On the nature of information

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Magical Realist, Nov 3, 2015.

  1. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    Does learning new information increase the mass of the human brain? Does information contain energy? How can something without mass or energy change a system? What is the ontic state of information? Does it have objective properties that allow us to measure it, quantify it, and estimate its magnitude? Can it exist without consciousness? Is information about information still information? Is there anything BUT information about information? How much information is contained in a single wave of light? Is lack of information a form of information? If information amount is increased when it is received, why is it not lessened when it is transmitted? If information cannot be destroyed, then where does it go when objects are destroyed?

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  3. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    Information is pattern treated generically -- especially when measured, incorporated in a system, etc. So that the set of all diverse mediums capable of substantiating and conveying "patterns which impart knowledge" do not have to each be specifically addressed. Also handy as an abstract placeholder when it is inconvenient to mention a particular means involved. Like when there are optional selections, or the method / substrate involved is unknown, or there is conversion from one medium to another (or several).

    Like so many other general concepts, people will reify information as if it really is some concrete thing or agency realized distinctly on its own, rather than via the matter arrangements that hold / compose a data structure or the oscillations and impulse-units that transport it. However, in some fringe(?) theories and constructs, matter as particles / waves might be reduced to posited elemental quantities / units of pattern that are treated as more fundamental; thus supposedly shrugging off the term "information" as just a synoptic label.

    If it required more tissue to hold / use the new knowledge / behavior patterns. Usually the brain just establishes the needed connections or "re-wires" itself to accommodate added data, or recruits components of existing networks for extra functional roles. (In very young brains unnecessary relationships may actually be pruned because of new information, instead of increasing them).

    Not the superimposed floating generalization of "information", but the specific substrate or medium involved which either holds a "knowledge-imparting pattern" or conveys it.

    A question for those who reify immaterial or abstract conceptions in the empirical world, or treat patterns as substantive agents existing independently of the arrangements or activities of the particulars (and their properties) which realize them.

    That which receives an artificial / natural organization or sequence of regularities (pattern) and has the means to respond to / process it in a predictable or quasi-predictable manner, is thus changed due to having that means. It can even be holes in a metal template catching metal stubs which in turn manipulate a mechanical system of gears, etc.
     
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  5. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Information is not energy, certainly, and does not contain energy as such. I would tend to agree with CC that information can be thought of as patterns. These constitute a form of order, as opposed to randomness or chaos.

    Shannon's information theory (on which I am not expert at all), derives a form of "information entropy", by which the amount of information in a communication is inversely related to the information entropy. I should stress that information entropy is not identical to the more familiar and traditional thermodynamic entropy that was originally developed in the c.19th by Clausius et al. However Boltzmann linked entropy, S, to the number of ways, W, a system can arrange itself, by S = k lnW (k= Boltzmann's constant). The more ordered a system is, the fewer the number of ways it can arrange itself. Compare for example liquid water, in which the molecules jostle and move in any orientation they like, versus ice, in which they are in fixed orientations, and at fixed distances apart, in a lattice structure. The entropy of ice is lower than the entropy of liquid water - and this can be measured thermodynamically. So one can see that the more "patterned" the arrangement, the lower the entropy.

    Whether one can speak of a crystal of ice as having more information in it than liquid water does is a nice point. In a sense I suppose that can perhaps be said to be true.

    So, to speak very, very loosely, one might (waving one's hands frantically like a TV gosh-wow scientist) say that information is a sort of inverse of entropy, rather than energy.

    P.S. But it is not a good idea to push this woolly idea too far in science. Entropy has (several) quantitative definitions in science and these must be respected if one is not to talk balls.

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  7. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    Does a vinyl LP or a magnetic tape increase in mass when recorded? No. Is there information stored there? Yes.

    Is it possible to store information in a manner that ALSO stores energy? Sort of, but when the energy changes state, information about the previous state may be lost. The bound energy that is matter may store information indefinitely by various mechanical/ physical or chemical mechanisms.
     
  8. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

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    The first two quotes underline the fact that information is physical. That means, you cannot represent information in an unphysical way, there is always some encoding involved.
    The third quote is a good question--if you record some files on a DVD, then you destroy the DVD, what happens to the information in the files? Note that, also with recording files, the information is physical and so is the recording medium. There seems to be no way around this; information must be something physical.

    Encoding information on a DVD or in a computer memory might not increase the energy of the DVD or the memory, but recording must be a physical process (and must therefore require energy), it must change something which is itself physical (the DVD surface, the computer memory).
    Information, or recording information, must rearrange a physical medium, and there is latency--how long does some medium store the information reliably, how weak can a signal be so that the original recording can be read (consider hard drive forensics for instance)?
     
  9. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    One of the things that frequently gives me pause when I use sciforums is that the models we built here seem applicable to all sorts of other questions I hadn't considered.

    Bound energy as a kind of information storage mechanism all by itself is a case in point. I'm pretty certain, even Shannon did not think of it in quite that way, possibly because his model involved noisy communication channels instead of something like grooves on a record or the alignment of magnetic domains on a strip of magnetic tape. Theoretically, unless something happens to mechanically modify the groove (like a scratch), or the domains on the tape (like a stronger magnetic field), or the interneuronal connections that are gradually built up over time in our brains (like a head injury), all means of storing information can reproduce the sequence of information as many times as it is desired to do so indefinitely. All such media will require a means of decoding, and that will involve a small transfer of energy to evoke the sequence based on the way it was originally stored.

    Information storage by means of unbound energy happens also (as in, information about the position a star or a planet was at some time in the past), but this kind of information is fleeting in the extreme, and unless transferred to storage by some bound energy mechanism (such as a photograph or a person who observes and/or it), the information is lost as soon as it is viewed only once.
     
    Last edited: Nov 11, 2015
  10. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    We evidently also know that entanglement within the electron shells of the bound structure of an atom have bound energy that is associated with transitions of the paired electron spin coupling mandated by Pauli's exclusion principle. Because an atom itself has structure, information is stored (almost by definition) there as well. Information about how to react chemically or not with other atoms is just one aspect of what is actually an amazing amount of informational content that is asserted by the physical nature of atomic structure. And you can read the information for as long and as many times as you wish with an instrument like a mass spectrometer.
     
  11. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    I take this to be a way of saying information is order, or rather than order contains information.
     
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  12. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    Yes.

    We now also understand that there is evidently order in the vacuum, or what we used to refer to as empty space. Energy and time and the bulk transport and rotation of bound and unbound forms and even entanglement are all there as well. But it is not anything like an aether, and even though parts of it may for a short time have inertia, the ability of the vacuum to retain inertia somehow requires the presence or proximity of bound energy. This is what bends a beam of light under the influence of gravity. Space does not curve or bend; time dilates and time combined with virtual energy propagation and rotation IS space. It gets inertia itself by means of the Higgs mechanism.

    Atomic structure imparts some of its order to the energy of the vacuum.

    And I've no clue where this stuff I am writing is coming from. It seems to just interlock itself into place.

    All you really need to give up is trying to apply the solid geometry and vector coordinate systems of Ancient Greece to an inertialess relativistic vacuum, and the failed attempt of a third rate calculus professor and his friend Hilbert to outshine his most famous student at physics by applying mathematical principles like complex numbers and the Pythagorean theorem where they never belonged. Even the geometric constant pi is not constant in relativity. Guess who was responsible for getting it into General relativity's field equations? It only works as well as it does because falling directly into a gravity well happens to be a slow process that only gets slower with increasing time dilation. Relativity even explains part of the mechanics of entanglement. It doesn't really need to exceed the speed of light. It is mechanically at rest everywhere relative to c, but is without inertia and does not require the bulk transport of bound or unbound energy in order to change state. Entanglement IS information. It allows bound energy to exist.

    Timing is, quite literally, everything. It isn't just true for jokes.
     
    Last edited: Nov 11, 2015
  13. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Golly I never realised Farsight was a calculus professor, 3rd rate or otherwise! Is there such a thing as a calculus professor, anyway? Seems a remarkably narrow field.

    I must say your statement that pi is not constant in relativity is ridiculous, by the way. As it is defined as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter in flat (Euclidean) geometry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi , the fact that other forms of geometry are possible does not affect the definition.

    Lastly the statement that entanglement allows bound energy to exist sounds like total rubbish. Are you on drugs or what?
     
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  14. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    Pi is a constant when the circle is at rest, from the frame that is stationary relative to its geometric center, or thereabouts.

    As soon as the circle (or energy) starts to rotate, pi is no longer a constant in the Euclidean sense. I'm not making this up. The thread on the Ehrenfest paradox explains it. As far as that goes, a circular trajectory works just as well for the twin paradox as a straight one, and for the same reasons. An observer at rest with respect to the geometric center of an analog clock cannot agree about the time it takes to complete one revolution of the hour, minute, or second hands relative to an observer traveling nearer the tips of those indicators.

    Pi was based on a geometric length (the circumference) and is subject to the same kinds of "spatial" contraction as everything else in relativistic "space", which is really only time.

    The speed of light (as a constant) is a different case because it is relativity invariant. Even so, the speed of light must be measured RELATIVE to something else. In this universe, the only absolute space is the geometric centers of bound energy that is matter. The speed of light is invariant relative to that, and to the instant of time we collectively refer to as "now", which also gives time its arrow. Time proceeds at different rates everywhere else depending on relative motion and proximity to bound matter. This is a concept that escaped Minkowski and Hilbert, who were too bothered about the relativity of simultaneity to bother about a resolution that has nothing to do with complex numbers or Pythagorus. Simultaneity is the domain of entanglement. For two events in this universe to be simultaneous, they must either be the same event viewed from different perspectives, or else they are entangled.

    In order for bound energy in the form of a fundamental particle like an electron to exist, some mechanism that is "faster" (or actually much "slower") than light must be responsible for binding it. I'm not making this up either. E=mc^2, since 1905. And if you don't believe that, you may as well be on some heavy medication.

    I didn't know Farsight was really Minkowsi. Farsight actually had very little to do with these ideas, other than to try and introduce the concept of charge. I wasn't ready for that one yet, but I do understand that electric and magnetic fields both are much, much slower effects than either entanglement, or, evidently, gravity.
     
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  15. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Sorry, this is bunk. Pi is Pi, a fixed mathematical ratio. It is not some experimentally measured variable. Read the Wiki link.

    E=mc² has nothing to do with entanglement. Einstein derived it long before the concept was born or thought of and it does not depend on QM in any way at all.
     
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  16. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    The nineteenth century was evidently dizzy with drug use (and most illegal drugs today were legal then), yet you never find mention of it in some of the literature about Lorentz covariance, which as far as I can tell, was very likely a drug-induced concept.

    I am perfectly clean of drugs with the exception of drugs to treat high cholesterol and hypothyroidism. A little benedryl lately; I evidently got some poison ivy clearing out some rocks from a flower garden. I feel fine. Again, thanks for your concern.

    From this day on, classical physics is any physics that uses Euclidean instead of relativistic geometry, or uses a Greek letter for a variable, constant, superscript or subscript.
     
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  17. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    Correct. QM depends on E=mc^2, not the other way around.
     
  18. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    But maths is not physics and pi is a mathematical concept, not a physical one, that's all. If you read the Wiki article it makes this very clear. I quote:

    "This definition of π implicitly makes use of flat (Euclidean) geometry; although the notion of a circle can be extended to any curved (non-Euclidean) geometry, these new circles will no longer satisfy the formula π = C/d.[7]"

    So in non-Euclidean geometries, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter may no longer be equal to pi. It is thus not pi that changes, it is the properties of circles in those geometries. pi remains pi because it is defined in terms of flat geometry. It would be a catastrophe for science and maths if this were otherwise. A whole load of mathematical concepts that depend on pi would no longer be defined, for a start.

    Not sure what the remark about Greek letters is supposed to signify: modern science is full of greek letters. I think possibly iota and omicron are the only Greek letters I have not encountered in the course of my science education - for obvious reasons: they resemble their Latin equivalents too closely to be of any use for denoting something special.
     
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  19. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Does it? I don't think I recall E=mc² coming up in QM at any stage. Most of ordinary QM does not relay on relativity at all. The sole exception, so far as I can recall, is the g factor of the electron, which is found to be double its classical value and is imported into standard QM as an unexplained fact, whereas Dirac's relativistic formulation of QM accounts for it. And that has nothing to do with E=mc², so far as I am aware.
     
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  20. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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  21. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Dan, something seems to have gone wrong with your mind. This well-known relation (which I have indeed been aware of since I was 16 years old) does not in any way require E=mc² in its derivation. It was formulated quite independently of relativity.

    You seem to be under the impression that Einstein only worked on relativity, when in fact he got his Nobel prize for his early QM work on the photo-electric effect.
     
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  22. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    Imo information takes up mind mass and at the same time and creates energy. Nothing like what faith does, the gateway to hunan omniscience. Knowledge must be learned it isn't just singular, it's best if you believe with hope. Like having an opener mind to science.
     
  23. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Er, right......

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    - "Mind mass" has no scientific meaning. Brain mass does.

    - Information does NOT create energy, as has been explained at some length earlier in this thread.

    - "Knowledge must be learned it isn't singular" appears to be two sentences, i.e. "Knowledge must be learned. It isn't just singular". The first is obvious. The second seems to be meaningless.

    - I have no idea what "having an opener mind to science" means. Tin-opener? More open?
     
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