Quibbles for Juan Roederer

Dear Juan:

Thanks so much for the great examples. I agree with your classification
completely, and you have made everything so much clearer than I managed
to do!

I have only a handful of minor quibbles.

(1) I think you go a little too far when you say (in paragraph 3) that
"there is no energy coupling between sender and receiver" in a true
information-use scenario. Rather, I would say, the informational signal
must be very low in energy in relation to the energies involved in the
stability of the sender and receiver.

At the observer end, the signal must be low-energy because that is the
whole point of information---to act as a guide and as a predictor for
the success of functional action. This purpose is defeated if the signal
itself disrupts the observer (as when we are blinded by the sun, for
example). At the observed-object side, the same principle applies, in
reverse. Inanimate objects do not care if they are destroyed, but we as
observers do. We must use a probe that does not destroy the object we
are observing if we wish to obtain useful information about it. To be
sure, there are exceptions, in which we gather information from the way
in which things explode, but in general I think the rule holds. For the
most part, we want to know how things are and how they react in an
intact fashion, so a relatively low-energy probe is essential.

On the other hand, SOME energy transfer is always required in order for
information to be gathered. There is no such thing as clarivoyance.

(2) This is really a minor quibble---and, as I say, I think your
examples are great---but without a little elaboration, someone might
take away the impression that true information use is tied intrinsically
to brains, since you use the dog as your example of the transition from
force-type interactions to information-type interactions.

I believe that the information-type interaction is an essential feature
of life as such, and that the bacterium is interacting with its
environment (and indeed its internal parts are interacting with each
other) according to essentially the same principles that the dog uses in
circling around the obstacle. I assume that you will agree with this
(no?), but I just wanted to get it out on the table to avoid any
possible misunderstandings.

(3) Finally, you write (also in paragraph 3) "Note that this class of
interactions must evolve; they cannot arise spontaneously in the abiotic
world." Two remarks on this.

First, if we are naturalists, we must assume that such interactions DID
evolve spontaneously in the abiotic world, even if we have no idea at
present how this was possible.

Second (and here I may part company with you, and probably with most
others, as well), I do not think it helps much to invoke Darwinian
evolution, for the following reason. What we are talking about is a very
specific type of dynamical interaction. Therefore, we must seek to
understand it by investigating the spontaneous activity of the type of
matter that comprises the living state (namely, giant, frustrated,
metastable, and low-energy-trigger-dependent proteins coupled to an
ordered-water-phosphate gel matrix). Once we understand how the living
information interaction is possible, then we will probably have a much
deeper insight into how transitions from one stable state to another
(ontogenetic learning) are possible, and ultimately how such transitions
can become fixed in the genome (phylogenesis).

I just don't think it helps very much to think along the lines of "Well,
it all happened by accident somehow, and the organisms in which it
happened survived and the others didn't." I think we have to try to do
better than that.

I don't know whether you will agree with me on this last point, but I
think it is crucial, because the Darwinian mindset seems to me to be
blocking the path of progress (as Peirce liked to say) by fostering a
complacency that we already understand things about which in fact we
haven't a clue.

Best regards,

James
Received on Wed Jun 19 13:31:56 2002