Peter Tse - What is Information?
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- Опубликовано: 15 сен 2024
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Information is a common word but has technical meanings so important that our entire world depends on them. What are the kinds of information? How about the scientific definitions of information? How does information figure in the fabric of the world?
Peter Ulric Tse is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College. He holds a BA from Dartmouth (1984; majored in Mathematics and Physics), and a PhD in Experimental Psychology from Harvard University (1998).
Watch more interviews on the nature of information: bit.ly/2RherlM
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He simply means that if there is a match and interlocking between two physical systems or a stream of data with a receiving system then this activates a biophysical activity. This activity he calls "information". But you can't posit that as fundamental since it is an effect on a higher hierarchical level, it does not explain anything on its cause and why and how things have been arranged to allow it to come into being.
His decoder analogy is more general than that. Basically, information has to do with those inputs that produce a certain output, e.g. those incoming signals that lead a neuron to fire instead of not fire. It's like a truth function of a propositional formula, only certain inputs produce the output "true". The smaller the share of possible inputs that leads to a certain output, the greater its information content. For example, "A and B" has larger information content than "A or B", since there are more ways the latter can be true than there a ways for the former to be true.
Thirty seconds into the video there is an error in reason. The interviewer asks what can biology tell us about information, as opposed to that of physics. Information doesn't exist outside of biology, there is no natural information.
"...allow it to come into being." Was it forbidden beforehand?
Whoa when he explained the brain as decoders my mind opened up. That was cool!
Great names think alike
@@TasteMyStinkholeAndLikeIt I think, therefore I think.
Loved this interview. Really clear distillation of the subject matter. I've never groked information theory in the neuronal hierarchical physicalist manner described here. Thanks for the great content. Will be reading further.
Brilliant.. The naturalistic explanation for consciousness is growing stronger with each new discovery in neuroscience.. excellent interview!
bill norris ...or maybe (if information is fundamental): “The universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter...we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.” (Sir James Jeans)
This is the best description of information I've ever heard. Excellent!
3:04
"just by some freak chance of nature, or maybe evolution."
i like this guy. he's onto something.
Maybe the better question is, what ISN'T information.
Anything our natural inputs can't detect + anything external machine inputs can't detect?
@Christian B
I think I would define that as presently usable information. Our machines allow us to detect more and more over the last few thousand years. That trend will probably continue.
As a side note, I think one reason we have not found intelligent life in the universe is because once life gets advanced enough it likely looks for an explanation for Consciousness and reality, and maybe something is discovered in that process that convinces them to not spread like a disease, or perhaps to even seek buddhist concept of freedom from eternal rebirth by not desiring anything, and ultimately not procreating.
Phase ? I would define the change of paradigm as new variables coming from the reaction to entropy; The Brownian movement, inducing the potential for synchronicity (phase being just one perspective) acting like a superior organization in the lower and disorganized level of the macro world, passing from the quantum generated realm to the more sophisticated realm marrying all the different types of forces (strong , weak, etc)
I said that subjective perceptions is truly unexplainable in my previous comment, but let me have a shot at it.
A computer can perceive information through, let's say, a camera. It display that information on a screen and we perceive an image in colors with all the details because we are conscious beeing with subjective perceptions.
The computer don't have subjective perceptions. Where we detect color or temperature or pain, etc., a computer only detect some physical disturbance. It can detect frequency of light, electric signal from a stretch material, etc. Computer don't detect colors or any of our subjective perceptions.
But computer still detect something because the substance they are made off allow them to react to that type of information.
Universal consciousness is somehow comparable to an infinite computer. What I think, is that the substance it is made off allow the perception, for example, of the information we call color. We can only perceive color because that subjective perception for us, correspond to an objective reality in the structure of universal consciousness. In other words, the substance that support universal consciousness is capable of sensing color as an objective reality like computer here senses electrical signal.
This would mean that there is an objective reality corresponding to every subjective perceptions we can have. And consciousness is constructed in such a way to react to it.
In our physical form we can not have access to those ultimate realities. But through some higher state of consciousness, some claim to have experience something of the sort.
I wonder...
That was my best shot.
But I'm not convince myself.
That one is still a mystery.
Didn't quite catch what he is defining 'information' to be. He suggests that the emergence of life has brought a new form of physical causation into the world, in which phase relationships act as sources of causation.
I just don't think that it's true that life would have been the first instance of such. There would always have been phase relationships throughout nature prior to the advent of life, among any number of items, orbits of celestial bodies, light or heat falling on an object, ocean waves lapping at the shore, etc. And any interaction between the phases of these various things would necessarily have some sort of consequent effects, even if not particularly significant or discernible.
Apart from consideration of the relative complexities of results within such systems, I can't see his 'information' as being anything more than a categorization of the consequent effects of physical interactions.
I just don't see how any of this amounts to a "new form of physical causation". Am I missing something?
Well it is a lay video. It turned out that proteins communicate via geometric phase topology (braided fractal frequency). If you wish to rabbit hole here's the good stuff.
TSC 2016 Anirban Bandyopadhyay
1 - ruclips.net/video/oDvAAF0Mpdw/видео.htmlh18m12s
2 - ruclips.net/video/UPYQMzfgFKE/видео.htmlh51m20s (advanced theoretical, FIT)
TSC 2017 Anirban Tuszynski
1 - ruclips.net/video/WNzE_VEalqc/видео.htmlm4s
2 - facebook.com/mark.valladares.1/posts/10214039808968268
TSC 2018 Anirban Bandyopadhyay (clock maps)
ruclips.net/video/n941JWmT_xQ/видео.html
FIT (Fractal Information Theory)
1 - ruclips.net/video/DK8zRBC5H1s/видео.html
2 - ruclips.net/video/3Fst2SM_igM/видео.html
3 - ruclips.net/video/SvdhLrVGuCY/видео.html
4 - ruclips.net/video/w-yjR7WvgUM/видео.html
@@eenkjet Thanks for the links. I started watching one of them.
Information is any words following FYI
Data and information are closely related and can many time be use interchangebly. But there are subtiles differences.
Homogeinity is the absence of information or data. Diversity indicate information. That information can be random- in that case it can only be use to generate randomness- or that information can be usefull for some other process or it can be not usefull to another process. But information is there with diversity. If it do not serve a purpose than we can say it's a pile of data. If it serve a purpose than we can say it's information to the process it serve. It's relative to the point of view.
A pile of statistics is data but if you use those data to explain something, it's information. Data become information when a consciousness can understand or make an interpretation of it. If there were no consciousness to interpret, than diversity would only be data: an accumulation of diverse stuff. It only become information when it's usefull and only consciousness can perceive the usefullness of something to something else.
Also, what is interesting is that information is immaterial yet it exist. It always come with a support of some kind. It can modify the support if the support is organised in a proper way but it can not be modified by the support. It can only be modified by other information or self-interaction. If there is no support than there is no more information. But what can make the support disappear is other information. So only information can transform information, matter has no power of it's own. But the combination of the two is very powerfull. I used that concept to explain free: will.ruclips.net/video/1wqmSQ9G4us/видео.html
Does information exist in the brain as energy / momentum, as something physical, or other?
There are two aspects that need to be defined. One is memory and the other is process. The process part is the firing of the Neuron in the system and passing that signal through the system for further processing. The memory part is, how is the criteria for firing or not firing in that specific neron stored?
Consider eye-hand sensorimotor loops. There is light which will radiate regardless. Life evolves to map onto the causal paths; both actual and potential. A retina is sensitive to light changes, an optic nerve is sensitive to retinal changes, cotical V1, etc, etc, then motor cortex, then hand movement. In short, life maps on to what is possible, then modifies what is possible, then maps on to that, ad infinitum. Remember that trials in evolution are trials against the very causal nature of reality. This perspective will help you see very far.
and how is it that "information can never be lost"?
Who said that? I don't beleive that is true.
Excellent. Thanks 🙏
Incredibly interesting!!!
all these information videos are missing an important aspect: data vs. information... big difference
i bet you can't define neither
Information is data without context. Context is uncomfortably invoking consciousness.
@@cq33xx58 Data and information are closely related and can many time be use interchangebly. But there are subtiles differences.
Homogeinity is the absence of information or data. Diversity indicate information. That information can be random- in that case it can only be use to generate randomness- or that information can be usefull for some other process or it can be not usefull to another process. But information is there with diversity. If it do not serve a purpose than we can say it's a pile of data. If it serve a purpose than we can say it's information to the process it serve. It's relative to the point of view.
A pile of statistics is data but if you use those data to explain something, it's information. Data become information when a consciousness can understand or make an interpretation of it. If there were no consciousness to interpret, than diversity would only be data: an accumulation of diverse stuff. It only become information when it's usefull and only consciousness can perceive the usefullness of something to something else.
Also, what is interesting is that information is immaterial yet it exist. It always come with a support of some kind. It can modify the support if the support is organised in a proper way but it can not be modified by the support. It can only be modified by other information. If there is no support than there is no more information. But what makes the support disappear is other information. So only information can transform information, matter has no power of it's own. But the combination of the two is very powerfull. I used that concept to explain free: will.ruclips.net/video/1wqmSQ9G4us/видео.html
@@alainlangdon I am aware what the definitions are for computer science and telecommunications, but do you realise how weak those definitions are from philosophical perspective? as for your own assumptions, you fell too early into the hole of consciousness... anyway thanks for sharing your insights
@@abhishekshah11 In physics information is simply the interaction of particles.. brains, or computers could be examples of decoders or detectors..
Patterns of energy in neuron from temporal phase relationships?
Does the phase detected by neurons in brain determine what the organism observes from environment?
Sounds like physical science is coming back to its parent, metaphysics.
as it should, say hello to daddy lawrence krauss .
We live in a golden age of philosophy.
Because of God's Beast that taught humans how to build visible objects to harness electricity and the light bulb with filaments that when heated up by the invisible waves of electricity would produce light, quantum mechanics was discovered. From that time on, this bewildering way in which INVISIBLE waves work has confused quantum physicist's ever since. They can't tell if those particles are made of material things or just waves colliding to produce what looks like material things ( matter ).
@Scott Lutz I don't even listen to these liars in these videos. Our Creator is the one who taught me how we're created in his INVISIBLE thoughts as information. Then he taught me how that information is processed into VISIBLE images. A few people who have studied and experimented with the double slit test and used equipment to detect the smallest of frequencies and those who build the atom smashing accelerators like CERN are beginning to understand the INVISIBLE Conscioiusness called our Creator but since they have never heard the voice speaking directly into their minds from this Consciousness, they will never learn exactly how we can be created as information first in those thoughts of our Creator and then processed in the visible images that look very real to us.
@@BradHolkesvig Creation by thought is a fact, we all started in minds of our father and mother. It's hard to except the fact all humans are woman body internal organ. But than again, it takes a genius to figure out all apples are basically apple tree flowers also this days, we never see flowers mixed together with fruits in supermarkets.
Phase as temporal (time) set of relations for energy is causal?
Matter exist at this level of reality as something we experience but it's an illusion because it's not what it appears to be. The more we know about matter, the less material it seems to be. For quantum field theory, it's all interaction between fields.
My intuition, which is not proovable, is that those fields constitute only a small part of what exist. We don't experience those other fields but combined together they form the support of universal consciousness. It's like an infinite computer on which run the information that constitute the universal consciousness.
In other words, God or the universal consciousness is information and it needs a support to exist. That support is organise in such a way as to be similar to a computer and it's software running on it, or a brain and it's mind depending on the image you are more comfortable with.
The software on a computer is intelligent information. It runs on the infrastructure of the computer but it is not influence by the chain of causes and effects that determine the substance of which the computer is made. The software obeys it's own internal laws.
Same thing with our mind. It's informations running on the infrastructure of the brain but it is not influence by the chain of cause and effect that affect the body.
Same thing with God. It's all informations but it needs a support.
That support is made of things (or fields) that come in and out of existence but there is always something that remain present otherwise the information would disappears. It's an auto sustain structure within the inpermanence of the void.
This constitute the mind of God or universal consciousness. It give rise to all that exist including us.
Your consciousness can divide in 10 to control the mouvement of your fingers and play a melody on a piano. The same way, the universal consciousness can divide in 10 exp 82 which is about the number of subparticule in this material universe and play the melody of reality.
Matter is consciousness made to look material. But remember, consciousness is information on a complex support.
When matter is there, it can interact in complex ways and give rise to complex biological structure through natural evolution. At some point appears a structure complexe enough to allow universal consciousness to experience it's creation through it. And that's what we are: universal consciousness looking through it's creation and thinking it's a person.
We are universal consciousness experiencing life. We are all one. All we do, we do it to ourself, the good and the bad.
The knowledge is always growing. The wisdom is infinite. And it's all powered by love.
And it all comes from nothingness.
And what makes it alive is the miracle of subjective perception. That's truly unexplainable.
I used those concepts to explain free will. If you are interested, read my posts in the comments section of this video:
ruclips.net/video/1wqmSQ9G4us/видео.html
Huge insights !!
Can information shape physical reality?
Well information is Yin and Yang Playing counter act together...
Does the brain code information as configuration of neurons using temporal phases to produce energy patterns?
honestly don't see how he could be a monist with this view, a platonist at bare minimum.
In philosophy he would be called a... physicalist .
@@billnorris1264 yea but his explication was he believes there is only energy and fluctuation and then goes on to say the world is unintelligible with just these . Then the only thing that would follow is that any account invoking information is purely a fictional one and not ontological
I'm not entirely sure I get what he's trying to say with his idea of 'information', but I don't get the sense that he is aiming at anything approaching Platonism. For Plato, the realm of forms is a reality, whereas this guy's idea of information seems like a way of categorizing phenomena for the sake of intelligibility. I'm not sure he's actually saying that Jennifer-Anniston-ness is a real thing in the Platonist sense (though maybe I'm misunderstanding him).
In any case, I also don't get the sense that whatever this 'information' is that he is trying to describe is at all related to the sort of 'information' questions that have been bring discussed among some quantum physicists, which I tend to think would fit more comfortably with Platonist concepts.
@@Giant_Meteor well said, but a little off track. In physics information it's very simple and only one thing, the interaction of either subatomic particles, photons or electrons.. a brain, a computer, or even a neuron act a decoder..
@@billnorris1264 I have encountered some discussion among physicists (or purported physicists, I suppose... I don't personally find the discussion sufficiently compelling to have entertained at any length) discussing the possibility that matter and energy arise in some fundamentally necessary way from sheer information itself. If so, whatever "information" it is that those guys are speculating about would be something other than interactions between particles, etc.
I'd like to know what elusive information is causing RUclips to keep giving me ads for adult diapers. If I knew that I'd really be closer to truth!
His explanation sounds a bit like Platonic theory. What I got is that the brain decodes patterns of a nebulous nature and assigns them to a person, thought, etc. Certain patters form to shape Oprah-ness, table-ness, dog-ness, etc. I'm just taking a guess here because this is a complex conversation to me lol.
Is there information in energy / momentum?
Can be. That is like asking if there is information in ink. Can be!
So when someone does an impression of a famous person it is firing those neurons but other neurons are telling you that is not them, partial neuron acceptance is perceived as funny.
Interesting insight
yes, I can see where you are going with that.
I feel very small right now
Get a book about information theory!
One wavelength contains information but since a wavelength of a vibration is invisible unless together with other vibrations that cause tiny flickers of light, we can't understand what those tiny flickers of light ( particles ) are on their own unless trillions of those flickers of light per millisecond give us a visible object to see.
The easy way to explain this is to set up an experiment like this;
Put a foot deep layer of stones on the bottom of a 2 foot deep container. Then position a video camera directly above the container so only the stones show up in the viewer without showing the edges of the container. Now fill the container with very clean water so that it covers the stones about 6 inches above the stones. Now start the video and run it for a minute. Take a look at the recorded video and all you will see is shiny stones and nothing else. Now start recording again and throw a marble in the water. Keep recording for a minute, then watch the recording. You will still see those shiny stones but the waves will change the way they look. They will be very wavy looking. Now start recording again and throw several different sized objects in the water and run the recording for a minute. Then watch it and see if you can see the stones on the bottom of the container. Most likely all you will see are distorted colors without being able to identify any visible stones on the bottom of the container. The information by the dropping of those objects in the water changed the information in your mind that gave you visible shiny stones to observe. Unless those stones were dropped in precise areas of the water which would form understood patterns, random waves in the water will not give you anything that can be understood. It's the patterns that these waves make that form bigger and bigger patterns until you observe a big object that makes sense to you is what the processing of information is. Kind of the same way they code 0's and 1's in a way that produces the images on a computer screen. If you just randomly use 0's and 1's without them arranged, they will not produce images you can understand although there would be visible images on a computer screen.
This represents the processing of information by the collision of vibrations. However, our Creator made it possible for us to observe understandable objects because of training as we are birthed into this world. A baby cannot distinguish objects and won't understand it's own image by looking in a mirror until about the age of 18 months so it takes awhile for our Creator to train a child to observe images and understand them. We just take those visible objects for granted as we get older, not knowing we had to be trained to observe them and by moving about and going to school, we learn about many other visible images that appear real to us.
Now convert pictures from each phase to black and white, nothing significant has changed, except there is more stuff inside a water with every step. Substance and quality.
@@xspotbox4400 The visible stones are illusions that appear to be real too.
@@BradHolkesvig They might be just an illusion, but something casting shadows must also be real.
Answer = patterns of energy. The only thing with no information is total entropy
Please, oh, please stop moving the camera. This edition is particularly distracting because the camera is moving particularly fast and in a jerky manner. It looks like the photog has lost control of the equipment. It looks like a mistake and not some aesthetic.
Elements
I hate RUclips adds
This can be dismissed as a logical fallacy. This is circular reasoning, the simplist life needs a piece of stored information and a storage mechanism to successfully duplicate (which is what life is) and if the concept of information was created by life then you just made a circle. For anything, which this man is saying, is to be believed then he must first show that information in some rudimentary form must exist outside of biology and only then can you even start to theorize on a storage and duplication mechanism which must already exist as an inherent property of matter.
I don't see the problem. Information is just the ability to establish status, like, is it day or night? A light sensor is tiggered if it is day. That is a physical state and a physical response, but the signal coming from the sensor of yes or no is information about the status of daylight or nighttime. The signal itself is not daylight or nighttime, but the physical signal itself is information about the status of daylight or not, or "phase". As described in the video.
@@blaster-zy7xx What I find amazing about your comment is that you call the on-off state information when actually the day-night mental interpretation is the actual information and not the physical photo-electrical reaction. Information appears simple, but it being nonphysical puts it outside of a material world view of understanding. Your example of a light sensor is completely accurate, physically. Is the “information” generated by the diode (light dark) real information or a natural cause and effect reaction? To define information as anything that can react with anything else means everything is information and its definition is meaningless.
@@sedevacantist1 Sort of. It's the subtle difference between "data" and "information".
Data can be meaningless. I agree that It takes some kind of processing to convert data into information or meaning. An on/off signal is data. Using the on/off signal to process that the signal means that it is daytime or night time is information. So I think we agree. It is the processing or "mental interpretation" that converts data to information. But I'll add a caveat to that. There are "automatic" systems inside the body that don't require mental processing in order to function. An example is hormones used to trigger reactions in the body. Are these hormones "information" systems used to trigger a cascade of biological events or not? We can find borderline examples to help us hone our definitions.
@@blaster-zy7xx You have hit on something that I have not researched, but endocrine glands releasing their hormones must have a controlling mechanism and that mechanism must have a controlling source which must trace back to a mind. On your first point, that data and information have subtle differences I don’t concur.
Allow me to explain my understanding of information so there is no ambiguity. All information is created by a mind, directly or indirectly. Computers produce information indirectly as they are all designed by a mind and only produce information they have been designed and programed to produce. Computers are only switches and an infinite number of switches will never produce coherent original information because a computer doesn’t have a mind. All information derived from a computer has been distorted by the machine and an algorithm and the distortion can always be reverse engineered back to the mind that concocted the original program that distorts the information.
This understanding of computers (which you may not agree with) applies to the hormone thing. The information in DNA which is the source for building and controlling the hormone system is not a material thing and must be the product of a mind. I will stop there because I don’t like posts that are short books.
@@sedevacantist1 "The information in DNA which is the source for building and controlling the hormone system is not a material thing and must be the product of a mind." What "mind" are you referring to? Are you referring to "the creator" as in God or are you referring to the mind of the individual for which the DNA is coding?
For more on how receptors can act as communication systems, this is a fascinating conversation about olfactory receptors. ruclips.net/video/NsqsEni2uE4/видео.html
I wuz here
Interesting...-ness.
Sounds like the Architect from the Matrix
ok im too dumb for this
The source of all information is mind. Full stop. It can't originate from anywhere else.
w t f
Whew! He used the word “evolution” in his conversion. Now he will be allowed to keep his job! (Yes, my post is sarcastic.)
NO ACADEMIC DARE STRAY FROM DARWINIST/ATHEIST EVOLUTION FOR FEAR OF LOSING EVERYTHING.
Sanjosemike (no longer in CA)
Do you think that phenomenon is only unique to scientists?
@@ericmoyer8538 Eric, interesting point. Believers are under attack by Leftists and Democrats all over the West. Parenthetically, I am not a Christian. But I was an atheist.
Atheism is no longer tenable. The arguments against it are statistical and compelling. Undirected evolution could never produce proteins and the power supply for them, ATP.
Sanjosemike (no longer in CA)
@@sanjosemike3137 got any sources for those claims?
@@ericmoyer8538 "No Safe Spaces" is a movie that outlines the persecution against believers and conservatives through our culture, but particularly academia. Guillermo Gonzales, Ph.D. lost his job at a major university for DARING to write a book about the Earth as a privileged planet. There are others, some of whom have joined the Discovery Institute in Seattle, because they had the "temerity" to believe in God.
Being against evolution is dangerous in US academia. Not so much in Europe and Asia.
Sanjosemike (no longer in CA)