Re: information theory

Hara Ra (harara@shamanics.com)
Sat, 04 Jul 1998 01:06:51 -0700

>Information by itself is meaningless. It needs at least two things:
>1. A substrate which can store and transmit patterns.
>2. An active system which can sense, interpret and create patterns
>in the substrate.
>Information AND the system which processes it is the fundamental unit here."
>
>Information theory is not really my field, but the point is that at a
>certain level 1) and 2) become identical.

A human brain is a good example of this.

> My own intuition is that the
>Universe is actually a big lump of instantiated MATH. The math is not so
>much a processing system, but a description of the way information CAN
>interact with itself. A facile analogy is to throw a bunch of cubes into a
>box and start shaking it. Sooner or later the cubes will start lining up.
>This is not due to a system "processing" the cubes but simply reflects that
>the shape of cubes is such that they can stack neatly in a certain
>configuration.

Well ... you need both the description AND its instantiation. In this case, the description of the cubes is the math, but the cubes themselves and shaking the box are also needed. And these days it is abundantly clear that having only the description is not going to be much help in describing what happens. Examples: Peano Axioms. Conway's Game of Life. Mandelbot Fractal.

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| Hara Ra <harara@shamanics.com> | 
| Box 8334 Santa Cruz, CA 95061  |
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| immortality for gods.          |
| Technology is the means by     |

| which we make the transition. |
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