[Fis] Philosophy, Computing, and Information - apologies!

[John Collier]

Dear Joseph, List,

I am running past my allotment, so I will shut up after this for a while. (I have to go to California for a workshop in any case, and won’t have much internet access for the two days I am traveling.)

The “it from bit” view was developed (after its origins for other reasons I will come to) partly to pose questions about black holes that cannot be posed in terms of energy. It also applies to any horizon, including event and particle horizons. Whatever the answer, it permits well-posed questions that have not been able to be posed in other terms, at least so far.

The “it from bit” view is independent of, but strongly recommends a computational view. I have argued for a transfer of information view of causation on independent philosophical grounds as a development of Russell’s at-at view of causation. The two approaches converge nicely.

My understanding of the “it from bit” view does not require a binary logic of causation, but emergence of information comes from bifurcations (Layzer, Frautschi, Collier, among others). So that is another happy convergence of two approaches. I see no reason why trifurcations and other higher order splits might not be possible, if unlikely. This is an empirical question, but makes no difference to the underlying mathematics, which takes base 2 logarithms by convention, for convenience. I don’t see this issue as empirical in itself, but the convenience has some empirical force.

The stronger “it from bit” view that applies to everything was due originally to Wheeler, not any of the physicists mentioned so far, and supported by Gell-Mann. Their reason is that empirical values in quantum mechanics often have been shown to arise from asymmetries, and they assume this will continue (proton spin is one notable current problem, but the problem is being pursued by this method, to the best of my understanding). My former student Scott Muller was able to show that asymmetries in a system assign a unique information content in the it from bit sense. In any case, the view has an empirical motivation, and has produced empirically satisfying results, if not universally so far.

With all due respect, Joseph, the scientists I have mentioned have been motivated by empirical issues (problems), not dogma, but you are not working on empirical problems. I have argued that the approach is motivated primarily by empirical issues, and it is simply wrong to attribute it to “authority”, since anyone in principle has access to the empirical issues and can make their own proposals. I have not seen these forthcoming for the issues involved.

I will shut up now.

Regards,
John

From: Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Joseph Brenner
Sent: June 13, 2015 10:16 AM
To: fis
Subject: [Fis] Philosophy, Computing, and Information - apologies!


----- Original Message -----
From: Joseph Brenner<mailto:joe.brenner at bluewin.ch>
To: fis<mailto:fis at listas.unizar.es>
Sent: Saturday, June 13, 2015 10:13 AM
Subject: Fw: [Fis] Philosophy, Computing, and Information - apologies!

Dear Colleagues,

I completely agree with Krassimir's position and on the importance of the issue on which it taken. Neither he nor I wish to say that there cannot be models and insights for science in religious beliefs, such as the Kabbala, but then John's diagram would be more appropriate if it had En Sof at the center rather than It-from-Bit.

The statement "It-from-Bit is just information", further, requires analysis: do we 1) accept this as dogma, including the implied limitation of information to separable binary entities? or 2) assume that the universe is constituted by complex informational processes, in which the term 'It-from-Bit' is misleading at best, and should be avoided?

I feel particularly uncomfortable when dogmatic computational views such as those of Lloyd and Davies are presented as authoritative without comment, except by appeal to the authority of 'some physicists'. Those FISers who would like to see a reasonably considered rebuttal might look at my article in Information: "The Logic of the Physics of Information".

Best wishes,

Joseph


----- Original Message -----
From: Krassimir Markov<mailto:markov at foibg.com>
To: John Collier<mailto:Collierj at ukzn.ac.za> ; Stanley N Salthe<mailto:ssalthe at binghamton.edu> ; fis<mailto:fis at listas.unizar.es>
Sent: Friday, June 12, 2015 11:18 PM
Subject: Re: [Fis] Philosophy, Computing, and Information - apologies!

Dear John and Stan,
Your two hierarchies are good only if you believe in God.
But this is belief, not science.
Sorry, nothing personal!
Friendly regards
Krassimir




From: John Collier<mailto:Collierj at ukzn.ac.za>
Sent: Friday, June 12, 2015 5:02 PM
To: Stanley N Salthe<mailto:ssalthe at binghamton.edu> ; fis<mailto:fis at listas.unizar.es>
Subject: Re: [Fis] Philosophy, Computing, and Information - apologies!

Not quite the same hierarchy, but similar:

[cid:image001.png at 01D0A5D6.D997C110]

It from bit is just information, which is fundamental, on Seth Lloyd’s computational view of nature. Paul Davies and some other physicists agree with this.
Chemical information is negentropic, and hierarchical in most physiological systems.

John

From: Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Stanley N Salthe
Sent: Friday, June 12, 2015 3:40 PM
To: fis
Subject: Re: [Fis] Philosophy, Computing, and Information - apologies!

Pedro -- Your list:

physical, biological, social, and Informational

is implicitly a hierarchy -- in fact, a subsumptive hierarchy, with the physical subsuming the biological and the biological subsuming the social.  But where should information appear?  Following Wheeler, we should have:

{informational {physicochemical {biological {social}}}}

STAN

On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 5:34 AM, Pedro C. Marijuan <pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es<mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es>> wrote:
Thanks, Ken. I think your previous message and this one are drawing sort of the border-lines of the discussion. Achieving a comprehensive view on the interrelationship between computation and information is an essential matter. In my opinion, and following the Vienna discussions, whenever life cycles are involved and meaningfully "touched", there is info; while the mere info circulation according to fixed rules and not impinging on any life-cycle relevant aspect, may be taken as computation. The distinction between both may help to consider more clearly the relationship between the four great domains of sceince: physical, biological, social, and Informational. If we adopt a pan-computationalist stance, the information turn of societies, of bioinformation, neuroinformation, etc. merely reduces to applying computer technologies. I think this would be a painful error, repeating the big mistake of 60s-70s, when people band-wagon to developed the sciences of the artificial and reduced the nascent info science to library science. People like Alex Pentland (his "social physics" 2014) are again taking the wrong way... Anyhow, it was nicer talking face to face as we did in the past conference!

best ---Pedro

Ken Herold wrote:
FIS:

Sorry to have been too disruptive in my restarting discussion post--I did not intend to substitute for the Information Science thread an alternative way of philosophy or computing.  The references I listed are indicative of some bad thinking as well as good ideas to reflect upon.  Our focus is information and I would like to hear how you might believe the formal relational scheme of Rosenbloom could be helpful?

Ken

--
Ken Herold
Director, Library Information Systems
Hamilton College
198 College Hill Road
Clinton, NY 13323
315-859-4487<tel:315-859-4487>
kherold at hamilton.edu<mailto:kherold at hamilton.edu> <mailto:kherold at hamilton.edu<mailto:kherold at hamilton.edu>>


--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526<tel:%2B34%20976%2071%203526> (& 6818)
pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es<mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es>
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
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