<div dir="ltr">
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Dear Friends,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>It is always a
refreshing experience to read the FIS discussion. Please allow me to contribute
a thread which may turn out to be useful. First, I’d like to draw a parallel
between FIS and the contemporaries of Mendel, then discuss similarities between
the concepts of “information” and “genetics”, as viewed thru the mirror of Mendel’s
work, and close by a constructive proposal with regard to the subject-matter of
information.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<ol style="margin-top:0cm" start="1" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span>Mendel and the concepts of his contemporaries</span></li></ol>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>There was a drastic
climb-down from elegant, important, high-level, complicated, exclusive concepts
as the scientific community had to accept that hereditary traits are passed
down the generations according to the rules of combinatorics. There is much
less glamour in 1:2:1 and 9:3:3:1 than in “divine will”, “mysteries of Nature”,
“preordained destiny” etc. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Mendel was offering
his contemporaries a simple, household, non-glamorous explanation, based on
elementary, everyday rules, based on proportions of natural numbers. He had
used garden peas to demonstrate his ideas on, not dragons to be slain, unicorns
to be ridden, angels to be observed dancing on the tip of needles or any other fancy
stuff. Just plain numbers.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Does anyone remember
today the shmocks ignoring Mendel? Mendel’s motto was: “My time shall certainly
come.” <br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span><br></span></p>
<ol style="margin-top:0cm" start="2" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span>Concepts hidden behind words</span></li></ol>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>While his contemporaries
had been industriously producing hot air, Mendel did his experiments. Today, we
do not need garden peas because we can simulate garden peas by entries in
databases. Mendel observed relations coming from contrasting one kind of
properties of garden peas with other kinds of properties of garden peas. We do
away with actual garden peas and contrast properties of one kind of database
entries with other kinds of properties of database entries. Believe it or not,
the system functions without actual garden peas, too. There appear specific
patterns if one contrasts differing properties of elements of one and the same set
of objects.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Having learnt quite a
lot since the times of Mendel, we can these days use abstract concepts, like “objects”
as symbols for actual things like “garden peas”. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>His contemporaries
could not understand Mendel, because they were enchanted by glitzy, fascinating,
fashionable words and could not believe that ideas of such unexciting greyness
as proportions among natural numbers could express the relations dominating in
Nature much better than their ideas of phlogiston and destiny. Mendel could not
make himself understood by his contemporaries, because he had lacked the words
for the concepts for “sequence”, “chromosome”, “haploid”, “triplet”, etc. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>The principle
discovered by Mendel is that Nature can be depicted by using natural numbers.
Once a few generations have wasted their time trying to ignore natural numbers,
their grandchildren have gained the insight to look for something that agrees
to the principles laid down by the rules of arithmetic.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Today, the attention of
FIS is drawn to relations between natural numbers. It remains to be seen, how
many generations have yet to pass until future scientists will say: “Well, let
us look into what is not happening if we cause something to happen.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span><br></span></p>
<ol style="margin-top:0cm" start="3" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span>What is information and how do we detect it</span></li></ol>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span><span> </span>In psychology, information is usually
understood to mean the difference between expectation and observation. To be
more general and understandable, one may call it the contrast between the foreground
and the background. For those who have grown up on the teachings of Shannon,
this makes not much sense, as of a universe of {0,1}, that what is not the case
is the background to that what is the case. Once one has a universe of, say,
{0,1,2,3}, the background is /if, say, “1” is the case: {0,2,3,}/ the others.
The difference to the Shannon concept is that the background is not uniformly
the background, but rather: the background does have properties which one can (not:
perceive, but) theoretize about. The differences within the background are our
garden peas.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>There are many, very
interesting, quite educative relations among the elements of the background.
FIS is invited to climb down from discussing phlogiston and destiny, and spend
time usefully by looking into relations among natural numbers. The time will
certainly come when people will understand that science is not glamour. Hollywood
is glamour. Science is numbers.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Thanks to MDPI, a
simple google entry “mdpi karl javorszky” will bring you to the relevant
literature.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Karl </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span><span> </span><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span><span> </span></span></p>
</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">2017-09-20 2:00 GMT+02:00 Koichiro Matsuno <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:CXQ02365@nifty.com" target="_blank">CXQ02365@nifty.com</a>></span>:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div link="blue" vlink="purple" lang="JA"><div class="m_-2145798496187908857WordSection1"><span class=""><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1f497d" lang="EN-US">On 19 Sept 2017 at 1:26 AM Terrence W. DEACON wrote:<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1f497d" lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">the science of information is still at an early stage and could be potentially held back by the hubris of certainty.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1f497d" lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1f497d" lang="EN-US"> Although I do not want to muddy the waters further, the distinction between information (to whom; or only to the statistician?) and physical sciences as we know them today may be in need of clarifying the nature of space and time underlying both the issues. So, suppose a fair coin toss game. If the tossing is repeated, the probability of heads or tails up would be just fifty-fifty. However, the outcome of each individual tossing-up would be either head or tail, and by no means in between like the fifty-fifty. What is more, the coin in focus assumes participation of a durable agent for repeating its toss-up.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1f497d" lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1f497d" lang="EN-US"> The statistician takes for granted the participation of the ordinary space and time or the static spacetime exclusive to the block-universe when the fifty-fifty probability is addressed. On the other hand, the agent involved in tossing the coin up is uncertain about the outcome of the next toss-up while the results of the preceding attempts already done remain definite. The future toward the capricious agent of tossing it up is open, while the content of the past has already been definitively fixed. The spacetime to such a playful agent is dynamically variable in distinguishing between the definite past and the indefinite future. The nature of the content of time differs between the past and the future. Information as an identifier of the distinction between the definite past and the indefinite future goes beyond the scope exclusive to the standard physics limited to the static block-universe, in the latter of which both the past and the future are definitively determinate at the present in a static manner. Nonetheless, there seems to be some hope in quantum mechanics in circumventing the present stalemate inflicting a heavy body blow on the stymied block-universe physics. <u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1f497d" lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1f497d" lang="EN-US"> If both the occurrence of a pure quantum state and its measurement could happen to be likely in a natural or experimental setting, such a pure state may obtain its duration with probability unity under the conditions that the frequency of repeated measurements can be enhanced without facing any limit, thanks to the quantum Zeno effect. The quantum player underlying such a quantum toss-up game could turn out to be quite steady and durable rather than merely being capricious. Biology upholding a durable organization of a concrete particular nature seems to take full advantage of durable individual events of QM origin. <u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1f497d" lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1f497d" lang="EN-US"> Although information seems to be quite a newbie in the philosopher-dominating time-honored discipline addressing the hard issue of what both space and time may look like, it might be able to enjoy some chance of bringing in something new empirically there. <u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1f497d" lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1f497d" lang="EN-US"> Koichiro Matsuno<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1f497d" lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1f497d" lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1f497d" lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1f497d" lang="EN-US"> <u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif" lang="EN-US">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif" lang="EN-US"> Fis [mailto:<a href="mailto:fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es" target="_blank">fis-bounces@listas.<wbr>unizar.es</a>] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Terrence W. DEACON<br><b>Sent:</b> Tuesday, September 19, 2017 1:26 AM<br><b>To:</b> Foundations of Information Science Information Science <<a href="mailto:Fis@listas.unizar.es" target="_blank">Fis@listas.unizar.es</a>><span class=""><br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [Fis] INFORMATION: JUST A MATTER OF MATH<u></u><u></u></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">All of these claims and counter-claims are null hypotheses - hypothetical axioms yet to be tested, both for logical coherence and empirical usefulness. Place your bets. Mine are on contrary assumptions: i.e. non-Turing computability, fundamental incompleteness, and a deep entanglement between information (including reference and functional value) and its necessary physical substrates. Of course for this to be science all need to eventually yield testable hypotheses. This level of controversy over basic issues indicates to me that the science of information is still at an early stage and could be potentially held back by the hubris of certainty.<u></u><u></u></span></p><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">—<span lang="EN-US"> Terry<u></u><u></u></span></p></div></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div></div></div><br>______________________________<wbr>_________________<br>
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