[Fis] _ Otto--re closing lecture
HowlBloom at aol.com
HowlBloom at aol.com
Wed Feb 3 07:10:18 CET 2016
Otto, an interesting call, for a theory that brings together the brute
force of an abiotic universe and information.
Here's a short timeline that pulls the brute force elements together as
informational exchange:
The evolution of information, sociality, social structure, and the
emergent properties of societies
(all dates ABB, After the Big Bang)
10(-31) ABB primitive communication between quarks via the strong force.
The first informational language: attraction and repulsion.
10(-31) ABB the first social groups, threesomes of quarks, produce two
shocking emergent properties—protons and neutrons
10,000 ABB massive social dances, pressure waves, ring the cosmos like a
gong. With, yes, music. What communicative force organizes trillions of
trillions of particles into pressure waves—into rhythmically coming together
in aggregations that span the universe? Do information exchange and
communication choreograph pressure waves in which masses of particles
rhythmically separate just a tiny bit, then come together again?
380,000 ABB emerging from a plasma, slowing down, and giving each other a
bit of breathing room, elementary particles use the electromagnetic force
to communicate. And they discover something odd. Tiny particles have an
inanimate longing. And their inanimate longing precisely fits the inanimate
longing of particles 1,800 times their size. The tiny particles join with
the hulking monsters. The result? Another emergent property, another
supersized surprise: atoms. Hydrogen, helium, and lithium, properties wildly
unpredictable from just the properties of an electron and a proton.
Properties that emerge from a communicative exchange. An informational exchange
between protons and electrons.
380,000 ABB the atom reveals a basic of cosmic structure—hierarchy.
Protons dominate. They determine where the team goes. Electrons subjugate
themselves. They meekly go along. They subordinate. They humbly circle the
proton nucleus.
380,000 ABB atoms communicate via gravity.
400,000 ABB more communication via gravity, but mass communication. The
result? Competition. The era of the great gravity crusades. Wisps,
plumes, and clots of atoms have showdowns, faceoffs in which the bigger swallows
the smaller whole. Then the winner goes off to another showdown, another
competitive confrontation. In which it either eats or is eaten. The result
of these showdowns between gravity balls? Galaxies, stars, planets, and
moons. A galaxy is, guess what, a social swirl organized in a hierarchy—
black holes at the center, stars circling the black holes, planets circling
the stars, and moons circling the planets. All via communication and
information. All via receivers interpreting the messages of senders and acting
on them.
one bottom line: communication, information, music, competition, and
hierarchy are not the products of post-agricultural, post industrial, or post
capitalist societies. they are at work even in dead stuff. even pre-living
nature.
hope that helps.
thanks again for letting me parade such strange ideas in such august
company.
Dear all,
Just a quick reply to Howard's fascinating account of cosmic history.
It seems what is crucially needed is a theory that brings together "brute
force" on the one hand - laws of nature "blindly" colliding and colluding,
from quarks to planets - and "information" on the other - from pre-human
codes (perhaps including quantum computation) and communication to advanced
human and cybernetic networks.
The former seems to be able to do away with everything except a few simple
rules of operation (gravity, natural selection, will-to-power), everything
more complex being the unfolding of the interaction between these few
simple rules (eternal or emergent is beside the point here). The latter seems to
depend upon subjective interpretation, the retention of systems memory,
symbolic coding-decoding, and other processes that compose only a subset of
the (creatures and processes) of the universe. Never the twain shall meet.
Or perhaps brute force can be analyzed as equivalent to information? Or
vice versa? Or as two sides of the same coin?
Best,
Otto Lehto,
Tampere, Finland
On 2 Feb 2016 13:46, "Krassimir Markov" <_markov at foibg.com_
(mailto:markov at foibg.com) > wrote:
Dear Howard,
Thank you very much for your great effort and nice explanation!
I like it!
Only what I needed to see is a concrete answer to the question “what it
the Information?”
You absolutely clearly described it and I totally agree with your
considerations.
Only what is needed is to conclude with a short definition.
I think it may be the next:
The Information is a reflection which may be interpreted by its receiver
in the context the receiver has in his/her memory.
>From this definition many consequences follow. In future we may discuss
them.
Friendly regards
Krassimir
PS:
Dear FIS Colleagues,
1. At the ITHEA web side, the conferences for year 2016 have been
announced.
One of them is the XIV-th International Conference on “General Information
Theory”.
Please visit link:
(http://www.ithea.org/conferences/conferences.html)
http://www.ithea.org/conferences/conferences.html
Welcome in Varna, Bulgaria !
2. May be it will be interesting to read the paper, published in our
International Journal “Information Theories and Applications” (
(http://www.foibg.com/ijita/) http://www.foibg.com/ijita/ ) :
_Formal Theory of Semantic and Pragmatic Information - a Technocratic
Approach_ (http://www.foibg.com/ijita/vol22/ijita22-04-p05.pdf)
by Venco Bojilov
(http://www.foibg.com/ijita/vol22/ijita22-04-p05.pdf)
http://www.foibg.com/ijita/vol22/ijita22-04-p05.pdf
Please send your remarks to the author to e-mail:
(mailto:office at ithea.org) _office at ithea.org_ (mailto:office at ithea.org)
Krassimir
From: (mailto:HowlBloom at aol.com) _HowlBloom at aol.com_
(mailto:HowlBloom at aol.com)
Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2016 8:46 AM
To: (mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es) _pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es_
(mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es)
Cc: (mailto:fis at listas.unizar.es) _fis at listas.unizar.es_
(mailto:fis at listas.unizar.es)
Subject: [Fis] _ Closing lecture
First, a few responses. I agree with Hans von Baeyer. Pedro’s kindness
is magic.
I agree with Gyorgy Darvas that quarks communicate.
I also agree with Jerry Chandler. Brute force is not the major mover of
history. Values and virtues count. A lot. In fact, a culture organizes
itself by calling one way of doing things evil—brute force—and another
way of doing things a value and a virtue. Our way is the value and the
virtue. The ways of others are brute force and evil. We see cooperation and
warmth among us. But only enmity and destruction among them.
The brute force is not within groups, where values, virtues, and
compassion prevail. It’s between groups. It’s in the pecking order battles
between groups.
Which means, in answer to Marcus Abundis, yes, groups struggle for
position in inter-group hierarchies like chickens in a barnyard. For example,
America and China are vying right now for top position in the barnyard of
nations. Russia’s in that battle, too. On a lower level, so are Saudi
Arabia and Iran, whose proxy war in Syria for pecking order dominance has cost a
quarter of a million lives. That’s brute force. Between groups whose
citizens are often lovely and loving to each other. Whose citizens are
proud of their values and virtues.
Now for a final statement.
Information exists in a context. That’s not at all surprising.
Information is all about context. As the writings of Guenther Witzany hint. And
as Ludwig Wittgenstein also suggested. Information is relational.
Information does not exist in a vacuum. It connects participants. And it makes
things happen. When it’s not connecting participants, it’s not
information
FIS gets fired up to a high energy level when discussing the definition of
information and its relationship to Shannon’s entropic information
equation. Alas, these discussions tend to remove the context. And context is
what gives information its indispensable ingredient, meaning.
There are two basic approaches in science:
· the abstract mathematical;
· and the observational empirical.
Mathematical abstractionists dwell on definitions and equations.
Empirical observers gather facts. Darwin was an observational empiricist. I’d
like to see more of Darwin’s kind of science in the world of information
theory.
One of Darwin’s most important contributions was not the concept of
natural selection. It was an approach that Darwin got from Kant and from his
grandfather Erasmus. That approach? Lay out the history of the cosmos on
a timeline and piece together its story. In chronological order. Piece
together the saga of how this cosmos has created itself. Including the
self-motivated, self-creation of life.
Communication plays a vital role in this story. It appears in the first
10(-32) of a second of the cosmos’ existence, when quarks communicated using
attraction and repulsion cues. OK, it’s not quite right to call the cues
attraction and repulsion cues. When two quarks sized each other up, they
interpreted the signals of the strong force differently. If you were a
quark, another quark might size you up and promptly speed away. But a quark
of a different variety might detect the same signals, find them wildly
attractive, and speed in your direction. One quark’s meat was another’s
poison, even in that first form of communication in the cosmos.
Information is not a stand-alone. Again, it’s contextual. It’s ruled
by what Guenther Witzany calls syntax, semantics, and, most important of
all, pragmatics. Its meaning comes from where it fits in a bigger picture.
Were the signals quarks exchanged information? Not according to many of
the definitions in FIS. Some of those definitions say that to be regarded
as information, a sender must deliberately signify something symbolically.
She must, for example, want to warn you about a poisoned apple. She must
put that message in symbols, like the words “poisoned apple,” then convey
that signal to a receiver. If she doesn’t want to see you poisoned, she
might text you, “watch out for poisoned apples.” I’m not sure whether the
definitions extant in FIS demand that you look at her text or not. Much
less whether you act on it.
In my latest book, The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates, I
propose a different definition of information. Information is anything a
receiver can decode, anything he can decipher. How do you know a receiver has
decoded a message? Through the decoder’s actions. If you are a quark and
you detect my strong force, you either scoot away or you rush over and join
me. You act. If you are a neurosurgeon looking at an mri, you make
internal decisions, mental decisions. You don’t move physically. Not at first.
But you move mentally. You imagine your scalpel poised over a different
spot than you might have picked before seeing the mri.
Information is anything a receiver can decode. So starlight reaching
planet earth 4.5 billion years ago, nearly half a billion years before the
appearance of the first life, was not information. There was no one or no
thing that interpreted it, translated it, or acted on it. But starlight in the
age of the Babylonians 2,600 years ago was highly informational. Entire
teams of scribes and priests spent their lives observing it and interpreting
it. Many of their interpretations were detailed bullet points of
political and personal advice to the ruler. Was there motion in response to
starlight? You bet. Starlight literally moved the troops and policies of
empires.
And today, when there are tens of thousands of professional astronomers
and millions of amateurs with telescopes, all churning out data and emails
to each other, the amount of information in starlight has skyrocketed. But,
in fact, the actual starlight has not increased. Not a bit. It’s the
number of interpreters that’s shot up. And with the interpreters, something
else has mushroomed: the information, the interpretation, and the theories
along with their supporting or opposing “facts.”
The timeline of communication from quarks to empires is crucial. It’s the
natural history we need to see the evolution of information. No matter
what we define information to be. The timeline of the cosmos is context on
the biggest scale. It can make new meaning of facts we scarcely see. It
can make more phenomena we experience every day but do not see into, guess
what? Information.
That’s a timeline I’m working on.
Thanks for having me in your group. And thanks for giving me a chance to
share thoughts with you.
howard
____________
Howard Bloom
Author of: The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces
of History ("mesmerizing"-The Washington Post),
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st
Century ("reassuring and sobering"-The New Yorker),
The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism ("A
tremendously enjoyable book." James Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic),
The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates ("Bloom's argument will rock
your world." Barbara Ehrenreich),
How I Accidentally Started the Sixties ("Wow! Whew! Wild!
Wonderful!" Timothy Leary), and
The Mohammed Code ("A terrifying book…the best book I've read on Islam."
David Swindle, PJ Media).
_www.howardbloom.net_ (http://www.howardbloom.net/)
Former Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute; Former Visiting
Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University.
Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; Founder, Space Development
Steering Committee; Founder: The Group Selection Squad; Founding Board
Member: Epic of Evolution Society; Founding Board Member, The Darwin Project;
Founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of
Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American
Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution
Society, International Society for Human Ethology, Scientific Advisory Board
Member, Lifeboat Foundation; Editorial Board Member, Journal of Space
Philosophy; Board member and member of Board of Governors, National Space Society.
In a message dated 2/1/2016 8:46:55 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
_pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es_ (mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es) writes:
Thanks Howard. Please, at your convenience send the concluding comments to
the fis list.
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____________
Howard Bloom
Author of: The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces
of History ("mesmerizing"-The Washington Post),
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st
Century ("reassuring and sobering"-The New Yorker),
The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism ("A
tremendously enjoyable book." James Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic),
The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates ("Bloom's argument will rock
your world." Barbara Ehrenreich),
How I Accidentally Started the Sixties ("Wow! Whew! Wild!
Wonderful!" Timothy Leary), and
The Mohammed Code ("A terrifying book…the best book I've read on Islam."
David Swindle, PJ Media).
www.howardbloom.net
Former Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute; Former Visiting
Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University.
Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; Founder, Space Development
Steering Committee; Founder: The Group Selection Squad; Founding Board
Member: Epic of Evolution Society; Founding Board Member, The Darwin Project;
Founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of
Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American
Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution
Society, International Society for Human Ethology, Scientific Advisory Board
Member, Lifeboat Foundation; Editorial Board Member, Journal of Space
Philosophy; Board member and member of Board of Governors, National Space Society.
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