Re: kickoff

At 11:24 AM 08/05/02, you wrote:
>(message from javorszky@EUnet.at)
>
>Dear FISers,
>
>First of all, let me thank you all for having organized this really
>exciting conference!
>
>Koichiro, in his discussion 'primer', has worked out the common and the
>different in the approaches of John, Andrei and Pedro towards the idea of
>information. Koichiro sums up the main ideas as I understand as follows:
>
>John talks about the actualised (present moment) fact and opposes the
>potential to this knowledge; Pedro remarks the predictability of the
>actualised, and visualises the actualised (or to-be-actualised) as embedded
>in the middle of the potential
>(knowing Pedro, one will know that he muses about symmetry); Andrei points
>out that the realised does have different properties to the potential.
>
>Let me propose that information is the pointing out of a specific
>realisation among many
>possible realisations. In terms of numbers: one specific arrangement of
>relations among numbers among many possible arrangements of relations among
>numbers. If we can accept this translation into number theory, then we may
>integrate the concepts outlined above into one consolidated model of
>information theory --interrelating those 'arch' principles that Pedro was
>mentioning...

I agree with this. Part of my reason for distinguishing between potential and
expressed information is to allow for a number of alternate possibilities.
However,
the possibilities are grounded in some actuality, preventing them from being
'mere' possibilities, which in themselves have no dynamical consequences.
Assuming that dynamics can be translated into number theory (I don't think this
is impossible; I translated it into abstract information theory, which is
not so
far away). The reverse translation, I think, does not work. Numbers are not
dynamical
entities.

John

----------
Dr John Collier john.collier@kla.univie.ac.at
Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research
Adolf Lorenz Gasse 2 +432-242-32390-19
A-3422 Altenberg Austria Fax: 242-32390-4
http://www.kli.ac.at/research.html?personal/collier
Received on Wed May 8 12:45:07 2002