@Praxis and @universeness

Either of you guys paint ever paint anything dark, grotesque, eerie, or unsettling, or does such subject matter carry no personal appeal to ever manifest on a canvas.

Be wary about trying to form intuitions with regard to whatever Shannon information means outside of the technical context in which it is used.

In daily life, information and knowledge are often used interchangeably as synonyms. However, in information science, they are used as antonyms: zero information means complete knowledge and thus zero ignorance while maximum information corresponds to minimum knowledge and thus maximum ignorance. — Yunus A. Çengel

Information here is a synonym for entropy.

Good guess, definitely beach in Hau'ula, Northshore Oahu, I'm sure of it, where piano guys also did their stunt. I've seen folks plein-air painting there. Just propagated some red tree mallow (Hau'ula) from Hau'ula (red tree mallow) a short way down the road from there. The point in Laie would also be a great place to paint the Koo'lau range and coast from that vantage point. Plenty of plen-airs in that spot too. Very cool.

Though you couldn't get that perspective in your painting by plein-air as you'd probably be in the water.

The world’s major religions all have a primitive way of know: i.e., they use scripture and authority to decide what is and is not true. In Christianity, if the Bible says it, especially if Jesus says it, then it must be true. — Art48

Religions maybe concerned with the conservation of a kind of being in the world over knowing truth (in a scientific sense) that constitutes a unique culture/perspective/ideology. Beliefs in this case would just be means toward that end, whether or not they are really true.

We could imagine a religious culture as a species of being, or just a way of being in the world.

Ideally, individuals should be able to pick and choose their religion/culture/job on the basis of education/exploration rather than indoctrination but maybe I've just been trained to say and believe this.

I've been brainwashed by the cult I was born into.

That looks like Pounders beach, in Hau'ula. Did you paint that from a picture or were you there.

He can't see the cruelty he is about to inflict to his own existence, but he can see it through the life of a dog. — L'éléphant

In your scenario there is no reason for killing the dog because it is a random act, which makes it cruel and unnecessary.

We would euthanize the dog without qualm if we knew the dog would be suffering until death. The question is whether or not the person who is seriously contemplating suicide can get outside of his/her own narrow perspective and initiate a transformation toward greater well being. Radical psychological change is possible. We should always consider trying to heal ourselves before ending it all.

There was a guy I knew who lived next door who suffered some kind of progressive neurological disease coupled with a war injury to a nerve plexus in his back. He couldn't walk on his own, was stuck in a tilted chair and couldn't sleep. The burden on his wife to take care of him probably immense. I would of liked to hear whether he thought life was worth living at that point. He lived for quite a few years after the couple moved away. He should of had recourse to the option of euthanasia if he desired it.

We're seldom privy to the details of one's suffering.

Antinatalists may fail to consider that because death is not an experience, in the same way being unconscious has no content/memory, that being and becoming someone/something is inevitable and eternal.

There will always be something that it is like to be, because in sleep/unconsciousness/death time and space have no breadth or duration for a subject or non-subject.

But this doesn't deny the value of annihilation in causing our troubles to cease, if we can't solve them by any other means. We are all headed for the wonderful drain, which will catapult the enigma of awareness of someone, somewhere, elsewhere.

The tree of life will blossom and fruit its strangeness again (you, I and they). There will be no memory to permit us to say it happened again.

You may become a creature who does not have the means (knowledge) to kill itself to end its own suffering. I don't want to become that turtle that got a straw stuck up its nose and have to live for years that way. That we believe that suicide is an option at all, is a strange privilege of radical self-determination. We should try to exercise that same self-determination in trying to untie the knots of our own personal suffering before we choose a final solution.

This thread opened a few rabbit holes in my local internet spacetime fabric.

Never have I heard/seen Ningen Isu until this moment. But I'm not sure I ought to recommend them to anyone. Intellectuals have high-brow refined taste so they would unlikely stoop to enjoy satirical nihilistic metal.

Ningen Isu is a Japanese metal band that formed in 1987. The name "Ningen Isu" (人間椅子) can be translated to "The Human Chair" in English. The band is known for its unique blend of heavy metal and hard rock with lyrics often inspired by Japanese folklore, horror, and supernatural themes. They have a dedicated following in Japan and have released numerous albums over the years, contributing to the Japanese metal music scene. The band's name, "Ningen Isu," reflects their distinct style and the dark and mysterious themes often present in their music and lyrics. — ChatGPT

So I don't really know how to answer this question for myself - why suicide or why not? — rossii

Why not explain the material and or psychological sources of your suffering.

Maybe you have chronic gastritis and your stomach is digesting itself and as a result you also have chronic insomnia, which is not unrelated to your really bad sciatic pain. The world hasn't yet invented proton pump inhibitors, so you have to rely on calcium carbonate as an antacid remedy, which is contributing to the development of kidney stones. All this is happening while your mother has sudden onset dementia and she has gone missing. This is terrible because you really do love her, and found comfort through her after your significant other committed suicide. Of course you found it impossible to keep a job with all these other stressors going on and are now worried by losing your rented living space. Everything is falling apart.

Burdened with this situation I might have committed suicide.

How awful is your own life compared to the above scenario?

Meh, we resonate with whatever tickles our inner pickle. There are blue moons, when for whatever unintelligible reason, the brain attunes to a piece of music as if it were an intoxicating drug.

But for the time in between those moments, one may wish and hope, to find something safe that tickles the inner pickle just a little bit.

Jeremy England's theory of "dissipative-driven adaptation" is interesting step toward explaining abiogenesis, but probably still a bit of a hunch at the moment.

You might be able to conceive of a macroscopic analogue to a molecule, a bunch of sticks jointed together by springs, that has very interesting/dynamic behavior depending on how/where energy is introduced into it. The idea would be, whatever degrees of freedom the structure has, it reconfigures in such a way as to increase heat dissipation (but I don't really understand this).

Think about correctly holding a tuning fork. Depending on which handle we hold, determines how the input energy gets dissipated. It hums if one of its modes of vibration is not dissipated by holding the correct end. Maybe we could imagine some molecules as tuning forks, which act differently depending on how they got tethered/distributed in a solution/matter mix. Maybe when these molecules vibrate that actually cause some-kind of alignment of their neighbors, and thus the process of higher order self-assembly gets going... Energy from outside the system would drive oscillations that drives self-assembly.

Such configurations that become locked into dynamic cyclical processes may always require the flow of energy of a universe moving toward thermodynamic equilibrium.

The periodic table for instance is an amazing example of transient negantropy (structure), as the phenomenon of gravity has pushed hydrogen atoms into relatively (un)stable atomic configurations, through a process that has increased global entropy. The interplay of these differentiated atoms allow for some wild inorganic processes to occur, even before life could ever begin.

For instance, there is evidence in Gabon, Africa, of a cycle of natural fission during a time in Earth's history when Uranium-235 was in high enough natural concentrations to undergo a chain reaction. This natural atomic reactor required water (neutron moderator) to sustain the reaction. Sunlight no doubt played a part, as well the presence of an underground river, in delivering the water back to the fission site after it was evaporated. So here you have a very strange example of a unique cycle in the crust of the Earth, dependent on all kinds of just so structures (the special ashes of long dead stars bathed in the light of a living star).

Life is just another just so structure, on par with what we might consider less exciting stuff.

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You've struck a wonderful or terrible idea. We've all heard of the phenomenon of Santacon. Folks could develop a Trump version of that, TrumpCon. We could all get away with committing crimes and avoiding jail time, so long as we become indistinguishable from Trump himself.

If we all raided Trump tower as Trump, they would have to let us into the penthouse.

Don't see much of an issue paying to have someone stand in line for you.

What if hiring someone to stand in line is a way to circumvent a rule of 1 product per customer. The entire line could be stand-ins for a single person. The scalper could take that product and then sell it at a higher price elsewhere. But this is more about organized queuing conspiracies hidden in plain sight.

That's a horrible way to underestimate life. — baker

Not sure what you mean by this. If the bliss ever arrives then life will be less underestimated. It's not an all or nothing proposition, either. The smallest increment of positive change by habitual meditation may help to rework bad attitudes, so we become more at ease in this world. This is the hope at least. The prison ought to become more of a playground.

Zombie nature is Buddha nature: empty. — praxis

This makes it sound depressing and austere. Buddha nature must also be full of joy.

People "meditate" to zombify themselves, to robotize themselves. — baker

This is an ignorant take on the value of meditation. Suffering folks might internalize their zombie nature far before they are driven to the mat (meditation). I've just had a mini breakthrough in my meditation practice. My stress level has diminished substantially. I've been waking up and wanting to do my work rather than avoiding it (like a good little robot).

But I'm still a working zombie, chained to the hull of a ship, rowing for someone else, burning boat loads of fossil fuels, that I may eat and sleep in comfort. Philosophers would tell us there is no free will either ( so who is responsible for making zombies or allowing us to see our zombie nature for what it is?)

If one can't escape being a robot, one might as well strive for robotic bliss (if it is real).

The zombie seeks to kindle the fire of its lost soul. Meditation might be a tool to do this.

omnes servi sumus

Are you against the formation of a techno-optimistic religion?

So long as the devotees tolerate my techo-pessimistic sentiments, and they don't make me flagellate myself or others, or humiliate me for not being able to do math problems, and let me go outside sometimes, and let me be the bell ringer. It's not like I feel I have any control over my life now. I could just as well be an indebted brick maker (slave laborer) in Pakistan, had I not the courage to free myself.

Imagine AI telling me that euthanasia is an opportunity to change myself for the better. So long as it doesn't mandate it, ok. Does it do my thinking for me, by hidden carrots I cannot see?

Nature does what nature does, no matter how awful it appears. AGI just seems like a gift of weapons ("thanks mother nature") for the masters of the universe to have an arms race with, for power over others/resources, at great cost to the stability, harmony, simplicity of life on earth.

Something may rise from the ashes, but it may require our ashes in the mix.

Dartmoor (Devon, England) would be a beautiful place to live. Got to stay on the moor for seven days in a cabin next to a thatched cottage with an AGA stove (those behemoths that would seem unliftable and never go fully cold). Walked a 10 mile circuit, from Tor to Tor across what might as well be a celestial plain. Sat under a frigid waterfall. The entire landscape was a novelty to me. The stone rows and circles, vestiges of the Neolithic, also contribute to ancient mystique. Though I'm sure the weather, and work, would cause the novelty to evaporate if I felt trapped there.

While sitting on a Tor I encountered a member of the British aristocracy (maybe some rich asshole role playing now), dressed in fox hunting uniform, prancing about on a handsome horse. He was doing roll call with a huge pack of svelte hounds. Each dog would respond to its name call by submissively touching the horse. A scene that really stands out in memory.

@Gnomon

:up: Am done pestering you and offer an apology to @Benj96 for any offense. I just can't understand or follow what is being said.

Is Information the Fifth Form of Matter (Interview with Melvin Vopson, Youtube)

@Gnomon

Did you read Vopson's paper, The Information Catastrophe?

A recent conjecture, called the mass-energy-information equivalence principle, proposed that information is equivalent to mass and energy and exists as a separate state of matter. In other words, stored information has mass and can be converted into energy, and a full hard drive is marginally heavier than an empty one. — SciLight Volume 2022, Issue 9A by Avery Thompson

The Information Catastrophe, Melvin M. Vopson

The total calculated mass of all the information we
produce yearly on Earth at present is 23.3  10-17 Kg. This is extremely insignificant
and impossible to notice. For comparison, this mass is 1000 billion times smaller than
the mass of single grain of rice, or about the mass of one E.coli bacteria [26]. It will
take longer than the age of the Universe to produce 1Kg of information mass. — Melvin Vopson

In terms of digital data, the mass-energy-information equivalence
principle formulated in 2019 has not been yet verified experimentally, but assuming
this is correct, then in not a very distant future, most of the planet’s mass will be made
up of bits of information. Applying the law of conservation in conjunction with the
mass-energy-information equivalence principle, it means that the mass of the planet is
unchanged over time. However, our technological progress inverts radically the
distribution of the Earth’s matter from predominantly ordinary matter, to the fifth
form of digital information matter. — Melvin Vopson

Vopson's paper here reads like a wacky sci-fi premise, projecting an exponential impossibility. How could information mass replace the normal mass of the Earth because of computers, yet register no measurable change? My question would be, where or how does the mass of this information reside in time and space as a physical entity -- what particles carry it?

I feel lost in the wacky sauce.

@punos

Weird how ChatGPT got such a clean paragraph. It can't translate or unscramble the original paragraph because it doesn't remember how it scrambled it. I think it went through several unsuccessful scrambles to get the one I posted. It's like when you translate sentences through Google translate, you lose the original.

Found it. The original paragraph was an output of ChatGPT:

The short story you're referring to by Jorge Luis Borges is titled "The Library of Babel." It's a famous and widely anthologized work that explores themes related to infinity, knowledge, and the nature of the universe through the concept of a vast and labyrinthine library containing all possible books. In this library, every combination of letters and words, including every book ever written and those that have never been written, exists. "The Library of Babel" is one of Borges' most celebrated and thought-provoking pieces of fiction. — ChatGPT

@Gnomon

I'm not attacking you, just doubting. Cheers.

@Gnomon

Assuming you really do know what you are talking about, you lack a principal of charity. Your audience doesn't have the means to understand you. If other roads of combined inquiry, such as a deep dive into information theory, statistical thermodynamics and quantum mechanics (a synthesis of knowledge about physics) get us to your understanding, we still might be able to disagree with how your present your information, or reject the implications conveyed by your 'philosophy'.

Why don't we need to study physics or information theory to understand your philosophy? If we do, you're speaking to the wrong audience. You need to sell it to a room full of physicists (aka the"shut up and calculate" terrorists).

If you could summarize the value of your perspective in a single paragraph, how would you? Sometimes one person's philosophy is another person's headache. Example: "Don't you dare tell me I don't have free will."

I would have preferred that the scientists involved would have used the word data as well, to make the difference with information clearer.
At the fundamental level, there is no demonstration of 'meaning' or 'intent' or 'determinism' imo.
I can conceive of no meaning, intent, feeling or determinism inherent in processes such as particle spin or quantum fluctuations. — universeness

No one has the decryption algorithm to the following scrambled paragraph, if there is one:

srevinesu lebaB yrtpolexse si yldwi fo dna si eht ecdirbelsac egdelbaac knwoeldge, a ti. stiltu, tsav erutan, krow eninihtarbmal, sterlet, yreve dezilogtnahna delater, hguorht trohs eht fo lla dna reve taht egroj siulL . noitcif. gnithguoht-vekorphtuo tsecip uoy'er gnirrefer eht dna ytnifni, ot eht yretlib tpecnoc smuaf dna

Our minds will try to give it context. Those are letters look like the ones used in English. Hey, I speak English. It's obviously gobble de gook. A computer might be able to compare the letter set and count to a coherent English paragraph elsewhere on the internet, maybe if it weren't derivative of ChatGPT. But how many complete paragraphs also contain the exact same set of letters and is this a problem? It looks like clues are left but maybe they are false clues. Why even assume it came from a paragraph that was transformed by some process, without someone there to tell us so.

This possibly highlights the role of the observer and the relative nature of information as processed data. How do we go about decrypting it? Maybe whatever process that scrambled it is irreversible. Information has been lost in one sense, relative to an observer, but whatever corresponds to the lower level of information/data of the physical world is conserved. The lowest level of data (bits) is fundamental, but not the representation of it.

A not so trite answer to "consciousness without particles" would be : the same way we have Energy "without particles that have mass". — Gnomon

You overlooked the part where people equate consciousness with working physical brains. If we started performing brain surgery on you, we might be able to knock out everything associated with your philosophical theory.

Though light is typically considered non-material, a form of energy, it is physical. Purely photonic brains would still be physical brains, if possible.

So, all I can say at this point is that there are people a lot smarter than me who do not find the Mind : Energy notion ridiculous. — Gnomon

I'm still lost as to why you don't think it's a false dichotomy. It is parsimonious/orthodox to conclude minds need physical materials to emerge in the universe and to do work. Where any work could possibly occur, you can apply the concept of energy.

It's not Science that makes "speculation" on the relationship between Mind & Energy "ridiculous", but the ancient metaphysical belief system known as Materialism. That common-sense "objective" worldview did not take the mind of the observer into account. — Gnomon

Materialism has evolved into physicalism to accord with the perspectives granted to us by physics.

Physicists/philosophers alike will continue to wrestle with whatever the role of the observer has to play in the interpretations of quantum mechanics but the subject is, and will always be, leagues over my head. Whereof one cannot speak, one must remain silent. :monkey:

Closer to the Truth: Does Information Create the Universe? (Youtube) I like Allen Guth's take on the question of whether or not information is fundamental.

But it does not have anything to say about the legitimate scientific/philosophical query we are discussing on this thread : "Could consciousness be a form of energy like the rest?"

The classical science answer would be, not just "no", but "hell no!". Yet the fundamental sub-atomic science answer might be "maybe". — Gnomon

Most people think a brain is required for consciousness. We can manipulate brains to make people fall unconscious, as I'm sure you've probably experienced general anesthesia yourself. Brains are made of matter and the work that they are able to do is function of the physics of organized matter in motion. It is a parsimonious proposition, based on evidence, to believe that consciousness requires a brain and a brain requires matter.

The question, could consciousness be a form of energy, implies a dichotomy that doesn't make the answer to the question trite/obvious. How do we have consciousness without particles that have mass and why speculate on whether we could if everything around us makes the speculation ridiculous?

It is possibly a mistake to say everything is energy with regard to the principle of mass and energy equivalence (though my understanding is limited here). Electrons produce photons all the time, but they don't become photons. Fission/fusion produce both mass and massless kinds of radiation, but for a star to lose mass, it is losing tons of particles with mass from its stellar wind.

A star never directly loses mass from photons, as the photons don't carry mass. A star loses mass indirectly from photons in their contribution as force carriers to help break nuclear bonds.

I'm not an expert in the science, so I include links to technical papers by professionals who do understand them. If you are not an expert in these "complex topics" how would you know when I am "glossing-over" something? — Gnomon

You are not an expert, as you say. I would want to know the physics inside and out before attempting to cite conjectures/experiments for support, though I can understand the (de)merit of trying to explain reality in one's own (un)fashionable terms. The test I guess is if people are interested.

But it's a fertile source of metaphors for philosophical reasoning about the roots of reality. Are you averse to metaphors & analogies drawn from physical fundamentals? :smile: — Gnomon

"Information is power." You could write a lot of good stuff on this without having to go anywhere near quantum physics or thermodynamics. You don't even need to coin a name for your 'theory' either.

The 'absolute' best answer currently available to humans regarding the exact mechanisms and source of human consciousness is 'we don't know.' For me, the best evidence we currently have, suggests that it is a process of the human brain alone. — universeness

:up:

@Gnomon

You gloss over interpretations of complex physics topics which I don't think you really understand in trying support your metaphysics. Your language and evasiveness is a red flag for me, suggestive of a kind of sophistry. But it wouldn't matter if everything you said was perfectly coherent, and you knew quantum physics inside and out, it'd be far too complicated for me to follow.

Makes me think of that Quantum physics professor that Dawkins interviewed -- too rich with metaphysical implications.

The Quantum misticism is too misty and the forrest of terms is too obscure and thick, and I'm cognitively limited, so I cannot pass.

Cheers to your passion.

Information is not merely processed data. — Gnomon

@universeness

Would either of you to care to explain the significance of this distinction that information is or isn't processed data. I suppose the technical definition you guys are using belongs to a specialized domain of computer science or information theory. Maybe it doesn't hold for ordinary macroscopic examples.

If I have a book of encrypted information that tells me how to do something but I've suddenly misplaced my encryption key, does the book lose information because I can't process or potentially process its data?

Even when the book has been decrypted, does it still lack information until I process/read it? A book is not a book without a reader.

On a fundamental level the book never loses significant information in the absence of any particular observer in a short time scale. This information, like energy and matter cannot be created or destroyed, just transformed. Whatever constitutes its fined-grained physical reality of the book as material has undergone some irreversible change in accordance the arrow of time (matter and energy always changing in flux). Some information changed but it is not relevant to the reader who is concerned with a particular macroscopic arrangement (the letter, words, sentences, the book) which come to represent relative information to a particular mind.

So maybe we can say that:

Relative information can be destroyed or lost.
Absolute information (energy and matter) can neither be created or destroyed and is fundamentally conserved, just converted. Absolute information ultimately has no meaning without a mind (is it information?); it must always exist in relation to a mind.

In order to lose relative information there must be a corresponding physical change of absolute information (energy and matter), no matter how trite that change may be, like losing your bitcoin key in a fire. But any change in absolute information need not always cause a meaningful loss in relative information, like losing the ink of single letter in a book.

Is it conceivable to lose or gain relative information with no corresponding change in the physical world?

Doesn't ChatGPT rely on the information contained within encyclopedias and textbooks? I've heard there is a breakdown in fidelity of information when ChatGPT begins to use its own output as a reference source. Its answers degrade into gibberish.

Encyclopedia and textbook are valuable as an enclosed and marked source of accurate information from which AI derives answers to questions. In that sense they can't become obsolete.

Regarding your question "where does the energy really come from", I have my own personal theory, as postulated in a non-academic thesis. — Gnomon

The energy comes from the erasure of information but is this reducible to the physics of running inputs through non-reversible logic gates? The input of energy of erasure is proportional to the energy lost as heat. This energy loss doesn't apply to reversible computation since information isn't lost.

How is Laundauer's principle related to the solution of the paradox of Maxwell's Demon?

Landauer's principle is closely related to the resolution of Maxwell's Demon paradox. Maxwell's Demon is a thought experiment proposed by physicist James Clerk Maxwell in the 19th century, which appeared to challenge the second law of thermodynamics.

In the Maxwell's Demon thought experiment, a hypothetical "demon" is described as a tiny, intelligent being capable of sorting fast-moving hot gas molecules from slow-moving cold gas molecules. By opening and closing a tiny door or gate in a partition between two chambers, the demon allows only fast molecules to pass from the hot side to the cold side and slow molecules to pass from the cold side to the hot side, effectively creating a temperature difference without doing any work. This seemed to violate the second law of thermodynamics, which states that heat naturally flows from hot to cold, and it appeared as if the demon was reducing the entropy of the system without expending energy.

Landauer's principle comes into play as a solution to the Maxwell's Demon paradox. Landauer's principle states that erasing information (in this case, the demon's knowledge of the molecule speeds) incurs a minimum energy cost. When the demon observes and records information about the gas molecules (fast or slow), it is essentially increasing its knowledge, which implies a reduction in entropy. When the demon erases this information (to forget which molecules are fast and slow), it must dissipate energy into the environment, thereby increasing the total entropy of the system.

In other words, Landauer's principle implies that the demon's act of erasing information about the gas molecules requires energy, and this energy expenditure ensures that the overall entropy of the system (including the demon and the gas) still obeys the second law of thermodynamics. The reduction in entropy from the sorting process is offset by the increase in entropy due to the energy dissipated during information erasure.

Therefore, Landauer's principle provides a resolution to Maxwell's Demon paradox by showing that the apparent violation of the second law of thermodynamics is reconciled when considering the energy cost of information erasure. This insight connects the realm of information theory with thermodynamics and helps maintain the consistency of the laws of thermodynamics. — ChatGPT

Hopefully ChatGPT isn't hallucinating a wrong answer.

How is Information Related to Energy in Physics?

There is already experimental evidence that meta-physical*1 (immaterial) Information can be converted into physical Energy*2. — Gnomon

At this point this is the only claim that I'd like to know more about but I'm not sure I could ever understand what is going on in the experiment to believe you are conceptually correct. Information can never be non-physically represented. Where does the energy really come from?

"Any logical operation with fewer output states than input states must produce heat to keep overall entropy from decreasing." But what exactly is producing the heat of the Laundauer limit in a non-reversible logic gate?

Why Pure Information Gives of Heat (Youtube)

A declaration without supporting explanation is hardly philosophical at all is it. — Benj96

Sorry for the rudeness, just a bit annoyed at your responses.

Because you cannot have any individual one component of the 4 (energy, time, matter or space) without the other 3. — Benj96

You admitted it was mistake to pose the initial question and you didn't directly answer my question whether you were thinking about substance dualism. If you can't have matter without energy as you say here, why did you ask whether consciousness could be a form of matter or energy? You set up the dichotomy as if it is significant/correct then drop it suddenly.

Photons in a vacuum are massless particles/waves. So that would be an example of a form of energy(?) without matter, but I'm sure you are talking about the bigger picture of dependent origination. If photons never act with matter we'd never be able to tell whether they exist, though all light is emitted from matter.

Potential energy doesn't require matter, space or time. It's just potential. The moment that potential is converted to something "actionable" it requires time, space and matter to "act." — Benj96

This is a non-sequitur weird response to what you quoted. Sounds like you have the big bang in mind.

A recent conjecture, called the mass-energy-information equivalence principle, proposed that information is equivalent to mass and energy and exists as a separate state of matter. In other words, stored information has mass and can be converted into energy, and a full hard drive is marginally heavier than an empty one. — Gnomon

Melvin Vopson could've made a mistake in his interpretation and conjecture deriving from Laundauer's principle.

Is Information Physical and Does it Have Mass?

As it is possible to see from the discussion above, information is not physical by itself but has a physical representation and, naturally, this physical representation complies with physical laws. This is in good agreement with what Landauer actually wrote and not with his more far-reaching claims. Thus, the physical properties that Landauer and other researchers conjectured, ascribing them to information [10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19], are actually the properties of the physical representation of information. — url=https://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/13/11/540

One wonders if it light waves in a vaccum would count as a non-material medium for the storage of information. So if information has mass from nowhere, how could it travel at the speed of light? Only massless particles can travel at the speed of light.

Move over Einstein.

:monkey:

@Benj96

Sounds like a lot of BS, Ben. :monkey:

If in the story, there are a lot of birches (presented as regular birches) growing underground without any light, it's illogical if the author never explains how they do photosynthesis. Similarly, if a character is presented as a healthy human being, then later in the story is completely distorted, if that distortion is never explained, it's illogical given the premises. But if the premises are that the character is completely crazy (or not a human being), then, even if the reader can't make sense of their behavior, it can be considered logical. — Skalidris

@L'éléphant gave a thoughtful answer to this concern, which I agree with.

Have you seen David Lynch's Mulholland Drive by chance? Despite a lot of surreal disjunction of scenes and characters, we are still able to piece together a explanation of what might be going on that makes the film deeply satisfying, meaningful. This explanation may radically change if we start listening to David Lynch himself provide contextual clues.

Some viewers might be completely turned off by the non-sequitur character jumps and inexplicable improbable events, such that they have no desire conjure up a logic that justifies such a strange experience.

I've got to admit though, aside from Mulholland Drive, I find Lynch's other films less compelling because I cannot really account for the chaos of what is going on in a way that would sustain my interest. The will to do the work of achieving coherence is lost.

@Benj96

Do you have the idea of energy as a substance which would constitute one half of a dualism (the old classic of spirit/energy and matter)?

So either energy carries an inherent conscious currency/property, or matter does. Or they do when they interact in complex or specific ways. — Benj96

I'm trying to imagine energy (the ability to do work) in the complete absence of matter, which I'm not sure makes much sense. This would imply a completely non-material world where whatever constitutes a form of energy is sufficient in-itself for a kind of existence. Though if matter is really just a form of energy, it's all energy dude (and this is not profound). Our ability to understand energy requires everything that informs the understanding (energy as properties of organized matter).

The kinetic energy of a water wheel requires a lot of organized material in action. It is an example of just transferring motion of materials to do work, which is relative to an intentional observer's frame of reference. In such a scenario, how could your ever have whatever constitutes the forms of energy apart from the forms of matter?

@believenothing

I hope you're satisfied with the answers you got.

You might find the following article about global aphasia interesting. It is possible to lose the ability to understand or produce spoken or written language. These folks retain various cognitive capacities. They can still contemplate/imagine without the ability to talk to themselves. However, language may still play an important role in helping to develop these cognitive capacities in the first place.

Can we think without language?

In the end, when people read stories, do they want to be comforted in their opinions or do they want to learn something through a story that makes sense? — Skalidris

Haven't read any of Ken Liu's stories but am currently reading Dostoevsky's novella,Notes from Underground, and find that the narrator is somewhat ridiculous and unbelievable. The exaggerated madness/neurosis of the character is there for Dostoevsky to illustrate his pessimism/doubt/mock enlightenment ideals of his contemporaries.

Another oddity in Dostoevsky's dialogues which wholly breaks from realism is the length of speech/monologues of his characters. No one in history likely holds a dialogue this way. They go on for pages and pages sometimes, you'd think the people being spoken to would have left the room ages ago.

Perhaps Ken Liu's poetic license of inconsistent/implausible character is justified in a similar way, as a means to some other end.