[Fis] 0% of most important Informatics

[Mark Johnson]

Hi Jason

Do you not think there might be some ontological assumptions in your post
here?

One of the things I liked about the philosophy of Critical Realism is the
method of "immanent critique" which is a systematic approach to revealing
implicit ontological assumptions in intellectual positions.

Best wishes

Mark

Dr. Mark William Johnson
Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health
University of Manchester

Department of Science Education
University of Copenhagen

Department of Eye and Vision Science (honorary)
University of Liverpool
Phone: 07786 064505
Email: johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com
Blog: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!SrPwOAzKCZPJvrh_Qca8SPPIsn-omP2pUgigeWVtlyTGG0sSvMiFbdtDjHrmdWvSYqI6uqjhqP3y6slDyY8kmQo$ 

On Fri, 27 Jun 2025, 17:35 Jason Hu, <jasonthegoodman at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Paul, very good point! Let me remind all friends on this list, that
> "scientists" may be classified into three types: Ontology-centered (arguing
> about WHAT exists); Epistemology-centered (figuring out HOW do we know what
> we think we know); and Methodology-centered (searching for HOW do I/we deal
> with THIS hands-on). For me, I have nothing to do with ontology, therefore
> I don't engage in debates of opinions about what is what. It is very easy
> to commit the academic original sin of IARYAW (pronounced as "ee-ah-you,"
> means "I-AM-RIGHT-YOU-ARE-WRONG") in that territory.
>
> I'm 40% epistemology-centered and 60% methodology-centered. That is why I
> ask you, the FIS experts, about what are the most important 20% of what you
> know about Informatics.  If a graduate student learning Physics needs to
> learn 1000 pages of Physics, then a high-school student needs to learn 200
> pages to be aware of the basics. That's what I mean 20%. This effort is not
> for researchers. It is for the whole young generation at large - what these
> youngsters need is a primer so that they are not informatics-illiterate.
>
> After all, consciousness or intelligence is all about making decisions,
> which involves predictions about the consequences of one's
> actions/non-actions. This is done through something we call "cognitive
> system," i.e. our brain plus all our neurons busily working together. Human
> language, formed by concepts or words, are all product/emergence of this
> cognitive system (first individually, then collectively), including words
> such as matter, energe, information. I agree that "information" involves
> living systems' functions - attempting to measurement, drawing
> distinctions, perceiving differences, etc., all the way to inventing math
> tools, doing statistics, discovering something named "entropy," and alas,
> "information"! Here comes an Internet group, who are doctors of "Foundation
> of Information System" (Sorry, I don't know your original naming of
> FIS...)
>
> So to rephrase my question in much simpler way - what would you teach your
> kids about what you consider yourself an expert about?  If you can distill
> 20% of what you have been talking/writing/debating and make it useful to
> your kids, that's what I hope to get from you.
>
> All the best - Jason
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 27, 2025 at 8:50 AM Paul Suni <paul.p.suni at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear Krassimir Markov,
>>
>> You stated that “...information cannot exist outside of matter and
>> energy, while the opposite is not true - matter and energy do not depend on
>> information…”  With all due respect, you commit a category mistake typical
>> of serious scientists. While there is a scientific consensus that
>> information is always accompanied by matter and energy, it is also true
>> that matter and energy must always exist in some form, thereby carrying
>> information. Formlessness is informative only outside of serious
>> science, as a religious concept among spiritual practitioners. I
>> challenge you to design a scientific experiment, where matter and energy
>> demonstrably occur without form, information. Yours is a good example of
>> the fallacy of the conflation of the epistemic and ontic domains of reality
>> - an apparently universal mental condition infecting academics.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Paul
>>
>>
>> On Jun 27, 2025, at 12:51 AM, Krassimir Markov <itheaiss at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> information cannot exist outside of matter and energy, while the opposite
>> is not true - matter and energy do not depend on information.
>>
>>
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