[Fis] [EXTERNAL] Re: Emotional Contagion? -The Irreality of materialism

Wed Mar 26 03:36:25 CET 2025

 back to the bloomean definition that "information is anything a receiver can interpret."  
when this mashup of a planet first formed 4.5 billion years ago, it was hit by starlight.  but the starlight was not information yet.  nothing was interpreting it.
then came birds 120 mya.  some of those birds invented long-distance migration to dodge the slings and arrows of this ball of stone's non-stop climate catastrophes.  like the ones we call winter and summer.
and some of those birds developed the ability, still a bit disputed, to use stars to navigate.  now, suddenly, the photon flows from stars turned from something inert to, guess what, information?
119,995,000  years later in mesopotamia, scholars worked their tales off to interpret stars, to use them to predict plagues, invasions, draughts, and prices in the marketplace.  all for customers who happened to be rulers and could pay a hefty sum for the guidance.  was starlight more information than it had been for migrating birds?  no, the photon flows were the same.  it was the interpreters who had changed.  and their evolving "science" of interpretation.
without an interpreter, nothing is information.
but there's a caveat.  when the first quarks formed in a blizzard of quarks in the first flick of the big bang 13.7 bya, each one felt naked and alone.  each needed to rush into the arms of appropriate partners. yes, appropriate partners. each needed to feel out which partners to rush to and which partners to avoid.
in other words, quarks were interpreters.  which means that quarks were exchanging information.
btw, would you like to see my article on why entropy is wrong?  why the whole concept is scientific garbage?  it contains a history of how we got the concept of information to begin with.
    On Tuesday, March 25, 2025 at 08:59:14 PM EDT, Jason Hu <jasonthegoodman at gmail.com> wrote:   

 Hi Daniel and Howard,I can be "informed," but I don't have to interpret that... e.g., I heard my dog is barking... so be it, I don't have to interpret what that means, but it is still a piece of information. Why not go back to the very root of the word "form"? A "form" is an output of our cognitive system, an "I-see" or an "Ah-ha!" Something caused me to form that "form" in my mind - "a difference that makes a difference." So I'm "informed." So information is the stuff that gets me informed... therefore we call it Information.Indeed the relationship of it with quantum physics and entropy are secondary. For quantum physics, it "informed" the wave function to collapse or set the fate of the cat. For entropy, a statistic measure, a status of the "informed" status reduced uncertainty. But those effects of "information", not cause. Would you agree or not?Best - Jason 
On Tue, Mar 25, 2025 at 12:16 AM Daniel Boyd <daniel.boyd at live.nl> wrote:

Hi Howard

Picking up on your mail from last week, it seems that the key point isdefinitions. 

I think it’s rather ironic that the word ‘information’ is itself uninformative, since it can be used in very different ways. If two people in a discussion are using the term under a different definition then a fruitful dialogue is unlikely. And there are many more than two options to choose from!

Certainly, there are uses of the word in which quantum physics and entropy are relevant, and such definitions appear to be the main topic of this thread.

You and I are using the word in a very different way: that which allows living organisms to behave responsively and adaptively and thus sustain their far from equilibrium states. A definition that lies in the conceptual vicinity of Pierce’s ‘pragmatic information’ and indeed has little or nothing to do with quantum physics or entropy. But one that necessitates more than most other definitions an acknowledgement of an immaterial aspect to reality.

In my opinion this is an equally valid use of the word, but one which presumably requires (and deserves) its own discussion thread. Perhaps you would like to kick off?

All the best

Daniel

From: Howard Bloom <howlbloom at aol.com>
Sent: 20 March 2025 04:24
To: Louis Kauffman <loukau at gmail.com>; Stuart Kauffman <stukauffman at gmail.com>; Sudip Patra <spatra at jgu.edu.in>
Cc: Eric Werner <eric.werner at oarf.org>; 1 <ktpeil at outlook.com>; Peter Erdi <peter.erdi at kzoo.edu>; fis <fis at listas.unizar.es>;joe.brenner at bluewin.ch; Gordana Dodig Crnkovic <gordana.dodig-crnkovic at chalmers.se>; Daniel Boyd <daniel.boyd at live.nl>
Subject: Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: [Fis] Emotional Contagion? -The Irreality of materialism

could i please repeat the definition of information in my book The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates:

information is anything a receiver can interpret

how do we know if a receiver has interpreted?  by the receiver's response.  unless it's an animal or a human and keeps that response to itself.

two things that are not useful in understanding information, in my opinion, are quantum physics and the entropy equation.

with warmth and oomph—howard

On Wednesday, March 19, 2025 at 10:30:07 PM EDT, Sudip Patra <spatra at jgu.edu.in> wrote: 

Also, as it's emerging, in quantum-like cognition literature, there are analogies and subtle differences between quantum and cognitive processes. Both are non Boolean certainly.

But more general frameworks are required.

Regards Sudip 

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