Re: Next stage, and Q1

From: Pedro C. Mariju�n <[email protected]>
Date: Mon 24 Jun 2002 - 13:51:43 CEST

Dear John,

I find very intriguing your paragraphs in response to Q1:

> Now, if self-organization is taken seriously, rather than merely as some
>vaguish metaphor, there must be something that is dissipated to create and
>maintain information. Furthermore, not just any dissipation will do; it
>will have to be dissipation of something of the right sort to permit the
>relevant sort of information to form.. So, rather than give an answer, I
>ask the following questions:
>
> What is dissipated in the production of information within the cell? Is it
>just energy, or is there a selection and disposal of information as well?
>How much is the information budget of the cell hierarchical? Are the lowest
>levels primarily energetic, and does this continue in the same mode to
>higher levels, or are their specifically informational (control) levels in
>the cell in which new information requires the dissipation of information
>at lower levels?

My whole point about these questions is that you are inquiring about a
unitary info--but what if biological info appears in several 'flavors'?
Imagine that we are inquiring about a unitary 'force' in nature: probably
we could not advance too far in our analysis unless we further distinguish
the very different several forces at action (the 4 ones). Well, 'energy'
came to the rescue providing the unitary entity, and appearing today for
many people as the necessary referent to conceptualize info. So the
cul-de-sac, in my opinion, as the different infos would be far closer to
the 'forces' category problem than to the 'energy' one.

For me the living cell is the theater of at least three different info
varieties or forms (or processes?), structural, generative, and
communicational, interlinked in a variety of ways; and probably it should
be four ones, as the above 'structural' implies lumping together the
mission of membranes, proteins, enzymes, metabolites... plus the crucial
antithetic work performed by constructive ribosomes / degradative
proteasomes. It looks an unsatisfying scheme, for myself too, but at least
provides room for making some further discussion of a family of related
concepts: representation, symmetry, function, life cycle, teleology... It
also highlights the unilaterality of those who think that enzymes only
interact by low-energy non-covalent bonds with their surrounds (Barham),
looking only at one type of communicational processes. But what about the
multitude of enzymes and proteins who suffer modification by
phosphorilation, dephosphorilation, methylation, acetylation,
proteolisis... aren't these interactions covalent?, and aren�t they quite
crucial in gene expression (histone-code), cycle control, and even the
signaling system itself? So my message is about not lumping together the
info dynamics (emphasis added on the 's') of the living cell under one
single category, otherwise we will always been talking about incoherent
properties, and we will never produce an interesting chart of the whole
bioinfo territory.

> In the brain, I think it is obvious that the formation of new information
>requires the rejection of dissonant information. Higher level concepts
>aren't merely the sum of a lot of lower level instances, but act as filters
>that sort and reject information. The question I ask is, can this be
>usefully reduced purely to the processing of energy, or is there a special
>sort of dissipation related to the formation of concepts? Alternatively, is
>concept formation not really a case of self-organization, but merely a very
>fancy sort of reorganization that produces no new constraints?

I much agree with the special dissipation idea, perhaps placing the
emphasis towards what I called 'abduction'. The capacity to selectively
destroy masses of info that we throw into irrelevence. Take the case of
laughter: as we argue in the final version of the fis 2002 paper (have a
look, it is brand-new) laughter makes much sense in the
info-hyper-saturated environment of human groups --as a genuine 'info
destroyer'. It throws into irrelevance items that had undeservedly taken
the attentional resources--and it leaves a pleasant background of generic
bonding among the co-laughing people. Again we are pretty unsatisfied with
the analysis we have done (although it includes intriguing formal chaotic
traces), but we believe that it serves to highlight laughter as a
'protophenomenon' of human socioinfo, strategically converging groupal,
emotional, cognitive & neurodynamic strands.

> The same questions can be asked at the firm level, but here we may also
>have dissipation at the social level of communications and perhaps other
>resources. What are the relevant resources? ....
> Mark Burch and I extended our treatment of rhythmic entrainment, in both
>the reorganization and self-organization cases to the social level: “Order
>From Rhythmic Entrainment and the Origin of Levels Through Dissipation”

I agree that 'Rhythmic Entrainment' looks a very important organizing item.
Let us think for instance on the inevitable economic cycles. But how could
we connect your idea with the very info structures on which firms and
markets are founded? I mean, inventions such as money, prices, accounting
systems, markets, stocks...? Could other FISers produce their suggestions
about the 'info granularities' that emerge along the time dimension of
economic systems?

best wishes

Pedro
=========================================
Pedro C. Mariju�n
Fundaci�n CIRCE
CPS, Univ. Zaragoza, 50018 Zaragoza, Spain
TEL. (34) 976 762036-761863, FAX (34) 976 732078
email: marijuan@posta.unizar.es
=========================================
Received on Mon Jun 24 13:52:49 2002

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