Re: [asa] Information and knowledge

I've been busy with other matters for a few days and now I come back to find this thread going in all types of directions.
No, I haven't read Yockey. Thanks for the reference. I hope to check it out.
And thanks for the insight on Floridi, Dave. If it's Floridi vs Landauer, then it's a no-brainer!!
I won't get into the philosophy here except to say that I suspect the idea that "Landauer is dead-wrong because his information theory leads to materialism" is the same category error as "Darwin is dead-wrong because his theory of evolution leads to purposelessness and unguided chance." Landauer's ideas do not necessitate materialism.

But all this is a digression from the original intent. I see with regret that I made an error when I started the thread. I meant to title it Information and Complexity but somehow I typed the wrong word. Independent of what anyone thinks of Landauer's ideas, which by the way are well established and supported in the information science community, even if not by the philosophical community, there are basic concepts of information that are important to remember.

One of those is the difference between complexity and information. Complexity is a physical configuration--or more precisely a measure of a characteristic of a physical configuration. Information is represented by a physical configuration. And it can be represented by any of many possible physical configuration.

Several responses in this thread kept confusing information about the genetic code with the genetic code itself. Of course our descriptions of the genetic code are information and are transmitted as such through normal channels. Our ability to do that doesn't alter the nature of the code. We can do the same with any type of complex inorganic matter as well. We have conveniently assigned a C, T, G, and A to certain repetitive arrangements of atoms to help us decipher and understand the genetic code. That's our way of understanding it. The genetic code existed for many billion years before we thought of C, T, G, and A. Our description of the genetic code can change (we could have used other letters for example or we can put it in many forms) but if we change the physical configuration of the DNA strand itself, then we've changed the complexity (or information if you insist) of the DNA.

Computer code, meanwhile is a value or significance assigned to a particular physical configuration. A computer is a complex series of latches and switches arranged in a particular manner. A compiler then translates high level computer code into a binary sequence. Essentially the physical configuration of electronic switches is defined as having certain meanings and then the computation can begin. For instance, a high voltage level can be assigned a 1 and a low voltage assigned a 0. Or that could be reversed. It doesn't matter--as long as everything is reversed synchronously. What matters is the meaning assigned to the physical representation. That is, what constitutes a 0 and what constitutes a 1? In this case, the physical configuration can change as long as the meaning is preserved and we appropriately assign the right meaning to a coherent set of physical configurations.

Genetic code and computer code have amazing similarities but they also have very important differences. Inferences from such an analogy must first carefully consider the differences.

Randy

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Received on Mon Apr 16 21:27:05 2007