Reading up a little on information theory, I came across this instructive exchange at:

http://ask.metafilter.com/57039/Is-the-Universe-made-of-information

Question: 'Is the universe made of information? I'm talking about when "information" is NOT used to describe data exchanged between sentient beings. I keep hearing about how "the universe is information" or "the universe is a quantum computer." '

One of the answers: 'There is no difference. Information is information, whether exchanged between sentient beings or not. What is a sentient being, anyway?

'If you think about the world for a moment, what is it?

'The stuff you see around you every day is made out of various chemical compounds. Chemical compounds are made of atoms. Atoms are made of subatomic particles such as protons, neutrons and electrons. Subatomic particles are made of quarks and leptons.

'What are quarks and leptons made out of? Modern physics doesn't have a good answer. Practically, they are just probability density functions that have certain parameters. For a mathematically inclined person, it is reasonable to think of them as collections of numbers that get plugged into the wave function. Numbers are information, so one way to think about the "fundamental" nature of the universe is information flow.'

Comments

[Michael Prescott]

A little more from the same thread:

====(begin quote)

I started to think about all this, recently, when I read an interview with Seth Lloyd, author of Programming the Universe (which I haven't read), in the July/August issue of "Technology Review"

The interviewer mentions Lloyd's claim that "the universe is indistinguishable from a quantum computer." To which Lloyd responds...

"I know it sounds crazy ... but it's factually the case. We couldn't built quantum computers unless the universe was quantum and computing. We can build such machines because the universe is storing and processing INFORMATION in the quantum realm." [emphasis added]

He later adds...

"How can [an electron] have information associated with it? The electron can either be here or there. So it registers a bit of information, one of two possibilities: on or off."

=====(end quote)

[Matt]

You might find this link interesting, as well.
Pretty much the same point.
http://www.theuniversesolved.com/theuniversesolved/blog/post/2012/09/The-Ultimate-Destiny-of-the-Nature-of-Matter-is-Something-Very-Familiar.aspx

[no one]

Hey Michael and Matt (especially Matt), I really didn't mean to stomp all over your information hippo - like I'd have to be a brontosaurus to stomp on a hippo.

I just can't get my head around the whole notion of data = life and maybe I became too reactive. When you deal with "information" all day long it's more fun to think about astral bodies than the same old boring data exchange that is giving you a pain in the neck........just wanted to let you know that I enjoy our information exchanges here and hope that new ideas keep flowing in regardless of some old dinosaur's reaction to them :-)

[Sophie]

I find information theory weird. Surely the intuitively obvious sense of 'information' is something like 'data organised purposively to achieve a coherent statement'. Information must always be 'about' something. And it must be transitive, such that at least one entity can pass it (inform) to at least one other entity. And it must be capable of uptake by the receiving entity. (One might go on along these lines.) What on earth is the point in seeking to define information in terms of matter?

And there must concern to distinguish 'date', and 'information' and 'knowledge', surely? The theory of knowledge has a long and noble history, and has done all that in wonderful minutiae. Yet the discussions on the links Michael provided quite blithely use 'data' and 'information' interchangeably. (Am I missing something?)

[Michael Prescott]

Information is not knowledge. Knowledge presupposes awareness. Information doesn't.

For instance, DNA contains information, but it doesn't contain knowledge.

[Joshua Cearley]

Minor hypothetical situation:

If there is a universal store of information for everything, and observations show entropy is always increasing, would it mean that entropy is a measurement of how "full" local particles are? The universe could be expanding because it needs more space to store data, similar to how a datacenter adds more hard drives to keep holding on to data.

[Matt Rouge]

no one,

The above Matt is not I, lol. I am the Matt of the red variety. But Matt's link was a good one!

||I just can't get my head around the whole notion of data = life and maybe I became too reactive. When you deal with "information" all day long it's more fun to think about astral bodies than the same old boring data exchange that is giving you a pain in the neck........just wanted to let you know that I enjoy our information exchanges here and hope that new ideas keep flowing in regardless of some old dinosaur's reaction to them :-)||

I think it's a case of a metaphor not having appeal. Michael pointed out that "information" or "data" can sound cold and remind people of materialism.

Michael's take and mine are a bit different: his metaphor cleaves more closely to computer information; mine is closer to Platonic forms. Although I use the term "information" too as it is not inaccurate, but doing so conjures the same negative connotations. But they are nothing more than connotations.

To say that we are composed of information is no "colder" than to say we are composed of leptons and baryons. Contrariwise, "consciousness" or "Source" only seems warm and fuzzy by dint of their connotations.

A lot of the arguing in the previous thread seemed to me to be not of a philosophical nature but rather of an emotional nature: "consciousness" just feels nice.

I think people need to dig deeper into what consciousness *is* on a mundane level first, then on a spiritual level. People were saying things like, "No information could exist without consciousness." But DNA, which is clearly and unambiguously information, existed even before there was any sentient life on this planet.

Now, you can *argue* that consciousness existed before that, was the origin of this and that, and that's fine--but you have to *argue* that and not just state it because it feels "nice." Saying that you just *feel* that consciousness is primary and so do many others is not really different than a Christian saying that s/he just *feels* that Jesus is Lord. That's faith, not philosophy.

The real insight in saying that everything can be reduced to information is, I think, this: This is not a Universe of things that have properties; it is a Universe of only properties. Further, at base, those properties are pure abstractions *without* any qualia whatsoever. As Michael has pointed out, an electron is ultimately a probability distribution. It is not an "object" that you can grasp with your senses directly or even with tools such as an (electron) microscope.

Everything we experience is composite. There is even a term in Buddhism, sankhara (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sankhara), which means "'that which has been put together and 'that which puts together.'" Sankhara-dukkha is one of the three main types of pain, which has to do with being a conditioned being. And there is the term "anatta," or "not-self" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatta): "In the early texts, the Buddha commonly uses the word in the context of teaching that all things perceived by the senses (including the mental sense) are not really "I" or "mine", and for this reason one should not cling to them."

So, in contrast to the feel-good concept of "consciousness," Buddhism has taken a very sophisticated and, frankly, rather negative approach to psychology with a focus on the illusory, indefinite, and composite nature of things. In this context, the reduction of all things to information is a very pertinent concept.

I don't think Buddhism gets everything right, but having been acquainted with its concepts from a fairly early age (I started studying it at age 13), I'm comfortable with an emergent consciousness as opposed to a controlling consciousness.

If you look at how mundane consciousness actually works, I think you can intuit its relationship with information. For example, right now I can see across the room the chest of drawers with incense and a lighter on top of it. Those are presumably "things" there, but I can close my eyes and still see them in my imagination. I can imagine going over there and lighting the incense, and so on. Now, even without the "things," I can still work with the properties in my mind just as if the "things" were still there. That is because the information content of those things stays with me to some extent. Doesn't it make the most sense to say that like is working with like in this case? Consciousness is information that is able to manipulate other types of information and also feedback into itself. If consciousness were *not* itself information-based, how would it relate to information?

Just some more food for thought.

[lynn]

The only trouble with it I feel is that, electrons, contained in atoms and present though out the universe, respond to observations with intent it seems. ie. a consciousness ? Lyn x.

[lynn]

Mind you having said that, slit experiments contain a camera. Lyn

[lynn]

It begs the question, how does it know a camera is there, and does there need to be human thought somewhere involved? Lyn

[lynn]

Last post, :). I know that when I predict with tarot cards, I use my thoughts to ask them for an outcome. I also know that I could use stones or anything, I simply have to give them meaning. So I can see in a sense if the man that set up the camera for the blind slit has some thoughts on the outcome of the experiment, this may influence the outcome.

I don't know, something like that. Lyn

[Avery Morrow]

"If you think about the world for a moment, what is it? The stuff you see around you every day is made out of various chemical compounds..." and so on down to quarks.

Totally wrong. The Universe cannot consist of just quarks, because they are quantities with no quality. Science is extremely good at determining quantities of component parts, but cannot tell you the qualities of those parts, other than to break them down into more quantities. Rene Guenon dealt with all of this nearly a century ago.

[Matt Rouge]

||Totally wrong. The Universe cannot consist of just quarks, because they are quantities with no quality.||

Precisely! That's what this whole reality-as-information idea is about.

Seriously, though, what "qualities" could a quark have?

[Sophie]

Michael,

'Information is not knowledge. Knowledge presupposes awareness. Information doesn't.

For instance, DNA contains information, but it doesn't contain knowledge.'

True: Information is not knowledge. I have made the point that it needs to be distinguished from it. But I cannot see that the distinction you offer is valid, for, information being purposive, it, too, presumes awareness. (Information can be said to be data processed for a purpose by an aware entity.) Data, on the other hand, does not presume the processing aware entity: it is observer-neurtral and unprocessed. So it is data, not information, that e.g., DNA can be said to contain.

Questions such as 'whose DNA?' begin the processing of DNA data, and thus the accumulation of information about it.

These (data, information, knowledge) are essential distinctions. They cannot be fudged.

Matt,

Is 'reality' not too loose a concept to be equated with 'information'? There is a dangerous reductionism in such an equation, one that presumes, for instance, that reality is quantifiable. And the fact that perception of reality is necessarily subjective also militates against such an equation.

[Piers]

I'm not convinced that either data or information exist without conscious beings. Imagine a world with no conscious beings left, but a hard drive exists containing 'data' about, let's say, property prices. What is that data? It's actually just an arrangement of molecules. Even if the hard drive were running, so what? Just some electricity and movements of electrons in particular arrangements. Without the ability to decode that into a concept or idea, the data isn't data, but just physical stuff. It's only 'data' if you abstract some meaning to it beyond the physical, and physical stuff can't do that creating of meaning.

The same goes for DNA actually - it is just an arrangement of molecules that produce other molecules. That's not data, that's just physical stuff interacting according to the laws of physics. The particular molecules may be there as a result of the action of long process through time, but that process is a process of interactions of physical stuff. It takes a conscious observer to say that those molecules are effectively 'storing information'.

But I agree it's convenient to call something physical 'data' when it can be understood as such, but that data only exists in a world of conscious beings.

Or can information exist as some abstraction from the physical, some kind of invisible measurement derived from matter existing in an information-realm? Well we know matter exists from direct observation (or at least it sure seems to exist), and the same goes for consciousness, but an invisible realm of abstract quantities? Not sure, although I do tend to think maths is discovered not invented.

I think the existence of maths or indeed information might be evidence for 'the mind of god' or cosmic consciousness. Basically I'm not at all sure it's coherent to say information exists in the absence of mind. And I'm suspicious of this reality-is-information argument, seems like another attempt to define what is in fact a meaningful reality as meaningless and purposeless and non-personal.

[Michael Prescott]

Here are some excerpts from a book I've just started reading, Programming the Universe, by Seth Lloyd, which may help clarify the issue of information existing in and of itself.

===(begin excerpts)

Things, or "its," arise out of information, or "bits." … [An] apple is a good "it." … But how much information does the apple embody? How many bits are there in an apple?… The laws of quantum mechanics, which govern all physical systems, make finite the number of bits required to specify the microscopic state of the apple and its atoms. Each atom, by its position and velocity, registers only a few bits; each nuclear spin in an atom's core registers but a single bit. As a result, the apple contains only a few times more bits than atoms–a few million billion billion zeros and ones.…

All bits are equal in terms of the amount of information they can register. A bit, short for "binary digit," is registered by two distinguishable states–0 or 1, yes or no, heads or tails. Any physical system with two such states registers exactly one bit. A system with more states registers more bits.…

All physical systems register information, and when they evolve dynamically in time, they transform and process that information. If an electron “here” registers a 0 and an electron “there” registers a 1, then when the electrons goes from here to there, it flips its bit. The natural dynamics of a physical system can be thought of as a computation in which a bit not only registers a 0 or a 1 but acts as an instruction: 0 can mean “do this” and 1 can mean “do that.” The significance of a bit depends not just on its value but on how that value affects other bits over time, as part of the continued information processing that makes up the dynamical evolution of the universe.…

The universe is made of bits. Every molecule, atom, and elementary particle registers bits of information. Every interaction between those pieces of the universe processes that information by altering those bits. That is, the universe computes, and because the universe is governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, it computes in an intrinsically quantum-mechanical fashion; its bits are quantum bits. The history of the universe is, in effect, a huge and ongoing quantum computation. The universe is a quantum computer.

What does the universe compute? It computes itself. The universe computes its own behavior. As soon as the universe began, it began computing. At first, the patterns it produced were simple, comprising elementary particles and establishing the fundamental laws of physics. In time, as it processed more and more information, the universe spun out ever more intricate and complex patterns, including galaxies, stars, and planets.… The quantum-computational nature of the universe dictates that the details of the future are intrinsically unpredictable. They can be computed only by a computer the size of the universe itself.

====(end excerpts)

For me, this raises the question: if physical systems register information, where or how is it registered? Lloyd seems to be assuming that the physical systems come first, with information as a property. But it seems to me that one might argue the reverse: that information comes first, and that physical systems do not so much register information as reflect or express it. (Those aren't quite the right words. What I'm getting at is that the universe's computations may be performed at an abstract level of pure information, and the resulting physical forms may be like the shadows in Plato's cave – or like the graphic images on a computer screen, which do not perform computations but are actually the result of underlying, unseen computations.)

Anyway, however you look at it, the term information as used here does not seem to imply or require any sort of conscious observer. This may be counterintuitive, but it's just the way the term is used by specialists in this field.

[Barbara]

If our intuitions are wrong, why the **** are we here?

[Matt Rouge]

Good excerpt, Michael,

I think this is like the Copernican revolution, in which at first, since people are so used to the geocentric view, it's very hard for them to get their head around the heliocentric view. It's literally hard to imagine, and it seems absurd.

But once people start to get it, it becomes very easy to see, and in fact it becomes absurd to think that it was ever viewed otherwise.

[Barbara]

What's more, we've just changed the usual dualism from mind and matter to knowledge and information. Words, words.

[Douglas]

New Scientist is covering just these theories in a special issue this month, including 'does consciousness create matter' and the 'universe is a quantum computer', as well as 'information theory'. It gives equal weight to all theories and doesnt seem to come down in favour of one over the other.

Synchronicity, or was it Michael perusing the latest issue of New Scientist that set this discussion off?

[Ian Wardell]

Strictly speaking information no more exists in a world wholly absent of any minds than money does. Not in books, nor monitors displaying the output of a working computer, not DNA, not tree rings. But scientists have this penchant for continually redefining words! eg energy, evidence, consciousness etc.

But the definition is uninteresting as whichever definition we consider consciousness cannot be derived from it.

[Ian Wardell]

Programming the Universe, by Seth Lloyd

"The universe is made of bits".

As I said before, we cannot derive colours, sounds or smells from bits or information, and it is colours sounds and smells which characterise the external world as we experience it on Earth. I think we should be cautious about taking the scientific story too literally.

[Art]

We are similar to the characters on the Ship's holodeck on the Starship Enterprise. Each one of us is individual but ultimately linked to the ship's computer.

"I remember understanding the others here.. as if the others here were a part of me too. As if all of it was just a vast expression of me. But it wasn't just me, it was .. gosh this is so hard to explain.. it was as if we were all the same. As if consciousness were like a huge being. The easiest way to explain it would be like all things are all different parts of the same body."
excerpt from Michelle M's NDE description, http://www.nderf.org/NDERF/NDE_Experiences/michelle_m's_nde.htm

"And it became very clear to me that all the Higher Selves are connected as one being, all humans are connected as one being, we are actually the same being, different aspects of the same being."
from Mellen Benedict's NDE description,
http://near-death.com/experiences/reincarnation04.html

"So, for a moment, you see. Relax. Don't take yourself so seriously! All is well. We are forever one."
excerpt from Riding the Dragon, mystical experiences of scientists,
http://www.issc-taste.org/arc/dbo.cgi?set=expom&id=00070&ss=1

and lastly, "My awareness was somehow intensified to a level that is not humanly possible. "I" was the awareness I was experiencing and that is the part that I find frustrating to communicate. I had the realization that I was everywhere at the same time...and I mean everywhere. I knew that everything is perfect and happening according to some divine plan, regardless of all the things we see as wrong with the world."
from Carl Turner's mystical experience,
http://www.beyondreligion.com/su_personal/dreamsvisions-kundalini.htm

[Michael Prescott]

More from Seth Lloyd's book, Programming the Universe:

==== (excerpt begins)

“But doesn't information have to mean something?” asked a student, troubled.

“You're right that when we think of information we normally associate it with meaning,” I answered. “But the meaning of ‘meaning’ is not clear.”…

Meaning is defined only relative to a scheme of interpretation....

Computers respond to languages called computer languages (Java, C, Fortran, BASIC). Such languages consist of simple commands–such as PRINT or ADD–that can be strung together to instruct the computer to perform complicated tasks. If you adopt Wittgenstein's perspective that the meaning of a piece of information is to be found in the action this information provokes, the meeting of a computer program written in a particular computer language is to be found in the actions the computer performs as it interprets that program. All the computer is doing is performing the sequences of elementary logic operations, such as AND, NOT, and COPY… The computer program unambiguously instructs the computer to perform a particular sequence of these operations. The “meaning” of a computer program is us universal, in the sense that two computers following the same instructions will perform the same set of information-processing operations and obtain the same result.…

Although meaning is hard to define, it is one of the most powerful features of information. The basic idea of information is that one physical system–a digit, a letter, a word, a sentence–can be put into correspondence with another physical system.

====(end of excerpt)

[Michael Prescott]

Ian wrote, "Strictly speaking information no more exists in a world wholly absent of any minds than money does. Not in books, nor monitors displaying the output of a working computer, not DNA, not tree rings."

If the genetic code isn't information, what is it? Is there another term you would use to describe the contents of a DNA molecule?

If information doesn't exist in the absence of minds, then must we necessarily create information? Let's say we learn the age of the universe. Did we create that information, or did we discover it? If we discovered it, then it already existed.

How about the laws of math and logic? Did we create them, or discover them? I would argue that they are discovered - that 2+2 = 4, and A is not non-A, long before there were any human beings who noticed these truths.

I think there may be some confusion between the terms "information" and "meaning" (see comment at 1:36 above for more on this). Seth Lloyd offers an example I didn't quote. If you ask, "May I have a piece of cake?" and the other person replies, "Yes," then the answer is meaningful and it provokes an action on your part (you eat the cake). OTOH, if the other person answers, "Thirty-two," the answer is not meaningful in this context and provokes no action with regard to the cake. Both answers are information (both can be reduced to bits, or, in the case of the first answer, a single bit), but only the first is meaningful information.

[Sophie]

'If you adopt Wittgenstein's perspective that the meaning of a piece of information is to be found in the action this information provokes ...'
Yes: an interpreter processes information by assigning a meaning to it. (The meaning of an item of information is made by what someone does with it. There is not intrinsic meaning of an item of information. It can be acted upon to make numerous meanings.)

' Although meaning is hard to define, it is one of the most powerful features of information.'
No: Meaning is not 'a feature' of information. Meaning is assigned to information by the action (use, interpretation, etc.) it provokes.

[Sophie]

Ian wrote, 'Strictly speaking information no more exists in a world wholly absent of any minds than money does. Not in books, nor monitors displaying the output of a working computer, not DNA, not tree rings.'

Ian is absolutely right: Information is information once it registers on a mind as itself. Absent any mind, it cannot register as itself, so it has no locus of existence. Mind has to be the a priori concept.

Michael said:
1. 'Let's say we learn the age of the universe. Did we create that information, or did we discover it? If we discovered it, then it already existed.'

If you discover the age of the universe, you have discovered a truth, a fact. It does not need you to act upon it to give it meaning. It has intrinsic meaning. It is not information of which meaning is yet to be made.

2. 'If you ask, "May I have a piece of cake?" and the other person replies, "Yes," then the answer is meaningful and it provokes an action on your part (you eat the cake).'

Michael, surely you are not saying that either 'may I have a piece of cake?' or 'yes' are information? Both are already statements, so they are already sequences that make explicit meanings.

[Ian Wardell]

I don't know a great deal about DNA, so let's consider some other information coming about through natural means. Consider tree rings. The information as to the age of the tree only exists if there are conscious beings who realise that there is an exact covariance between the number of rings and the age of the tree in years. Otherwise you just have a tree with rings with no conscious being knowing the age of the tree.

Or consider a book written in some ancient language that no-one now knows. Hence no-one is obtaining any information from that book. So my stance would be that the information doesn't exist.

OK I accept that scientists might well use a broader definition. But I think information originally meant to *inform*?

Without anyone being informed there are just physical patterns in the world.

As for mathematics. I strongly suspect that it is *not* a mere invention of the human mind. I believe that mathematics is discovered. In fact mathematics is really fascinating. The fact that physical laws are written in the language of mathematics and of a peculiar elegant kind. But that's another topic!

[Sophie]

IIan,

'Or consider a book written in some ancient language that no-one now knows. Hence no-one is obtaining any information from that book. So my stance would be that the information doesn't exist.'

If you know that the book contains information in a language that no-one knows, then how can you come to the conclusion that the information does not exist? Surely the most you can conclude is that the information in the book is not accessible to you, nor to anyone else.

[Ian Wardell]

If the arrangement of letters in a book don't convey any meaning to anyone, not now and not ever, then how does it differ from any arbitrary or random arrangement of letters?

But as I say it depends on how you define information. Clearly some people eg scientists, have a much broader definition.

[lynn]

I don't think I'm sold, and like Barbara says "words "words", whether they are described as bits, or atoms, electrons etc. the quantum level doesn't appear to hold information, but react to an observer. One that changes its structure to become something else.

Mellon Thomas experiences and others, seem to relate to the fact that people are all one, connected to the source. I see it that way too.

Not to say we can't hypothesize on these things. Lyn x.

[Matt Rouge]

Sophie, you wrote,

||True: Information is not knowledge. I have made the point that it needs to be distinguished from it. But I cannot see that the distinction you offer is valid, for, information being purposive, it, too, presumes awareness. (Information can be said to be data processed for a purpose by an aware entity.) Data, on the other hand, does not presume the processing aware entity: it is observer-neurtral and unprocessed. So it is data, not information, that e.g., DNA can be said to contain.||

I think these may be your own distinction, and I don't think it's a useful one, as it bases the status of the information/data on the capabilities/actions of the observers and not on anything intrinsic to the information/data. Thus, if ETs find a copy of a Michael Prescott thriller on a distant planet but can't read it, it's just "data"; but if they can somehow decipher it and be thrilled by its appealing characters and clever plot twists, then it's "information"? That doesn't seem to be a very helpful distinction to me. It would like having two names for food--one for before it was eaten and one for after--and acting as if they were essentially two different things.

||Questions such as 'whose DNA?' begin the processing of DNA data, and thus the accumulation of information about it.

These (data, information, knowledge) are essential distinctions. They cannot be fudged.||

Knowledge is something totally different and *is* about the observer or knower. "Justified true belief" is a pretty common definition of knowledge. Information can be untrue or not believed, but it is still information. The criterion of "justified" is contextual and not intrinsic to the information.

||Is 'reality' not too loose a concept to be equated with 'information'?||

Not really. I'm saying that "all that is" is reducible to information/form.

||There is a dangerous reductionism in such an equation,||

What is dangerous about it?

||one that presumes, for instance, that reality is quantifiable.||

I differ with Michael (though I don't think it is all that deep a difference) in that I don't think information need consist of quanta or be reducible to binary relationships. I *do* believe that complete information about *everything* exists forever (i.e., Akashic records), including subjective states like thoughts, emotions, qualia, etc. My thought is that it all doesn't come down to 1s and 0s since, per an example I gave on the preceding post, the number pi is conceptually pretty easy to grasp (the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter) but is not perfectly expressible in binary any other integer-based system.

||And the fact that perception of reality is necessarily subjective also militates against such an equation.||

No, since the subjective information is fully a part of the system as well.

[Matt Rouge]

||Ian is absolutely right: Information is information once it registers on a mind as itself. Absent any mind, it cannot register as itself, so it has no locus of existence. Mind has to be the a priori concept.||

We have an equivocation issue in this whole debate. The sense in which Michael and I are using the word "information" is not necessarily the same as that used by a given philosopher or information theorist, so our propositions can't be dismissed simply by saying, "That's not what information is."

Sometimes insights come in the form of expanding definitions, concepts, and our understanding of things. For example, our scientific understand of light has gradually increased over the past several thousand years. In the 20th century, we learned that light has a dual particle/wave nature, which would have seemed unthinkable to someone in Newton's day. But it's still the same light.

Thus, the first new insight is that information can and does exist autonomously in the absence of a mind and indeed without an identifiable "informer" or "informee." The second new insight is that everything is reducible to information. It is the true "monad," and if you look at Leibniz "Monadology" with "monad" meaning "unit of information," it starts to make some real sense.

The objection that qualia cannot be derived from information won't work, since qualia are a big mystery anyway. No philosophy or scientific explanation has even come close to explaining qualia, invalidating a philosophical construct because it can't do so is unreasonable.

The idea that reducing things to information is cold or "like materialism" is also not on target, I believe. In Michael's version, you have 1s and 0s or something similar; the analogy with computer technology might strike some as mechanical, but that is nothing more than a connotation, an image. We know for a fact things in the material world are made up of subatomic particles. Does that make life seem cold and mechanical? I think at one point it did strike people this way, but we've got used to the idea.

My version is more like Platonic realism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_realism) combined with insights from quantum mechanics, parapsychology, Buddhism, and many other sources. The basics really are quite ancient. I think what we are seeing now is that cutting-edge science and parapsychology are validating these ancient insights.

[Matt Rouge]

||It begs the question, how does it know a camera is there, and does there need to be human thought somewhere involved? Lyn||

In quantum mechanics there are found many such results, in which particles/waves seem to have to "know" what to do. Things start to make more sense when you perceive them as fiat systems in which information is following a program.

E.g., there are many video games in which, if an avatar goes off one side of the screen it will pop back on the other side of the screen (Asteroids being an early example). The rule is arbitrary. It makes no sense in terms of physics but it does in terms of game play and is quite easy to get used to.

In the double-slit experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment), we found light behaving in ways that defied the classical paradigm. Ultimately, the rules of nature appear to be as arbitrary as those of a video game.

[lynn]

Welll, Matty, we are all hypothesizing here. the double slit experiments although appear arbitrary, just show that science is still discovering.Lets face it, they don't know it all.

Using tarot cards, although like computer games to some, have given me legitimate results. As I said, I ask what information I want from them, and it makes sense to me that the phenomena must work within a quantum universe. So what is a small universe in my room, simply obeys the rules of a larger one. How I see it, Lyn x.

[lynn]

Ahh, there's that word again, I'm potentiating them. :). Lyn x.

[Matt Rouge]

Lynn,

I don't see where we actually disagree. I read Tarot a lot too, and I always feel that your observations on Tarot and how it works jibe with my own.

[Michael Prescott]

Sophie wrote, "Michael, surely you are not saying that either 'may I have a piece of cake?' or 'yes' are information? Both are already statements, so they are already sequences that make explicit meanings."

Yes, I'm saying that both utterances are information. In this case they are meaningful information. If the answer to the question were a non sequitur like "Thirty-two" or "Giraffe," it would also be information, but not meaningful in that context.

Information and meaning are two distinct things. Information and knowledge are also two distinct things, as are information and awareness. That's my understanding, anyway. But I'm still testing the waters of this arcane subject.

[Simon Oakes]

"Information and meaning are two distinct things"

I'm not sure it's that simple, Michael. The problem with physical theories of information, such as Claude Shannon's, is that they cannot capture the distinction between sense and nonsense. In other words, a complete theory of information needs to incorporate the factors that make information effective or useful i.e. meaningful. Or to put it more simply, information is more akin to semantics rather than just syntax.

If I can throw in another twopennysworth here this, to my mind, is a wonderful interview on this subject with one of the leading theorists in this area, the mathematician Gregory Chaitin:

http://closertotruth.com/video-profile/Does-Information-Create-the-Cosmos-Gregory-Chaitin-/1437

Cheers everyone

Simon

[Simon Oakes]

Just to add Chaitin in this interview supports Michael's binary view of information, but makes clear that in his view seeing information as in any way fundamental to the make up of the cosmos is akin to a form of philosophical idealism.

Simon

[Juan]

I have two ideas for this discussion.

First, Seth Lloyd said that we could not build quantum computers if the universe was not a quantum computer. But by the same reasoning we could say that we could not build classical computers if the universe was not a classical computer, and we know that the universe can not be a classical computer because classical physics fails in the very small and the very large. What I mean is that it is true that classical and quantum computers capture something about the nature of reality, but they are not the ultimate reality, because there will always be more comprehensive theories that leave back to previous theories. I mean, I do not think either quantum mechanics, information theory or holographic paradigm have the final word on the nature of reality and represent the ultimate reality. So do not think that information is the ultimate reality. I doubt we will ever know the ultimate reality.

And second, John Searle in his arguments against strong AI distinguishes between intrinsic and extrinsic properties. The intrinsic properties are properties that objects have independently of an observer, such as mass, electric charge, shape, etc. The extrinsic properties are properties of objects relative to an observer, such as price, the sentimental value, etc. So I would argue that the information is an extrinsic property, because it does not exist in the natural world, but that only occurs in the relationship between the natural world and an observer, wrote Ian. Thus, without an observer a single DNA is a molecule that makes certain things under natural laws, because observers can only say that DNA carries information. Sure, we can say that DNA had information before we discover it, but this is just a figure of speech, because information comes from the interaction between the natural world and observers. So the information can not be the ultimate reality, because it is derivable from matter and mind, which leads to traditional ideas about ultimate reality.

[Ian Wardell]

Matt Rouge
"The objection that qualia cannot be derived from information won't work, since qualia are a big mystery anyway. No philosophy or scientific explanation has even come close to explaining qualia, invalidating a philosophical construct because it can't do so is unreasonable".

I do not remotely agree that either qualia, or more generally consciousness, is a big mystery. The mind/body problem is only a problem as consciousness does not seem to be reducible to the brain or its processes. Or more generally if we assume that brains produce consciousness we have a huge problem because none of the various positions are remotely satisfactory.

[Sophie]

Matt Rouge,

'I think these may be your own distinction, and I don't think it's a useful one, as it bases the status of the information/data on the capabilities/actions of the observers and not on anything intrinsic to the information/data.'

Err... hardly. These are the classic core distinctions of all approaches to the theory of knowledge. What makes you think that there is 'anything intrinsic' in data and information, other than that each is itself?

'Thus, if ETs find a copy of a Michael Prescott thriller on a distant planet but can't read it, it's just "data"; but if they can somehow decipher it and be thrilled by its appealing characters and clever plot twists, then it's "information"? That doesn't seem to be a very helpful distinction to me.'

But that's your distinction, not mine. If someone cannot read Michael's thriller, then they cannot decide that it is data. At most, they can guess that it might be.

'Knowledge is something totally different and *is* about the observer or knower. "Justified true belief" is a pretty common definition of knowledge.'

I don't know if this is a common definition, but it is a pretty awful one. For one thing, there are numerous categories of knowledge, among them the two ends of the spectrum: 'a hypothesis of which the truth is affirmable and falsifiable' and 'intuitive truth'.

'||Is 'reality' not too loose a concept to be equated with 'information'?||
Not really. I'm saying that "all that is" is reducible to information/form.
||There is a dangerous reductionism in such an equation,||

What is dangerous about it?'

The danger is in that your statement freezes as a premise that cannot be accommodated in a sequence of reasoning. Watch:

'All that is' is 'information/form'.
'I' am some of the things that are 'all that is'.

Now you can go nowhere (although I have provided the necessary distributed middle) because you have equated 'all that is' and 'information/form'. You cannot conclude that 'I' = 'all that is' and 'information/form'. So you are deep into reductio ad absurdum territory.

[Sophie]

Michael,

' Yes, I'm saying that both utterances are information. In this case they are meaningful information.'

I put it to you that what you are really saying is that the two sentences each have a meaning. You are not categorising them as information at all.

[Barbara]

Sophie, the complex data you are so cleverly and expertly providing is only partly turning into knowledge in my feeble brain, but intuitively I love it. So it's good stuff, qualia wise. And qualia is what the human universe is all set up to explore, I reckon.

[Sophie]

Barbara,

Here's to qualia! :)

[Bruce Siegel]

Just a brief thought from a member of the loyal opposition. :o)

"The universe is a quantum computer."

Many of us feel that what's most fundamental about the universe is that it is alive and conscious. Computers are neither.

Seems to me that saying that the universe is a computer, stems from the same sort of thinking that leads to the conclusion that a human is a machine.

Sure--in either case, there are parallels aplenty to tickle the intellect. But is this the sort of approach that helps us to understand our lives and our world?

Doesn't work for me!

[Michael Prescott]

"I put it to you that what you are really saying is that the two sentences each have a meaning. You are not categorising them as information at all."

Meaning is a (possible) property of information. Not all information has meaning, but anything that has meaning is information.

Your objection equates to: "You are saying that two apples each have roundness. You are not categorizing them as physical objects at all."

But roundness is a property of (some) objects. Without an object there can be no roundness. Without information, there can be no meaning.

[Matt Rouge]

||The danger is in that your statement freezes as a premise that cannot be accommodated in a sequence of reasoning. Watch:

'All that is' is 'information/form'.
'I' am some of the things that are 'all that is'.

Now you can go nowhere (although I have provided the necessary distributed middle) because you have equated 'all that is' and 'information/form'. You cannot conclude that 'I' = 'all that is' and 'information/form'. So you are deep into reductio ad absurdum territory.||

Perhaps I'm dense, but I don't see it.

All that is is information.
You are part of all that is.
You are information.

Problem?

[Sophie]

Matt Rouge,

Sure is a problem! Consider 'information' and whether or when it is an undistributed term in your construction. If 'information' is undistributed in your first premise and (purported) conclusion, then 'you' is also 'all that is', in the light of your first premise. And that is inconsistent with your second premise, where 'You' is only 'part of all that it'. If you modify your conclusion to 'You' are 'part of all that is information', you are left with only a series of three synthetic statements, the last of which is not a conclusion derived from the first two because it cannot be derived from them.