Re: (not completly) new topics

Dear colleagues,

here there are some replies to Peter's tricky questions (apparently simple,
but quite demanding as a home work):

>1. Werner Ebeling states in his eights statement:
>
>**********************************************
>Information can be created by selforganization
>*********************************************
>
>Question 1: How this statment appears in the cellular, whole brain, and
>firm level ?
>

In my opinion, Werner's statement is overstretching the elegant views he
develops on dynamic entropies (what an excellent work on higher order
correlations within info carriers!). Close by, his distinction between free
& bound info, although anthropocentricly interesting, becomes unclear for
the living cell. For instance, both the sequential info of DNA and the
'amorphous' architectures of enzyme networks and enzyme gradients would
become lumped together. And how they relate to cell signaling would be
quite unclear... But at least his view is sophisticate enough, as there is
a trend to cover with only one info category the whole cellular
info-occurrences. On this matter I would like to emphasize that crucial
current bioinformatic disciplines --genomics, proteomics, signaling
science-- dovetail with the three info genera proposed in these discussions
almost 5 years ago. Quite often scientific action goes in advance of
scientific reflection. I mean, pragmatic considerations alone should lead
us to a very serious contemplation of the current bioinformatic
(bioinformation) revolution... Anyhow, if the initial statement refers only
to the origins of life, I also tend to disagree: we still lack crucial
pieces of the puzzle. (What about 'panspermia': life as a cosmic
phenomenon?).

About brains, well, Juan makes some important claims. Also there was a
recent posting by Terry which was addressing iterative dynamics and
reentry... So, I would agree with the self.org. statement, provided there
is room for realizing how many poorly understood aspects are left out of
the picture: 'intelligent interconnecting architectures', roles of
evolutionary old structures, memory, emotions, consciousness, language,
qualia, etc., without forgetting the enormous background of molecular
intelligence involved (hormones, neuropeptides, etc.)

About firms, a clearer 'yes'. My hunch is that they constitute the easiest
place to conceptualize the paradoxical 'evenescent permanence' which
characterizes genuinely informational entities, provided that we achieve a
conceptual leap beyond the trivial interpretation of the curious varieties
of INFO the enterprise' structures endlessly produce and process. For
instance, the double entry book-keeping system, plus the 'Account of
Results' (sorry I directly translate from Spanish) are social inventions of
info nature: they allow participation in the 'invisible hand' planning of
markets. Plus the cannon of power laws (partitions?) which smoothly emerges
out from the mature interaction with the competitive environment...

>2. Juan Roederer mentions:
>
>***************************************************************************
****
>This brings up a new element in information-processing, namely that of
>decision-making
>*****************************************************************************
>Questions 2: How natural and artificial decision making systems process
>and create information?

Juan's paper is a scholarly piece. I agree with his initial emphasis on the
difference between info interactions and physical ones (although a broad
sense of info has to be attributed and respected for every one of the
consolidated uses of the term in other classical disciplines--Werner made a
good point about that days ago-- notwithstanding the strict sense each one
of us may particularly champion). On neuronal matters I miss the crucial
role seemingly played by the thalamocortical 'dialog' (eg, Edelman,
Llinás), because this could be the basic mechanism of 'attention' (the
heart of this Q2 motif). Attempting a generalization:

-- artificial systems have to rely on SPECIFICATION (a previous instruction
by the human makers on what is, or is not, info for them), implying a
terrible limitation of domains and functional brittleness, eg,
artif.intelligence systems as 'idiot savants'.

-- while living systems would operate by ABDUCTION. Both cellular signaling
systems and nervous systems have the capacity (the wisdom!) to eliminate a
lot of the irrelevant surrounding info and concentrate only on a single
item (or a few ones) of relevance. Here, the posting by John days ago on
the very relative role of energy differences in cell comm. was quite right
in my opinion (for instance, some crucial steroids, morphogens, and
hormones... directly enter into the nucleus, without any previous
processing, while opsins of the visual system, acompanied by G proteins,
adenyl ciclase, AMPc, chains of protein kinases, etc. migt achieve
magnifications of the order of... 10 exp 10, or even more, as just one
photon produces neuronal depolarization). Biological communication, and the
related decision-making, becomes dramatically decoupled from its energy
counterparts.

>3. Ted Goranson's
>************************************************************************
>work is in modeling the behavior of complex business enterprises,
>primarily those that make stuff.
>***********************************************************************
>
>Q3. Can we accumulate arguments that to manage and control complex
>business enterprises, a new
>Information Science is neccessary??
>

Ted makes some brief points on the vertical scheme (of multilevel info
flow) that I much share, particularly the asymmetry between the up and down
views on the same info 'phase transition'. For the sake of discussion, my
point is that directly modelling the intra-firms, or inter-firms production
& business complex procecesses would place our fis 'infoeconomy' views into
a very difficult alley. That task is the basic stuff for many
(sophisticate) research groups close to the complexity and econophysics
views.

Our general views, however, may be interesting to pay attention to current
non-trivial challenges, such as the nature of the firm, the 'value'
conceptualization, the 'invisible hand' foundations, the info nature of
accounting practices and its historical emergence side by side with
scientific book-keeping (eg. Toledo and Tarazona Schools of Translation,
Fibonacci, Luca Paccioli, Durero, Lavoisier; by the way, Sánchez Vidal, of
this list has a beatiful essay about all this, although in Spanish), also
the power law cannon (partitions and number theory underlying Pareto´s law
and Zipf's law?), and let us also remember the many discussions --and
several recent Nobel prizes-- about economic information, transactions, and
the functioning of markets and of stock exchanges. Finally, the unaccounted
value of Nature's resources and processes by economic markets is a dramatic
contemporary problem, that in my view can only be tackled by putting both
universes, the natural and the artificial, on a common info ground... So,
Michael was quite right: in fis infoeconomy we cannot forget the ultimate
relationship of human info with the natural niche.

best

Pedro

=========================================
Pedro C. Marijuán
Fundación CIRCE
CPS Univ. Zaragoza, 50018 Zaragoza, Spain
TEL. (34) 976 762036-761863, FAX (34) 976 732078
email: marijuan@posta.unizar.es
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Received on Wed Jun 5 14:03:53 2002