Information - The Meaning Of Life In a Nutshell?

Devans99

I and others spend a great deal of time on this site discussing God, time, and infinity and I don’t think that is a problem; all are subjects with a long philosophical history and worthy of extended discussion. However, I would, using a very broad brush, categorise them as related to the ‘meaning of death’. So for a change, I’m posting something relating to the ‘meaning of life’.

I justify my claim that information is the meaning of life as follows:

1. Everything in the universe can be classified as some form of information

2. All our senses are mechanisms for consuming or producing information

3. Our minds, the centre of our being, are information processing machines

4. All our everyday activities are consuming or producing information:
- A. We process information at work
- B. Watching TV, using the internet, reading a book are all information processing
- C. Talking to someone else is the production and consumption of information
- D. Eating is deriving information from our sense of taste
- E. Having sex is deriving information from our sense of touch

5. Producing/consuming information makes our lives happier. The more information processed it seems the happier we get - we get excited by new information - neurotransmitters that raise our mood seem to be released during the production / consumption of information.

6. Producing/consuming information seems to cause an increase in subjective longevity - I am of the opinion (hard to prove) that the neurotransmitters / hormones that are released when we process information also slow down our subjective experience of the passage of time - as if the mind is saying ‘here is something interesting… and here is more time in which to process it’.

7. Producing/consuming information seems to cause an increase in our objective longevity - the mind is like a muscle I feel - it wastes away if not used and gets stronger if exercised. Thinking (=information processing) is how we exercise our minds. If we don’t think enough we get senile dementia which is a killer - so information processing prolongs life objectively.

So there you go - produce and consume a large amount of information for a happy, long, life - my take on the meaning of life. What do folks think?

PS, I'd probably define ‘information’ as a statement with a true/false value (that is allowed to be fuzzy), but I'm still thinking about this one!

Pfhorrest

More or less correct.

A Christian Philosophy

Hello.

information is the meaning of life — Devans99

By that, do you mean that our life's purpose is to gather and produce information?

Here is my objection. For any thing that has a purpose, we call that thing "good" when it fulfills its purpose correctly, and "bad" otherwise. E.g. the purpose of a paper-cutter is to cut paper. We call it a "good paper-cutter" when it is able to cut paper correctly, and a "bad paper-cutter" otherwise.

If the purpose of a person was merely to gather and produce information, then anybody that does that should be called a "good person". But that is absurd. I'm sure Hitler gathered and produced as much information as any other person (if not more, being that he is famous), but he is nearly-universally judged to be a bad person.

Devans99

If the purpose of a person was merely to gather and produce information, then anybody that does that should be called a "good person". But that is absurd. I'm sure Hitler gathered and produced as much information as any other person (if not more, being that he is famous), but he is nearly-universally judged to be a bad person. — Samuel Lacrampe

Hitler was a destroyer of people - our primary source of information - and therefore a destroyer of information - therefore I think I he can be classified as a bad person.

So I think the definition of good / bad person in informational terms is actually recursive: There is the amount of information you produce yourself, but in addition, if you save many lives, then recursively that results in a large amount of additional information. And if, as with Hitler, if you end many lives, then recursively that results in the destruction of large amounts of information.

Nils Loc

So what if unchecked information processing actually causes our extinction? This would be a case of fulfilling purpose in the short term while forgoing even more in the future (relative to some species point of view).

Is there any inherent difference in human (anthropocentric) processing of information (as if we had free will to do anything else) and the kind that occurs in the natural world for slime mold, trees and colliding galaxies?

Devans99

So what if unchecked information processing actually causes our extinction? — Nils Loc

So you mean some sort of Terminator/Matrix scenario where the machines take over and enslave us all? If we ever develop AI, I think it will value information too and thus treat humans as a source of information and respect them accordingly.

Is there anything inherent difference in human (anthropocentric) processing of information (as if we had free will to do anything else) and the kind that occurs in the natural world for slime mold, trees and colliding galaxies? — Nils Loc

I guess I was trying to get at the meaning of life from the perspective of an intelligent entity (be it an organic life form, an AI or a deity). I am not disputing that information processing continues in the universe, regardless if there is anything to observe and value it.

Slime molds do actually seem to be quite information-savvy:

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2000/09/28/189608.htm?site=galileo&topic=latest

A Christian Philosophy

↪Devans99

That seems consistent. I'll keep testing your hypothesis. Let's say a person did not kill people like Hitler, but tortured people a lot and made them miserable. He also lied, cheated, and kicked puppies in the face. I would imagine it reasonable to call this person a bad person, and yet no information was lost in this case.

Gnomon

So there you go - produce and consume a large amount of information for a happy, long, life - my take on the meaning of life. What do folks think? — Devans99

I agree with your intuition that Information is essential to Life (Enformy), and the cessation of information processing is what we call Death (Entropy). But the statement above is a "bit" too simplistic. By that definition, an elderly computer will have lived a happy meaningful life. So, if you are interested in a more complete worldview based on the role of Information in the Cosmos, here are some links to my personal understanding of Life, Mind, and Meaning.

The Enformationism Worldview : http://enformationism.info/enformationism.info/

Enformy : "In the Enformationism theory, Enformy is a hypothetical, holistic, metaphysical, natural trend or force, that counteracts Entropy & Randomness to produce complexity & progress."
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

EnFormAction : "the general cause of every-thing in the world. Energy, Matter, Gravity, Life, Mind are secondary creative causes, each with limited application."
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

The meaning of life is the story you write with the information you process.

Devans99

By that definition, an elderly computer will have lived a happy meaningful life. — Gnomon

Fair point. So I qualify my original statement with: Something has to have life in order for the meaning of life to be applicable.

The Enformationism Worldview : http://enformationism.info/enformationism.info/ — Gnomon

↪Gnomon

That's an interesting web site you have! I am having a browse through it.

TheMadFool

So there you go - produce and consume a large amount of information for a happy, long, life - my take on the meaning of life. What do folks think? — Devans99

Amazingly, if you haven't already noticed, there is a rather inexplicable absence of information in things that matter the most:

1. Meaning of life
2. How to live the good life
3. God
4. Afterlife (death)
5. Morality
6. The theory of everything
7. Consciousness
8. Origin of life

Why is it so that in the information age there are gigantic lacunae in our knowledge framework and that too in areas that are of greatest consequence?

Devans99

That seems consistent. I'll keep testing your hypothesis. Let's say a person did not kill people like Hitler, but tortured people a lot and made them miserable. He also lied, cheated, and kicked puppies in the face. I would imagine it reasonable to call this person a bad person, and yet no information was lost in this case. — Samuel Lacrampe

Interesting point. I think it could maybe be argued that the unhappiness that results from such behaviour causes a reduction in the amount of information produced - people who are down in the dumps/unhappy/depressed generate less (high quality) information than happy people?

Devans99

Amazingly, if you haven't already noticed, there is a rather inexplicable absence of information in things that matter the most:

1. Meaning of life
2. How to live the good life
3. God
4. Afterlife (death)
5. Morality
6. The theory of everything
7. Consciousness
8. Origin of life — TheMadFool

1 and 2 - I feel these are addressed in the OP?

3 and 4 - Seem to relate more to the meaning of death than life?

5 - There appears to be a link between morality and information, see: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/363177

6 - By which you mean a theory that extends QM to include gravity? QM seems to me to be about information (particles) and our ability to measure information (uncertainty principle).

7 - Consciousness seems to be the processing of information as opposed to unconsciousness which is the complete lack of processing of information - the senses (information sources) are deactivated and the mind (information processor) is inactive.

8 - I feel that DNA is information, so the concept of information and the origins of life are intertwined.

TheMadFool

1 and 2 - I feel these are addressed in the OP?

3 and 4 - Seem to relate more to the meaning of death than life?

5 - There appears to be a link between morality and information, see: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/363177

6 - By which you mean a theory that extends QM to include gravity? QM seems to me to be about information (particles) and our ability to measure information (uncertainty principle).

7 - Consciousness seems to be the processing of information as opposed to unconsciousness which is the complete lack of processing of information - the senses (information sources) are deactivated and the mind (information processor) is inactive.

8 - I feel that DNA is information, so the concept of information and the origins of life are intertwined. — Devans99

I'm not disagreeing with you. The modern world has been aptly described as the information age. I was just wondering about the pockets of zero information in critical areas like the ones I mentioned in my previous post. This could be simply a matter of searching more carefully for the missing information but it could also be because such information is non-existent. There's a big difference between undiscovered information and non-existent information, right? The former can be found but the latter is a fool's errand if you seek it. How, in your opinion, would this affect your thesis that the meaning of life is information?

A Christian Philosophy

I think it could maybe be argued that the unhappiness that results from such behaviour causes a reduction in the amount of information produced - people who are down in the dumps/unhappy/depressed generate less (high quality) information than happy people? — Devans99

Hmmm... Is this claim ad hoc, or is it defendable?
On another related note, would you make the distinction between true and false information? Such as real news vs fake news, or correct vs incorrect belief systems.

I like sushi

↪Devans99

A whole lot of nothing I’m afraid. The being you could just as easily have said ‘art is the meaning of life, because I’m viewing everything as art’.

See the problem? If not you’re just doing physics - by which you’re still left with the unfathomable problem of articulating what ‘information’ means in terms of ‘entropy’ (which is merely a term like ‘gravity’ which is used to describe physical phenomenon NOT meaning.

It seems like you’re trying to smuggle physics into philosophy and pass off observation as an example of ‘meaning’. The natural sciences are set up to discern ‘how’ not ‘why’ - why is the realm of the philosophers, most of whom obsess over ‘meaning’ more than ‘use’ sadly. The ‘meaning’ is more or less the department of ‘ethics’/‘religious institutions’.

Wayfarer

All ‘information’ informs someone of something. Possibly, it is also conveyed as morphic information by DNA. But the vast bulk of the universe is devoid of information. Of course rational beings are able to discover information - to be informed about - all manner of things in the universe. But I question the idea that information is constitutive or foundational of matter.

Wayfarer

A topic came up a few weeks ago, where I asserted that crystals - like quartz crystals, or diamonds - don’t contain information, or can be meaningfully said to consist of information.

softwhere

↪Devans99

I would just switch from information to interpretation. This is an active process. Metaphorically speaking, we are readers, readers, readers making sense of the text of experience, which includes actual texts and provides the metaphor.

This also allows us to make sense of existence-time or reading-time which is not physics time. As you read this sentence, it's beginning is dragged along in expectation toward its end. In reading there is no present, only the expectation of the future shaped from the past. I think we can generalize this to all of existence. Note also that the beginning of the sentence only gets a relatively settled meaning from the end of the sentence, so the (meaning of the) past is not fixed. In terms of the OP, 'interpretation' is less likely to come across as half-physics and half-philosophy in an unstable blend.

Galuchat

Ignorant discussion thus far.
You need to read (at least portions of) this book:

Handbook of the Philosophy of Science
Volume 8: Philosophy of Information
edited by Pieter Adriaans and Johan vanBenthem

softwhere

Producing/consuming information makes our lives happier. The more information processed it seems the happier we get - we get excited by new information - neurotransmitters that raise our mood seem to be released during the production / consumption of information. — Devans99

I might use different words, but this roughly gets the joy of reading and writing right. A person should of course exercise and eat well, but beyond the obvious stuff I think endlessly challenging the mind (with interpretation and not just the absorption of facts) not only makes our lives happier but even feels 'essentially' human. And it's a clean form of pleasure: one is drunk on thought and not bourbon. One becomes capable of more kinds of conversation with more kinds of people.

Galuchat

And it's a clean form of pleasure: one is drunk on thought and not bourbon. — softwhere

Apparently, some can only think milk.

softwhere

Apparently, some can only think milk. — Galuchat

Perhaps. But 'history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.' People learn by talking as well as reading. That people on this forum vary in terms of exposure is clear. In some ways that's good. We are all forced to interpret the strange idiolects of (often enough) autodidacts. The posts I like best refer me to new thinkers.

Even the 'bad' posts are useful as opportunities for articulating what I think is wrong with them. I've been on and off such forums for years. While I learned more philosophy from books, I benefited from writing, writing, writing. I don't think there's a substitute for writing. It helps one see what, if anything, they have taken from their reading.

It's also a great place to observe and practice social skills. I read all kinds of threads that I don't participate in. To me the style of self-presentation is as interesting as the thoughts presented. Its part of a total projection through the public, written word of an ideal personality.

Galuchat

↪softwhere

Off-topic. Thanks for proving my point.

Wayfarer

↪Galuchat

great ref thanks :up:

Devans99

A whole lot of nothing I’m afraid. The being you could just as easily have said ‘art is the meaning of life, because I’m viewing everything as art’. — I like sushi

Art is a subclass/subtype of information?

But the vast bulk of the universe is devoid of information — Wayfarer

Then what is astronomy?

Fields pervade the universe such as the Higgs field etc... these fields fluctuate in line with the uncertainty principle... virtual particles are constantly created and destroyed. So even empty space is information rich.

iolo

Meaning of life? At some point that 'we' can't remember a sort of consciousness aparently began and after a while 'we' were trained in a language which assured 'us' that 'we' were something known as individuals and that this was of huge importance. After a 'life' or various lengths of time this consciousness apparently stops. It is all deeply 'meaningful', some say. Others tell the truth. :)

Nils Loc

But I question the idea that information is constitutive or foundational of matter. — Wayfarer

I guess this makes more sense, respecting a general definition. Information must inform, but the whole world is there waiting to inform us about itself. The sense data which becomes an impression and is used by an agent toward some end (ie. attention, recall, association...) is information (?).

Information:

1) facts provided or learned about something or someone

2) what is conveyed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of things

praxis

‘meaning’ is more or less the department of ‘ethics’/‘religious institutions’. — I like sushi

Meaning that only some fool wearing a robe has the authority to say what the meaning of life is? :rofl:

softwhere

↪Galuchat

At this point I withdraw from our ~~conversation.~~

I like sushi

↪praxis

Yep. I think the question is that useless ;)

Sir Philo Sophia

@Devans99,

re "Information - The Meaning Of Life " and "Producing/consuming information makes our lives happier. "

I think you got that wrong on basic principles. That is, the "The Meaning Of Life" must have some meaning itself, so any information consumed must have important meaning to the person. So, I'd say the consumption/creation of knowledge (the meaningful upgrading of information) is closer to the truth. However, even closer would be the consumption of wisdom (the meaningful upgrading of knowledge) is even closer to ones truth. Also, I believe you are falsely linking information consumption with happiness, which is no more true that food consumption. The path to healthy happiness is when you selectively produce/consume meaningful knowledge and wisdom that aligns your life/behavior/state of mind with your more true meaning/purpose in life (or at least one that brings you more peace than otherwise).

Information - The Meaning Of Life In a Nutshell?

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