[Fis] It From Bit video

[John Collier]

I certainly agree, Marcus. One would do much better spending the time reading Seth Lloyd’s book, Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes On the Cosmos<https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Programming_the_Universe>, Knopf<https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Alfred_A._Knopf>, March 14, 2006, 240 p., ISBN 1-4000-4092-2<https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Special:BookSources/1400040922>. He does not get to meaning, though. Some people have tried to infer physics is based on information, information involves meaning, so physics involves meaning. It usually (but not always) ends up with “The universe is meaningful” or something like that or stronger (intelligent design of some sort). A book that certainly does not do this is David Layzer’s Cosmogenesis. Which does work its way through to meaning, but it is a late arrival. The book that most takes the meaningful universe as a consequence of information being fundamental view is Paul Davies and Niels Henrik Gregersen (Editors), Information and the Nature of Reality: From Physics to Metaphysics, Cambridge University Press, 2010, 398 pp., $30.00, ISBN:9780521762250. The last chapters try to show this supports particularly Christian beliefs.

John

From: Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Marcus Abundis
Sent: May 28, 2015 3:10 AM
To: fis at listas.unizar.es
Subject: Re: [Fis] It From Bit video

While the interviews on the video are interesting, in general, I also find them a bit annoying. I never hear "information" actually described in a specific way. They could as easily be discussing "raw data" as far as I can tell. For example, when is "meaning" associated with information (or data) and how does that meaning arise, who/what is ascribing meaning, etc..? The interview could have gone much further, and did not seem particularly well thought out in advance. Without a clear sense of how "information" is being used here, subsequent thoughts would seem to be equally unclear or confused (to my mind).
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