[Fis] Bill Miller's contribution: the "It" of a machine, truth and trust

[Mark Johnson]

Dear Bill, Mike and John

First of all thank you to Bill and Mike for continuing the very stimulating
discussion that began in the video call a few weeks ago.

There are, as is often the case on FIS, a number of ontological assertions
flying around which make navigating this space rather difficult. Mike does
his best to address this head-on in his identification of two fundamental
problems: "First, the belief that we can objectively and uniquely nail down
what something is. And second, that our formal models of life, computers or
materials tell the entire story of their capabilities and limitations."

Channelling Warren McCulloch, and perhaps in response to those who ask
"what is a machine?", I would like to ask "What is a machine that we might
know it, and what are we that we might know a machine?"

What follows from the formulation such a question (whether you ask about
number, distinction, etc), is that any determination of "what a machine is"
- the "it" of a machine - is both contingent and necessary. It is
contingent because it must depend on the determination by the observer
(Maturana). It is necessary because without any determination of what a
machine is, we would have no machines, no science, no institutions, no
coordination - the world would not be like the world we experience.

Our arguments about ontology are an expression of the contingency of
definition. The fact that we keep on going at it is indicative of the
necessity of definition. We perhaps should be mindful that alongside
contingency, is paraconsistency in definition: it is not x OR y,
information OR energy. It is probably x AND y.

This gives rise to something that doesn't often come up on this list, which
I have been reflecting on, which is dialectic. If you take necessity and
contingency together, you get a dialectical process. This is political. I
know (I'm sure he won't mind me saying this) that behind John's passionate
emphasis on energy is a personal story about the pathology of humankind,
and a fear that misapprehending the underlying mechanism of evolutionary
development will lead to the kind of terrible consequences we saw in the
middle of the last century. Personally, I very swayed by his arguments -
they run very deep.

Indeed, behind much of the anxiety of AI are political feelings, which are
not properly inspected. As scientists, we are often rather too buttoned-up,
pretending this is all completely rational. Well, we know it isn't. There
are feasible dystopias and infeasible dystopias, and equally infeasible
utopias.

The politics comes from the dialectics which comes from the contingency and
necessity of definition of what a machine is. This is not to say that there
cannot be coordinated stability through science. But it fundamentally
requires trust and humility, and acceptance of contingency and
paraconsistency. As Von Foerster pointed out many years ago, the word
"truth" has the same root as the word "trust" (see
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://youtu.be/Mc6YFUoPWSI?feature=shared__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!SOPq9poc-3vl-7SlVOj3yLI-dqYIjO9xvO16b4Q48lrtaRtB6K2fa2Uhx7dQtpM-i1tLaT5hg8TRQv5nhrKJK3Q$ )

Trust appears to be some kind of physiological process. Do machines help us
to trust each other? Well, what do you think? You're in a machine right
now. Do you trust me? If this wasn't email, what might we do to engender
trust between us better? Could a machine help? How?

Best wishes,

Mark



On Wed, 14 May 2025 at 22:02, JOHN TORDAY <jtorday at ucla.edu> wrote:

> Dear Pedro, Bill and fis,with all due respect,  I have attached my replies
> to Bill's *Information in a cellular framework – abstract for discussion*
> *William B. Miller, Jr.*
>
> John S. Torday
> Professor of Pediatrics
> Obstetrics and Gynecology
> Evolutionary Medicine
> UCLA
>
> *Fellow, The European Academy of Science and Arts*
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
> From: JOHN TORDAY <jtorday at ucla.edu>
> Date: Wed, May 14, 2025 at 4:56 PM
> Subject: Re: [Fis] Bill Miller's contribution
> To: Pedro C. Marijuán <pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com>
>
>
> Dear Pedro and Bill and fis, I have attached my responses to Bill's
> "Information in a Cellular Framework".....
>
> John S. Torday
> Professor of Pediatrics
> Obstetrics and Gynecology
> Evolutionary Medicine
> UCLA
>
> *Fellow, The European Academy of Science and Arts*
>
>
> On Wed, May 14, 2025 at 3:45 PM Pedro C. Marijuán <
> pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Given the archive difficulties with attached files, systematically
>> scrubbed by the server, I am posting Bill's text as a regular message
>> (today I finally could do that!).
>> It is an angle pretty different from the mechanism/non mechanism
>> one...      Regards --Pedro
>> -------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>> *Information in a cellular framework – abstract for discussion William B.
>> Miller, Jr.*
>>
>> A long-standing presumption among many physicists and mathematicians is
>> that biology is a descriptive endeavor and any deep understanding of the
>> living frame must issue from their more rigorous disciplines. Nonetheless,
>> neither physics nor mathematics has explained the non-equilibrium living
>> state in which intelligent self-referential cells deploy problem-solving
>> competencies to sustain themselves across living scales. Consequently,
>> some
>> scientists argue that the reverse may be correct: biology might
>> productively
>> inform physics and mathematics, offering insights into how natural laws
>> might extend beyond known physical and mathematical principles.
>> In the same spirit, examining the specific attributes of biological
>> information processing and living information management as specifically
>> exemplified by cells might provide a productive further thrust to the
>> fundamental action-logic of those theoretical information systems
>> formulated
>> by visionary information theorists.
>>
>> To stimulate that initiative, it is proposed that information theorists
>> might
>> direct their attention to the specific informational characteristics of
>> intelligent,
>> measuring cells, which represent the basal strata of our living planetary
>> system.
>>
>> Several specific attributes of biological information have been
>> empirically verified at the cellular level, thereby defining the
>> informational
>> conditions of our living system:
>>
>> --All cells are cognitive, problem-solving agents.
>>
>> --Their living context is the ambiguity of information.
>>
>> --The uncertain validity of environmental stimuli governs the cellular
>> reception, analysis, and deployment of all cellular resources.
>>
>> --Imperfect information requires cells to internally measure their
>> received information.
>>
>> --Accordingly, all cellular information is a product of infoautopoiesis,
>> entailing that all the information that any cell has about its external
>> environment is exclusive, self-referential, and self-produced.
>>
>> --Cellular infoautopiesis drives an obligatory and little appreciated
>> derivative: each cell, and then we as cellular beings, create our
>> exclusive self-referential representations of reality and act upon that
>> self-generated purview.
>>
>> --Obliged informational uncertainties stimulate the collective cellular
>> analysis of self-generated cellular information, driving ubiquitous
>> planetary multicellularity as a cellular expression of the familiar
>> 'wisdom of crowds'.
>>
>> --Cellular information processing directs toward narrowing distinctions
>> on the adjacents to diminish their obligatory uncertainty gap, yielding
>> the effective minimization of surprisal in conformity with the Free
>> Energy Principle.
>>
>> --Every cell does work to sustain its self-directed state of homeorhetic
>> preferential flux.
>>
>> --Narrowing the distinctions on the adjacents as the effective
>> minimization of surprisal enables cellular predictions and
>> anticipations.
>>
>> --Self-referential cellular states of homeorhetic preference drive
>> multicellular eukaryotic macroorganic behaviors and emotions.
>>
>> *SOME BASIC QUESTIONS (for the discussion)*
>>
>> Information in the living frame has been commonly defined according to
>> Bateson’s familiar definition as a 'difference that makes a difference
>> over
>> time.' How might that definition explain internal self reference that
>> governs
>> our lives, enabling living information management? Might other definitions
>> serve better?
>>
>> How can previously formulated information theories illuminate the cellular
>> living process within its obligatory context of informational ambiguity?
>> How do current information theories explain the presence of inference,
>> prediction, and anticipation.
>>
>> Why do these informational cues, which must first manifest at the level of
>> cells as exclusive states of self-referential homeorhetic preference,
>> exert in
>> multicellularity as nuanced multicellular behaviors and emotions?
>> Recent research confirms the remarkable competencies of diverse
>> intelligences across living scales. How might applying information systems
>> theory contribute to our debate about any categorical distinctions
>> between the
>> living frame and the abiotic realm? If a fluid continuum is asserted, how
>> might that be rationalized?
>>
>> Is our understanding of biological systems improved by asserting an
>> immaterial Platonic informational platform permitting cells to
>> interrogate a
>> constrained portion of universal informational space-time (? phase space
>> partition) as part of a universal informational fabric?
>>
>> Given the extraordinary competencies of current AI systems and projected
>> future abilities, how might information theory inform constructive
>> responses
>> to inevitable social, economic, and cultural pressures?
>> What should govern our ethical responses to the still-developing organic
>> constructs
>>  which will include synthetic combinations of digital competencies and
>> living cells?
>> If 'consciousness' is determined to be a litmus of our ethical stance
>> toward
>> other living entities, what practical informational threshold exists, if
>> any?
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------
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-- 
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!SOPq9poc-3vl-7SlVOj3yLI-dqYIjO9xvO16b4Q48lrtaRtB6K2fa2Uhx7dQtpM-i1tLaT5hg8TRQv5ngd1tt6A$ 
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