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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Dear Ramon and colleagues (Karl, Jerry,
Annette...)</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Thanks for the excellent comment on
entropy. It clarifies basic aspects of the abuse on the Second Law
and entropy, particularly by nonphysicists. There is sort of a
meta-knowledge, widely shared in this list, that the reliability
of informational approaches has to be grounded on physics. If we
look for informational properties of fermions, hadrons, electrons,
atoms, periodic table, waves, etc. the inquiry is quite OK, for
these are places where important info developments are occurring
(e.g., from chemoinformation to quantum information science and to
the new info interpretations of quantum mechanics). But, let me
colorfully say, that if we visit other neighboring planets, that
very physics has not generated much diversity around. Terrestrial
life itself is what has created an amazing panorama of uncanny
complexity around information. From cells to nervous systems to
hyperconnected societies. I will mention just three major
conundrums--with the spirit of enlarging the current discussion.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">1. The informational view of the cell
(unfortunately we are still not too far from Crick's Central
Dogma).</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">2. The informational coupling between
organisms and their environments via the electro-molecular
processing of nervous systems ("meaning" culminating in
consciousness. <br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">3. The hypercommunication paradox (how
mobiles and artificial social networks are creating
dis-functionalities and havoc in contemporary societies--rather
than the utopian "happiness" promised).</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">It is unfortunate that we, scholars
devoted to "information study", are not interested collectively in
one of the biggest historical transformations--perhaps the biggest
one-- taking place just in front of our eyes. As I often mention,
we also need focused discussions --chaired ones-- in order to
contemplate these alternative conundrums and not to automatically
fall under the spell of "conundrum 0" of what is (physical)
information. So, given that we have recently incorporated new
organization into the list via IS4SI, let me reiterate the need of
suggestions with potential themes/chairs for future focused
discussions. Please send them publicly in the list or privately to
me offline. Those new in the list may have a glance to the
historical record of fis chaired discussions at:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://fis.sciforum.net/fis-discussion-sessions/">https://fis.sciforum.net/fis-discussion-sessions/</a></div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><b>And very best greetings to Michel
and the emerging FRENCH CHAPTER!! It is great that we count with
further nucleus of organization. </b>I see just now their
promising message...</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Best regards to all,<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">--Pedro</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">PS. just in retrospect, I would ad the
fourth informational conundrum on the"ecology of knowledge" (how
disciplinary and individual limitations might be partially
transcended via the never-ending combinatorics of knowledge). </div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"> El 23/10/2019 a las 14:58, GUEVARA
ERRA RAMON MARIANO escribió:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAHVHHJWhQFZmU3DuXQG7NFpLkFXhzCBj-Ou3Uf9GCaj9fxivtA@mail.gmail.com">
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<div dir="ltr">
<div>Dear all, <br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I want to add a small comment about the units of entropy
[this is related to : "One aspect of Shannon information is
that it requires that the transmissible form of information
be represented in terms of bits and bytes. Indeed, bits and
bytes are the only permissible forms of representation of
Shannon information. The units of Shannon information are
numeric of indefinite magnitude, are they not? As numeric
units, Shannon units are unbounded in scale and are unlimited
in scope. This fact that Shannon information can represent
unbounded scales (magnitudes) is one key element of the wildly
successful theory." ]</div>
<div>I found that comment very interesting and I thought about
the relation with thermodynamics. <br>
</div>
<div>Indeed, Gibbs (or Boltzmann ) entropy is related to Shannon
entropy, as it was shown by Landauer and others. They are
actually proportional. If this is the case, we can think of
entropy as having units as in S = k log N, the famous
Boltzmann formula. The units are J/K. It means that changes in
information (actually erasing information) leads to generation
of heat. It is also interesting that information depends on
the scale used to calculate it. For example, we can calculate
the entropy in a DNA molecule in terms of its nucleotids the
same as we can calculate the entropy of an English text. But
we can also calculate the entropy at a smaller spatial scale,
and they are not the same. Actually entropy is ill defined
even in statistical mechanics, where we need to know the size
of the cells in phase space. If I remember well this gives an
infinite amount of entropy for an ideal gas. But then we
consider cells given by the quantum mechanical uncertainty in
phase space (dp dx proportional to Planck constant h for one
dimension) and entropy becomes finite. <br>
</div>
<div> <br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Oct 21, 2019 at 4:19
PM Karl Javorszky <<a
href="mailto:karl.javorszky@gmail.com"
moz-do-not-send="true">karl.javorszky@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>This is Part Two of the Letter to Jerry ("Shannon and
the Tautomat")</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm
0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif""><span lang="EN-GB"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt
36pt;line-height:normal;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif""><i><span
style="font-size:14pt" lang="EN-GB">Does the
same hypothesis, the same critical concept, apply to
the neighboring concept of
real scientific information, that is, the natural
forms of scientific
information as used by working scientists
(physicists, engineers, chemists,
biologists, physicians, ecologists, and other
specialists)? Is this a conundrum?
Or, it merely a matter of "getting the physics
right”?<span></span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm
0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif""><span
style="font-size:14pt" lang="EN-GB"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm
0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif""><span lang="EN-GB">In
the last few generations I had the enjoyment to watch,
there was a
movement to the<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm
0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif""><span lang="EN-GB"><span> </span>subjectification
of reality. There
is less talk nowadays about the Principle to which one
has to subject himself.
If the Great Idea, which is independent of today’s
small despairs and hopes,
goes through dead bodies to show us its supreme
merits, it is received with
more suspicion than in my parents’ and grandparents’
times. Similarly, it used
to be that Physics rules supreme. After the
discoveries of the last centuries,
it was natural that the measuring scientists believed
they had figured out the
answers. in actual fact, it seems, Physics is subject
to Mathematics is subject
to Logic is subject to Philosophy is subject to
Physiology is subject to Regulation
Theory (formerly known as Theology). No,
unfortunately, it is now the theory of
Physics that has to re-adjust to the facts coming from
life sciences, just like
these had to give up long-held dogmata after being
repeatedly shown facts of
evidence. The table has turned now. The fact is that
you cannot procreate
unless some circumstances are ideal. The requirements
of maintaining an ideal
surrounding leads to requirements relating to ordered
changes in the
environment (that the changes that come – e.g. by tide
and daylight rhythms –
will happen in an ordered way, where all the rules
that come from <i>a=a </i>are
observed) and that the elements are complying with the
changes in the
surrounding environment. Therefore the surrounding
environment has to be made
up such that it obeys laws that govern well ordered
assemblies that undergo
changes. Sorting pictures the ranking of elements of a
set according to a
property (e.g. being well prepared for
cold/drought/predators, etc.)<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm
0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif""><span lang="EN-GB">Sorting
things around and reordering them again, and watching
the
patterns they make as they follow the rules of
combinatorics, one discovers
that whatever small thing it is that consists of two
parts, in an idealised
assembly, under external influences the elements will
group up, spontaneously,
because it is in their nature to react so. Please
watch the exciting life of
elements of a set while being reordered. One can
educate himself massively on
the subject of ‘order’ by playing with his tautomat.
Like playing with a
general version of the Rubik cube. <span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm
0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif""><span lang="EN-GB">Had
our culture allowed concepts of individuality of
elements as the
basis of Logic and therefore of Arithmetic and all her
descendants, we would
live in a different society. It could not have
happened before our times
anyway, because one needs computers to delineate and
concretise the concepts
that we discuss. We have now the technical means to
sing about the heroics of
the little individual Dinge an sich; what we need now
is the inner permission
to be curious. Some songs will sound familiar to
professionals: there are
charms, up and down jumpers, spinners, bosoms, muons
and some more. The
individual Dinge are quite flexible: in dependence of
external influences, they
will match up with distinctly separate gangs of other
individual Dinge,
therefore taking part in several great adventures. The
problem is that you do
not need to excavate a huge circular tunnel with the
circumference of a great
number of kilometres, so a small city’s worth of
well-paid professionals will
not earn their bread, once people say, well one can
figure that out much
cheaper! Bring me <i>n</i> urns and <i>n</i> balls,
<i>d </i>colors, some
robots and a few scribes and you will see what
particles build up a unit (the
term <i>particle </i>in itself is an authoritarian
one, imposing identity on
the object named by suggesting it is a part, a small
one, of a greater Ding. It
is otherwise: the greater is built up of the parts,
not the smaller gets
created by misadventures of the Whole. Let us stay
with Kant, it is the Ding an
sich, but now, ready for a spin out in the world,
painted in two colors. These
coloured things team up for some moments for some
tasks, and some of them stay
together for very long, but the world is not a
collection of fragments of a
broken Ultimate Whole.)<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm
0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif""><span lang="EN-GB"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt
36pt;line-height:normal;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif""><i><span
style="font-size:14pt" lang="EN-GB">By the way,
I would argue that the clarity of the status of
matter, i.e., the chemical
table of elements and their compositions, augmented
by a huge range of physical
measurements that span variables from all physical
units of measure, is vastly
clearer than any theory of physics.<span></span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt
36pt;line-height:normal;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif""><i><span
style="font-size:14pt" lang="EN-GB">Does not the
theory of wave mechanics emanate from the physics of
atoms and composites? Or,
shall we simply agree that the relationships from
between physical theories
form a “which came first, the chicken or the egg?”;</span></i><i><span
style="font-size:13.5pt" lang="EN-GB"> “The union
of units unite the unity."</span></i><i><span
style="font-size:14pt" lang="EN-GB"><span></span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm
0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif""><span lang="EN-GB"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm
0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif""><span lang="EN-GB">The
chemical elements are logical archetypes. That they
exist and that
they have such characteristics, which allow them to be
grouped in several ways
into types, is beyond any question. They are part of
the setup. <span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm
0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif""><span lang="EN-GB">Let
us discuss a large warehouse with many items that are
subject to
seasonal fluctuations of demand. The inner logistics
of the warehouse has to
keep up with optimising the retrieval costs by
re-arranging the contents such
that the most often sold product shall be the closest
to the packaging area.
Now we state two hypothesises: 1) if the warehouse is
not optimised, pileups,
traffic jams, are to be expected among delivery boys
fetching the merchandise,
2) the actions of optimising the warehouse contribute
to the inner traffic of
the warehouse, and by that means cause pileups,
traffic jams, are to be
expected among delivery boys fetching the merchandise.
The quantity and the
quality (type, constituents) of the pileups will
differ, but pileups will come
into existence. Some points in space are more sought
after than other points
(entrance and exit of the warehouse). The pileups are
distinguishable. These
are what is called chemical elements. We are playing
presently with interference
patterns coming from the two differing sub-segments of
the common space, but
arranging playing-card type pictures of triangles
intersecting each other is a
very time-consuming hobby. Anyone interested in
naturally generated hiccups and
pileups in theoretical space?<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm
8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif""><span lang="EN-GB"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm
8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif""><span lang="EN-GB">Now
the time has come to go beyond
answering your questions and offering a concept which
can clarify the relation
between the special case (Shannon) and the general
system. This relates to the
sadly neglected topic of the cuts.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm
8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif""><span lang="EN-GB">As
we have learnt that 5 is 1+1+1+1+1, we
have seen this demonstrated on the number line, with
cuts creating the unit
distances. Then we have learnt that 2+3=5. We have
seen two and then three
units placed alongside each other and we have counted
that these are indeed
five. What we neglected to ask, is the following: what
happened to that noble
and valiant Cut of the Second Class that formerly
separated the Two from the
Three? Had it been demoted to a simple, unimportant,
common Cut First Class?
Does this little inexactitude not come back and hunt
us as a mysterious vanity
of Nature?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm
8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif""><span lang="EN-GB">Shannon
keeps the deep silence of one who
has ridden roughshod across the Society of Cuts. Not
so us.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm
8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif""><span lang="EN-GB">We
account for the cuts very exactly,
because it is them who determine the structure of the
set. If you have a Cut of
Class {(2,(7,4,3),/insert funny notation here/, etc. }
(that is a cut that
separates two from among seven of which 4 are in 1
more group and 3 in 2 more
groups) being different from a Cut of Class
{8,(11,7,0,5)}, then you can keep
count of the cuts and keeping count of the states of
the set is more or less
superfluous. If you have a usual distribution of the
types of cuts, then the
actual measurement (experience) can be compared to
that, on the level of the
messages about cuts, which more or less exactly
describes the state of the set.
The additional advantage of bookkeeping the cuts is
that they translate into
First Class cuts, if the need arises to become
linearised. If we play with 136
puppets (as is the most reasonable way to do), Shannon
has 136 cuts that are
all alike. The tautomat generates a varied diversity
of cuts that are a
description of the set’s state. If we match each state
of the tautomat to one
of the states of Shannon, we see that in the intervals
1-32 and 97-135ff
Shannon has more alternatives to carry messages
expressed by the state of the
set that numbers <i>n</i> elements. Within the range
of 33-96 however, with a
peak at 67, up to 3.4 times more alternatives are
there for the state to have
states in its form (reading) as a complete assembly
than as a sequenced
collection of elements. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm
8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif""><span lang="EN-GB">Information
is a description of the
remaining alternatives. The remaining alternatives do
not exist in this moment
/they remain/. This is the reason the birth of the
concept is so much of
endless pain and futile efforts. In logic it is
strictly forbidden to talk
about things that do not exist. Maybe one can help
with the idea that we talk
about the cuts, because the cuts do exist. Their
biodiversity has not been
addressed yet. The cuts appear to be the origami
mechanism that unfolds from a
linear order into an elaborate composition. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm
8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif""><span lang="EN-GB"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm
8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif""><span lang="EN-GB">The
last point is a reassuring thought: we
already do have a very detailed table of all possible
collections of cuts – of group
boundaries – which come from the elements’
belonging-to to cycles. It looks
promising to investigate, how the collection of cuts
does not change if the set
is linearised. It appears that the cuts are the actual
carriers of information,
as they detail, which alternatives remain, and this
independently of linear or
spatial neighbourhood.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm
8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif""><span lang="EN-GB">Thank
you for addressing by your questions
some interesting topics.<a
name="m_4414160887436725937__GoBack"
moz-do-not-send="true"></a> </span></p>
</div>
<div>Karl<br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es">pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/">http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/</a>
------------------------------------------------- </pre>
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