View Full Version : What is Information?
rgray222
22nd May 2016, 00:00
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AvIOzVJMCM
Science is a method ready-made for measuring the 'hardware' of the universe. But what about the 'software'?This is a topic that interests me more every day- what is 'information'? The short video above asks that exact question:
Information is on our phones and in our DNA sequence, but what is it exactly? Is it something subjective or a real quantity?
One can see that if we regard our universe/reality as being a computer simulation - like a super-enhanced game of Doom or Skyrim - then the world is constructed completely by information in a computer program.
The well-known American theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler proposed that information is fundamental to creating the reality of the Universe, coining the short phrase 'It from Bit' to describe that function.
It from bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom — a very deep bottom, in most instances — an immaterial source and explanation; that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe.
I know a couple of my favorite authors, Jacques Vallee and Paul Davies, have also covered this fascinating topic. Any recommendations for further reading?
Source: (http://www.dailygrail.com/2016/5/What-is-Information) Daily Grail (http://www.dailygrail.com/)
ZooLife
22nd May 2016, 00:47
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
-- Albert Einstein
One of the best things to remember about information is.....
GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage out)
https://pbmo.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/snake-by-bibifur-by-raphael-garnier.gif
Inversion
22nd May 2016, 01:11
The static on an old analog TV could be the raw data of the holographic or electromagnetic universe. Some Benedictine monks supposedly pulled in a picture of Jesus on the Chronovisor using a cathode ray tube.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_(video)
It looks like the pattern on the sun. You could call the black & white pixels a binary code.
http://cdn.makeuseof.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/burned-lcd-display-3.jpg?7a15c3
Michelle Marie
22nd May 2016, 01:13
Interestingly, when I watched the video on the part about entropy, I was confused. First, I recalled that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. That is the law of conservation, and I thought it was the second law of thermodynamics. As I was scouting around the Internet I found this article that states that entropy and evolution are mutually exclusive.
http://www.icr.org/article/51/247/
Sir Julian Huxley states that "the whole of reality is evolution-a single process of self-transformation." In my experience, information gleaned from the inner levels (when attuned to the whole) seems to be the Source of information/energy/evolution.
Information/ideas is/are Light. We are lit up and vibration is raised when openly receiving this Light. The inspiring ideas I gain from going within "orders the Universe" and changes old patterns of chaos (life's problems) to a higher state of being (evolution) while implementing these solutions/ideas. I'm sure it matters what frequency we are attuned to. I practice attunement, or calibration to the whole, through surrender or alignment to Divine Will.
The web of light/consciousness that we are are all ideas/information and is the Source of consciousness. We are information at varying levels of vibration. Using will power consciously through intention, we can tune into different frequencies of information. I'm learning that this is how we commune with other realms.
I find information fascinating from this perspective. And I love the sense of connection from perceiving the web of consciousness - the Light that is Spirit.
I'm sure we can either choose entropy or evolution, depending on our choices coming from either a limited or expanded sense of Self.
Thanks for the thread!
Love,
Michelle Marie :heart:
Innocent Warrior
22nd May 2016, 02:34
"Here we find ourselves, suddenly, not in a critical speculation, but in a holy place, and should go very warily and reverently. We stand before the secret of the world, there where Being passes into Appearance, and Unity into Variety."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Any recommendations for further reading?
"Biocentrism", by Robert Lanza, MD, you can find it here (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?9462-Interesting-Free-Books-in-PDF&p=1047911&viewfull=1#post1047911) in the "Interesting Free Books in PDF" thread.
The only point I disagree on is the example he gives of how our kitchen is not there when we're not observing it. This is subject to the state of the collective mind of humanity and the individual's relationship to it. The collective mind of humanity determines how the collective reality is manifested.
...this is a participatory universe.
This has been proven beyond doubt, scientifically, see chapter eight, "The Most Amazing Experiment".
Agape
22nd May 2016, 11:20
Information is in-formatio , something taking form . Imagine vast ocean of primordial Soup of formless reality in which segments of forms , formatting and replicating itself through countless media of density and elementary structure ,
vibrates simultaneously in multiple forms .
The universe truly is endless and formless but we live in broad band of defined dimensions we can foresee and explore , and inhabit .
The Universe as such does not have a Centre, it truly is and infinity to all sides ..
within the vast realm of universe you define yourself .
Information really is a logical processing ..
if we can process the present moment correctly we are likely to move to foreseeable future
:flower:
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll256/PaldenLhamo/giphy_zpszqdfd8s6.gif (http://s290.photobucket.com/user/PaldenLhamo/media/giphy_zpszqdfd8s6.gif.html)
It's in the Heart :heart: 2
complex and self-effulgent pattern of reality
the speck of speculation
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll256/PaldenLhamo/header_zpsu23eeibj.gif (http://s290.photobucket.com/user/PaldenLhamo/media/header_zpsu23eeibj.gif.html)
figment of my imagination ..
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll256/PaldenLhamo/tumblr_n0tyrtuVXO1riri2uo5_r2_500_zpsueeguaul.gif (http://s290.photobucket.com/user/PaldenLhamo/media/tumblr_n0tyrtuVXO1riri2uo5_r2_500_zpsueeguaul.gif.html)
http://ciid.dk/education/portfolio/idp14/courses/introduction-to-programming/projects/geometric-mandalas-and-planetary-models/
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll256/PaldenLhamo/Rolfe-Redding_Mandala_zpsuungfv2m.jpg (http://s290.photobucket.com/user/PaldenLhamo/media/Rolfe-Redding_Mandala_zpsuungfv2m.jpg.html)
information theory -
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll256/PaldenLhamo/3257965d8a1ea67509f74b4803055958_zps2kdtypno.gif (http://s290.photobucket.com/user/PaldenLhamo/media/3257965d8a1ea67509f74b4803055958_zps2kdtypno.gif.html)
Source of gif : http://budha2.blog.bg/technology/2016/02/27/visokoenergetichen-vakum-eter-ili-pytia-kym-prakticheskata-a.1433457
DMT crystal model : information sequence
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll256/PaldenLhamo/tumblr_o6tubhyYlI1vqb4g5o1_500_zpssbrqxnst.gif (http://s290.photobucket.com/user/PaldenLhamo/media/tumblr_o6tubhyYlI1vqb4g5o1_500_zpssbrqxnst.gif.html)
:bearhug:
Agape
22nd May 2016, 22:46
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll256/PaldenLhamo/14lgib_zpszotw1gp1.gif (http://s290.photobucket.com/user/PaldenLhamo/media/14lgib_zpszotw1gp1.gif.html)
The Wheel of Time , the Universal watch , the time and its sequence , the sacred order of everything , the relic of past and vision of future ,
the sequence , the causes and consequences ...
Carmody
23rd May 2016, 01:29
who needs...
who needs....
Information...
P1QZxGFrVqQ
Differential begets Information begets organization begets awareness begets reflection begets intelligence. (Refection, reactance, self-awareness)
Agape
23rd May 2016, 11:02
A 'charge' . For example , the new electron that changes your 'oscillation octave' and thus your life path either for long time to go if not forever or until you swap the electron or lose it for someone else ,
charge .. between neural synapses , positive to negative and so forth .
It used to work that way but the problem with our age is over-charge and over-information going on, hand in hand .
Makes me thing of massive cooling down would have to happen , 'be bestowed' upon this planet , so that people sit calm and think on the base frequency natural to them and what is most important .
People dying of hunger still thinking they need to meet Miley Cyrus surely has to be result of overheating :Angel:
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araucaria
26th May 2016, 06:54
Some musings here. I see information as a combination of a minimum two elements, binary code being the irreducible form of this: a 1 is only meaningful in distinction to a 0, and vice versa. Hence the most basic building block is definable as something that is not something else: duality as the first step of creation from unity. The red pill in your hand is only meaningful on its own to the extent that it might suggest that you have swallowed a blue one. If you are uncomfortable with duality, then you can only be impossibly uncomfortable with the endless multiplication of complementarities we call creation.
Information processing, which we often call creativity, in a way is just the opposite; it serves to rein in creation by reducing the number of discrete categories into some sort of order. Hence, if you can see red and blue as simply two shades of violet, you have simplified two categories into a single category. But while gathering red and blue and everything in between up into this Platonic abstraction of colour, you have also done the opposite, since you now have three colours instead of two. This is the fundamental dichotomy between art and science that we seemingly cannot escape from. Science seeks to classify individual instances under laws that cover many such. Not only do apples and oranges fall to the ground in the same way, everything else has a similar gravitational tendency as well, including planets. This is simplification by Isaac Newton on the hugest scale. People who are uncomfortable with the idea that this is not the whole story invented the Fall of Man, original sin, and that is the hole we are still digging for ourselves.
Pass this idea on to a poet, you get: “The Earth is blue like an orange” (Paul Eluard). This is a pre-space age metaphor that turns out to be extremely accurate, not in terms of the Earth being a piece of overripe fruit about to drop, but in terms of nourishment and delight from a whole range of subtle flavours, sweetness but also a hint of sharpness – altogether what we call roundness. The hint of sharpness is there in this clash of colours, not just the obvious one (blue v orange), but the counterintuitive one: the earth is normally brown (growing other colours), it only looks blue from a distance because of the orange juicy sea. In other words, we are looking at a microcosm and a macrocosm, how they interrelate, and how both relate to an intermediate cosmos, the woman he loves (for this is a love poem). This is a synthetic attempt at describing love as a feeling of elation when every sensation and feeling goes into overdrive, beyond completeness.
You also find the opposite, analytical approach in both science and poetry. Just as science also breaks things down into ever smaller parts, in earlier times poets would wax lyrical about the loved one’s features from head to toe (or rather a more interesting order than that!) – not even seeing the wart on the tip of her nose or other less than perfect feature so obvious to anyone not in love. So ultimately you have the contrary interpretation of love as being blind. Alternatively, not seeing leads to the major love theme of pining over the loved one’s absence.
So on the one hand you have the interplay of macro- and micro-cosmos, which can be seen in terms of the transfer of information. But where is the information source, supposing there is one? Platonic idealism for example suggests, to put it in the broadest terms, that it is in any case not where we are at. Perhaps the American ‘the bigger the better’ approach is right: God as the ultimate macrocosm? Or perhaps ‘small is beautiful’ is the correct approach, and the simplest element is the source of all things. Something like ‘Let there be light’ and take it from there. But that is not an item of information at all, merely an instance of will. Hence the Kabbala notion of tsimtsum as presence through absence: the divinity shrank to make way for the creation.
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2047206/jewish/Tsimtsum.htm
Combining the two leads to the ‘As above so below’ meme whereby it is all one, theoretically all signal and no noise. But the effect, and perhaps the purpose (if you need a purpose) of self-similarity is the endless variations: ‘As above not quite so below’. And vice versa. That is why we prize our individuality and the originality it makes possible. We are precisely not machines or robots, although anyone consistently good as what they do is admired for their machinelike efficiency. In other words, the signal-to-noise ratio goes up but not to 1, there has to be more than 0 noise. Noise is a vital part of the system, which explains why there will always be two ways of looking at what is ultimately a wave function: either a perfect signal being distorted or a huge distortion being converted into some sort of signal. We provide the noise, and that is a good thing.
The idea of variations on an original theme is of moot value. The bottom-up approach includes things like blueprints, patents or musical scores, which are all much simpler than their possible embodiments, which are at once more and less than the supposed original – information is both added and lost. No one pines over Beethoven’s Beethoven when they can listen to Barenboim’s Beethoven... Patents inspire further patents, music inspires more music: the reproductive process per se as medium is part of the message. But the top-down approach also has its merits. In his essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, Walter Benjamin describes how the value of an original work of art is what he calls its ‘aura’, which is what gets lost in the process of mechanical reproduction such as photography. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_Mechanical_Reproduction
If I take the example of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, which is where Leonardo’s aura lies, in the paint he himself mixed – and containing his own DNA if, as is likely, he used his finger at some point – and applied in a certain irreproducible order and manner in a bygone place and time – that aura has become increasingly inaccessible as the age of mechanical reproduction has taken a certain faded embodiment of the work of art to virtually every human on the planet. In my youth, you could go right up to the picture and stare at it for as long as you wished. Nowadays, you have to stand in line for about an hour in order to file quickly past the painting held behind glass several meters away, rather in the way you would file past a coffin at a funeral. In other words, the aura is virtually dead, while the translatable information is more alive than ever, albeit through mechanical reproduction.
So there you have another paradox: not only are we operating more as noise than signal, but we are also fooling ourselves if we think our aura can be carved in stone. You are not your aura. I suggest this is what Leonardo was saying and doing when he painted a masterpiece designed to self-destruct:
http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?71284-Where-Do-Our-Thoughts-Physically-Exist&p=832724&viewfull=1#post832724
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