[Fis] "express matter and energy in terms of information"--Cheese

Wed Feb 14 10:51:55 CET 2024

Dear Pedro,

I find your elaboration of Krassimir's question very aptly pointing out 
the difficulty of getting to the essence of things and understanding the 
objects themselves in an increasingly complex world of human 
concepts/information. The more of this information we have to deal with, 
the more and more difficult it is for us to distinguish between the more 
and the less relevant, being further and further meta-reflections of 
that object. It is also increasingly difficult to find common features 
for all this information, that is, information that succinctly define 
the object. Therefore, I believe that if we want to understand something 
we should focus on the fundamental information, i.e. the set of the 
smallest number of concepts sufficient to distinguish/define the object.
This is the principle I tried to follow in the just published article 
that defines information and complexity at the fundamental level.
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01655515231203644*core-collateral-purchase-access__;Iw!!D9dNQwwGXtA!T32AiE6UmQl-7n70JaaD2Z8MkqW19WQsVpbwk065JHpDk-lBrAiFGUO1bbWk5PVAYYGnnhnXoVC70zzLMwlGJJWPuR6f$ 
Information is understood here either as an Aristotelian form or form of 
energy (it is worth noting that information is a generalization of the 
concept of form-shape to all other characteristics of objects), or 
technically (Shannon) as an element of a collection. Complexity, on the 
other hand, is here the equivalent of information compression (in the 
broadest sense).
The article was intentionally written in a somewhat provocative form to 
draw attention to the misconceptions arising from a lack of 
understanding of these key concepts, even among well-known authorities. 
An example of this is Shannon's universal attribution of 
natural/physical properties to information on the basis of similarity to 
thermodynamics where we deal only with collections of gas particles, 
while other physical objects/processes are not collections but complex 
structures and systems.
I can send PDF of the paper if you are interested.

Best regards
Mariusz

W dniu 13.02.2024 o 18:52, Pedro C. Marijuán pisze:
> Dear All,
>
> This was great from Krassimir:
> "Please give at least one example, for instance, to express the cheese 
> in terms of information."
>
> I was reminded of a famous essay I read in the 80s (or 90s) about 
> "what's in a cent?" (or maybe a "penny"?). It was a one or two pages 
> essay on the enormous web of occurrences related to a "simple" object 
> such as a penny. I could not locate it any more --does anyone know 
> about it?
>
> Well, the cheese. The sheer diversity of cheeses. The different 
> flavor, fragance, taste, texture, appearance... as estimated by our 
> senses, are some of these related to "terms of information"?
> And let's go to the milk fermentation by yeasts, bacteria, fungi... 
> See 
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-science-behind-your-cheese-180981199/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!T32AiE6UmQl-7n70JaaD2Z8MkqW19WQsVpbwk065JHpDk-lBrAiFGUO1bbWk5PVAYYGnnhnXoVC70zzLMwlGJKbJYQoO$ 
> What are the molecular transporters, enzymes, signaling systems 
> involved? What are the main "molecular recognition" events? Again: are 
> some of these related to "terms of information"?
> And what about the lives of those involved in the "making of"? And of 
> the patient "donor" animals? And the engineering and the whole 
> organization of the production process?
> And let's go to the marketing, web sales, use of influencers, social 
> networks, etc. And fundamentally, when we go to a market all the other 
> stories will disappear and will get subsumed into a "price" that 
> signals the value of the product--into a collective information 
> processing that recalibrates itself at high speed. That famous Adam 
> Smith "invisible hand".
>
> Therefore, the initial question taken literally becomes rather absurd, 
> fundamentalist--it is the same as if we ask for the "physics" of the 
> cheese or for its "chemistry". But curiously, in this case the 
> information-related aspects get an upper hand. The fact is that 
> socially we have to handle a big, very big system of the sciences, and 
> we are forced to combine, recombine their specialized disciplinary 
> views etc. etc. It is in this bigger multidisciplinary context where 
> the "physicalist" dominance in intelligence & information studies was 
> discussed by Yixin-Zhong a few months ago... quite opportune.
>
> Best--Pedro
>
>
> El 12/02/2024 a las 22:38, Krassimir Markov escribió:
>> Dear Carlos,
>> You wrote "... express matter and energy in terms of information".
>>
>> Simple question:
>>
>> How can it be done?
>>
>> Please give at least one example, for instance, to express the cheese 
>> in terms of information.
>>
>> With respect,
>> Krassimir
>>
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