline in the brain goes up to change the signal-noise balance. We become less able to focus on endogenous/dopamimergic planning and more open to the exogenous/readiness response where we have no clear prediction of where the signals we seek might come from. So the brain as a whole is made readier to react to anything that might just normally be treated as peripheral noise. — apokrisis
Anxiety is just a machinery for paying better attention to the uncertain environment when that is the processing mode that makes better sense than remaining head down and focused on some narrow task or activity r — apokrisis
An organism must be able to resist change to its structure of habits so as to persist as that functional set of habits. But the same organism must also have the plasticity to adapt as the world changes in ways it hasn’t encountered. It must have the attentional level of processing to complement the habitual. Paradigms need to be tweakable.
So any systems minded biologist or neuroscientist gets this. Existence for an organism is a dialectical balancing act in terms of staying the same and yet constantly adapting. — apokrisis
We test for mental content all the time (tests, quizes, exams) so in practice we ackowlegde mental content exist. I'm wondering if it's falsifiable or unfalsifiable... not sure. My default is that mental content does exist. — Mark Nyquist
↪Pop Great!!! You agreed with me on something. Like you said a few months ago, we are usually oceans apart. — Mark Nyquist
All that goes away is the body’s stepping in to help optimize the movements that the anxious or fearful person is contemplating in rapid fashion. — Joshs
I will do this quickly not because of physiological help , but because I already know that this is a situation that requires split second decision. — Joshs
This is precisely because the feared event hasn’t happened yet. If what we fear happens, we will no longer be afraid but shift to a different attitude. — Joshs
We can’t concentrate in fear not because of the hormones but because then worry over the situation is a greater priority to us than other interests PTSD isnt a disorder of chemicals , it is a problem of failure to effectively understand events the past that have relevance for ones present and future. — Joshs
Try injecting yourself with adrenaline and see how it ‘makes’ you focus. It actually has the opposite effect unless you are already gearing yourself up for action, — Joshs
It is crucial
to bring temporality into the equation and remind that , as Piaget said, each assimilation to ‘habits’ is at the same time an accommodation to the novelties of the environment. The world is always, minute by minute, changing in ways the organism hasn’t precisely encountered. — Joshs
This may be an interesting difference between us. What is novelty to you? Do organisms and humans just rearrange previous bits and codes most of the time? — Joshs
The point being time perception is inseparably linked to information. — Mark Nyquist
In that case, what follows is, nature made / caused events or entities are not meaningful in terms of human intelligence, perfect form or logic in its purpose or design.
Nature caused events or entities have been happening randomly without aim, purpose or plans. We can explain the physical cause of the snowfall using the other elements such as humidity, temperature and air pressure, but that is not snow itself. It is the condition for snowfall, and there is no way to explain why snow flakes looks the way it is without citing God's will.
In that case, I wonder if it could be related to information which is based on predesigned and thought out plans, practical purposes, human intelligence and meanings in abstract form or linguistic content. — Corvus
The first sentence made sense to me. The second sentence makes sense to me. The third sentence makes sense to me. The first half of the fourth sentence makes sense to me. Concluding that it is a god's will that a snowflake takes the shape it takes, does not make sense to me.
Why throw in a god's will or a question of intelligent design? — Athena
One metaphysics to rule them all! — apokrisis
Where there seem no reasonable answers to the questions, it is our tendency to rely on God for the answers. If you are a theist, you would accept it. If not, then it is unlikely you would accept it.
It is a question that has two possible answers. One is that it is unknown. The other is God wanted it to be. Saying unknown sounds there is no answer. Saying God wanted it sounds like it is at least an answer. But in essence, they are the same answer. — Corvus
think you need to consider what 'biosemiosis' means (and I'm not an expert by any stretch, I've only learned about the concept on this forum and readings from it. The Wikipedia definition is 'Biosemiotics (from the Greek βίος bios, "life" and σημειωτικός sēmeiōtikos, "observant of signs") is a field of semiotics and biology that studies the prelinguistic meaning-making, or production and interpretation of signs and codes and their communication in the biological realm.[1] — Wayfarer
That would not be so bad if that god were an unknown god instead of a god-like Zeus who has human qualities. — Athena
What I said was : "Shannon defined his concept of Information in terms of the absence of energy (entropy)". I didn't mean to put words in his mouth, but was merely using my own terminology. As I tried to explain before, Shannon was not thinking in terms of Energy when he borrowed the concept of Entropy from Physics to define the distinction between meaningful information and meaningless noise. For him, Entropy was simply a mathematical statistical measurement of potential to carry content (an empty vessel). And since he was mostly concerned with impediments to communication, his measurement focused on the negative.So where did "information is a lack of energy" come from? — frank
Do you see the inverse relationship? — Gnomon
Shannon was not thinking in terms of Energy when he borrowed the concept of Entropy from Physics to define the distinction between meaningful information and meaningless noise. For him, Entropy was simply a mathematical statistical measurement of potential to carry content (an empty vessel). — Gnomon
An analog to thermodynamic entropy is information entropy. In 1948, while working at Bell Telephone Laboratories, electrical engineer Claude Shannon set out to mathematically quantify the statistical nature of “lost information” in phone-line signals. To do this, Shannon developed the very general concept of information entropy, a fundamental cornerstone of information theory. Initially it seems that Shannon was not particularly aware of the close similarity between his new quantity and earlier work in thermodynamics. In 1949, however, when Shannon had been working on his equations for some time, he happened to visit the mathematician John von Neumann, who asked him how he was getting on with his theory of missing information. Shannon replied that the theory was in excellent shape, except that he needed a good name for “missing information”. “Why don’t you call it entropy”, von Neumann suggested. “In the first place, a mathematical development very much like yours already exists in Boltzmann’s statistical mechanics, and in the second place, no one understands entropy very well, so in any discussion you will be in a position of advantage.”
I see it as a problem were the end points are known but the intermediate processes need to be solved. — Mark Nyquist
Entropy and information aren’t metaphysical substances. They are inverse descriptions we apply to a natural world we are now coming to view as essentially probabilistic rather than deterministic. — apokrisis
Describing the natural world as probabilistic is a category error. Probability is about prediction. — frank
Propensities are not relative frequencies, but purported causes of the observed stable relative frequencies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propensity_probability
The concept of determined events is baked into information theory. — frank
Yes, Of course, those abstract terms can be used to describe the statistical energy state of material substances. But, in that symbolic sense, they are mathematical "objects". And what physical stuff is mathematics made of?Yep. Entropy and information aren’t metaphysical substances. — apokrisis
And some cutting-edge physicists have concluded that even physical Matter is made of metaphysical (abstract) Information — Gnomon
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