Computers are real

Quantum Quack said:
actually Enmos I would have to disagree.
The information of your random letters is exactly what you have typed and not more in fact I can even copy it:
ekjrhjs sehfbsdhgvsd dsf dsfsdhfagf
Just because it has no meaning to us does not change the fact that it is information...it does not need to have "utility" nor any other human quality to be information persee.

Say you are listing to radio signals from deep space, and notice it makes no sense what so ever to us, yet someone comes along with a special codec and desiphers a portion of the signal and it says " good morning this Alpha Centuri news":)

But I agree that it would normally have no "meaning" however IMO information it still is.

I guess it comes down to definition of what information is...
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I guess it does come down to the definition.
In my view information is dependent on the sender/recipient. In other words it's highly subjective.
Smiling is sending information to another person that says you mean well or are comfortable with them. But smile to a Chimp and they will take it as a sign of aggression.
 
Enmos said:
..information is dependent on the sender/recipient.
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Sorry, but information and sending it are two different things; there are multiple ways to send a given message or bit of information.

You could use morse code, or translate it into one of hundreds of languages, or invent one and use that representation. You could write it out on paper and mail it (or arrange a courier to pick it up and deliver it), or type it into an email and send it electronically.

What about computers communicating? Machines can recognise bit patterns too; they aren't concerned about the "meaning" in any of them - just the differences between them.

P.S. You are correct about the sender-receiver paradigm, and information being relative to both.
We decide which things are senders and receivers, and which are things that convey information from one to the other.
A cellphone is a sender-receiver, but if there was only one cellphone in the universe, it wouldn't be. You need a comms network as well.

Assuming a network of channels to send messages and receive them, you also assume senders and receivers.
This picture can be inverted - the senders and receivers become channels for the network information, or the network sends and receives messages to other parts of itself, using cellphones for channels.

An electron sends and receives photon messages, or photons send and receive electron messages; the view is which one we choose.
In QIS, this view can be swapped around, before or after a computation - both views are available but not at the same time (or in the same space).
 
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What do you do when you want to store information in any way ? In other words, when you want something to carry information.
 
Vkothii,
P.S. You are correct about the sender-receiver paradigm, and information being relative to both.
We decide which things are senders and receivers, and which are things that convey information from one to the other.
A cellphone is a sender-receiver, but if there was only one cellphone in the universe, it wouldn't be. You need a comms network as well.
Assuming a network of channels to send messages and receive them, you also assume senders and receivers.
This picture can be inverted - the senders and receivers become channels for the network information, or the network sends and receives messages to other parts of itself, using cellphones for channels.
An electron sends and receives photon messages, or photons send and receive electron messages; the view is which one we choose.
In QIS, this view can be swapped around, before or after a computation - both views are available but not at the same time (or in the same space).
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Could it be said that you are refering to a state of reflection or Reflective Sciences where by nothing can exist with out it's inherant reflection be it an electron , a photon or a cellphone? [ to use your examples]
 
Heres a small problem, who's to say that the makeup of an atom isn't in fact just a matrix array in a very elaborate computer? Wouldn't this just mean we are in fact an observation frame within a giant fractal of computers creating (and I loosely term) "Holograms" of themselves to create duplicates of themselves within themselves, within themselves within... ad infinitum.
 
Enmos said:
What do you do when you want to store information in any way ? In other words, when you want something to carry information.
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What do you do?
You use matter and energy, of course.

The fact is, you can decide which is the message, and which is the sending/receiving process. Matter can be energised, or commuted, but so can energy (as heat, for example).

We, the communicators, decide how to use either as a channel or carrier, which we then modulate with information.
Shannon's ideas end up going quite deep into the ontology/epistemology of information thing. What is it? Who sent it, and where from?
Essentially these are the questions science tries to answer, since nature is effectively a collection of information, as physical matter and as energy that transforms it.
We just have to decode the message, after deciding which is the channel it came down.
 
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No, to get something to carry information we organize it in a particular way. The organization is in fact what conveys the information, not the something that is organized.
One can convey the exact same information using an wide array of different somethings.
 
You're repeating what I just said.

To get something to carry "information" (a message or a signal) we modulate it.
"we organize it in a particular way". If the mesage is in Dutch, you put it in a bottle, turf it in the current, and a Swahili native finds it on the African coast sometime later, what's the information?
 
Vkothii said:
You're repeating what I just said.

To get something to carry "information" (a message or a signal) we modulate it.
"we organize it in a particular way". If the mesage is in Dutch, you put it in a bottle, turf it in the current, and a Swahili native finds it on the African coast sometime later, what's the information?
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Both sender and recipient can determine the content, independently of each other.
But I think we are close to an agreement :)
 
So, you send a message that you independently decide is the Dutch language (the representation), the Swahili native independently decides it's in Swahili? Who translates it?
 
No :p
Dutch is a recorded language. The rules for it's organization are all recorded.
So even if the Swahili native doesn't recognize it as information it still contains information. That's why I said information is subjective.. relative to the sender/recipient.
 
Right, so it's relative to both ends of the channel. If the representation changes (because the receiver expects a particular representation, i.e. encoding) then there is no communication, but there is still a message.

It just hasn't been carried properly - this requires a protocol. All channels have a protocol of communication, apart from the physical representation/realisation.
 
Vkothii said:
Right, so it's relative to both ends of the channel. If the representation changes (because the receiver expects a particular representation, i.e. encoding) then there is no communication, but there is still a message.

It just hasn't been carried properly - this requires a protocol. All channels have a protocol of communication, apart from the physical representation/realisation.
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Yes.
I would obviously call "physical representation/realization" organization though ;)
 
Organisation is too general a term, you need to be just a shade more specific with channels that get modulated.

A channel has a carrier, or actually it is a carrier. For example the English Channel carries boats across it, because of wind and tides - these are the energy in the channel that modulates the boat information. The protocol is kinematics and hydrodynamics, and the geometry of the information - the boats.

Since these are not transformed by the channel's protocol, except as themselves, the only translation is the position of each boat.

A storm that damages or destroys some boats, is a communication error - an error in protocol, or in the interaction between the carrier and the geometry of the information.
A string of bits has a 'geometry', an algebraic one.
 
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Vkothii said:
Organisation is too general a term, you need to be just a shade more specific with channels that get modulated.

A channel has a carrier, or actually it is a carrier. For example the English Channel carries boats across it, because of wind and tides - these are the energy in the channel that modulates the boat information. The protocol is kinematics and hydrodynamics, and the geometry of the information - the boats.

Since these are not transformed by the channel's protocol, except as themselves, the only translation is the position of each boat.
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Well this is a bit technical but I agree.
I just wouldn't call a field with randomly scattered rocks a channel.. ;)
 
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