Re: [Fis] Meaningful Information vs Information

Hi Group,
 
It is however not so strange (well known from human history :) ) how it is
hard for human mind to give up its position as the only "machine" able to
process information and uncover its meaning... There were many examples in
history when switching from the human-centered attitudes and theories had to
be (painfully) experienced otherwise evolution of science and emergence of
new meaningful and correct knowledge would have been questionable indeed. So
 we are not a centre of the Universe anymore, we are not the only living
beings with brains, having social life, experiencing feelings and gaining
general experience about our environment. Neither live beings are the only
type of systems able to process information. Now it seems that we are again
in such a painful point of bifurcation when speaking about the meaning and
hopefully not so painful in regard to the non-anthropocentric notion of
information. Why should we expect that information is meaningful only for
humans ? There are many examples of signs that are meaningless to our mind
but evidently has a meaning in other contexts. Song of a bird, genetic code
in nature, even binary code in computers created by us to bear meaning
within machine (but not our mind) are good examples. Should we speak about
correctness instead ? But it is the meaning that can be correct or not,
while meaning itself being a property of information... Genetic code. If it
is in a wrong context (e.g. you try to analyze genetic sequences in your
mind) then it will not be used to produce any protein it carries a meaning
for. If it is incorrect then it still will be processed but with mistakes -
mutations. But then why do our minds analyze it at all ? Because of it's
meaning within a cell. In this case it is meaningful for our minds just
because it is meaningful for the cell and not vice versa. Our mind just
tries to explore the meaning and the context of genes. Nor mind is a
context for genetic information as it does not participate in DNR
replication, neither genes work correctly just because we assigned a meaning
for them in our heads.
 
Can absolutely meaningless information (if it is information) exist at all ?
In the world of chemical reactions catalysers change a flow of processes not
participating in them directly, but through certain structural interactions
that can be described as information matching context and therefore
meaningful. You can not describe catalysis in terms of chemical reaction or
transfer of energy. But the process very much reminds meaning-context
coupling.
 If something is meaningless for somebody then it well might carry a at
least some meaning for someone else, or for example enzymes DNA polymerases
are meaningless in processes of carbohydrate metabolism within a cell but
they are vital when repairing defected DNA. In similar way a key from my
doors does not necessarily suits lock in doors of my neighbor, etc... Then
what is meaningless ? Here some examples from nature on "the meaningless":
frogs do not see (perceive) objects that do not move because if somebody
does not move then it is meaningless to a frog (nor an enemy neither prey)..
 Human eyes do not see infrared or ultraviolet radiation and do not perceive
radio frequency waves because we would be overloaded with huge amounts of
information that is meaningless for our daily activities and survival...
 
Meaning may be responsible for many well known phenomena generalized by a
term of retro-causality. The best examples available are from quantum
world: light quanta can exist only in space between two objects, if there is
nothing to be aimed at - light will not be emitted. One may also consider
experiment of diffraction where every single photon "knows" where others go
to choose its unique way and finally interact with the totality of others to
produce well known wavy patterns on a screen... Something like this also
emerges in our macro-world when we start thinking about systems in terms of
information theory, meaning, purpose, context... If there is a purpose there
will be an actor aimed at it. Look how precisely protein macromolecules
folds into their secondary, tertiary structures (structure as information)
just to fit an object they have to interact (function=meaning) with
(purpose)... What is more interesting they are not folded by an external
actor - they fold by themselves following laws and internal forces of
molecular interaction responding to conditions (signals) from their
environment. But the result matches a function (meaning) of this structure
within the entire system (context). This proves bidirectional (top-down &
down-top) evolution and emergence of system hierarchies as earlier discussed
in this list.
 
But there is even more fun to this. It seems that information frequently
(always ?..) has several layers of meaning targeted at different "listeners"
i.e. same events/structures are meaningful in different contexts. For
example when you read those words and sentences of this message you can
understand my thoughts, however your brain first analyses each symbol
(letter) and joins it in to words without your conscious participation. But
prior to being able to perceive letters yet another part of your brain has
to decode a signal from your eyes which consists of numerous signals
produced by different kinds of cells sensitive to light or color that are
located in retina. In fact brain is decoding, comparing and merging two
different sets of signals in order to construct a stereo-view of
surroundings, feel shape of objects, and so on... Now lets look at yet
another systems participating in this process- the Internet, computers.
Letters are meaningful for us, but what is meaningful for the Internet is
the SMTP communication protocol (in case of e-mail messages). Computer
interacts with the meaning only as binary representation of letters (ASCII
code) but it does not care about letters themselves... And more levels of
meaning can be identified here. If at least one of them failed nobody would
be able to read this message and some layers of meaning would be lost... So
when we hear a sound of a thunderstorm we "are supposed" to respond to this
(message) adequately and ensure safety of our home and flesh ;-). If it was
meaningless we wouldn't hear it. If meaningless information can participate
in generation of meaningful information, then is it truly meaningless ? Are
there any opinions on this (multiple layers of meaning) ?..
 
Best regards
 Viktoras
 

_______________________________________________
fis mailing list
fis@listas.unizar.es
http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
Received on Tue Feb 24 09:53:41 2004