whenever we find information, we find it inscribed or encoded somehow in a physical medium of whatever kind.
There is a sentry in a watchtower, looking through a telescope. The watchtower stands on top of a headland which forms the northern entrance to a harbour. The sentry’s job is to keep a lookout.
When the sentry sees a ship on the horizon, he sends a signal about the impending arrival. The signal is sent via a code - a semaphore, comprising a set of flags.
One flag is for the number of masts the ship has, which provides an indication of the class, and size, of the vessel; another indicates its nationality; and the third indicates its expected time of arrival - before or after noon.
When he has made this identification he hoists his flags, and then tugs on a rope which sounds a steam-horn. The horn alerts the shipping clerk who resides in an office on the dockside about a mile away. He comes out of his office and looks at the flags through his telescope. Then he writes down what they tell him - three-masted ship is on the horizon; Greek; arriving this afternoon.
He goes back inside and transmits this piece of information to the harbourmaster’s cottage via Morse code, where it is written in a log-book by another shipping clerk, under ‘Arrivals’.
In this transaction, a single item of information has been relayed by various means. First, by semaphore; second, by Morse code; and finally, in writing. The physical forms and the nature of the symbolic code is completely different in each step: the flags are visual, the morse code auditory, the log book entry written text. But the same information is represented in each step of the sequence.
The question I want to explore is: in such a case, what stays the same, and what changes?
whenever we find information, we find it inscribed or encoded somehow in a physical medium of whatever kind.
How, then, could the information be physical? — Wayfarer
The idea of transmission of anything seems physical. — MikeL
All those representations are physical but the actual information is something different to that. — Wayfarer
Can you elaborate a little more? — MikeL
.There is stuff, and stuff is structured, but structure is not more stuff.
Ok. I guess we can wait for the oncoming barrage. — Noble Dust
The really hot physicists these days dispense with the stuff, and manage with just structure. So worse than information is physical, they claim that physicality is informational. — unenlightened
More like: sharks smelling blood in the water, circling their prey, anticipating a feeding frenzy. — Galuchat
“It from bit”. Otherwise put, every “it” every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself derives its function, its meaning, its very existence (even if in some contexts indirectly) from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits. “It from bit” symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom a very deep bottom, in most instances an immaterial source and explanation; that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a
participatory universe. — Galuchat
The world is what it is, the structure we discern is not in the world as such, it is only in what we discern about the world. — Cavacava
The religious ecstasy is more than palpable. — Noble Dust
You posted a quote from Archibald without context... — Noble Dust
The question is absurd. First of all, what does "physical" mean and how is it different from the "mental"? You start off on the wrong foot by assuming dualism.The title basically says it. I am questioning whether information, generally speaking, is physical. — Wayfarer
For the record, you have no information regarding my worldview. It's a shame that you feel compelled to denigrate the reputation of the eminent scientists quoted (your reputation is undoubtedly greater than theirs). Are you really that insecure in your beliefs? — Galuchat
I am still awaiting your explanation of information (if you have one), — Galuchat
nd genuinely hoping that it forms the basis of a worldview which is far superior to the one you suppose folks like me and my boys hold. — Galuchat
How, then, could the information be physical? — Wayfarer
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