Re: Where does the information come from?

The creationist view of things is essentially an informatics view
also. Information consists of chosen alternatives. Like a letter can
be either of 26 alternatives, or a bit can be 0 or 1. The assertion
inherent in a creationist view of things is that basically all exists
of information. So it means that all exists of things which could have
been otherwise alternatively. Take a look at the table of chemical
elements and you can easily see that it can be done to interpret each
and every element as being a thing which could alternatively have been
something else. So we can see that the view that everything consists
of information is easily meritable.

The question where does information come from can be answered to ways.
1. it is a copy of other information
2. it is created from nothing by choosing

Philosophically when it is true that either alternative can be
realized, then it must be true that the result information comes from
nothing. If the information would come from something, then the
accepted fact that the alternative could have been realized is not
true, because then the result could only turn out in accordance with
that something. Therefore the logic only functions consistently when
the origin is held to be nothing. The information that comes from
choosing is thus completely new in the universe. Thus the true origin
of anything, as very on topic for talk.origins, is nothing.

Science mainly proceeds by answer 1. by copying information. A planet
for example sends out information, and scientists transfer this
information to a book. This practicse of transferring or copying
information is called objectivity. It is basically not allowed for
scientists to create information, it is not allowed for scientists to
choose, thus creating information, which is called subjectivity.

Religion mainly proceeds by choosing , subjectivity. Through free
belief the identity of an agent doing the choosing is established. The
identity of an agent cannot be established by evidence, because
evidence forces to a conclusion, destroying the freedom neccessary in
reaching a belief about the agent. (Ockham, Reid) So there is a
subjective side to informatics about what does the job of realizing an
alternative, which is the spiritual domain. One may belief God
decides, or one may belief the spiritual domain is empty. One can
express a feeling of emptiness, and this would not be more or less
correct than expressing a feelling of the divine.

Creatio ex nihilo, these 3 words accurately describe the origins of
anything. It is a theory with irresistable simplicity, an axiom of
nothing. The question obviously arises how can we get something from
nothing? We can answer this question by introducing a rule that the
totality of the universe must always be nothing. If for instance the
universe consists of 0 at first, and we want to introduce the 1 into
the universe, then it can only be done in a way that the totality of
the universe remains nothing. To do this we introduce the 1 as a
rewrite of 0. Consider for instance a CD. It has holes and flat
spaces, signifying 1 and 0's, bits. But if we reverse the holes and
flat spaces on the CD, make flat spaces out of holes, and holes out of
the flat spaces, and then reverse the wires on the CD reader, then the
movie on the CD will show exactly the same. What this means is that in
this boolean logic, the 0's and 1's are basically interchangeable and
arbitrary, signifying nothing. So that way we can get something from
nothing. (universal nil potency rewrite system)


On 14 dec, 05:08, j...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
Paul J Gans <gan...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:





Richard Norman <r_s_nor...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, 12 Dec 2011 21:21:54 -0800 (PST), sadovnik socratus
<is.socra...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Dec 12, 6:36 pm, TomS <TomS_mem...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"On Mon, 12 Dec 2011 10:13:37 -0700, in article

When the stock market goes up, the total value of all of the stock on
the market can go up by trillions of dollars. Where does all of that
money come from? Where does the money go to when there is a crash?

When a tree grows, where does that height come from? When a tree is
chopped down, where does its height go to?
--
---Tom S.
=========================.

Book ? The big questions? by Michael Brooks.
Page 195-196.
? Where did the information go?
The laws of physics dictate that information, like energy,
cannot be destroyed, which means it must go somewhere.?

This is a highly technical point closely related to the transformation
of "useful" energy into heat; the increase of entropy.

Information is conserved in the same way that energy is conserved even
as it is "lost" to heat.  Information just gets confounded and recoded
with other extraneous information so that it can no longer be decoded
and interpreted to regain the original meaning ("message content").
Essentially the laws of physics are good at encryption and we don't
have the key.

It also depends on what one means by "information".  Your question
upthread about where does the white go when snow melts is an
example.  I doubt that that would be considered conserved information.

There's a massive ambiguity traded on when people talk about
"information" in physics. It can mean:

1. Structure in the world

2. Structure in measurements of the world

3. Accuracy of measurements of the world

4. The logical form (it's called in*form*ation for a reson, folks) of a
model of the world, or

5. The intentionality (that is, the referencing) of thoughts in heads of
physicists, about the world.

Structure comes and goes, but it does so, sensu 1-4, in terms of
*descriptions* of the world at some scale. If mass and energy are
interconvertible and conserved, then *at that scale* information is
conserved. But at another scale (e.g., at the scale of macrostructures)
it can be easily destroyed or created simply by the fact that the best
description at that scale now doesn't have, or now does, that structure.

When people say "genes are information carriers" they tend to mean
something like: "genes correlated with phenotypes because they cause
it", but we know that DNA is a relatively inert molecule on its own (it
just sits and slowly denatures in the testtube) and so it is at best a
co-cause. That sort of information is sensu 4, and can easily be created
and destroyed.

The final sense - intentionality (or "aboutness" of thoughts) is where
the trouble appears. It seems that if genes are [thoughts
about/representations of/purposive transmissions of] phenotypes, the
problem is how they come to be or not. Selection causes differential
correlations, but the intentionality is missing (this was, in my best
reconstruction, what Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini were arguing: the
aboutness is either there or not, and selection can't deliver it).

So proponents of teleosemantics argue that aboutness is a post hoc
relation, not a pre hoc one - that is, it is what we can say about a
referential link from gene to phenotype (and environment) *after* the
fact. Aboutness evaporates. I think this is right, and it is a subtle
point that even philosophers like Fodor do not get, because their
presumption is that language refers in some non-reductive fashion.

But I hope it is clear that appealing to information senses 1-4 does not
license conclusions in terms of sense 5; it's a simple homonymity.
"Information" means many things.
--
John S. Wilkins, Associate, Philosophy, University of Sydneyhttp://evolvingthoughts.net
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre- Tekst uit oorspronkelijk bericht niet weergeven -

- Tekst uit oorspronkelijk bericht weergeven -


.

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