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

[Jason Hu]

Dear Joe,

Geniuses consider very simple questions, such as Einstein's "What is time"
or McCulloch's "What is a number." I'm not sure if FIS members are geniuses
but we can monkey-see-monkey-do. So, for the question "what is a machine",
let's consider its easier form "Is a clock a machine?" or "Is a clock
larger than the sum of its parts? Yes or no?

What would be a typical FIS member's answer? I'm curious.

My own answer is "Yes AND No." Without any human involved, a clock equals
the sum of its parts minus the original clock-maker's efforts to build it
in that particular structure. But "without any human involved" is a false
condition, because at least two human roles need to be involved to define
the concept "clock." The first one is the guy who winds the spring in the
clock to provide "energy" for it to tick-tock. The second role is the guy
who reads the clock face to tell time; therefore, the clock is realized to
be a clock. These two roles, plus the original designer/builder, enable the
clock to be a clock. Without any of them, the clock is not larger than the
sum of its parts. With human (creator/energizer/observer/user), it IS
larger than the sum of its parts! That "largeness" is simply "clockness."
So if you replace the word "clock" with "machine, " or with "LLM," or with
"AI"... you get "cybernetic perspective, second-order."
Best - Jason

On Sun, May 18, 2025 at 12:59 AM <joe.brenner at bluewin.ch> wrote:

> Dear FIS'ers,
>
> My recent emphasis on ontology should not be taken to mean that I am
> eliminativist with respect to epistemology. I am simply concerned with
> restoring the proper balance between them. Mark’s note overall is thus very *à
> propos. *I just would point out that his use of paraconsistency (PC) is
> not complete, since PC, while allowing real contradictions, remains a logic
> of propositions. Also, while I welcome his reference to “a AND b”, he
> omitted pointing out, as I have tried to, that this is the *4th *Lemma in
> the lemmic logic of Nagarjuna and his modern interpreters. For a more
> complete story, one should refer to the 3rd Lemma, the NEITHER a NOR b.
>
> Having said that, two recent postings call, nay, cry out for an epistemic
> critique - those of Jason Hu and Paul Suni.  I was surprised to learn that
> the last 200 years of thought have produced concepts of vitalism and
> mechanism that are not fraught with errors and omissions and are
> desperately in need of new approaches. Systemics, cybernetics and
> informatics still reflect predominantly Western concepts and their standard
> bivalent logics. Uncertainty is safely quarantined in the quantum domain.
>
>  I am, also, perfectly aware that the FIS Group is not a venue for debate
> on political issues. However, to ignore completely the recent
> socio-political regressions would in my opinion trivialize our discussion.
> Note that I did not use the common fig leaf of "risk" trivializing.
>
>  I used the word Trump, as I hoped and still hope that most of you will
> understand, as shorthand for the almost unbearable attacks being made on
> the democratic system in the United States based on perversions, to begin
> with, of ordinary capitalism. We then are confronted by the attempts at
> thought control by a so-called "extreme right-wing" using totalitarian
> techniques, augmented by AI. "Trump" means a society whose power-structure
> is white, male and, again, Western despite the inevitable
> "fellow-travelers" in all categories.
>
>  Apart from my role in it, I think the discussion, a couple of years ago,
> of disinformation was a good one. In the interim, it has become so
> prevalent as to be unremarkable. Note also the cases of pseudo-information
> as in the recent discussion of Trump’s rule as an “hypnocracy”.
>
>  I am generally sympathetic to Thomas' analysis: "In humans, this change
> means that there are no mental processes without a more or less clearly
> recognizable emotional involvement. The inextricable link between
> information processing—and, in more highly developed organisms, the
> psyche—and the body is what distinguishes living beings." However, his
> sentence: "In living beings, the main task of information processing is to
> optimize options for action.", while correct, falls back into a kind of
> moral neutrality when applied to humans.
>
> I thus conclude that a discussion of "minds" and machines should take into
> account the existence, as in the work of the biologist E. O. Wilson, of two
> kinds of minds, with tendencies to selfishness and altruism respectively.
> Are information processes the same in both? Perhaps there are some
> differences in the way information and context (background) are processed
> by "Trump" and by us that deserve attention?
>
>          Although it conflicts somewhat with what I have written, I think
> that John Torday's interpretation in terms of energy is valid and very
> worthwhile. Further analysis might show that an interpretation of
> information_as_energy and the reverse are both valid.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Joseph
>
>
> Le 17.05.2025 23:25 CEST, Mark Johnson <johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com> a écrit :
>
>
> 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!UWguawVU31SD7dQXGXyNINKmScT4Q0gIQoorMiQVEuF4_FL7GYngSX58oy4qbZGRtESBME4UabwQC1G1-m0U4kDZysWI$ 
> <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!UWguawVU31SD7dQXGXyNINKmScT4Q0gIQoorMiQVEuF4_FL7GYngSX58oy4qbZGRtESBME4UabwQC1G1-m0U4rFn-TQ3$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!SOPq9poc-3vl-7SlVOj3yLI-dqYIjO9xvO16b4Q48lrtaRtB6K2fa2Uhx7dQtpM-i1tLaT5hg8TRQv5ngd1tt6A$>
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