Atla wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2018 4:35 pm
Atla wrote, in response to -1-:
Category 1: information is abstract knowledge, description, physical information, it is an abstraction of "stuff"
Category 2: information is "something" that was discovered lately, some kind of new stuff, some kind of new substance, it exists independently, it exists in addition to and iteracts with "stuff"
Only one of these can be correct.
The premise of this topic is that 1 is correct and 2 is nonsense. I take position 1. You also take position 1.
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.