On 28 May 2014 19:46, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > On 5/28/2014 12:35 AM, LizR wrote: > > On 28 May 2014 16:20, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > >> I think the more crucial step is arguing that computation (and therefore >> consciousness) can exist without physics. That physical instantiation is >> dispensable. >> > > Yes indeed. I would say that for comp to be meaningful, it's necessary > to show that information is a real (and fundamental) thing, rather than > something that only has relevance / meaning to us - I suppose deriving the > entropy of a black hole, the Beckenstein bound and the holographic > principle all hint that this is the case. (Maybe QM unitarity and the black > hole information paradox too?) > > I'm not sure how secure a footing any of these items put the "reification > of information" it on, though. > > As Bruno has noted, we live on border between order and chaos - neither > maximum nor minimum information/entropy but something like "complexity". > Here's recent survey of ways to quantify it by Scott Aaronso, Sean Carroll > and Lauren Ouellette. http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1818 >
As usual I don't have time to read that paper, at least not immediately. However I see that defining complexity appear to require coarse graining. If so, I would take this to mean that there isn't anything fundamental being defined - or at least that we're in a grey area where nothing is known to be fundamental. On the other hand, entropy used to require coarse graining but as I mentioned above has now been defined for black holes, so assuming BHs really exist (and the things we think are BHs aren't some other type of massive object of an undefined nature) that would at least suggest that fundamental physics involves entropy, and hence information. Is there any complexity measure that doesn;t involve CG and hence isn't just (imho) "in the eye of the beholder" ? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
