Information does not exist as such

[Greta]

“To me that's again, Plato-school dualistic nonsense.”

Of course, it’s the interpreter that’s writing nonsense. Just as with Plato. That’s what I call the fanciful interpretation of Berkeley. He never spoke of “ideas”. He spoke of “thoughts” by which he meant sense data. For instance, seeing the round mottled moon up in the sky giving off a foggy brilliance. He was anxious to show that unperceivable things don’t exist in the specific sense of things posited by speculative intelects. By the thing rather than we who look, what he meant is that when we see the moon, a tiny thing, that is what the moon is now, at this distance, and it may be a signal to us that if we approach it, we will see and feel the ground of the moon, but beyond all the different sense data there is nothing more (it is a rather phenomenological attitude). Not for common sense. They mangle him because he holds that God is always perceiving the things when we aren't around, which is the reason for the “Esse est percipi” language. The moon is in the sky, even when we aren't looking, but, it is perceivable, and thus, perceived by God. The point on which everything hangs, I reiterate, is to see the denial of the intellect's power to grasp hidden content not available to the immediate understanding of the sense data, which he calls “thoughts”. I agree, we don't know if there is more we can't perceive directly, Berkeley didn't hold that since he wanted to say God doesn't deceive us. This tendency to read philosophy of the past idiotically is a kind of leveling down which is largely due to the cause that most philosophers have no capability to think, but, rather, to retail paragraphs of text like the one you just adduced. I think it has much to do with the mass academic scaling up of size, in former times one had to have some intelligence to be a philosopher, now it is a routinized career and correspondingly consists of busied production of idiocies for the sake of an interested, not to say entertained, readership.

“As a nondualist I actually fail to see a difference between the two”

I think Locke’s view is due to taking touch and solidity, or “corpuscularity”, more seriously than the other senses. There is a sort of natural tendency towards that view. After all, one can close the eyes, but not the body as a whole.

Many others would be better suited to your U/N.

The problem you point out seems more the result of increasing specialisation and chunking. Who are the generalists today? Who is paid to be a generalist? How difficult is generalised thinking within the complexity of today's rapidly growing and changing body of knowledge? The scope of knowledge is forcing humans to pass generalist functions and analysis of these extremely complex systems to AI, which may as a result become the next generation of philosopher!

I don't see the problem with dualism. It need not be mystical, eg. hardware and software, the brain and its configuration (very subtle variances in the configuration of the same mass of gooey grey matter make the difference between a corporate raider and a philanthropist). Until a TOE pulls together the contradictions between QM and GR, science too effectively posits reality to be tentatively dual, and certainly functionally dual (one more intuitively reliable, the other more probabilistic and, ironically, accurate).

[Atla]

I don't see the problem with dualism. It need not be mystical, eg. hardware and software, the brain and its configuration (very subtle variances in the configuration of the same mass of gooey grey matter make the difference between a corporate raider and a philanthropist).

But why are the positions of particles information, and their other properties not information? You write a contradiction.

Until a TOE pulls together the contradictions between QM and GR, science too effectively posits reality to be tentatively dual, and certainly functionally dual (one more intuitively reliable, the other more probabilistic and, ironically, accurate).

Science doesn't posit reality to be tentatively or functionally dual. Science posits one physical reality, of which we have two descriptions and one or both may be incomplete. They are descriptions of one and the same stuff. (Personally I believe that QM is incomplete, GR well, there are major problems on galaxy scale, probably also incomplete.)

[Atla]

Of course, it’s the interpreter that’s writing nonsense. Just as with Plato. That’s what I call the fanciful interpretation of Berkeley. He never spoke of “ideas”. He spoke of “thoughts” by which he meant sense data. For instance, seeing the round mottled moon up in the sky giving off a foggy brilliance. He was anxious to show that unperceivable things don’t exist in the specific sense of things posited by speculative intelects. By the thing rather than we who look, what he meant is that when we see the moon, a tiny thing, that is what the moon is now, at this distance, and it may be a signal to us that if we approach it, we will see and feel the ground of the moon, but beyond all the different sense data there is nothing more (it is a rather phenomenological attitude). Not for common sense. They mangle him because he holds that God is always perceiving the things when we aren't around, which is the reason for the “Esse est percipi” language. The moon is in the sky, even when we aren't looking, but, it is perceivable, and thus, perceived by God. The point on which everything hangs, I reiterate, is to see the denial of the intellect's power to grasp hidden content not available to the immediate understanding of the sense data, which he calls “thoughts”. I agree, we don't know if there is more we can't perceive directly, Berkeley didn't hold that since he wanted to say God doesn't deceive us. This tendency to read philosophy of the past idiotically is a kind of leveling down which is largely due to the cause that most philosophers have no capability to think, but, rather, to retail paragraphs of text like the one you just adduced. I think it has much to do with the mass academic scaling up of size, in former times one had to have some intelligence to be a philosopher, now it is a routinized career and correspondingly consists of busied production of idiocies for the sake of an interested, not to say entertained, readership.

Ah thanks for the clarification, I was wondering if Berkeley was misinterpreted or not (sorry that I'm totally unfamiliar with this philosopher). Still rather confused by what you wrote.

There is an abstract model of reality in my head. 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"?

And technically, when we look at the Moon, we neither see the Moon as thing-in-itself; nor what the Moon is now, at this distance (if I understood the gist of it). Instead, we see a usually accurate representation of the Moon, at this distance. Technically, this representation we see, is a part of the inside of our head.

[Greta]

I don't see the problem with dualism. It need not be mystical, eg. hardware and software, the brain and its configuration (very subtle variances in the configuration of the same mass of gooey grey matter make the difference between a corporate raider and a philanthropist).

But why are the positions of particles information, and their other properties not information? You write a contradiction.

Actually, it's all information - aside from the fabric of reality in which a perturbation (information) acts.

Until a TOE pulls together the contradictions between QM and GR, science too effectively posits reality to be tentatively dual, and certainly functionally dual (one more intuitively reliable, the other more probabilistic and, ironically, accurate).

Science doesn't posit reality to be tentatively or functionally dual. Science posits one physical reality, of which we have two descriptions and one or both may be incomplete. They are descriptions of one and the same stuff. (Personally I believe that QM is incomplete, GR well, there are major problems on galaxy scale, probably also incomplete.)

I'm inclined to agree that each theory is incomplete at the extremities of their scales. However, the hard fact is that, if QM and GR are not linked, then reality simply is functionally dual. This observation need have zero mystical implication but can fit neatly in the basic frame above - hardware and software.

[Atla]

Actually, it's all information - aside from the fabric of reality in which a perturbation (information) acts.

If it's all information then what is matter? If there is no matter, then what duality do you mention? Again a contradiction.

And what is this fabric you mention. If it's not information, then what is it? If it isn't anything, just a word for reality, then "fabric of reality" is a redundant and misleading expression. So if it isn't anything then why do you treat it as something.

I'm inclined to agree that each theory is incomplete at the extremities of their scales. However, the hard fact is that, if QM and GR are not linked, then reality simply is functionally dual. This observation need have zero mystical implication but can fit neatly in the basic frame above - hardware and software.

I have never heard your "hard fact" before, and I think pretty much any physicist would disagree with you, where did you get this idea from anyway? It's just plain backwards thinking. Two incomplete descriptions of something don't make that something functionally into two. The two theories talk about the same world, same particles, same everything.

And again, software is a part of the hardware, the made-up software-hardware duality is just a convention. Dualistic thinking like that makes life much easier, but it's not to be taken literally, when talking about philosophy.

This electron is "hardware", that electron is "software" (or hardware and software at the same time).. where is the real duality?

[Greta]

Actually, it's all information - aside from the fabric of reality in which a perturbation (information) acts.

If it's all information then what is matter? If there is no matter, then what duality do you mention? Again a contradiction.

And what is this fabric you mention. If it's not information, then what is it? If it isn't anything, just a word for reality, then "fabric of reality" is a redundant and misleading expression. So if it isn't anything then why do you treat it as something.

Maybe everything is information, but maybe not. I've wondered about the Planck scale being inherently informational, essentially 1s and 0s. Again, maybe. Meanwhile, there is of course a fabric of reality in which the things we observe are essentially perturbations. Maybe that fabric is entirely informational too, maybe there is a fundamental "stuff".

I'm inclined to agree that each theory is incomplete at the extremities of their scales. However, the hard fact is that, if QM and GR are not linked, then reality simply is functionally dual. This observation need have zero mystical implication but can fit neatly in the basic frame above - hardware and software.

I have never heard your "hard fact" before, and I think pretty much any physicist would disagree with you, where did you get this idea from anyway? It's just plain backwards thinking. Two incomplete descriptions of something don't make that something functionally into two. The two theories talk about the same world, same particles, same everything.

And again, software is a part of the hardware, the made-up software-hardware duality is just a convention. Dualistic thinking like that makes life much easier, but it's not to be taken literally, when talking about philosophy.

This electron is "hardware", that electron is "software" (or hardware and software at the same time).. where is the real duality?

No, almost any physicist would agree. Just that you are misinterpreting.

Your complaints remind me of a group discussion where Martin Koch, the very rational neurosurgeon spoke of the mind and the brain as being different in nature. A philosopher in the group cried, "You are a dualist!" as a means of shaming Koch. Kock's reply was, "So what"?". He refused to be influenced by the traditional notions of dualism and called it as he saw it. That's how I feel about it too. Mountains and molehills.

At the moment our conceptions hold reality to be dual (at least). In the future there may be a reconciling, where, for instance, rather than having either regular or quantum computers running by two different sets of rules (functionally dual) there may be computers running on the common denominator of these domains.

[Atla]

Maybe everything is information, but maybe not. I've wondered about the Planck scale being inherently informational, essentially 1s and 0s. Again, maybe. Meanwhile, there is of course a fabric of reality in which the things we observe are essentially perturbations. Maybe that fabric is entirely informational too, maybe there is a fundamental "stuff".

Why 0 and 1? why not qubits or something other than binary? Why would a human-made abstraction truly be encoded at Planck scale?

Information, stuff, perturbations, configurations, fabric, some properties are information others aren't, but all properties are information.. you do your best to confuse the issue.

But you still sidestep the main problem. What is this fabric-information duality you mention? If everything about that "fabric" is information, then there's nothing left for the "fabric" to be. So then what is this "fabric" you refer to, where is it what is it? Where is the real duality?

That fabric is a ghost produced by dualistic thinking, that's what it is.

No, almost any physicist would agree. Just that you are misinterpreting.

At this point I have to conclude that you don't know about physics. Physics isn't the study of two different physical realms that are functionally connected.. huh.. what would that even mean..
It's just that QM is more of the study of the small scale and GR more of the study of the large scale. They are incomplete, because reality happens to be more complex than what humanity could figure out so far.

Your complaints remind me of a group discussion where Martin Koch, the very rational neurosurgeon spoke of the mind and the brain as being different in nature. A philosopher in the group cried, "You are a dualist!" as a means of shaming Koch. Kock's reply was, "So what"?". He refused to be influenced by the traditional notions of dualism and called it as he saw it. That's how I feel about it too. Mountains and molehills.

At the moment our conceptions hold reality to be dual (at least). In the future there may be a reconciling, where, for instance, rather than having either regular or quantum computers running by two different sets of rules (functionally dual) there may be computers running on the common denominator of these domains.

You couldn't possibly be more wrong. Maybe you are okay with calling it as you see it, but then why are you engaged in a philosophical discussion? If something seems to be true, then it's true for you?

Whose conceptions hold reality to be dual? It's dual in Western philosophy. Eastern philosophy has both dual and nondual views.

Realizing nonduality blows several of the most fundamental things you knew about the nature of existence, apart. It debunks all of Western philosophy and leads to a worldview so different that you couldn't even imagine it right now even if you tried. Whether for good or bad but it's a life changing experience.

It turns you upside down and inside out, and blows the gates of the Western mind apart. You are unaware of this and don't understand my comments, that's why you think it's "mountains and molehills". Your computer example in the end also shows that you are unaware that the issue goes many times deeper than that.

Simply put, you exist in a massive state of delusion that you have no idea is there. And that's normal for everyone in the West.

Now of course I'm at the disadvantage here because the vast majority on this forum have dualistic or even worse views. What I write aren't complaints, they are facts.

[uwot]

Simply put, you exist in a massive state of delusion that you have no idea is there. And that's normal for everyone in the West.

As it happens, just about every variation of monism has been explored by western philosophers from the Pre-Socratic Ionian physical monists, monotheists, epiphenomenalists, idealists; I'm sure even you have heard of Berkeley, Spinoza and Hegel.

Now of course I'm at the disadvantage here because the vast majority on this forum have dualistic or even worse views. What I write aren't complaints, they are facts.

I rather think your disadvantage is that you don't know much about western philosophy.

[Atla]

Simply put, you exist in a massive state of delusion that you have no idea is there. And that's normal for everyone in the West.

As it happens, just about every variation of monism has been explored by western philosophers from the Pre-Socratic Ionian physical monists, monotheists, epiphenomenalists, idealists; I'm sure even you have heard of Berkeley, Spinoza and Hegel.

Now of course I'm at the disadvantage here because the vast majority on this forum have dualistic or even worse views. What I write aren't complaints, they are facts.

I rather think your disadvantage is that you don't know much about western philosophy.

Wrong, monism is a simpler form of dualistic thinking, of course Western philosophy has explored just about every variation that. The problem is that dualism influences our thinking on at least two levels, and Westerners almost never notice the second, more underlying one.
Monism doesn't work either, but it's still much better than falling into "dual" dualism without realizing it. Which is what materialists have been doing lately with information.

[uwot]

The problem is that dualism influences our thinking on at least two levels, and Westerners almost never notice the second, more underlying one.

Ok, so bring me up to speed: what am I missing?

[Atla]

The problem is that dualism influences our thinking on at least two levels, and Westerners almost never notice the second, more underlying one.

Ok, so bring me up to speed: what am I missing?

The second, underlying layer: well, hard to express. Basically, in monism, we make reality into a "thing". Reality is matter/mind/information/oneness/God/whatever.

But a "thing" is just a human thought. And human thoughts seem to come in units, with divisions between them. But it only seems that way: human thoughts do not come in units, there are no divisions between them. And a human thought isn't really separate from the rest of the world, it doesn't strictly begin here and end there. Neuroscience confirms this too.

But most Western philosophers didn't realize this for 2400 years and projected their thoughts on reality. And with doing so, they automatically projected divisions on reality that plain simply, aren't there.

When we project a unit onto reality, we will always have the hallucination, deep down in our worldview, that there is a subtle ontological division in reality. Even if we say that reality is "oneness", that's making it into something, with a border around it that isn't ontologically there.

Apparently splitting reality into two. And that's the full tragedy of dualism. It doesn't just work one one level - it's a general cognitive error that can pop up on 2 or more levels.

Easterners talk about awakening - it's real. Life changing, but actually nothing special, one way to get there is by realizing nonmonistic nondualism and then realizing the mind-blowing implications.

Then there are far worse forms of monism too, like materialism and idealism, which are two sides of the same coin. These not only do the above projection, but also add what reality is NOT. In materialism, reality is not mind/consciousness. In idealism, reality is not matter/physical.

But we have to work with what we got, and right now materialism is by far the most useful and widespread form of monism. What materialists need to realize is that information is abstract thinking, or if they see everything as information, then they need to drop matter. But they must not treat information like some sort of new substance because it isn't.

Nowadays all this nonsense about information is really leading the scientific process into pseudoscience territory, a waste of time, resources and sanity.

I studied computer sciences for a few years, you wouldn't believe how many ways there are of thinking about information, something that isn't really there as something other than matter and energy.

[Greta]

Maybe everything is information, but maybe not. I've wondered about the Planck scale being inherently informational, essentially 1s and 0s. Again, maybe. Meanwhile, there is of course a fabric of reality in which the things we observe are essentially perturbations. Maybe that fabric is entirely informational too, maybe there is a fundamental "stuff".

Why 0 and 1? why not qubits or something other than binary? Why would a human-made abstraction truly be encoded at Planck scale?

Good point and taken on board. Cheers.

Information, stuff, perturbations, configurations, fabric, some properties are information others aren't, but all properties are information.. you do your best to confuse the issue.

But you still sidestep the main problem. What is this fabric-information duality you mention? If everything about that "fabric" is information, then there's nothing left for the "fabric" to be. So then what is this "fabric" you refer to, where is it what is it? Where is the real duality?

That fabric is a ghost produced by dualistic thinking, that's what it is.

It's nothing to do with dualistic thinking. It's to do with the fact that reality has a substance to it, relative to be sure, but existent. There is a lot more energy in a cubic centimetre of a neutron star than there is in a cm³ of you, which contains more energy than the same amount of air. Meanwhile, there's more systematised information in you than in neutron stars or air. Information density is just as real as mass, related, but not the same.

Within the "fabric of the cosmos" (Brian Greene) is dynamic patterning / systematisation. What is this fabric? That's the question - what is energy? These things are obviously not currently known. So it's hardly "sidestep[ping] the main problem" to not claim knowledge about something about which none of us know.

At this point I have to conclude that you don't know about physics. Physics isn't the study of two different physical realms that are functionally connected.. huh.. what would that even mean..
It's just that QM is more of the study of the small scale and GR more of the study of the large scale. They are incomplete, because reality happens to be more complex than what humanity could figure out so far.

At this point I have to conclude that you have comprehension issues. Of course the theories are incomplete because reality is complex. Duh.

The fact is that the divisions between these domains are real. There really is a physical point, a scale where the rules change. Famously so. Don't blame me for it because the change in rules makes no sense to me too, but that is simply how reality is configured as far as we can tell so far.

Your complaints remind me of a group discussion where Martin Koch, the very rational neurosurgeon spoke of the mind and the brain as being different in nature. A philosopher in the group cried, "You are a dualist!" as a means of shaming Koch. Kock's reply was, "So what"?". He refused to be influenced by the traditional notions of dualism and called it as he saw it. That's how I feel about it too. Mountains and molehills.

At the moment our conceptions hold reality to be dual (at least). In the future there may be a reconciling, where, for instance, rather than having either regular or quantum computers running by two different sets of rules (functionally dual) there may be computers running on the common denominator of these domains.

You couldn't possibly be more wrong. Maybe you are okay with calling it as you see it, but then why are you engaged in a philosophical discussion? If something seems to be true, then it's true for you?

I could also ask you why you bother with philosophical discussion because you seem to be more "certain" in your views than I am, less open to exchange. Of course everyone in a philosophical discussion calls it as they see it - that's the whole point of such discussion. There's no point in me calling it as someone else sees it - they can do that for themselves.

Each of us is basically a small piece of a much larger reality exchanging information with other pieces of that larger reality about their particular perspectives based on their particular journeys. Thus, each individual possesses a unique combination of impressions gained from their particular movements through places over times in both natural and cultural environments, and that is what's theoretically being exchanged here.

Realizing nonduality blows several of the most fundamental things you knew about the nature of existence, apart. It debunks all of Western philosophy and leads to a worldview so different that you couldn't even imagine it right now even if you tried. Whether for good or bad but it's a life changing experience.

It turns you upside down and inside out, and blows the gates of the Western mind apart. You are unaware of this and don't understand my comments, that's why you think it's "mountains and molehills". Your computer example in the end also shows that you are unaware that the issue goes many times deeper than that.

Simply put, you exist in a massive state of delusion that you have no idea is there. And that's normal for everyone in the West.

Now of course I'm at the disadvantage here because the vast majority on this forum have dualistic or even worse views. What I write aren't complaints, they are facts.

I am not keen on claiming any absolute realisation of duality or nonduality as there is no certainty. My point was always only about where the evidence points at the moment - towards two major domains of reality that operate under somewhat variant physical laws. I don't mind whether that notion offends people's ideological notions of unity or dualism. Note that proponents of MOND, which is not yet discounted, might yet posit a third state of reality that occurs at the largest of known scales. Trialism

[uwot]

The problem is that dualism influences our thinking on at least two levels, and Westerners almost never notice the second, more underlying one.

Ok, so bring me up to speed: what am I missing?

The second, underlying layer: well, hard to express. Basically, in monism, we make reality into a "thing". Reality is matter/mind/information/oneness/God/whatever.

The dominant western philosophy is empiricism, the defining feature of which is that it doesn't particularly care about ontology. Rather than treat reality as a "thing", the basic premise is that 'the truth' is hidden behind a 'veil of appearance' and that any knowledge claims are restricted to those referring to phenomena. Although it's adoption as a scientific methodology was critical to late medieval and renaissance scientists, Galileo and Kepler, for example, it was largely codified by British thinkers, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Their thinking was a profound influence on the British scientists who founded the Royal Society, the motto of which is 'take no one's word for it'. The RS then published Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica which treated gravity, force, energy and whatnot as strictly mathematical entities, the cause and reason for which was irrelevant. David Hume tightened everything up in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, which woke Immanuel Kant from his "dogmatic slumbers" and stirred him to write The Critique of Pure Reason-which, more than any other, attempts to synthesise western philosophy. If you don't understand at least the broad outline of, you do not understand western philosophy. Long story short-in the present context-there are phenomena (we see, hear, smell etc) and there are noumena (whatever is causing those sensations). Idealists think you can dispense with the noumenal, which for practical purposes is true; while materialists assume there is something responsible for the phenomena which is mind independent.

But a "thing" is just a human thought.

The point is not that a human thought does or does not refer to some actual state of being. It would be a very strange universe if some state of reality were not the case; the trouble is, we cannot tell from the phenomena which one it is. Technically, every explanation for the cause of phenomena is underdetermined

And human thoughts seem to come in units, with divisions between them. But it only seems that way: human thoughts do not come in units, there are no divisions between them. And a human thought isn't really separate from the rest of the world, it doesn't strictly begin here and end there. Neuroscience confirms this too.

I don't think it does, but let's hear your explanation.

But most Western philosophers didn't realize this for 2400 years and projected their thoughts on reality. And with doing so, they automatically projected divisions on reality that plain simply, aren't there.

Isn't that just you projecting your thoughts on reality?

When we project a unit onto reality, we will always have the hallucination, deep down in our worldview, that there is a subtle ontological division in reality. Even if we say that reality is "oneness", that's making it into something, with a border around it that isn't ontologically there.

That's just a semantic quibble. If you are talking about the 'whole of reality', does it make sense to talk about two of them?

Apparently splitting reality into two. And that's the full tragedy of dualism. It doesn't just work one one level - it's a general cognitive error that can pop up on 2 or more levels.

Splitting reality into two, or more, is actually very successful. For practical ends, assuming that reality as we perceive it is also a 'thing' that is bound by mathematical rules works very well.

Easterners talk about awakening - it's real. Life changing, but actually nothing special, one way to get there is by realizing nonmonistic nondualism and then realizing the mind-blowing implications.

So what is "nonmonistic nondualism" and what are the "actually nothing special" "mind-blowing implications"?

Then there are far worse forms of monism too, like materialism and idealism, which are two sides of the same coin. These not only do the above projection, but also add what reality is NOT. In materialism, reality is not mind/consciousness. In idealism, reality is not matter/physical.

So now your point is that there are dual aspects at least. Are you advancing some brand of epiphenomenalism?

But we have to work with what we got, and right now materialism is by far the most useful and widespread form of monism.

Hang on a mo. Using mathematical tools, based on theoretical explanations, does not commit you to those explanations. Did you watch the link that Troll provided? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM-zWTU7X-k

What materialists need to realize is that information is abstract thinking, or if they see everything as information, then they need to drop matter. But they must not treat information like some sort of new substance because it isn't.

Materialism at its most basic, is simply the assumption that the most likely explanation for all the phenomena that give the impression that there is a universe made of some stuff, is that there is some stuff the universe is made of. What any 'materialist' attributes to that stuff is their own business, but the basic premise is a reasonable place to start, until you find a very good reason to abandon it. Information is just anything that is the case about 'the stuff', from its gross properties, through its topology, down to its fine structure.

Nowadays all this nonsense about information is really leading the scientific process into pseudoscience territory, a waste of time, resources and sanity.

In the broadest sense, since Newton at least, it has been extraordinarily productive to treat reality pluralistically.

I studied computer sciences for a few years, you wouldn't believe how many ways there are of thinking about information, something that isn't really there as something other than matter and energy.

Matter and energy? That sounds suspiciously dualist. What do you mean?

[Atla]

It's nothing to do with dualistic thinking. It's to do with the fact that reality has a substance to it, relative to be sure, but existent. There is a lot more energy in a cubic centimetre of a neutron star than there is in a cm³ of you, which contains more energy than the same amount of air. Meanwhile, there's more systematised information in you than in neutron stars or air. Information density is just as real as mass, related, but not the same.

Within the "fabric of the cosmos" (Brian Greene) is dynamic patterning / systematisation. What is this fabric? That's the question - what is energy? These things are obviously not currently known. So it's hardly "sidestep[ping] the main problem" to not claim knowledge about something about which none of us know..

But that's a dualistic self-contradiction. Everything about this underlying substance/fabric can be described as information, which you agreed with. So then the conception of the substance/fabric itself becomes a ghost, it's not "something extra" anymore.

At this point I have to conclude that you have comprehension issues. Of course the theories are incomplete because reality is complex. Duh.

The fact is that the divisions between these domains are real. There really is a physical point, a scale where the rules change. Famously so. Don't blame me for it because the change in rules makes no sense to me too, but that is simply how reality is configured as far as we can tell so far.

I am not keen on claiming any absolute realisation of duality or nonduality as there is no certainty. My point was always only about where the evidence points at the moment - towards two major domains of reality that operate under somewhat variant physical laws. I don't mind whether that notion offends people's ideological notions of unity or dualism. Note that proponents of MOND, which is not yet discounted, might yet posit a third state of reality that occurs at the largest of known scales. Trialism

Ohh.. you really have fundamentally misunderstood physics and therefore reality.
There is roughly a point where we usually turn to the other theory, but that doesn't mean that there really are two domains?! Reality is NOT configured like that.
But if you have this misunderstanding, then I can see why you believe in dualism.

I could also ask you why you bother with philosophical discussion because you seem to be more "certain" in your views than I am, less open to exchange. Of course everyone in a philosophical discussion calls it as they see it - that's the whole point of such discussion. There's no point in me calling it as someone else sees it - they can do that for themselves.

Each of us is basically a small piece of a much larger reality exchanging information with other pieces of that larger reality about their particular perspectives based on their particular journeys. Thus, each individual possesses a unique combination of impressions gained from their particular movements through places over times in both natural and cultural environments, and that is what's theoretically being exchanged here.

Nonmonistic nondualism isn't a view in the classic sense, it's more like the lack of assumptions and then seeing what remains. It's ontologically the the correct one, and I was bored so why not talk about it. And after all I think it would be "better" if people realized that information is just an abstraction.

[Atla]

The dominant western philosophy is empiricism, the defining feature of which is that it doesn't particularly care about ontology. Rather than treat reality as a "thing", the basic premise is that 'the truth' is hidden behind a 'veil of appearance' and that any knowledge claims are restricted to those referring to phenomena. Although it's adoption as a scientific methodology was critical to late medieval and renaissance scientists, Galileo and Kepler, for example, it was largely codified by British thinkers, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Their thinking was a profound influence on the British scientists who founded the Royal Society, the motto of which is 'take no one's word for it'. The RS then published Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica which treated gravity, force, energy and whatnot as strictly mathematical entities, the cause and reason for which was irrelevant. David Hume tightened everything up in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, which woke Immanuel Kant from his "dogmatic slumbers" and stirred him to write The Critique of Pure Reason-which, more than any other, attempts to synthesise western philosophy. If you don't understand at least the broad outline of, you do not understand western philosophy. Long story short-in the present context-there are phenomena (we see, hear, smell etc) and there are noumena (whatever is causing those sensations). Idealists think you can dispense with the noumenal, which for practical purposes is true; while materialists assume there is something responsible for the phenomena which is mind independent.

The point is not that a human thought does or does not refer to some actual state of being. It would be a very strange universe if some state of reality were not the case; the trouble is, we cannot tell from the phenomena which one it is. Technically, every explanation for the cause of phenomena is underdetermined

I don't see your point, as I said, everything you listed falls under dualistic thinking, on one or more levels.
For example the noumena-phenomena dualism is a hallucination of the Western mind, these two are one and the same thing. I wrote about this more extensively in the Hard problem of consciousness topic of this board.

I don't think it does, but let's hear your explanation.

We can take PET scans of people who are thinking, and we can see that the thoughts are in the head. (Which parts of the head exactly, is only partially solved yet, of course.)
But what we don't see, is a fundamental division that rips that part of the head out of the universe, or genuinely isolates it from its the environment.

That's just a semantic quibble. If you are talking about the 'whole of reality', does it make sense to talk about two of them?

It's not a semantic quibble, such divisions become ontological and dominate all of Western philosophy.

Splitting reality into two, or more, is actually very successful. For practical ends, assuming that reality as we perceive it is also a 'thing' that is bound by mathematical rules works very well.

In the broadest sense, since Newton at least, it has been extraordinarily productive to treat reality pluralistically.

Dualistic thinking is very successful for scientific purposes, and probably sped up the development of humanity, but that doesn't make it true. Strange state of affairs, isn't it.

So what is "nonmonistic nondualism" and what are the "actually nothing special" "mind-blowing implications"?

Maybe you'll agree that it's difficult to express the bulk of Eastern realizations in a few sentences. A process that can take years.

So now your point is that there are dual aspects at least. Are you advancing some brand of epiphenomenalism?

No dual aspect.

Hang on a mo. Using mathematical tools, based on theoretical explanations, does not commit you to those explanations. Did you watch the link that Troll provided? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM-zWTU7X-k

I think we can agree that most scientists have a materialist wordlview, and interpret mathematics in that materialists worldview. Even if they are unaware of it.

Materialism at its most basic, is simply the assumption that the most likely explanation for all the phenomena that give the impression that there is a universe made of some stuff, is that there is some stuff the universe is made of. What any 'materialist' attributes to that stuff is their own business, but the basic premise is a reasonable place to start, until you find a very good reason to abandon it. Information is just anything that is the case about 'the stuff', from its gross properties, through its topology, down to its fine structure.

In other words, information is a description, abstraction of "stuff".
But there is this widespread belief nowadays that there really exists stuff AND information. That's the problem!

Matter and energy? That sounds suspiciously dualist. What do you mean?

Well most materialists talk about matter and energy, I mean it shouldn't be mistaken for matter and energy and information.