Meta discussion

Pedro--

>>Personally I find that the discussion on 'info' differences between
>>living and nonliving matter has been quite profound. Also, the
>>relationships between information and entropy (either thermodynamic
>>or Shannonian) have resisted clarification, although some new ideas
>>to ponder have been presented. Very intriguingly, the theme of
>>molecular recognition, followed by abduction, has somehow produced a
>>collective convergence --the hunch that going both backwards and
>>forwards a substantial part of the info puzzle may get an improved
>>ordering. Then, the interdisciplinary problem (or its absence within
>>our present system of sciences) has not received much attention; but
>>the socioinfo realm (including the exchanges on power laws and a
>>little bit of economics) has shown some promise of finding an
>>interesting development from FIS perspectives. In spite of some
>>individual attempts, we have not meaningfully connected with the
>>contemporary problems (sustainable development, world crisis) but
>>who knows...

This is a great list. Perhaps the discussion on the necessity of sign
should also be included. What you have listed are where the
discussion has indicated non-convergence, but I suspect that the
actual nubs behind the differing opinions can be discovered and
exposed --the different "religious issues" if you will.

I have found the virtual conference very much more useful than, say,
the physical one in Vienna because the virtual intercourse has
exposed some "first principles" to have more utility than I had
previously allowed. The e-conference is a self-organizing system in
itself, with interaction of abstractions for recognition and
dominance. For instance, I previously saw investigations of "signing
systems" in emergent chemical behavior as a dead end. I preferred the
abstractions humans use to deal with molecules rather than working
seriously with the abstractions that molecules themselves use. I'm
now convinced otherwise -- not sure I have the tools to make
something of this insight, but to do so a research team would have to
choose among the various philosophies espoused here.

An example is the category theory issue versus set theory as the
basis for the abstraction. It seems you MUST prefer one, and the
question is of which strikes very deep into the issue of whether
meaning or effect follows or bears any relationship at all to
recognition.

Pedro, your job is to be polite and inclusive, so you tend to skirt
these issues. But isn't there value in digging deeper and at least
trying to clarify the basic differences in approach? It might help
our self-organization.

>>My opinion is that we are 'in the dark' yet. All the formal tools
>>presented so far have weak and strong aspects... Rather than relying
>>on a single approach, I am inclined to follow a syncretistic vision.
>>For instance, the overall qualitative conceptualization from Karl,
>>the physical from Juan and Andrei, the entropy from Shu-Kun, the
>>communication in living cells from Jerry and Cristophe, the
>>self-referential from Terry, the symbolic from John H., the social
>>info 'mechanics' from Ted and Wolfgang, the causality and optimality
>>from John C.... but obviously this 'soccer team' is quite arbitrary.

If we were putting together a research lab for this work, we�d need
to make some basic decisions (quite independently of personalities)
about:

--the mix of disciplines,

--some application domain in which the science can be tested (and
presumably be useful), and

--some essential leverageable principles, including some commitments
as noted above.

I take your notion of a soccer team to address the first bullet more
than the third.

As to the second, I believe your preference for the application
domain is in social and economic systems which will then provide a
new "economics" for molecular organization. This is the other way
around from many represented here.
Received on Wed Dec 18 01:30:10 2002