Notably to your point, information based physics are quite popular, and some of these posit that information is the only thing that exists. The apparent haeccity of objects, our lived world of three dimensional space and time, are simply the effects of interactions of information. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, exactly. My original point was that we shouldn't reject a useful theory just because it has limitations. So I think we're on the same page. — Theorem
As already discussed, pretty much every science 'above' chemistry leverages the concept heavily. — Theorem
It's a bit too much to set down here — Count Timothy von Icarus
I know people constantly use the term, but I've yet to see an example where "information" does any work. — Daemon
HOST: So let's start at the very beginning. In a nutshell, what is the holographic principle?
HEADRICK: Well, as you said, the holographic principle is the idea that the universe around us, which we are used to thinking of as being three dimensional — we have three dimensions of space — is actually at a more fundamental level two dimensional and that everything we see that's going on around us in three dimensions is actually happening in a two-dimensional space.
HOST: Great. So let's break it down even further. This two-dimensional plane, what's it made of? It's made of what you call information?
HEADRICK: Right. So similarly to the bits and bytes that live on a compact disc, which encode, for example, a piece of music — on this plane, that's where the bits that fundamentally make up our universe live. That's where they're encoded and what they're encoding is what we see going on around us in three dimensions.
HOST: And when you say information, can you give me an example of a piece of information or unit of information?
HEADRICK: The concept of information is very general. When we're talking about computers, we think of bits and bytes and megabytes and so on. An example in physics of information would be, for example, the positions and velocities of physical objects.
HOST: And so you're saying that this information on a two-dimensional plane encodes for our three-dimensional universe?
HEADRICK: Exactly. Like in the compact disc example, it encodes some piece of music. In this case, it encodes what's going on in our universe.
HOST: You're now working on a big project with scientists around the world funded by the Simons Foundation to use the holographic principle to reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics.
HEADRICK: The problem of combining quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of relativity is one of the hardest problems in physics. So quantum mechanics is a theory that is usually used to describe things happening at very small scales, like atoms and nuclei, and so on. Einstein's theory of relativity is used to describe gravity and the universe on large scales.
As theoretical physicists, we're not satisfied to have two different theories. We need one, unified theory which encompasses both, and that's a very hard problem that theoretical physicists have been working on for the better part of the last hundred years. It turns out that this idea of the holographic principle or the universe is a hologram, although at first, it might seem like a completely random idea, it actually helps us to solve some of the thorniest puzzles that arise when you try to combine quantum mechanics and general relativity. That's why we're excited about and that's why we continue to study it.
When you've described this electrical and mechanical process, there isn't anything left for "information" to do.
So, to put the question directly, how can you support the claim that all of the examples he cites here are physical? As he says, the mathematical symbols that express the laws of science are not themselves subject to physical laws. — Wayfarer
HEADRICK: The concept of information is very general. When we're talking about computers, we think of bits and bytes and megabytes and so on.
If the information about the object is the only thing you can show to exist — Count Timothy von Icarus
The corollary of this argument, the one that information ontology rests on is the question "once you've recorded all the information about an object, what else is there?" If the information about the object is the only thing you can show to exist, then the next step is to cut out the unnecessary metaphysics and posit that physical things are information. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Correct.And how does perception take place? It's those electrochemical impulses (not information) travelling along the optic nerve, for example. And what causes any resulting behaviour? More electrochemical impulses. — Daemon
The mouse would press a button when it saw the line, to get a reward. Is that close enough to "sign evaluation" for you? It all takes place thanks to the bioelectrochemical processes (and not "information"). — Daemon
How do bioelectrochemical processes express increases in complexity of neural
organization as opposed to just arbitrary differences? — Joshs
These radical theories are based on the principle that information is physical, the information is registered by physical systems, and all physical systems can register information.25 Accordingly, there is a given amount of information stored in the universe, regardless whether it is observed or not. The proposed existence of this information imposes some fundamental questions about it: “Why is there information stored in the universe and where is it?” and “How much information is stored in the universe?” Let us deal with these questions in detail.
To answer the first question, let us imagine an observer tracking and analyzing a random elementary particle. Let us assume that this particle is a free electron moving in the vacuum of space, but the observer has no prior knowledge of the particle and its properties. Upon tracking the particle and commencing the studies, the observer will determine, via meticulous measurements, that the particle has a mass of 9.109 × 10–31 kg, charge of −1.602 × 10–19 C, and a spin of 1/2. If the examined particle was already known or theoretically predicted, then the observer would be able to match its properties to an electron, in this case, and to confirm that what was observed/detected was indeed an electron. The key aspect here is the fact that by undertaking the observations and performing the measurements, the observer did not create any information. The three degrees of freedom that describe the electron, any electron anywhere in the universe, or any elementary particle, were already embedded somewhere, most likely in the particle itself. This is equivalent to saying that particles and elementary particles store information about themselves, or by extrapolation, there is an information content stored in the matter of the universe. Due to the mass-energy-information equivalence principle,22 we postulate that information can only be stored in particles that are stable and have a non-zero rest mass, while interaction/force carrier bosons can only transfer information via waveform. Hence, in this work, we are only examining the information content stored in the matter particles that make up the observable universe, but it is important to mention that information could also be stored in other forms, including on the surface of the space–time fabric itself, according to the holographic principle.13
I don't think those processes do "express" increases in complexity. A little more explanation perhaps? — Daemon
Now, in all quantum theories I know of, particles lack haecceity. That is, they an essential thisness of identity unique to them; — Count Timothy von Icarus
What’s crucial in these examples are the concepts of complexity , pattern, scheme, thematics, normativity. I think they imply a non-linear, reciprocal feedback idea of interaction between physical entities that is a more sophisticated understanding of causality than linear causal dynamics allows for. — Joshs
So, when you say: "the information going through the optic nerve is just electrical impulses," you are correct (if we simplify how sight works considerably). The pattern of action potentials in the optic nerve is a signal. What information ontology is saying is that, when you look very closely, at the most basic level, you will not find electrons. What you will find is information representing electrons; information is the basement of ontological entities, it doesn't go any deeper. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I think the big question here is if the higher level knowing of conciousness is essentially something totally new (type dualism at a high level of emergence), or is the result of something entirely different, something due to the special intrinsic nature of physical symbols such as letters, DNA, etc. (substance dualism). — Count Timothy von Icarus
Ernst Mayr, one of the architects of the modern synthesis, has been one of the most outspoken supporters of the view that life is fundamentally different from inanimate matter. In The growth of Biological Thought he made this point in no uncertain terms: ‘… The discovery of the genetic code was a breakthrough of the first order. It showed why organisms are fundamentally different from any kind of nonliving material. There is nothing in the inanimate world that has a genetic program which stores information with a history of three thousand million years!’ — Marcello Barbieri, What is Information?
things without intrinsic meaning transmit meaning to knowers...... if something as simple as heat can be a signal carrying a complex meaning, then it doesn't seem like all meaning must come from the intrinsic features of symbols. — Count Timothy von Icarus
The substance dualism approach also seems to run into significant issues when it claims that computer algorithms don't process meaning because they aren't "alive." This seems strange given that they are composed of and use symbols to sustain themselves, symbols that are supposedly inheritly meaningful. — Count Timothy von Icarus
From a phenomenological perspective, it would not be the case that subjective experience stands apart from physical laws in its own realm, but that it is the condition of possibility of the natural attitude and its accompanying physical laws. — Joshs
Or is the thing, as it were, always underway, not at all graspable therefore in pure Objectivity, but rather, in virtue of its relation to subjectivity, in principle only a relatively identical something, which does not have its essence in advance or graspable once and for all, but instead has an open essence, one that can always take on new properties according to the constitutive circumstances of givenness? But this is precisely the problem, to determine more exactly the sense of this openness, as regards, specifically, the "Objectivity" of natural science.” — Joshs
But does each thing (or, what is equivalent here: does any thing at all) have such an essence of its own in the first place? — Joshs
In definitions of evolution that avoid this circularity, it seems languages and computer viruses, even crystals, may be living things (as well as biological viruses). — Count Timothy von Icarus
Plenty of complex phenomena, seeming miracles of life, actually end up being described by the same mathematics that can describe phenomena in diffuse inorganic systems (earthquakes and heart cells sharing the same model for synchrony). — Count Timothy von Icarus
The efficient causes are actually where I might put information and meaning. — Count Timothy von Icarus
In Rosen’s (1991) account, a material system is an organism if and only if it is closed to efficient cause. A system is closed to efficient cause if its components have efficient causes generated within the system, and effects that contribute to the production of other efficient causes....
...When explaining the (M, R)-systems, Rosen (1991) points out that it is closure to efficient cause that solves the problems of metabolism, repair and replication of the system. In an organism, the final cause of a component is its contribution to the self-maintenance of the (metabolism, self-repair and organizational invariance of the) system.
So, if you kick semiotics down to the efficient cause, what would be the formal cause? — Count Timothy von Icarus
I am very intrigued by the fact that incredibly disparate self organizing phenomena operate through extremely similar functions, and how incredibly common self similarity is. — Count Timothy von Icarus
One example of the problems of non-living evolution and applying our current frameworks to them: https://serendipstudio.org/exchange/gavia/essential-character-non-life-evolution — Count Timothy von Icarus
Edit: Another issue for the epistemic cut occurring at the fuzzy boundary of life are modified Wigner's friend experiments showing that the role of an observer in physics may emerge at incredibly small scales, well below scales for the simplest organic molecules. This seems like it would result in two epistemic cuts, one for observation, a second for biologically relevant meaning. — Count Timothy von Icarus
You also have people fiddling around with the possibility of evolution at these incredibly small scales, but they are less convincing (still neat https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-96048-6) — Count Timothy von Icarus
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