----Message d'origine---- De: joe.bren...@bluewin.ch Date: 08.05.2013 03:19 À: <fis@listas.unizar.es> Objet: Supertasks and Information One of the tasks of the FIS initiative could be to criticize notions of information that are at best misleading. Such a notion has arisen, in my opinion, in the work on supertasks of J. P. Laraudogoitia. The term ‘supertask’ designates the idea of an infinite number of actions performed in a finite amount of time, as in the paradoxes of Zeno. The problem is that in the toy example he uses, the author assigns questionable properties to information as if they were a matter of course.
The author makes a distinction between the direct sphere of physical experience and the “rather more abstract one of information”, thus setting up a notion of information which will fit his argument. Thus, he is able to say that instantaneous changes in processes in the brain are excluded, but instantaneous changes in the information stored in it are not. In the toy example, the subject acquires information from “mere non-actualized potentialities” in an unopened book, which is nevertheless necessary (in the toy example) to the success of the supertask. In fact, all of the informational processing in standard tasks involves non-actualized potentialities which are by no means abstract. The utility of the supertask concept (it is claimed), is to give greater insight into the consequences of physical theories, but I am not sure this is a good way to achieve that goal. Perhaps a few of you have run into similar arguments and may like to comment.
Best wishes,
Joseph --
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