Probability, Information, Redundancy, Entropy (Campbell & Wilden)

RE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gjx_SpWocw
see these books:
http://www.amazon.com/Rules-Are-No-Game-Communication/dp/0710098685/ref=ntt_a...

http://www.amazon.com/Grammatical-Man-Information-Entropy-Language/dp/0671440...

Wilden quotations: "Thinking only of the beginning and end of the journey, we might regard our departure as the cause of our arrival, when in fact our arrival was the cause of our departure...in living and social systems the use of matter-energy is governed by information. Ordinary physical or Newtonian causality (also so called 'efficient causality') is a matter energy relationship determined by the past: the cause is 'behind' the effect...and the effect always follows the cause...In contrast, cybernetic causality, or goalseeking within constraints, is an informational relationship defined by the future: the goal exists before the effects that result from the absence of the goal, the result of something not yet happening. Cybernetic causality does not however contradict or nullify ordinary physical causality: it complements it on another level." (Rules, p. 78)

"As we descend the dependent hierarchy from inorganic nature to society and culture, the relationship between matter-energy and information radically changes. The more complex a system is, the more distinctive is the relationship between the two...In the social and cultural order the relation between matter-energy and information becomes increasingly indirect and arbitrary, nowhere more so than in speech and language, where the matter-energy has no natural relation to what it symbolizes...It also becomes richer, more complex, more flexible, more ambiguous, and less dependent on close connection: continents or centuries may separate one sender-receiver from another." (Wilden, Rules, pp. 171-172).

"Once it is agreed that information and noise are not inherently distinct, then it follows that without context, there can be no information—i.e. no distinction between information and noise. For any biological or social system, the existence of coded and uncoded variety or diversity presupposes the existence of goalseeking subsystems dependent upon communication for survival. Communication is impossible without coding, and coding is impossible without context. We see, therefore, that information, communication, context, order, and goalseeking are all implicit in the original distinction between coded and uncoded variety." (Rules, p. 184).

"Three levels of knowledge can also be distinguished: sensing, where analog continuity dominates digital discontinuity; meaning, where analog and digital coding combine in iconic coding; and signification, where digital coding dominates analog coding. Taking up the definition of information as coded variety (or diversity), sensing can be defined as coded information, meaning as coded sensing, and signification as coded meaning." (Rules p. 185; 225)

"The process of increasing organization through the constant creation of novel information in life and society (Erwin Schrodinger called it 'negative entropy') does not violate the second axiom, however. Systems whose entropy remains constant, increases, or fluctuates are open systems dependent upon their environment. They take order from the environment (matter-energy and information), and re-order it to maintain or increase their own order, and return to the environment the increasing disorder." (Rules, p. 185)

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Anthony Wilden
• Jeremy Campbell
• Probability
• Information Theory
• Information
• Entropy
• negative entropy
• Redundancy
• prediction
• bioenergetic view
• Bateson
• life
• DNA
• uncertainty
• memory
• context Math Technology

[MrParanormalist]

So in short, you are describing the new essentialism taking hold in the sciences, right? The idea that telos in the Aristotlian-Thomistic sense inheres in agency is, as you undoubtedly are aware, making a come-back and that is what this video brought to my mind.

[threeofwands]

@Professoranton

Okay, so I was about to say something like, "it is not raining", is a product of the imagination, and should be dealt with accordingly.

But then I thought about the case, "we are not being fed". This is a plus cognitive fact. And in truth animals try to communicate this negative fact to their mothers at all times with the appropriate animal behavior.

So I would say these negative facts goes to what has the ability to listen, and may often go unanswered.

[HeliumXenonKrypton]

- wow - deep stuff !! All new ideas to me ... thanks for sharing this vid.

[wholethinker]

About this coin: each try is independent. The probability of an independent event does not depend on the previous one. That is, 50% to get head, no matter how many times in a row it was before.

And of course, for a big number of tries we'll have the frequency close to 50%.

[DrDissent]

@ThePeaceableKingdom I think you and I are on the same page. The mistake was my misreading of your scenario. I jumped to the conclusion it was the classic "pick a card any card" scenario in which you couldn't know anything until the person came up and touched the card.

[DrDissent]

@xknowledgeisfreex No probability exists just like gravity... as a phenomena independent of interpretation. I'll probably make a video response, people seem to think the observer is somehow intermingled with the outcome.

[xknowledgeisfreex]

@DrDissent

There is no such thing as "the" probability of a rock falling into one of two holes.

It is all dependent on the probability space, that you use to model the specific situation and when you say the probability of X is p, then you are always talking about your model and never about reality.