Information does not exist as such

[Atla]

Oh for f's sake, ease off on the drama, Mary-Lou! No one is "attacking" you. You will note on other threads where people really are "attacking". This is not attacking but is known as "disagreement". We are allowed to disagree with you and challenge your statements.

Hehe.. ease off on the drama. Of course I meant disagreement.

Above you have misinterpreted my post based on the absence of an optional comma - there is the stuff and there is the unevenness of the stuff - lumps and eddies. Like uwot, I have argued this point from the very start. The reductionism of everything to information is highly speculative and also needs to demonstrate the emergences from the initial "source code".

I don't think so. Stuff and unevenness of the stuff is ontologically the same thing. Lumps and eddies are an abstraction, a metaphor for some of the stuff. As far as I can tell you pretty much disagree with uwot.

There is nothing highly speculative about reducing everything to information. Just rename stuff to information and there you are. (For example personally I think purely in information, connections, I just translate it into stuff.)

I don't know what you mean by emergence from the initial "source code". Soft emergence is an abstraction, a metaphor. Hard emergence is magical thinking.

[Atla]

I agree, that we have a common set (intersection of conceptual areas of opinion) of what information is. I also deny that information is of Category 2.

My opinion is different from yours inasmuch as I differentiate between "stuff" and "information". To me, information is a communicated knowledge. DNA has information how to build a baby from zygotes. A bus schedule has information when the next bus leaves a station. A smell has information to a dog that says "edible" or "leave it alone". A movement and some warmth gives information to a snake that the warm moving body is edible or else dangerous to the snake.

I am a warm and moving body, but to a dog a am not dinner and under the right circumstances, am not danger to him. I am warm and moving, but a bus schedule will never take me for a meal or for danger. I'm warm and moving, yet the cell that uses DNA in its division will never recognize that.

While being respectful of your opinion, I maintain, along with your other critics, Atla, that information is separate from stuff. Information is the transferred knowledge or signals or triggers, if you wish. That presupposes that the signal or triggers will be understood by a recipient. Without a receiver there is no communication.

While information can not exist without a carrier, it is not wise to say the information is the same as the carrier. If it were the same, then I would be a meal to a bus schedule and I would be a meal to a DNA string.

Well of course. Ontologically speaking, information doesn't exist independently. It's an abstraction, and all abstractions are made of "stuff".

How we think in our everyday life, outside philosophy, is an entirely different question however. Dualistic thinking is pretty much a must, it makes life so much easier. Of course I fully agree with that, and I also use "information" in all kinds of ways in everyday speech, some of which would probably fall into category 2.

My point is, if we want to understand reality, we have to also be aware what's "really" going on information.

I don't think that you are saying the same thing as some of the other critics in the topic. Some are saying that information is ontologically separate.

[Greta]

Oh for f's sake, ease off on the drama, Mary-Lou! No one is "attacking" you. You will note on other threads where people really are "attacking". This is not attacking but is known as "disagreement". We are allowed to disagree with you and challenge your statements.

Hehe.. ease off on the drama. Of course I meant disagreement.

Above you have misinterpreted my post based on the absence of an optional comma - there is the stuff and there is the unevenness of the stuff - lumps and eddies. Like uwot, I have argued this point from the very start. The reductionism of everything to information is highly speculative and also needs to demonstrate the emergences from the initial "source code".

I don't think so. Stuff and unevenness of the stuff is ontologically the same thing. Lumps and eddies are an abstraction, a metaphor for some of the stuff. As far as I can tell you pretty much disagree with uwot.

Nope. Stuff may be homogeneous or it may have clumps and eddies. The "singularity" that grew into the universe was purported to originally have been homogeneous but once it started expanding, it did not expand exactly but irregularities /chaos emerged. Clumps and eddies.

There is nothing highly speculative about reducing everything to information. Just rename stuff to information and there you are. (For example personally I think purely in information, connections, I just translate it into stuff.)

I can see how one might think of fundamental particles as "bits" of reality but we don't know what kinds of particles are truly fundamental to reality. Hypothetically, what might one find using a hadron collider the size of the Milky Way? Or the size of the Bootes Void? It's not physically possible of course (seemingly) but the point is that there may be ever more fundamental entities in reality but it's impossible to fully test.

I don't know what you mean by emergence from the initial "source code". Soft emergence is an abstraction, a metaphor. Hard emergence is magical thinking.
[/quote]

[Atla]

Nope. Stuff may be homogeneous or it may have clumps and eddies. The "singularity" that grew into the universe was purported to originally have been homogeneous but once it started expanding, it did not expand exactly but irregularities /chaos emerged. Clumps and eddies.

That's wild speculation. There is a fundamental problem with this picture: you are taking for granted that "information" can be created/destroyed. That requires the assumption that quantum fluctuations are genuinely random, and not just apparently random.

All we can say at this point is that the observable part of the universe probably comes from a singularity, where singularity means that we can't see beyond a certain point.

And even if things were completely homogeneous at one point (which I personally think is impossible).. well then there isn't really stuff to talk about so homogeneous stuff is a redundant expression.

I can see how one might think of fundamental particles as "bits" of reality but we don't know what kinds of particles are truly fundamental to reality. Hypothetically, what might one find using a hadron collider the size of the Milky Way? Or the size of the Bootes Void? It's not physically possible of course (seemingly) but the point is that there may be ever more fundamental entities in reality but it's impossible to fully test.

I'm not thinking in bits, just information as in connections, relations. I found that it's pretty much to only way to even attempt thinking about what quantum mechanics is saying.

[Atla]

Here is the most popular charlatan, he takes the findings of the scientific process and mixes them with nonsense: the idea that information exists independently.

(It's enough to watch 29:58-31:22 and 43:35-45:16, the rest is mostly rambling.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZX6awZq5Z0

[Greta]

Nope. Stuff may be homogeneous or it may have clumps and eddies. The "singularity" that grew into the universe was purported to originally have been homogeneous but once it started expanding, it did not expand exactly but irregularities /chaos emerged. Clumps and eddies.

That's wild speculation. There is a fundamental problem with this picture: you are taking for granted that "information" can be created/destroyed. That requires the assumption that quantum fluctuations are genuinely random, and not just apparently random.

All we can say at this point is that the observable part of the universe probably comes from a singularity, where singularity means that we can't see beyond a certain point.

And even if things were completely homogeneous at one point (which I personally think is impossible).. well then there isn't really stuff to talk about so homogeneous stuff is a redundant expression.

The "wild speculation" is the current most popular hypothesis in science. I suggest that your notion is no less wildly speculative, possibly more so.

Your last sentence is only a rephrasing of the sticking point - you are claiming that there is no stuff to be more or less homogeneous, I say there appears to be. An old late forum friend, Obvious Leo, like you thought there was nothing fundamental in reality but time and information. I disagreed with him too on the same grounds - he was too certain of a position, and didn't use enough qualifiers.

I can see how one might think of fundamental particles as "bits" of reality but we don't know what kinds of particles are truly fundamental to reality. Hypothetically, what might one find using a hadron collider the size of the Milky Way? Or the size of the Bootes Void? It's not physically possible of course (seemingly) but the point is that there may be ever more fundamental entities in reality but it's impossible to fully test.

I'm not thinking in bits, just information as in connections, relations. I found that it's pretty much to only way to even attempt thinking about what quantum mechanics is saying.

Yeah, maybe :) Still, if you break things down, something always effectively acts as "bits".

[Atla]

The "wild speculation" is the current most popular hypothesis in science. I suggest that your notion is no less wildly speculative, possibly more so.

Your last sentence is only a rephrasing of the sticking point - you are claiming that there is no stuff to be more or less homogeneous, I say there appears to be. An old late forum friend, Obvious Leo, like you thought there was nothing fundamental in reality but time and information. I disagreed with him too on the same grounds - he was too certain of a position, and didn't use enough qualifiers.

According to that current most popular hypothesis in science, matter and antimatter should have been created in equal amounts, and so the world shouldn't look like the way it does. We shouldn't exist at all, if things really started from a homogeneous state as you claim. The thypothesis is incomplete, and probably in more ways than one. I do think that some kind of Big Bang probably happened but the details are unclear.

(I don't consider time or information fundamental btw, where did I write that?)

I think you are too certain of your position. Why reduce reality to two fundamental things when there is zero evidence for it. You keep saying that it appears to be so, but I really don't know what you mean.

Yeah, maybe Still, if you break things down, something always effectively acts as "bits".

Not at all. Bits are human-made binary abstractions, and there is no "acting" going on, there are only correlations.

[Greta]

The "wild speculation" is the current most popular hypothesis in science. I suggest that your notion is no less wildly speculative, possibly more so.

Your last sentence is only a rephrasing of the sticking point - you are claiming that there is no stuff to be more or less homogeneous, I say there appears to be. An old late forum friend, Obvious Leo, like you thought there was nothing fundamental in reality but time and information. I disagreed with him too on the same grounds - he was too certain of a position, and didn't use enough qualifiers.

According to that current most popular hypothesis in science, matter and antimatter should have been created in equal amounts, and so the world shouldn't look like the way it does. We shouldn't exist at all, if things really started from a homogeneous state as you claim. The thypothesis is incomplete, and probably in more ways than one. I do think that some kind of Big Bang probably happened but the details are unclear.

(I don't consider time or information fundamental btw, where did I write that?)

I think you are too certain of your position. Why reduce reality to two fundamental things when there is zero evidence for it. You keep saying that it appears to be so, but I really don't know what you mean.

Since you refute that "stuff" exists and it's all just information, I presumed that you would also include time.

You need to make exactly clear what you think DOES exist. Only information? So you do not include time either?

Yeah, maybe Still, if you break things down, something always effectively acts as "bits".

Not at all. Bits are human-made binary abstractions, and there is no "acting" going on, there are only correlations.

If there is a system there there are components that "act" within the system. Do you deny that systems and systematisation exist too?

[Atla]

Since you refute that "stuff" exists and it's all just information

I never refuted that "stuff" exists and never said that it's all just information. Please read the first comment in this topic. What I said was that we shouldn't develop a double vision, when thinking about the nature of reality.

I presumed that you would also include time.

So you do not include time either?

I don't know what you mean by this.

You need to make exactly clear what you think DOES exist. Only information?

I don't really know what you mean, this strikes me as more like a religious question. In the Judeo-Christian worldview, reality is "made of something". Because God, the potter, made the world out of clay, or something like that.

You can for example say that reality is "made of strings" but that's still just a conceptualization.

I don't really see reality made out of anything, I'm only talking about conceptualizations. My point is we shouldn't develop ontological double visions in our conceptualizations.

If there is a system there there are components that "act" within the system. Do you deny that systems and systematisation exist too?

Of course, this Newtonian misconception was outdated 100 years ago. There are only correlations. And the only system is the universe (and that's not even true, probably).

You can of course still use models where "components" "act", and this is probably what most physicists do most of the time, but as a description of reality this doesn't cut it anymore.

[Troll]

“So using that, I can posit all sorts of things about the Moon, without never having looked at it, that are probably true. Is that "hidden content"?”

He meant someone like Penrose, who claims a mathematical model is the result of the intellect perceiving content that the sensorium can’t. The claim about Einstein's “curved space” is the greatest instance now powerful. The issue is whether one speaks of a functional and predictive model, existing in the mind, or of the substance/nature as the place of the Aristotelian causes.

“we see a usually accurate representation of the Moon, at this distance.”

I would drop the word "usually". What we see is the moon. That’s all one gets, more and more such views. From this vantage, then that, or through a thick light like a fog which it gives off. More there is not. If one takes literally the sense of what one says, when one says, “The moon is in the sky.”, when we aren't looking at it, we are assuming what it would be like in this or that announcement of itself, just as it is in this or that look. All of which, Berkeley assumes, God, is taking in.

[Atla]

He meant someone like Penrose, who claims a mathematical model is the result of the intellect perceiving content that the sensorium can’t. The claim about Einstein's “curved space” is the greatest instance now powerful. The issue is whether one speaks of a functional and predictive model, existing in the mind, or of the substance/nature as the place of the Aristotelian causes.

Ok I'm definitely not Berkeleyan. I can't even make much sense of such line of thinking, sorry. It freaks me out, I'm more like Advaitan.
By intellect/sensorium/mind I see different parts or aspects of what's going on inside the head. The abstract models we create are mostly, but not entirely, constructed using sensory input. Using such input, we can come up with predictions that we didn't realize before.

I would drop the word "usually". What we see is the moon.

Yeah.. by usually I meant that, for example a schizophrenic might look at the sky and see a dozen moons, with angry faces on them, and the moons are talking to him.

[Troll]

“a schizophrenic might look at the sky and see a dozen moons, with angry faces on them, and the moons are talking to him.”

Well, but is it like a reflection on the crooked sides of a damaged tin bucket, or do you mean it is an hallucination. In the latter case, that isn’t the moon.


I must say, what you call “non-dualism” sounds incomprehensibly “abstract”. I find Berkeley clear and obvious. He doesn't speak of some profound and mysterious notion of "inside the head", whatever that may mean, but simply of seeing things.

[Atla]

Well, but is it like a reflection on the crooked sides of a damaged tin bucket, or do you mean it is an hallucination. In the latter case, that isn’t the moon.

I find Berkeley clear and obvious. He doesn't speak of some profound and mysterious notion of "inside the head", whatever that may mean, but simply of seeing things.

We never see the Moon. The Moon is out there, ~400000 kilometers away from us. Sunlight is reflected from the Moon, that light travels for a little more than a second, and then hits the eye. What happens after that is up to debate, no one really knows yet, but those signals get processed in various ways in the brain and then an imagine of the Moon is constructed from them. (Personally I suspect that what we see might be standing waves of the electromagnetic field in the head, on roughly 1-100 Hz frequencies, but this is just speculation, a major piece of the puzzle is missing here).

But suffice to say: there is overwhelming evidence that the Moon doesn't present itself to us. And when for example a schizophrenic brain processes the incoming light of the Moon, things can go very wrong, that's the real horror of schizophrenia, what is real and what is a hallucination can be inseparable like that.

Quite frankly, if I understand this subjective idealism correctly, it itself sounds mildly psychotic to me. Such things should be avoided.

I must say, what you call “non-dualism” sounds incomprehensibly “abstract”

In this regard it's pretty much the opposite, it's more like about seeing through abstractions, understanding them for what they are, not taking them too literally.

[Dontaskme]

uwot made it clear that he sees reality as stuff and its unevenness - information. You seemingly dispute that there is any stuff, that it's all just information, which makes about as much sense as saying it's "turtles all the way down".

All stuff is information..what else could it be?

If there's no God, which is just another word for Source...then it's all "turtles all the way down" if there's no source of anything, then what exactly is anything? .... the only question left to query is what or who exactly are you?

Who is this ''thing'' who can dispute that there is stuff or not?..what the heck is stuff when it's at home? and where is that knowing coming from if there is no source which is just another word for God..any ideas?

Please explain?

[Greta]

uwot made it clear that he sees reality as stuff and its unevenness - information. You seemingly dispute that there is any stuff, that it's all just information, which makes about as much sense as saying it's "turtles all the way down".

All stuff is information..what else could it be?

Energy? Something else that we don't know about? It might all be information but it might not.

... the only question left to query is what or who exactly are you?

We are each something quite similar to 7.5 billion other humans, and billions of other mammals and simpler vertebrates. There's not a great difference.

Who is this ''thing'' who can dispute that there is stuff or not?..what the heck is stuff when it's at home? and where is that knowing coming from if there is no source which is just another word for God..any ideas?

The "thing" is a human. Homo sapiens, hominid descendant from a common ape ancestor.

"Stuff" is relative. This is the case both when stuff is at home and when it attends work and parties.

Your God comment is just guesswork and wishful thinking but I appreciate that you need to believe this to be happy and dare not deviate from your internal "gospel".

Of course a source need not be a deity, just as the source of a snowflake is not something greater than a snowflake, but a tiny speck of debris around which ice crystals build.