TO: Magnus, Graham, Jonathan, Andrea and others
FROM: Rog
I cut and pasted this from a week's worth of messages. Sorry for the length.
JONATHAN:
It is very important to differentiate between information and meaning.
Information is something that accumulates, filling databanks, libraries and
our mortal minds. If information is quality, then my telephone directory
should be one of the highest quality items in existance - more so a whole
library of directories. I can't accept this - there is no wisdom to be
gained by learning the telephone book. On the other hand, "meaning" can
often distill away huge amounts of information. Over centuries and millenia,
Man accumulated information about the movements of stars and planets in the
sky. Ptolemy did away with the need to learn this accumulated information by
reducing them to a small number of complicated mathematical rules.
ROG:
Earlier in this thread I began to shift away from information and move toward
knowledge. You are going in a similar (though possibly broader) direction
with meaning and wisdom and data reduction.
MAGNUS:
> Count me in with those who agree information is a value pattern.
Me too. Or to be more specific, information is *intellectual* value patterns.
ROG:
I disagree, both with Shannon's use of information, and Jonathan's meaning
angle. Information is not isolated to intellectual value patterns.
MAGNUS:
Ok, but if we *do* want to combine Zeilinger's idea and the MoQ? We are after
all discussing the MoQ. What do we get? A puzzle, that's what. Information is
intellectual patterns of value right? According to the MoQ, the intellectual
level is supposed to be at the top of the static ladder, not at the rock
bottom where Zeilinger wants to put it. Or rather at level 0 (not counting
a possible quantum level which would put it at level -1).
Some of you mentioned the possibility to tweak the MoQ to adapt it to
Zeilinger's hypothesis, but I wouldn't recognize the MoQ after such an
operation.
ROG:
Perhaps not just with Zeilinger's (though it was interesting to discuss).
But with the information/knowledge/meaning angle I think it is very possible.
(Note nobody suggests actually changing the MOQ, the idea was more to look at
the MOQ from a different set of glasses to see the exercise reveals/obscures.
Or to look at knowledge/information from MOQ glasses. We can't be sure it is
a waste until we explore this admitted flight of fancy. But, it MAY be a
waste.
GRAHAM:
Is the information contained in DNA an *intellectual* value pattern? Or would
it be more correct to say that it is a biological
value pattern? If that is the case, is it not possible that quantum
information is an inorganic value pattern? Doesn't this imply
that information exists on all rungs of the ladder? Isn't that what Pirsig is
saying?
ROG:
I think if we switch from patterns of value to patterns of information (which
many are reluctant to even play around with) that information would exist at
all levels. You have already heard my (borrowed) evolutionary epistimology
angle, where one can view the origin of knowledge/meaning as occuring with
the formation of life. Knowledge is relating to how to survive/thrive, and
knowledge in its earliest form is embodied in the circular process of life.
Knowledge -- like life -- bootstraps itself.
MAGNUS:
I think it would be more correct to say that [DNA] is biological value.
However, if we assign meaning to the patterns in a DNA
string, we would add information to them, hence intellectual patterns. The
physical appearance of a thing does not change
when we add intellectual patterns like this. But it does enable us to *read*
the information of the DNA. This is what the
DNA researchers are doing trying to catalogue the human chromosomes.
GRAHAM:
This seems to come right back to the question of defining what the term
"information" means, which is how I got into this thread in
the first place.
You seem to be saying that it is only information if it exists in the human
mind. DNA has been doing its thing for [b]illions of
years, but the patterns it contains only became information about 50 years
ago when we started to discover how to unravel it.
Or, probably closer to my understanding of the term, you are saying that it
is only information if we assign meaning to it. The
question is then: is meaning a uniquely intellectual property? Could it not
be said that biology demonstrates that it finds meaning
in the DNA patterns by decoding them as it does?
MAGNUS:
A very good point. I've been trying to find out for a long time if anyone
knows anything about this. Does biology interpret
information in DNA with some kind of microprocessor or is it just following
some natural law when a new cell is created?
The only thing that seems to be clear is that the DNA is copied, but nothing
is ever said about how the DNA is used to
create new cells.
ROG:
DNA can be viewed as the recipe for a chef (or two) to create a new chef by
using the ingredients within the kitchen. Or in more conventional terms, DNA
is the instruction set for a cell to use itself and its local environment to
create a new, thriving cell. DNA works by producing proteins which exert
control over the chemical processes inside cells -- turning them on and off
in a precise sequence in precise places at precise times.
MAGNUS:
Indeed, I agree with what you said to Andrea that the term information is
useless without meaning. In my understanding of the MoQ,
information is intellectual patterns, the meaning comes from the social layer
and the media comes from the inorganic layer. When
information theory "hijacks" the term information to mean the bits without
meaning, the only thing left is the inorganic pattern
that is being stored, transferred or whatever.
This also means that it's impossible to have information without meaning
*and* media. And since the media is inorganic, it seems
impossible that quantum patterns could support information.
ROG:
I think as long as one sticks to the belief that information is an
intellectual pattern, that this exploratory thread will never be congruent.
Personally, I think the foundation for knowledge itself (which is information
with meaning) is created along with life, and I have no problem replacing
patterns of inorganic "value" with patterns of inorganic "information," at
least within the confines of this conceptual flight of fancy.
I may be wrong though...
Rog
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