Re: Next stage, and Q1

Dear Pedro and John:

Other obligations prevent me from participating in the current
discussion period. I will return to Washington on June 30, 2002.

Could we postpone the discussion of my extended abstract in order to
begin on July 1, 2002? I have a number of systematic biological
examples which will bring some clarity (I hope) to the basic
definitions and the relations to Shannon (engineering) mathematics.

Meanwhile, I make a short response to Pedro's metaphor.

Pedro: I concur with your metaphor with regard to "forces". In
order to create a coherent structure for the concept of information,
one needs to construct a taxonomy that relates the (mathematical)
structures of communication and the transmission processes that link
one system to another. After one has a coherent taxonomy of
communicative processes, then one can ask how are these processes
relate to one another and what are the generating functions for
messages, the generating functions for transmitting of messages and
the processes associated with receiving a message.

Thus, Pedro, when you write:

>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...

I can appreciate the vivid metaphor of a "theater", but one needs a
coherent picture of the mathematical relations that allows each actor
to play a unique role. (In some cases, as in good theater, an actor
can play multiple roles.) The constructed story must generate a
persistent story that can be passed from generation to generation.
(Hence, the essential character of "molecular recognition.) And
always in the context of a specific "home" or a specific landscape or
a specific "dropcloth" within our imaginations.

It is these later issues that motivate the notion of "organic
communication" as I use the term in my abstract.

Cheers

Jerry LR Chandler

>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 22:07:53 2002