Fernando, Luis, List: This is a further commentary on your paper, focusing on the section labelled: Agnumetry, quantifying modernization.
First, your original thinking in this area is clearly expressed and logically justified. Congratulations. This synthesis of the motivations for human actions with the means to get them done is a novel feature that I like very much. The simple comparison of artifacts to objective allows enumeration of a form of necessary information for the particular act under consideration. The postulate of the ratio of relations between human and the count of artifacts at different points in time is a clear and concise statement, and, within this context, compelling. Your paper is a very substantial contribution to cultural information, in my view. In more general terms, I have constructed a mathematical concept of "economy of relations" which, I suspect, has similar motivations. The general notion of an "economy of relations" is foundational to Shannon information theory because the goal of an exact encoding, transmission and decoding of symbols is to preserve the informational content of the message, which is analogous to the ratio you describe on page 31. It may be helpful to you that in my unpublished work, I first construct a "number spine" based on the count of attributes of mathematical objects that contain form. This number spine encode the "count" concept without constraining the meaning of the number, which can be assigned on the basis of attributes of the number. In other words, the the informational count can be assigned realistic units (of being), as you have done. My question to you is: Can you enumerate a number of examples of agnumery from various cultures and time periods. Please note that I am NOT commenting on various presuppositions and assumptions of your paper. I believe that you will find ways to modify the strong rhetoric in such a way that the basic numeric argument is sustained and can be further developed. (At least, I would encourage you to attempt to do this, but it will be a daunting rhetorical task.) Perhaps other contributors to the list (Raf?) who are highly skilled rhetoricians, can be of help? In summary, an excellent beginning toward quantifying a meaningful theory of information content associated with cultural developments. It is pleasing to see the potential for convergence of various approaches to the meaning of information. Cheers Jerry On Jul 24, 2015, at 7:28 AM, Pedro C. Marijuan wrote: > Hola Fernando & Luis, > > Many thanks for your contribution, quite interesting to read. I really second > the previous comments from Joseph, Gyuri and Jerry. I also see a few other > points: > --The relationship between entropy and culture taken as order is rather > risky. I think there is a misunderstanding of entropy on which I strongly > recommend the work of Arieh Ben-Naim (2013, entropy and the second law), > quite a lot of fuzzy mysticism has been produced around. That the artificial > work reduces human information to the simple world of a cyborg is dubious > (how many informational decisions made by the cavemen versus the urbanite?) > The respective emotional rewards of their choices are another matter. > --About the complexity of human acts everyday activities apparently are > "conceptually simple", quite deceptively--they become the most difficult ones > to be performed by robots versus the complex but easy industrial operations. > These everyday activities look easy because of a previous learning process > only. For instance in my trip to Vienna, after arrival I got lost three times > while taking the airport bus, the tram, the metro, etc. Terrible experience > that forced myself into a lot of informational (wrong) choices and > explorations. However next day I was just the master (in spanish "el puto > amo"). The tremendous initial complexity had been assimilated and my > transportation acts were now very easy. Not including these crucial aspects > on the relative complexity, and how it is transformed when navigated by the > sophisticated "deep learning" strategies of our nervous system is not OK in > my opinion. > --When computing the informational value of human acts, the number of bit > attributed to fingers, hands, limps, body, etc. look rather arbitrary. The > same for the law of information conservation as presently formulated. (How do > this dovetail with the cyclic nature of human life? There is "information > generation" and non-conservation, no?) > --When analyzing technologies the procedure followed does not look very > clear, in particular regarding the invariability of the total level of > information value. However, the final two pages on the relationship between > informational value and price look quite interesting and in my opinion they > are the best section of the paper. > Overall the attempt is quite brave and full of suggestions... > > Best--Pedro > > Pedro C. Marijuan wrote: > > -- > ------------------------------------------------- > Pedro C. Marijuán > Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group > Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud > Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA) > Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X > 50009 Zaragoza, Spain > Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818) > pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es > http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/ > ------------------------------------------------- > > _______________________________________________ > Fis mailing list > Fis@listas.unizar.es > http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis _______________________________________________ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
