[Fis] The elusive concept of information

[Karl Javorszky]

Dear Colleagues,



there are so many points to deal with, that an enumeration is not only a
pleasure but also a must.

   1. Administrative

Pedro would be writing also in my name, if he addresses a letter to the
presently unsubscribed, who had made at least 1 contribution in the last 3
years, saying “blah blah European Union blah blah … we cordially invite you
to rejoin …” with a link. The cut went definitely too deep, as it appears
that the person Pedro mentioned as organising the next FIS conference,
himself is not on the subscriber list.

   1. Narrative ~ reception/impact study/marketing

As far as I understand the invitation by Pedro to discuss how – in which
narrative – the search for a functional definition of information is
conducted, this is equivalent to what used to be called previously
“reception studies”. Here, the group does not discuss the libretto or the
composition of an opera, but how the audience and the critics reacted to
the performance. This is by all means a legitimate subject (ask any
bourgeois Viennese about the high dramas around professional claqueurs
being engaged for premieres, critics being bribed, and so forth) and worth
a study. Specifically is this a valuable subject to dwell upon, in case one
has no idea neither about libretti nor about composing stage music.
Camouflaging a disinterest or ignorance on a subject is best done by
discussing how enthusiastically the audience boo-ed or jubilated, how the
critics were profound or arbitrary, unanimous or deeply divided in their
support or condemnation of the performers and the circumstances of the
performance, and how the reaction of the general public is woefully lacking
in insight or how enthusiastic in the well-deserved praise.

The shift in focus to the sociology of the performance away from the
subject-matter is a technique applicable generally, be it in the fields of
opera premieres, new lines of fashion or electric bicycles. By observing
the behaviour of influencers, actually bribing the influencers (claqueurs),
it is possible to push narratives away from or into success.

This aspect has nothing to do with any subject matter of a debate or a
collaborative effort to hammer out such a definition of information which
is pleasing to most of us. Normally, the observers/influencers of a
performance remain hidden: it would be contra-productive, if the corps des
claqueurs came up the stage to bow with the performers, even worse if the
Great Machinator, the incarnation from the deep culture, who actually
influences which performances become a success and which ones will be
termed a failure, if this well-connected but normally invisible grey
eminence came up together with the conductor to receive the admiration for
a well-organised artistic experience.

We have now to decide, whether we discuss how incomparably heroically we
conduct the quest for a concept of information, or rather we discuss
methods and successes or dead-ends in approaching, objectifying and
codifying what is information. Organising the claqueurs – or writing in a
scientific fashion about organising a positive reception of a new opera -
is different to finding a libretto of a drama which is seductive to the
population and writing an elegant and pleasant, rememberable music for the
libretto.

   1. Competition and rewards expected

Krassimir has pointed out that it is deeply human to try to achieve
acknowledgement, praise and rewards. His implication, roughly, as I
understand him is: do not even try, cease and desist, you have no chance,
because, among others, I am also in this game, along with many other
researchers of high fame and renown.

After 39.5 years of working with neurotics, hysterics and slightly mad
people, one has learnt that the partner is the important person in the
dialogue. He is fascinating, tragic, incomparable, extraordinary: the role
of the hair-dresser, visagist or psychologist is to remain detached,
neutral, noncommitted and generally uninteresting, a part of the coulisse.
One has already learnt the addictive seduction of effects of hormones being
discharged while in specific social positions, relating to being understood
or having one’s ways or being praised, generally being in the centre of
attention. There are many ways to generate endorphins, and being an
extraordinary social success is but one of them.

And then again, in the city marathons there are many thousands of athletes,
and many hundreds may reasonably entertain hope that in case of an optimal
combination of positive factors, they may actually end up crossing the line
42 km farther away as among the first or maybe even the first. One may know
that one has trained well and long enough, and one may be confident that
the result is not determined by narratives or claqueurs, but on the merits
of the subject matter of optimally using the biochemistry while
coordinating movements.

   1. Subject matter

Information has been encircled to belonging in the realm of that what is
not the case. The scope of information is the collection of the remaining
alternatives. In one reading, information is the pointing out of one of the
alternatives. It is important to know that the alternatives are each and
all not the case. They could be, but presently they are not.

How do we find an abundance of interdependences which contain things that
are the case and a collection of alternatives that are not the case but
could be the case? This is not an easy task with the tool we currently use,
because in the present understanding of the counting system, its elements
have no a-priori communality in a property that makes some elements of the
subset to be the case while the others are not the case but could be the
case. This is Act I.: Present the Intolerable Situation

May we take the counting system, shake it, turn it sideways and tear out
everything that is not a natural number? The horrific barbarism is a hit on
the stage, as what remains of the counting system is as archaic as the
pre-Sumer, with wild animalistic phantasies of returning to the very roots.
Act II: the prospect of a novelty and its many enemies

The remaining elements are stripped of their intellectual voodoo and are
again de-abstracted into beads, pebbles, rocks, cows, women. One does not
de-individuate the objects in order to gain uniformity and abstractive
powers. One re-individuates the objects and sorts and orders them. Act III:
Pastorale, everything seems to be all right

Great conflicts, enmities, vendetta. There are some who say that it is the
colour of the things that is the main ordering criterium, while others
insist that it is their edibility, for some others it is their exchange
value on the market. The things have no stable linear position! They have a
few reasonable alternatives, e.g. colour, nutrition or commercial value,
but not every order concept can be realised at all times. The members of
the tribe are divided and declare that war will triumph over love: it is
not enough that there are long periods during which elements can share
non-contradicting positions, there almost inevitably comes the moment,
where a decision has to be made either about the properties of the thing or
the place it occupies. The protagonists picture by dancing, how many
segments of the linear arrangements are in concordance and arriving at
which spots a conflict is unavoidable. Act IV: Katharsis

The wise women of pre-Sumeria appear with a proposal which allows a
co-existence between peaceful prosperity and forceful assertion. Make an
Arena of Compromises, where each element is under way from his place
assigned by Chieftain X towards his place as assigned by Chieftain Y. This
creates an intricate web of paths, allowing for sub-topoi in which
everything is as predictable as classical physics, chemistry, biochemistry
and genetics, as the participants criss-cross the arena in a cyclic,
periodic, rhythmic fashion. Genetics is that garden within the arena, in
which the cogs fit, the places, times, elements and orders match. The choir
praises the divine order that allows acts of fornication and reproduction
by using the syntax governing the position in a sequence and the implicated
properties of a multidimensional assembly, in optimal circumstances, if
everything goes well (then, it is one-of-four material on one-of-three
places). We do not sing about destruction, explosion, dematerialisation:
these may appear as shadows far away. Act V: Finale.



   1. Invitation

This libretto is good, because it narrates a story of discovery, insight,
understanding and happiness. It is based on rules of {<,=,>} on natural
numbers {1,2,…,15,16} which lends it somewhat of a credibility. If this is
not a story based on true facts, then no story is.

The composer shall set the ideas into a language the public understands.
This will at first inevitably be the language of mathematics. They have a
rich collection of instruments and know how to introduce a theme. They can
give a voice to the pantomime the pre-Sumerians conduct.

It would be nice, if talented persons had a thought about bringing the
libretto on stage. The audience is waiting eagerly for an explanation, how
genetics works, and science and industry will not sit idly by, while some
competitors develop the biologic variety of arithmetic. This is a project
the EU would salivate on. Thanks to the competence of many colleagues here,
a favourable narrative and a positive reception are hopes that one may
entertain.

Friendly greetings

Karl

Am Mi., 10. Okt. 2018 um 16:11 Uhr schrieb Bruno Marchal <marchal at ulb.ac.be
>:

> Dear Krassimir, dear colleagues,
>
>
> I did not realise that some people have been eliminated from the list? Was
> not that some error?
> I am OK with the idea of getting back the old list.
>
> Yes, the elusive concept of information, but most “in” are elusive, like
> the infinite and the infinities, the indicible, informal, intuitive, etc.
> The elusive “in” often close to negation.
>
> Maybe to understand information, we should try to understood better was
> could be a general notion of formation, and then define information
> negatively from that: whatever formation is given, it is not information.
>
> Personally, I do not belief in science, but I believe in the scientific
> attitude, which is modesty, never claiming the truth, and always proposing
> theories and interpretations of theories, whatever the domain is. My domain
> is the “theology" of the universal Turing machine, where the “theology" is
> defined by what is true about the machine, and its (variates, imposed by
> incompleteness) self-referential modes, the “science" of the machine is all
> what the machine can justify.
> Incompleteness entails a gap between truth and justifiability, and machine
> can discover that gap, and become mystical in some sense. It is a testable
> theory, as it contains physics, which can be compared with the observation.
> It fits, as the quantum aspect of nature is recovered by the fact that no
> universal machine can know the infinitely many computations which support
> them, and the laws of physics arise by a sort of consciousness or first
> person selection statistic on those computations.
>
> Only bad faith wants to separate science from religion.
>
> I see religion/meaning/truth as the only goal.
> I see science/theories/observation as the only mean.
>
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
> On 7 Oct 2018, at 18:22, Krassimir Markov <markov at foibg.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Pedro and FIS Colleagues,
>
> Warm greetings for the new season of FIS discussions!
>
> The strict restrictions are not good as we have seen in FIS list!
> Now, there are many cases where the EU Directive is seen to be not
> adequate to real situations.
> For instance the supermarket’s cards – renewing is not acceptable by the
> customers who already receive discount cards and deactivating old cards is
> not in the interest of the supermarket’s  stakeholders.
> So ...
> The possibility to unsubscribe is enough and it was not needed to reduce
> the FIS list.
> I propose to return old list of addresses – many colleagues did not
> understand what really they need to do and we removed many of them without
> any real need.
> In addition, the FIS list is a scientific but not a SPAM, not an
> industrial advertising structure and EU Directive had to be implemented
> cleverly.
>
> Now about the nice sentence of Karl: *“the elusive concept of
> information”.*
>
> Many years and many scientists try to discover what is information,  but
> still there is not common understanding.
> Because of many reasons.
>
> First, every current definition discover only a part of the whole.
>
> Second, every scientist wants to be the inventor and to be the first who
> give the entire definition and to write The General Information Theory. Me
> too :-) !
>
> Third, and maybe the most important!, is the contradiction of scientific
> and non scientific paradigms which cause impossibility to find common
> understanding.
> In this direction, the worst influence is done by the paradigm for
> external for the brain intelligence.
> It doesn’t matter what kind of it is assumed – machine,
> information-space-time continuum, or any other.
>
> At the end, still there are many scientists who really do not want to have
> clear understanding of concept information – in such case every paper
> written in scientific manner is good to be published nevertheless what is
> its content.
>
> Because of this, I see the need to establish at least to separate lists –
> for those who believe in external intelligence and for those who really
> want to understand what is information and why the other believe that
> external intelligence exists.
> If somebody believe that external intelligence does not exist, his place
> is in the first list - of believers.
> Especially for me, I stopped answering to such posts because I esteem the
> human rights and don’t want to contradict without any real result.
>
> Friendly greetings and successful FIS work!
> Krassimir
>
>
>
>
>
>
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