Re: AAT yahoo group more than 500 members

Tim Tyler <seemysig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

John Wilkins wrote:

My point is that while all information may be physically instantiated
(as I am not a Platonist), there is no physical quantity that exactly
equates to information. Long ago, back in the 60s, Brillouin showed that
information had to have a physical (thermodynamic) cost, but not all
thermodynamic costs are informational.

Well, this is disputed by Ed Fredkin. He would argue that the
whole universe in informational - so /all/ thermodynamic costs are
therefore informational. He reformulates the fundamental units
into space, time, and bits.

So does Wheeler, and that is a consistent (albeit IMO useless) position
to take. But if we take that literally, then there is no reason to
privilege gemes or memes as information, because this must be true of
all things. So their informational nature is irrelevant (and you might
as well start calling it "causation" anyway).

Confusion physical quantities, which is a causal notion, with information,
which is a semantic or signal-based notion is a confusion of categories.

Fredkin's idea is that physics is fundamentally informational in
nature.

E.g. we may all be living in a computer simulation, with everything
represented as bits - including all the signals.

Of course, this is not information in Shannon's "signal" sense,
but information as data - irrespective of its "suprise value".

It would indeed be unreasonable to Shannon information to
weigh something - e.g. because it is observer specific - but
Shannon-information is not the only way of quantifying bits:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_information

It is to physical information one should turn if you want
a sensible answer to the quesiton of how much a bit weighs.

I look forward to ever receiving that sensible answer (this is not aimed
at you: I have been asking folk for this for 15 years).

--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Philosophy
University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."

.

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