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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jun 23, 2018 - 10:10pm PT
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^^^ Awareness is an interpretation. Just not at the level they are talking about it.
There. That should add to the fun, Gill. Grab some popcorn. :-)
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jun 24, 2018 - 05:29am PT
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Here's a way to restate my position. To the tree rings question posed either up-thread or in the link; I would say that tree rings are not intrinsically information. They, like everything else in the universe are intrinsically data.
They are information to humans, because humans have the ability to do something with the data. Tree rings are not information to chimpanzees. On the other hand, the yellow color of some fruits like bananas in a forest are information to both humans and chimpanzees. The information yielded by the sun rising and setting is information to plants.
Back to the junk DNA. That portion of the genome stopped becoming information to the instructions for putting your body together. It didn't stop becoming information to humans who can use the information, after-the-fact, for the purposes of ancestry, for instance. Again, information is all about the contract between two parties. We use the concept a lot in object-oriented software programming.
Btw, thanks for the contact info. I'll be contacting you.
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nafod
Boulder climber
State college
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Jun 24, 2018 - 06:10am PT
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My thought on information...if you hold a question at hand, with a probability distribution on possible answers, and the data allows you to refine that distribution, then the data has given you information relative to that question.
Flipping it around, for any piece of data, you can always find a question that makes the data information.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jun 24, 2018 - 06:56am PT
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Yeah, for we humans, who have evolved machinery to muse about almost anything that might be true. It's not true in general. It's not that the tree rings couldn't at some time in the future, perhaps, be information to chimpanzees. But, I think that it's pretty clear that it is not information to them now. Which, again points out the time-dependent nature of what is and isn't information.
If you just want to play word games, fine; my definition of information as I just stated is easily understood and is quite consistent with how evolution has worked. Genes build proteins that build gene survival machines that procreate and preserve the algorithms for building the machine through successive generations. Because the code and the machine are evolving together, it would be darn right surprising if some of the code were no longer relevant as the machinery has changed. It becomes junk DNA to the organism. I mean, c'mon, it is easy to grasp that the sequence of bases that was once information to the "system", is no longer relevant. What better way of describing this difference in time of the state of that piece of DNA? It was once information, now it isn't. But it was always data.
I actually deal with this regularly. You can have data sitting in a database, but if it is stripped of its metadata it loses its context and is no longer useful. It is still sitting there in the database, say, and it is data pretty much by definition, but it is not information to any of the applications that might have used it. Again, the information is not intrinsic, it always requires context.
Off to see if I can get a little climbing in with Henry Lester at Eldorado before the rain.
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WBraun
climber
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Jun 24, 2018 - 07:13am PT
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The living entity itself is NOT the code, is NOT the genes, is NOT the DNA, is the NOT the gross physical nor subtle material body (mind).
Nor has the living entity itself ever been the gross physical material body and subtle material body.
The living entity itself is non-material non-physical eternally from the very start.
Modern science is completely in the dark from the very start and misleads not only themselves but all living entities who also subscribe to that destructive illusion.
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nafod
Boulder climber
State college
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Jun 24, 2018 - 07:18am PT
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It becomes junk DNA to the organism. The crazy thing is, now the organism (us) can actually introspect on that junk DNA and contemplate on the history of how it got there. It carries a *lot* of information. Again.
Mind = blown
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WBraun
climber
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Jun 24, 2018 - 07:19am PT
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We are NOT the organism.
The driver is never the vehicle itself .....
The material world is an idea that the living entity creates in illusion.
Life itself is NOT ever an idea nor never an illusion!
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 24, 2018 - 07:19am PT
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Jim: Awareness is an interpretation. With education from sources that inform awareness during perception of a threat or success, the original nature of a living being/organism changes.
I’ll disagree. There would seem to be some conflagration here with a number of different terms: interpretations, perceptions, consciousness, awareness, etc. I’m speaking from a cognitive science view and a direct view from my practices of attending to consciousness.
Try this: if there are no “things” to be conscious of, could there be awareness nonetheless? Must there exist things in order for one to be aware? Does a tree perceive “things” that it is conscious of? Maybe not. Does a tree have awareness? It would seem so to anyone who would see a tree as an element in an ecology / system. Interaction implies awareness.
Interpretation would seem to imply that there is more than one interpretation available. (I take it that one would not argue that a given interpretation is incontrovertible understanding.) The generation of (more than one) interpretations, imo, implies a thinking conscious mind. A tree might have an imputed rule-set , but I don’t think we would call that an interpretation (viz., of its environment and resource acquisition needs).
I would argue that there is first awareness, and that seems to be a core characteristic of the universe. Awareness seems to be meta-global. Then there could be consciousness that becomes cognizant of (its own) awareness: the emanation or flowering of an instantiation, if you will. What it cognizes itself and its environment to be is where the interpretation come in.
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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Jun 24, 2018 - 08:09am PT
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...i am!
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Jun 24, 2018 - 11:53am PT
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Awareness is an interpretation
This true.
For the brain to function without recourse to global interrelationships is not possible. Neurons are by nature highly interconnected structures.
Interpretations at the most basic level, occur like heartbeats or blinking eyes and are wholly instinctual and automatic and dynamic; and are outcomes of the interconnected neuronal web.It may not be possible to deliberately halt awareness by cleaving it from this network of algorithmic-like interpretations. Moreover, the brain might even include a fail-safe mechanism to prevent just that possibility from occurring. In other words, the fail-safe might render awareness-without-interpretation impossible strictly because such a mental state, were it to occur, could in several ways be detrimental to survival itself.
Of course, very deliberate, willful intellectual interpretation is another matter.
Therefore, the discussion hitherto lacks an ironclad working definition of "interpretation" and rests upon semantics at this stage.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 24, 2018 - 01:02pm PT
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I think of awareness as just awareness.
Same for interpretation.
Though when I say just I don't mean that there is only one awareness or interpretation.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jun 24, 2018 - 01:55pm PT
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Here's a way to restate my position. To the tree rings question posed either up-thread or in the link; I would say that tree rings are not intrinsically information. They, like everything else in the universe are intrinsically data.
Okay, but now you've introduced a distinction between information and data. I believe that that's a distinction without a difference for the purposes I've been talking about. All you are doing with it is to say, in effect, "It's data in a time slice if it doesn't mean anything to anybody at that particular time slice. It's information in a time slice if it does mean something to somebody in that particular time slice."
But, on this view, "'data' really is just every state of the universe." On this view, a salt crystal in nature is "data" because it doesn't now but could in principle at some time mean something to somebody. The background radiation that SETI ignores is "data," because, like the random string in my example, it could actually be meaningful, if only we could interpret it. So, on this view, the additional term "data" genuinely fails to explicate, because whatever "information" is, it is NOT that. And I dismissed what you are now calling "data" BECAUSE we know that "information" is not that.
Back to the junk DNA. That portion of the genome stopped becoming information to the instructions for putting your body together.
As far as we know at present. But I cannot emphasize strongly enough: We do not understand the genome!
But, let's grant your idea. Again, I don't see how it explicates anything relevant to information, because now, by your lights, it is just "data" rather than "information," but we still need an account of actual information.
Again, information is all about the contract between two parties. We use the concept a lot in object-oriented software programming.
Okay, but again we're on the same page: Genuine information has necessary intentional context. You go further than I would dare to go by even calling in a "contract between two parties," which evolutionists should wish to shy FAR away from.
What you seem to be saying at this point is that "data" lacks meaning, which is necessary for intentionality; while "information" has meaning and can be employed intentionally in "contracts."
But you seem to now be making the point I made on my website. We can distinguish between "all the states of the universe, however random and meaningless" and "information, which implies meaning and intentionality." You are simply calling "all that stuff" "data," and "all that meaningful stuff" "information." But that is exactly my point.
Somehow, though, you agree that there is genuine information in the genome and in our minds, which is distinct from what you are calling "data," yet you seem to think that its mere existence (in the genome, mind, etc.) is all there is to say. Like your early line, you seem to CONCLUDE: "There it is."
But, as I said from the outset, "there it is is what needs to be EXPLAINED." It's the PROBLEM rather than the conclusion of the matter.
In a universe that entirely lacks intention and meaning, somehow genuine meaning and information emerged. THAT is what needs an account. And the only empirical accounts thus far say either, like you: "There it is, and it must have emerged naturalistically," or they try to explain some naturalistic process by which it emerged.
Those processes ALWAYS smuggle in the very thing they are trying to explain. At the deepest processes of the cell we see purpose, intention, and it is to THAT intention that explanations necessarily appeal to "explain" how intention came to reach the macro level, such as in our minds and purposes.
However, the mystery of intention at the cellular level just is the mystery of life itself, because the distinction between life and non-life IS this intention, this purpose.
Empiricists need a continuum between non-life and life, not a "clear, bright line." That's why empiricists make so much of "organic molecules" being discovered here or there. They believe that if you put enough organic molecules together in "the right conditions" (which thus far remain just wishful thinking), "life is inevitable." But HOW can it be "inevitable" in the sense that empiricists need it?
It is "inevitable" in that robust sense because NECESSARILY naturalistic processes (determined and replicate in "the right conditions") "convert" non-life into a functioning organism with genuine intention "built in."
But there are literally countless problems with this whole approach, and I've been focusing on the information-content problem.
Now you and I seem to be agreed that "information is not IN the 'date' itself," and that intention is a necessary condition for information to be said to exist. But if those two points are agreed, then life could not have emerged according to any existing empirical model.
Imagine that "the first cell" contained just 1 bit of information in its genome: 0 or 1. Imagine that simple enzymes existed that could bind to the 0 or the 1. Imagine that such enzymes did nothing but convert a 1 to a 0 and vice-versa upon binding. (I'm trying to imagine the absolutely simplest "process" by which "replication" could occur deterministically, as in, "In the right conditions, it just happens, and it always happens in such conditions.")
Okay, now let's just wave our hands in the general direction of cellular division and just grant that the "conversion" process I mentioned enabled multiple "bits" to string together, with enzymes starting to bind these strings together and with a small degree of randomness convert the values of the bits. Now, certainly you have a cell with "data" in your sense. Let's say that by some mechanism as yet undiscovered, at some point that body of "data" gets motivated to separate into two identical copies and form two cells. Wow! But, okay, we'll grant it; it happened.
STILL, you have merely "data," not "information." And I cannot emphasize this enough!
SOMEWHERE in that process, that "data" was not just random strings being manipulated according to deterministic processes! Somewhere in there a CRITICAL and QUALITATIVE transformation took place!
"Life" is NOT just random "data" that happens to replicate! "Life" is a self-contained "instruction set" that the genome houses and that SOMETHING "reads" and "processes" into new cells like that first one.
The problem is much worse than that scientists don't even BEGIN to understand that qualitative transformation. Making much of that would be a mere appeal to ignorance. No, the problem is that we have exactly ZERO evidence to believe that that QUALITATIVE divide is EVER bridged by non-living entities. In other words, we have ZERO evidence to believe that "you can get here from there," even at the level of the most basic information in the instruction-set for the most basic living cell. We don't just "not understand it." We in fact have no evidence to believe that that divide CAN be bridged.
So, I await the empirical account of "there it is," when we KNOW that there is a sharp divide between "just the way the universe happens to be at some point in time, both at the micro and macro levels" and genuine information.
If by "there it is," you want to agree that the cell just contains "data" that we happen (now) to see as "instructions" but that really "in itself" are not, well, fine. I'll happily grant you that. But it's not what you really want, because then you still need to explain the existence of genuine information. The "appeal to complexity" is an egregious fallacy of division! So, you then still need to account for how from merely "data"-filled cells genuine intention and information emerged.
If you instead say that "there it is" means that cells are laden with genuine information, which I personally think is the only hope an empiricist has got, then you now need to explain how that information "meant anything to 'anybody' prior to there BEING 'anybody.'" HOW, then, did an "instruction set" instruct "anybody" to "do anything"?
If your "answer" again appeals to "naturalistic processes," then we're back to square one: All you're talking about is states of affairs rather than information. And if you instead admit what is true, that "information implies a reader," then you have to explain how a floating pile of enzymes and proteins became a "reader" rather than just a bunch of goo floating around together.
In short, "there it is" either fails to explicate the vast divide between "states of affairs" and "information," or it smuggles in the very features that need explanation.
The "mystery of life" just is the "mystery of information." And on purely empirical terms, it remains a complete mystery.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jun 24, 2018 - 02:02pm PT
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I was just listening to Carl Sagan explaining our insignificance both in terms of our length on this planet as a species and our size in relation to the universe, and all i could think is yes, but we know that. Knowing, how strange and how unique and how amazing. I don't imagine we're insignificant at all!
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jun 24, 2018 - 03:58pm PT
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^^^ I'm with you, Paul. We are not insignificant. And in a robust sense, the universe is what it is because we gape in awe at it.
It is beyond awesome, and so are we!
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jun 24, 2018 - 03:59pm PT
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Okay, so I think that I have made my points -- I don't think that there is anything, fundamentally, that I have missed. I've heard your points. You have not persuaded me, but you have made me rethink my position and allowed me to say mine with as much brevity as (I think) possible, which is always what I strive for. That's not a big part of what you strive for, clearly:)
So, I'm done with this branch of this long-running thread. Let's continue the conversation in person, MB1!
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nafod
Boulder climber
State college
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Jun 24, 2018 - 04:27pm PT
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Knowing, how strange and how unique and how amazing. I don't imagine we're insignificant at all!
All the really interesting things happen with system that have recursion in them. Even more so with systems that can reason about themselves. Still more for those that can change themselves.
The idea that we, who are a part of the universe, can contain within us (as thought) a model of the universe, it reminds me of fractals and how as you zoom in, there is similarity between scales. But here the universe contains within it billions of miniature models of the universe, changed but recognizable as related to the original. The result of pieces of the universe looking back at itself. Wow.
This local piece of the universe can now dive right into the genome and directly edit what evolution took so long to work at, and to make changes that maybe weren’t possible before. And we were at the beginning of the new era...
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jun 24, 2018 - 04:28pm PT
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Let's continue the conversation in person, MB1!
That or other conversations. :-)
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Jun 24, 2018 - 04:56pm PT
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"Breath sweeps mind" Suzuki Roshi
What does that mean? It refers to an experience; what is the mind like when it is swept. I think it really refers to "just breathing" not being distracted by anything else. When you are just breathing there is no distraction regarding anything i.e. neo evolution, Dennett , sickness etc.. The very act of complete immersion in what you are doing (i.e. breathing, doing science, thinking about Dennett, requires you to let go of all other conscious activities in order to be completely immersed/absorbed. Big deal , so what; but, that also means you have to let go of your likes and dislikes, your opinions ,your conditioning. Otherwise the mind won't be swept; it will only be a pretend sweeping if you conditioning still remains. It takes courage and great effort to truly sweep your mind. Information about your brain is of no use in this pursuit.
Why would you want to sweep your mind? To get an unconditioned view thus enabling unconditioned action.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jun 24, 2018 - 05:19pm PT
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All the really interesting things happen with system that have recursion in them. Even more so with systems that can reason about themselves. Still more for those that can change themselves.
The idea that we, who are a part of the universe, can contain within us (as thought) a model of the universe, it reminds me of fractals and how as you zoom in, there is similarity between scales. But here the universe contains within it billions of miniature models of the universe, changed but recognizable as related to the original. The result of pieces of the universe looking back at itself. Wow.
This local piece of the universe can now dive right into the genome and directly edit what evolution took so long to work at, and to make changes that maybe weren’t possible before. And we were at the beginning of the new era...
Great post! I'm a recursion fan!
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jun 24, 2018 - 06:33pm PT
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I cannot emphasize strongly enough: We do not understand the genome! -mb1
You know I have a sneaking suspicion that if we did a multi-pitch climb** together we'd get along just fine, we'd understand each other, we'd communicate effectively/seamlessly and we'd have a great day with no gear, tool or safety issues.
But we word and phrase things so, so, so very differently!! It's rather a mystery to me. But that's okay.
**free, no aid, less than 5.11, lol
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