AW: [Fis] 2004 FIS session: concluding comments

Dear FIS,

let me summarise what I have tried to bring across this year:

a) there are two aspects to information: WHAT and WHEN. Usually, one treats
the confluence of what-when or when-what as an information. Information does
concsit of pointing out a connection between a realisation of {what} and a
realisation of {when}. (Like in the Shannon algorithm, one points out {0|1}
is on place {1,2,3,...i...,n}.)
b) The WHEN can also be understood as Where. (I point to each of the
positions for a digit in a binary number and when my finder is there then
the conncetion is established between how and when/where.)
c) The WHAT can also be understood as as How. (The things I point out are an
answer to a What question, but I can point out the same object by describing
how it is similar or dissimilar to objects already known.)
d) Entropy can be understood as a process and as well as a state. If we say
"this collection will entropy in a few days" we mean that it shall be devoid
of specifics and will have become a mesh of yecch. Each subsystem shall have
become more similar to all other subsystems then presently. If we say "this
state is the entropic state" we mean that for whatever change in the state
of the assembly we shall need energy. By itself, it shall remain so. It has
already arrived at a state which we casll entropied state.
e) Then, we again match What (here: how) to When. It is important to
understand that we always talk about a state turning (evolving, becoming,
proceeding) in a matter of a few steps into a different state, in the case
of entropy the most durable state.
f) We all know that usually the usual things remain stable. It would be a
surprise if something quite usual terminated prematurely or remained in a
prolonged state of being so. We know the expected life spans of milk, bread,
fish, news, heat, a cold, a sorrow, a pleasure, a pot of flowers, a day, a
month, a year. In relation to WHAT we talk about we assign a WHEN it shall
have ended being so. This without any discussion, as we have all learnt this
intellectual capacity before we have learnt to speak: so we of course don't
talk about the scientific discovery that in dependence of HOW a thing is
made up there is a quite well circumscribed expectation horizon WHEN it
shall have become different. The HOW points out the thing against the
collection of any other thing that can be HOW and the WHEN points out the
assigned end of expected life span of this thing among all possible WHENs.
g) I firmly believe that mathematics can help making a model of our
surroundings and in case we do have a model of our surroundings it can help
makig that model transportable across individual items of our surroundings.
(If I know how many 5 apples are, I can also count 5 children.)
h) Therefore, I suggest that we look into the matter of WHAT and WHEN.
i) Comparing all possible instances of individual combinations of WHATs
(collections of semantic differentials modi Chomsky) we can distinguish 1.
how many pieces this collection is made up of, 2. how many of these pieces
are alike.
j) We open up a new numeric approach by counting the number of differing
pieces an assembly is made up of, rather than the overall number of pieces
an assembly is made up of. We then find that number of differing pieces of
an assembly is in itself a discriminating descriptor, even regardless of the
overall size of the assembly (although there exists an interdependence
between overall size of an assembly and the number of pieces is is most
probably made up of).
k) The durability of a state is how many steps it will remain so as it is.
If the state is a probably one, there shall be a large number of steps the
state shall remain so.
l) We can reconstruct the WHAT dimension of an assembly from its WHEN data
and the WHEN dimension from its HOW data.
m) This regardless of the absolute size (more or less).
I shall keep repeating these tautologies because I am convinced that they
show a very important tool to model interdependence of systems with.

-----Ursprungliche Nachricht-----
Von: fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es [mailto:fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es]Im
Auftrag von Luis Serra (by way of Luis Serra <serra@unizar.es>) (by way of
"Pedro C. Marijuan" <marijuan@unizar.es>)
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 16. Juni 2004 11:57
An: fis-listas.unizar.es
Betreff: Re: [Fis] 2004 FIS session: concluding comments

Dear colleagues,

I have been very busy during last months with courses, projects and things
like that ---far less interesting than the present discussion. Unluckily,
I was unable to participate in this exciting session. But fortunately, as
Michel remarked, we can retrieve the postings and the discussion from the
FIS site.

  I would like just to make a very brief comment about entropy and
information in my own field. As many of you already know from the past fis
session on sustainable development, my specialization is on thermoeconomic
analysis. It is an energy analysis, based on the Second Law of
thermodynamics (entropy), suitable to be applied to complex factories and
industrial systems. It studies how the resources consumed in an industrial
plant are distributed among the different pieces of equipment and how much
they participate in the final product(s) formation. In other words, it
allows to evaluate and analyze the process of cost formation (amount of
energy consumed for producing a product) throughout the analysis of the
interactions of the different plant units and throughout the entropy
generated in each physical equipment.

I agree with Pedro, in some private discussions that we have had in the
past, that this is a typical informational problem in which there is a neat
connection between entropy generation and creation of economic information.
In the thermoeconomic analysis, we study how the energy quality (exergy),
which is in very close connection with entropy generation, is degraded in
its flow along the productive process and as a consequence an economic
input (information) is created. I think that the methodology of this
thermoeconomic analysis is very systematic and formal, and might be
generalized and applied to other fields, to tentatively analyze, with
appropriate measurable magnitudes, the generation and distribution of some
"information" throughout the structure & processes of a system consisting
of different "components" or "pieces of equipment" in mutual interaction.

During the vacational period I will retrieve all your comments in this very
exciting session that I have missed!

Best regards to everybody

Luis

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Received on Wed Jun 16 15:37:08 2004