Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

[Constance]

Bob Doyle’s work in progress at The Information Philosopher website is worth exploring at length and in detail since he expresses a far more complex and comprehensively defined concept of ‘information’ than we find in computational neuroscience and AI. The following quote is from a page preceding his online book concerning freedom and freedom of choice, a key issue in Doyle’s ‘information philosophy’.




That ebook is available for free download at:

http://www.informationphilosopher.com/books/Free_Will_Scandal.pdf

Doyle’s ‘two-stage model of free will and creativity’ can be approached first by reading his extracts from James reproduced in the information philosopher website and attached links to pages concerning other philosophers and scientists. Reading his ebook is another alternative we could pursue. In chapter 12 of the ebook, titled “Two-Stage Models of Free Will,” beginning on pg. 160, Doyle identifies the philosophers and scientists that have developed the two-stage model at the core of his information philosophy: James, 161; Poincaré, 165; Hadamard, 165; Compton, 166; Adler, 167; Popper, 168; Margenau, 170; Dennett 171; Kane, 172; Long and Sedley, 176; Penrose, 177; Annas, 177; Mele, 178; Fischer, 179; Libet and Kosslyn, 181; Searle, 183; Heisenberg, 184.

Doyle’s website page on “Mind,” which I copied in full above, is another primary source that orients us to what ‘information’ is in his information philosophy. I’ll just reproduce one extract here:

“The “stuff” of thought is pure information, neither matter nor energy, though it needs matter for its embodiment and energy for its communication. Information is the modern spirit, the soul in the body, the ghost in the machine
.
In ancient philosophy, mind/soul versus body was one of the classic dualisms, such as idealism versus materialism, the problem of the one (monism) or the many (pluralism), the distinction between essence and existence, between universals and particulars, between necessity and contingency, between eternal and ephemeral, but most important, the difference between the intelligible world of the noumena and the sensible world of mere appearances or phenomena.

When mind and body are viewed today as a dualism, it is because the mind is considered to be fundamentally different from the material brain, though perhaps not another “substance.” We propose an easily understandable and critically important physical difference between matter and immaterial information. Whereas the total amount of matter is conserved, the universe is continuously creating new information - by rearranging existing matter into new information structures. The total amount of information (a kind of order) in the universe is increasing, despite the second law of thermodynamics, which - counterintuitively - says that the total amount of disorder (entropy) is also increasing.

Matter, along with energy (mc2), cannot increase. It is conserved, a constant of the universe. Information is not conserved. As information grows, it is the source of genuine novelty in the universe. The future is not determined by the past and present, because the future contains unpredictable new information. New information is continuously created.”

Information Philosopher - Mind


Doyle’s interdisciplinary analyses of contributions from philosophy and science toward understanding consciousness, mind, and ‘information’ answer the question of how “new information is continuously created.”

 

[Constance]

Also from Doyle’s ebook, a brief introduction to ‘biological information’:

"The Biology of Free Will

Perhaps physics now puts no limits on human freedom, but what about biology? Each of us gets a significant amount of genetic information from our parents, which at least predisposes us to certain behaviors that have evolved to improve our reproductive success, sexual behavior, for example.

Are we completely “determined” by a combination of our biological nature and the social nurture of our environmental conditioning? Is biology itself all a causal process that is simply unfolding from a distant past that contained all the information about the one possible biological future?

Information biology says no. While the stability of biological systems is extraordinary, and while their error-free performance of vital functions over many-year lifetimes is astonishing, their dependence on randomness is clear. Biological laws, like physical laws, are only adequately determined, statistical laws.

At the atomic and molecular level, biological processes are stochastic, depending on thermal and quantal noise to deliver the “just-in-time” parts needed by assembly lines for the basic structural elements of life, such as the amino acids needed by the ribosome factories to assemble proteins.

So our question is how the typical structures of the brain have evolved to deal with microscopic, atomic level, noise. Do they simply ignore it because they are adequately determined large objects, or might they have remained sensitive to the noise because it provides some benefits?

We can expect that if quantum noise, or even ordinary thermal noise, offered benefits that contribute to reproductive success, there would have been evolutionary pressure to take advantage of the noise.

Many biologists argue that quantum-level processes are just too small to be important, too small for the relatively macroscopic biological apparatus to even notice. But consider this evidence to the contrary." . . . see the chapter titled "The Biology of Free Will," following the chapter on the physics of free will.

 

[Soupie]

@smcder

I was just at a seminar for cognitive behavioral therapy. The speaker was a Dr. Aldo Pucci, and his brand of CBT is called Rational Living Therapy. While I've been well aware of CBT for years, it was interesting to consider it in light of the discussion in this thread and what you've shared about your meditation experiences.

Perhaps the core idea of CBT is the so-called ABCs of emotion. The idea is as follows:

(A) Awareness - we become aware of something, an object, event, feeling, or memory, etc.

(B) Belief - we have a conscious or unconscious belief/thought about the thing we've become aware of.

(C) Consequence - As a result of our conscious or often unconscious apprasial in step (B), we have a corresponding emotional and behavioral response.

For example, let's say that Bob's wife dies. After the funeral, his family and friends are surprised to find that Bob seems to be happy. It turns out that Bob believed that his wife was holding him back from fully experiencing life and is therefore feeling positive now that she is dead.

On the other hand, When Sam's wife died, he seems miserable and depressed. It turns out that Sam believes that life is not worth living without his wife.

In short, our appraisal of events — our thoughts about events — directly influence our feelings and behaviors.

For some people, the above makes quite a bit of sense, but others may find it troubling. In one sense, it seems to make emotions epiphenominal (while giving thoughts quite a bit of power). In fact, Mr. Pucci made the statement that all feelings and behaviors are preceded by thoughts. This is of course good for those who want to believe in free will. However, he did qualify his statement later when he introduced what he called "reflexive thoughts" which are essentially automatic, unconscious thoughts.

How does this make feelings epiphenominal? In the following sense:

Someone calls Jim a jerk, and Jim punches the person in the nose. When asked why he punched the person in the nose, Jim might say "he made me mad."

A CBT practitioner would say: he didn't make you mad, you'r thought about what he said made you mad.

The person might remark: what thought?

In this case, when someone calls Jim a name, he has an unconscious thought that being called names is bad because it means people don't respect him. If people don't respect him, than his is not a real man. Not being a real man is awful. Therefore, he became angry and punched the name caller.

Thus, the behavior was ultimately prompted by the — largely unconscious — apprasial and not the emotion.

However, one might argue that the emotional response was still needed to generate the punching behavior.

The helpful aspect of CBT is that people can use it to reflect on their conscious and unconscious appraisals, manipulate them, and thus gain some measure of control over their feelings and their behaviors.

Thus, if one didn't previously, they can gain a measure of control over their emotional reactions to things they become aware of by thinking differently. Thus, when called a name, rather than getting angery and fighting, Jim might think: "he is mad at me right now, thats why he called me a jerk. He might not respect me, but thats ok. My manliness doesn't depend on whether everyone respcts me. Not everyone will, and that's okay. Besides, I know that those I really care about do."

For my own part, as I stated earlier in our discussion about basic emotions versus appraisal emotions, I think it is a case where both are at play. My thought is that some of these "automatic, reflexive thoughts" are innate, archtypes of the human pysche, the collective unconscious if you will.

Thus, when a newborn is seperated from the mother in the hospital, the newborn will begin to cry and — I think — experience sadness. What apprasial is this hours old baby making at step (B)?

My answer would be that an innate, unconscious, instinctual apprasial has kicked in: The newborn is "aware" that it has been seperated from its mother, it is upset, and it cries in an "effort" to be reunited with the mother.

I think there are other, innate, unconscious schemas that come pre-packaged with the human psyche. I think many people — perhaps when they gain a measure of enlightenment — can recognize these innate, instinctual schemas and allow them to fall away.

So what does CBT say about free will. I was deathly ill so I didn't have the energy to ask Dr. Pucci afterward. I think a determinst would agree that our behaviors and emotions might be triggered by unconscious thoughts. But what about when our emotions and behaviors are triggered by conscious thoughts or when we "step in" and correct automatic, unconscious thoughts? Is that free will (as some argue)?

Or are there unconscious, deterministic thoughts underneath all conscious thoughts as strict determinism would demand!?

And this concept of the ABCs reminded me somewhat, smcder, of how you've described the Buddhist concept of awareness. Whereas the CBT practicioner "gets" behind the emotions and watches them, so to speak, the Buddhist practicioner goes a step further and gets behind not just emotion, but thinking as well. It struck me that a Buddhist gets behind steps (C) and (B) and identifies only with awareness. And while a CBT practioner will actively manipulate their thoughts/appraisals, a Buddhist might simply non-judgementally observe them arising.

In this sense, we can sit back perhaps and non-judgmentally watch our body do its thing. We are neither our emotions nor our thoughts, we are only awareness. But, perhaps, when we want,mif we want, we can step in and manipulate our thoughts (are they our thoughts!?). Is this free will? Whose thoughts are they when we don't step in and change them? And who or what are we that can sit back and watch or choose to intervene?

 

[smcder]

@smcder

I was just at a seminar for cognitive behavioral therapy. The speaker was a Dr. Aldo Pucci, and his brand of CBT is called Rational Living Therapy. While I've been well aware of CBT for years, it was interesting to consider it in light of the discussion in this thread and what you've shared about your meditation experiences.

Perhaps the core idea of CBT is the so-called ABCs of emotion. The idea is as follows:

(A) Awareness - we become aware of something, an object, event, feeling, or memory, etc.

(B) Belief - we have a conscious or unconscious belief/thought about the thing we've become aware of.

(C) Consequence - As a result of our conscious or often unconscious apprasial in step (B), we have a corresponding emotional and behavioral response.

For example, let's say that Bob's wife dies. After the funeral, his family and friends are surprised to find that Bob seems to be happy. It turns out that Bob believed that his wife was holding him back from fully experiencing life and is therefore feeling positive now that she is dead.

On the other hand, When Sam's wife died, he seems miserable and depressed. It turns out that Sam believes that life is not worth living without his wife.

In short, our appraisal of events — our thoughts about events — directly influence our feelings and behaviors.

For some people, the above makes quite a bit of sense, but others may find it troubling. In one sense, it seems to make emotions epiphenominal (while giving thoughts quite a bit of power). In fact, Mr. Pucci made the statement that all feelings and behaviors are preceded by thoughts. This is of course good for those who want to believe in free will. However, he did qualify his statement later when he introduced what he called "reflexive thoughts" which are essentially automatic, unconscious thoughts.

How does this make feelings epiphenominal? In the following sense:

Someone calls Jim a jerk, and Jim punches the person in the nose. When asked why he punched the person in the nose, Jim might say "he made me mad."

A CBT practitioner would say: he didn't make you mad, you'r thought about what he said made you mad.

The person might remark: what thought?

In this case, when someone calls Jim a name, he has an unconscious thought that being called names is bad because it means people don't respect him. If people don't respect him, than his is not a real man. Not being a real man is awful. Therefore, he became angry and punched the name caller.

Thus, the behavior was ultimately prompted by the — largely unconscious — apprasial and not the emotion.

However, one might argue that the emotional response was still needed to generate the punching behavior.

The helpful aspect of CBT is that people can use it to reflect on their conscious and unconscious appraisals, manipulate them, and thus gain some measure of control over their feelings and their behaviors.

Thus, if one didn't previously, they can gain a measure of control over their emotional reactions to things they become aware of by thinking differently. Thus, when called a name, rather than getting angery and fighting, Jim might think: "he is mad at me right now, thats why he called me a jerk. He might not respect me, but thats ok. My manliness doesn't depend on whether everyone respcts me. Not everyone will, and that's okay. Besides, I know that those I really care about do."

For my own part, as I stated earlier in our discussion about basic emotions versus appraisal emotions, I think it is a case where both are at play. My thought is that some of these "automatic, reflexive thoughts" are innate, archtypes of the human pysche, the collective unconscious if you will.

Thus, when a newborn is seperated from the mother in the hospital, the newborn will begin to cry and — I think — experience sadness. What apprasial is this hours old baby making at step (B)?

My answer would be that an innate, unconscious, instinctual apprasial has kicked in: The newborn is "aware" that it has been seperated from its mother, it is upset, and it cries in an "effort" to be reunited with the mother.

I think there are other, innate, unconscious schemas that come pre-packaged with the human psyche. I think many people — perhaps when they gain a measure of enlightenment — can recognize these innate, instinctual schemas and allow them to fall away.

So what does CBT say about free will. I was deathly ill so I didn't have the energy to ask Dr. Pucci afterward. I think a determinst would agree that our behaviors and emotions might be triggered by unconscious thoughts. But what about when our emotions and behaviors are triggered by conscious thoughts or when we "step in" and correct automatic, unconscious thoughts? Is that free will (as some argue)?

Or are there unconscious, deterministic thoughts underneath all conscious thoughts as strict determinism would demand!?

And this concept of the ABCs reminded me somewhat, smcder, of how you've described the Buddhist concept of awareness. Whereas the CBT practicioner "gets" behind the emotions and watches them, so to speak, the Buddhist practicioner goes a step further and gets behind not just emotion, but thinking as well. It struck me that a Buddhist gets behind steps (C) and (B) and identifies only with awareness. And while a CBT practioner will actively manipulate their thoughts/appraisals, a Buddhist might simply non-judgementally observe them arising.

In this sense, we can sit back perhaps and non-judgmentally watch our body do its thing. We are neither our emotions nor our thoughts, we are only awareness. But, perhaps, when we want,mif we want, we can step in and manipulate our thoughts (are they our thoughts!?). Is this free will? Whose thoughts are they when we don't step in and change them? And who or what are we that can sit back and watch or choose to intervene?

Yes

And ...

No

...

And yes again



I think I posted on the Tx thread re: my experience with pain the other night ... Or I may have made that post only in my head?

The awareness is not the pain? Classic post, if you missed it. ;-)

This awareness is the most personal thing I have in the sense that I can find nothing deeper than it (when I go looking for "self") and the most impersonal because I think it is in you (and you and you ... ) and so when I am concentrated on this awareness

Pain
Fear
Death

Are not the awareness but arise, abide and pass away like other phenomena. This may be what is called the "deathless" - but it's not personal immortality - the concept.

Over time, with practice, even when all the noise is in your head you can go to this awareness no matter what is going on and watch yourself non judgementally - doing this allows bad habits, knee jerk reactions and all the story lines to drop away.





Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Constance]

Formulating Science in Terms of Possible and Impossible Tasks
A Conversation with
Chiara Marletto [12.6.14]
Topic:
UNIVERSE

"It turns out that in the constructor theoretic view, humans, as knowledge creating systems, are quite central to fundamental physics in an objective, non-anthropocentric, way. This is a very deep change in perspective. One of the ideas that will be dropped if constructor theory turns out to be effective is that the only fundamental entities in physics are laws of motion and initial conditions. In order for physics to accommodate more of physical reality, there needs to be a switch to this new mode of explanation, which accepts that scientific explanation is more than just predictions. Predictions will be supplemented with statements about what tasks are possible, what are impossible and why."

Marletto is working with David Deutsch on a new theory of physics, called Constructor Theory, and which includes a Constructor Theory of Information.

Formulating Science in Terms of Possible and Impossible Tasks | Edge.org

 

[Constance]

"Humanism: the fourth wave"
John Heron

Published in R. House, D. Kalisch and J. Maidman (eds), The Future of Humanistic Psychology, Ross-on-Wye: PCCS Books, 2013

Untitled 1

And see: From the quest for certainty to

 

[CryptoGuru]

Came across this. Consciousness Is Part of Reality, Not a Trick of Evolution | The Weiler Psi

and my own theory on consciousness 2. The Neu Beginning | NeuSpirit Learning Center

 

[smcder]

@smcder

I was just at a seminar for cognitive behavioral therapy. The speaker was a Dr. Aldo Pucci, and his brand of CBT is called Rational Living Therapy. While I've been well aware of CBT for years, it was interesting to consider it in light of the discussion in this thread and what you've shared about your meditation experiences.

Perhaps the core idea of CBT is the so-called ABCs of emotion. The idea is as follows:

(A) Awareness - we become aware of something, an object, event, feeling, or memory, etc.

(B) Belief - we have a conscious or unconscious belief/thought about the thing we've become aware of.

(C) Consequence - As a result of our conscious or often unconscious apprasial in step (B), we have a corresponding emotional and behavioral response.

For example, let's say that Bob's wife dies. After the funeral, his family and friends are surprised to find that Bob seems to be happy. It turns out that Bob believed that his wife was holding him back from fully experiencing life and is therefore feeling positive now that she is dead.

On the other hand, When Sam's wife died, he seems miserable and depressed. It turns out that Sam believes that life is not worth living without his wife.

In short, our appraisal of events — our thoughts about events — directly influence our feelings and behaviors.

For some people, the above makes quite a bit of sense, but others may find it troubling. In one sense, it seems to make emotions epiphenominal (while giving thoughts quite a bit of power). In fact, Mr. Pucci made the statement that all feelings and behaviors are preceded by thoughts. This is of course good for those who want to believe in free will. However, he did qualify his statement later when he introduced what he called "reflexive thoughts" which are essentially automatic, unconscious thoughts.

How does this make feelings epiphenominal? In the following sense:

Someone calls Jim a jerk, and Jim punches the person in the nose. When asked why he punched the person in the nose, Jim might say "he made me mad."

A CBT practitioner would say: he didn't make you mad, you'r thought about what he said made you mad.

The person might remark: what thought?

In this case, when someone calls Jim a name, he has an unconscious thought that being called names is bad because it means people don't respect him. If people don't respect him, than his is not a real man. Not being a real man is awful. Therefore, he became angry and punched the name caller.

Thus, the behavior was ultimately prompted by the — largely unconscious — apprasial and not the emotion.

However, one might argue that the emotional response was still needed to generate the punching behavior.

The helpful aspect of CBT is that people can use it to reflect on their conscious and unconscious appraisals, manipulate them, and thus gain some measure of control over their feelings and their behaviors.

Thus, if one didn't previously, they can gain a measure of control over their emotional reactions to things they become aware of by thinking differently. Thus, when called a name, rather than getting angery and fighting, Jim might think: "he is mad at me right now, thats why he called me a jerk. He might not respect me, but thats ok. My manliness doesn't depend on whether everyone respcts me. Not everyone will, and that's okay. Besides, I know that those I really care about do."

For my own part, as I stated earlier in our discussion about basic emotions versus appraisal emotions, I think it is a case where both are at play. My thought is that some of these "automatic, reflexive thoughts" are innate, archtypes of the human pysche, the collective unconscious if you will.

Thus, when a newborn is seperated from the mother in the hospital, the newborn will begin to cry and — I think — experience sadness. What apprasial is this hours old baby making at step (B)?

My answer would be that an innate, unconscious, instinctual apprasial has kicked in: The newborn is "aware" that it has been seperated from its mother, it is upset, and it cries in an "effort" to be reunited with the mother.

I think there are other, innate, unconscious schemas that come pre-packaged with the human psyche. I think many people — perhaps when they gain a measure of enlightenment — can recognize these innate, instinctual schemas and allow them to fall away.

So what does CBT say about free will. I was deathly ill so I didn't have the energy to ask Dr. Pucci afterward. I think a determinst would agree that our behaviors and emotions might be triggered by unconscious thoughts. But what about when our emotions and behaviors are triggered by conscious thoughts or when we "step in" and correct automatic, unconscious thoughts? Is that free will (as some argue)?

Or are there unconscious, deterministic thoughts underneath all conscious thoughts as strict determinism would demand!?

And this concept of the ABCs reminded me somewhat, smcder, of how you've described the Buddhist concept of awareness. Whereas the CBT practicioner "gets" behind the emotions and watches them, so to speak, the Buddhist practicioner goes a step further and gets behind not just emotion, but thinking as well. It struck me that a Buddhist gets behind steps (C) and (B) and identifies only with awareness. And while a CBT practioner will actively manipulate their thoughts/appraisals, a Buddhist might simply non-judgementally observe them arising.

In this sense, we can sit back perhaps and non-judgmentally watch our body do its thing. We are neither our emotions nor our thoughts, we are only awareness. But, perhaps, when we want,mif we want, we can step in and manipulate our thoughts (are they our thoughts!?). Is this free will? Whose thoughts are they when we don't step in and change them? And who or what are we that can sit back and watch or choose to intervene?

So many excellent thoughts and questions ...

I worked with CBT for OCD many years ago and off and on since ... and I think it is in part a matter of belief ... you are given a set of rules and a reasonable theory about how the brain works and then you are given training so that it does work that way.

But the first part works a little like the induction phase in hypnosis ... if you buy everything and work with the program it's very effective - and add to it the effect of wanting to please and the other shamanistic powers of the psychiatrist

Fingers steepled
Eyebrows arced

Suggestion is powerful

So, with Freudian and Jungian theory ... It's maybe better to think of as a good narrative.

It must fit some aspects of reality but the plasticity of belief also plays a role ... It seems to me there are many possible psychologies even for the individual.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Soupie]

Formulating Science in Terms of Possible and Impossible Tasks
A Conversation with
Chiara Marletto [12.6.14]
Topic:
UNIVERSE

"It turns out that in the constructor theoretic view, humans, as knowledge creating systems, are quite central to fundamental physics in an objective, non-anthropocentric, way. This is a very deep change in perspective. One of the ideas that will be dropped if constructor theory turns out to be effective is that the only fundamental entities in physics are laws of motion and initial conditions. In order for physics to accommodate more of physical reality, there needs to be a switch to this new mode of explanation, which accepts that scientific explanation is more than just predictions. Predictions will be supplemented with statements about what tasks are possible, what are impossible and why."

Marletto is working with David Deutsch on a new theory of physics, called Constructor Theory, and which includes a Constructor Theory of Information.

Formulating Science in Terms of Possible and Impossible Tasks | Edge.org

Hm, a beautiful idea.

CONSTRUCTOR THEORY | Edge.org

... One of the first rather unexpected yields of this theory has been a new foundation for information theory. There's a notorious problem with defining information within physics, namely that on the one hand information is purely abstract, and the original theory of computation as developed by Alan Turing and others regarded computers and the information they manipulate purely abstractly as mathematical objects. Many mathematicians to this day don't realize that information is physical and that there is no such thing as an abstract computer. Only a physical object can compute things.

On the other hand, physicists have always known that in order to do the work that the theory of information does within physics, such as informing the theory of statistical mechanics, and thereby, thermodynamics (the second law of thermodynamics), information has to be a physical quantity. And yet, information is independent of the physical object that it resides in.

I'm speaking to you now: Information starts as some kind of electrochemical signals in my brain, and then it gets converted into other signals in my nerves and then into sound waves and then into the vibrations of a microphone, mechanical vibrations, then into electricity and so on, and presumably will eventually go on the Internet. This something has been instantiated in radically different physical objects that obey different laws of physics. Yet in order to describe this process you have to refer to the thing that has remained unchanged throughout the process, which is only the information rather than any obviously physical thing like energy or momentum.

The way to get this substrate independence of information is to refer it to a level of physics that is below and more fundamental than things like laws of motion, that we have been used thinking of as near the lowest, most fundamental level of physics. Constructor theory is that deeper level of physics, physical laws and physical systems, more fundamental than the existing prevailing conception of what physics is (namely particles and waves and space and time and an initial state and laws of motion that describe the evolution of that initial state). ...

( @smcder )

In some ways this theory, just like quantum theory and relativity and anything that's fundamental in physics, overlaps with philosophy. So having the right philosophy, which is the philosophy of Karl Popper basically, though not essential, is extremely helpful to avoid going down blind alleys. ...​

 

[smcder]

Hm, a beautiful idea.

CONSTRUCTOR THEORY | Edge.org

... One of the first rather unexpected yields of this theory has been a new foundation for information theory. There's a notorious problem with defining information within physics, namely that on the one hand information is purely abstract, and the original theory of computation as developed by Alan Turing and others regarded computers and the information they manipulate purely abstractly as mathematical objects. Many mathematicians to this day don't realize that information is physical and that there is no such thing as an abstract computer. Only a physical object can compute things.

On the other hand, physicists have always known that in order to do the work that the theory of information does within physics, such as informing the theory of statistical mechanics, and thereby, thermodynamics (the second law of thermodynamics), information has to be a physical quantity. And yet, information is independent of the physical object that it resides in.

I'm speaking to you now: Information starts as some kind of electrochemical signals in my brain, and then it gets converted into other signals in my nerves and then into sound waves and then into the vibrations of a microphone, mechanical vibrations, then into electricity and so on, and presumably will eventually go on the Internet. This something has been instantiated in radically different physical objects that obey different laws of physics. Yet in order to describe this process you have to refer to the thing that has remained unchanged throughout the process, which is only the information rather than any obviously physical thing like energy or momentum.

The way to get this substrate independence of information is to refer it to a level of physics that is below and more fundamental than things like laws of motion, that we have been used thinking of as near the lowest, most fundamental level of physics. Constructor theory is that deeper level of physics, physical laws and physical systems, more fundamental than the existing prevailing conception of what physics is (namely particles and waves and space and time and an initial state and laws of motion that describe the evolution of that initial state). ...

(@scmder)

In some ways this theory, just like quantum theory and relativity and anything that's fundamental in physics, overlaps with philosophy. So having the right philosophy, which is the philosophy of Karl Popper basically, though not essential, is extremely helpful to avoid going down blind alleys. ...​

I can see why you like it! ;-)

Tell me more about Popper.

Blind alleys ... by which I assume you mean dead ends? You've mentioned them before and also goose chases. If you're trying to tell me something, just say it! ;-)

See, I've got a lot of geese I've chased down a blind alley and I don't know what to do with them all.

 

[smcder]

Interesting site:

Glossary of Science Fiction Ideas and Inventions

 

[Constance]

Hm, a beautiful idea.

CONSTRUCTOR THEORY | Edge.org

... One of the first rather unexpected yields of this theory has been a new foundation for information theory. There's a notorious problem with defining information within physics, namely that on the one hand information is purely abstract, and the original theory of computation as developed by Alan Turing and others regarded computers and the information they manipulate purely abstractly as mathematical objects. Many mathematicians to this day don't realize that information is physical and that there is no such thing as an abstract computer. Only a physical object can compute things.

On the other hand, physicists have always known that in order to do the work that the theory of information does within physics, such as informing the theory of statistical mechanics, and thereby, thermodynamics (the second law of thermodynamics), information has to be a physical quantity. And yet, information is independent of the physical object that it resides in.

I'm speaking to you now: Information starts as some kind of electrochemical signals in my brain, and then it gets converted into other signals in my nerves and then into sound waves and then into the vibrations of a microphone, mechanical vibrations, then into electricity and so on, and presumably will eventually go on the Internet. This something has been instantiated in radically different physical objects that obey different laws of physics. Yet in order to describe this process you have to refer to the thing that has remained unchanged throughout the process, which is only the information rather than any obviously physical thing like energy or momentum.

The way to get this substrate independence of information is to refer it to a level of physics that is below and more fundamental than things like laws of motion, that we have been used thinking of as near the lowest, most fundamental level of physics. Constructor theory is that deeper level of physics, physical laws and physical systems, more fundamental than the existing prevailing conception of what physics is (namely particles and waves and space and time and an initial state and laws of motion that describe the evolution of that initial state). ...

( @smcder )

In some ways this theory, just like quantum theory and relativity and anything that's fundamental in physics, overlaps with philosophy. So having the right philosophy, which is the philosophy of Karl Popper basically, though not essential, is extremely helpful to avoid going down blind alleys. ...​

Soupie, have you come across the philosophical paper Deutsch refers to in the above piece?

No one else is actually working on it at the moment. Several of our colleagues have expressed something between curiosity and substantial interest which may well go up as soon as we have results. At the moment, there's no publication. I've submitted a philosophical paper which hasn't even been published yet. When that comes out, it'll get a wider readership. . . . I had to write the philosophical paper first because there's quite a lot of philosophical foundation to constructor theory, and to put that into a physics paper would have simply made it too long and, to physicists, too boring. So I have to write something that we can refer to. It's philosophical paper first, and then the next thing was going to be constructor theory algebra which is the language and formalism and showing how both old laws and new constructor theoretic laws can be expressed, but now it's likely that the first paper on constructor theory will be constructor theoretic information theory, because it's yielded unexpectedly good results there.

There are now two scientific papers available at arxiv, the first by Deutsch and Marletto on Constructor Theory of Information and the second by Marletto on Constructor Theory of Life.

[1405.5563] Constructor Theory of Information

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1407.0681v2.pdf

I'm just starting to read the second one. The first is beyond me except for a few extracts:


Extracts from the first:

"With hindsight we can now see that the ‘quantisation’ after which quantum theory is named really refers to a property of quantum information. The discrete and the continuous are linked, in quantum theory, in a manner that was not previously guessed at, but is easily understood in terms of constructor information theory: each information observable of a quantum physical system has only a discrete set of attributes, but there is a continuous infinity of such observables, no union of which is an information observable. So in quantum physics, classical information is discrete, and superinformation (quantum information) is continuous."

"Quantum entanglement is an example of a phenomenon that depends on coherence. It is usually characterised in terms of probabilistic quantities such as the correlations referred to in Bell’s theorem. But underlying those quantitative measures is a qualitative property: the presence of locally inaccessible information1 (Deutsch & Hayden 2000). In our terminology, that means that some combined system S1 ⊕S2 has information variables that cannot be measured by measuring Cartesian products (nor subsets thereof) of variables of S1 and S2."
1 Entanglement is not the only property of quantum information for which locally inaccessible information is responsible. There is also the misleadingly named “non-locality without entanglement” of Bennett et al. (1999)."

"Concluding remarks
The constructor theory of information relies only on the fundamental constructor-theoretic dichotomy between possible and impossible tasks. All its definitions and conjectured principles are constructor-theoretic. It reconciles apparently contradictory features of information: that of being an abstraction, yet governed by laws of physics; of being physical, yet counter-factual. And it robustly unifies the theories of quantum and classical information."

 

[Constance]

Found the philosophy paper:

Constructor Theory
David Deutsch
September 2012 (Revised December 2012)

Abstract: Constructor theory seeks to express all fundamental scientific theories
in terms of a dichotomy between possible and impossible physical
transformations – those that can be caused to happen and those that
cannot. This is a departure from the prevailing conception of
fundamental physics which is to predict what will happen from initial
conditions and laws of motion. Several converging motivations for
expecting constructor theory to be a fundamental branch of physics are
discussed. Some principles of the theory are suggested and its potential
for solving various problems and achieving various unifications is
explored. These include providing a theory of information underlying
classical and quantum information; generalising the theory of
computation to include all physical transformations; unifying formal
statements of conservation laws with the stronger operational ones
(such as the ruling-out of perpetual motion machines); expressing the
principles of testability and of the computability of nature (currently
deemed methodological and metaphysical respectively) as laws of
physics; allowing exact statements of emergent laws (such as the
second law of thermodynamics); and expressing certain apparently
anthropocentric attributes such as knowledge in physical terms.

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1210/1210.7439.pdf

 

[Constance]

Theory of everything says universe is a transformer

• 16:27 06 November 2012 by Douglas Heaven

Solving the mysteries of the universe is usually about finding the best answer to a question. But what if we are not even asking the right questions?

A pioneer in quantum computation, University of Oxford physicist and best-selling author David Deutsch has spent most of his career working towards a new way of asking questions about the universe. Deutsch's vision for this "theory of everything" ties together ideas in cosmology, computation, philosophy and evolution to describe the nature of reality.

It has been suggested that his long-awaited theory could account for several fundamental mysteries, such as why time flows in only one direction – a property that is not required by most physical laws. Now Deutsch has posted a taste of the form his theory might take, opening the door to what may become a new branch of physics.

Transformations rule
According to Deutsch, the problem with current theories is that they do not adequately explain why some transformations between states of being are possible and some are not. We know, for instance, that dye can dissolve in water and cannot spontaneously clump back together – but we do not know why that must be so.
Deutsch proposes a framework built on the transformations themselves, rather than the components. Called Constructor Theory, this model defines a constructor as anything that causes transformations in physical systems without itself being altered, rather like a chemical catalyst. Deutsch then asks which transformations must be ruled out to achieve a particular result, regardless of the constructor that caused it. In other words, which processes can happen to cause dye to dissolve in water, which ones cannot, and why?

Deutsch's vision can be seen as a generalisation of the second law of thermodynamics, says Vlatko Vedral, also at Oxford. This law encompasses the property of entropy, which says that order leads to disorder in a closed system. Entropy, in turn, implies that we cannot rewind time, because that would involve disordered matter moving towards order.

In Constructor Theory, the key would be figuring out why such a transformation would not be allowed. In asking those types of questions, Deutsch seems to want to apply the notion that some states are simply inaccessible from others to all physical laws, Vedral says.

Laying that groundwork might explain, for instance, why the laws of quantum mechanics are so strict, says Vedral. Small variations in the way we describe quantum laws can lead to contradictions, such as a violation of the speed of light.
"As soon as you modify quantum mechanics, something goes wrong," he says. "Why is this? It's a puzzle." If Constructor Theory can show which transformations are permitted and which are not, that would explain the very underpinnings of quantum mechanics, says Vedral.

Stated intent
"It's tricky to see what this would look like," he admits. And for now, the new paper on Constructor Theory is only a statement of intent, says Vedral. "It's not yet at the level where you can recover existing physics." But he is excited about the possibilities.

What Deutsch seems to be reaching for is a theory that goes beyond a computational view of the universe, says Seth Lloyd at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Such a theory might not only help unify relativity and quantum mechanics, it might also show that they are necessary parts of the universe, answering the troubling philosophical question of why things are the way they are, he says.
"If Deutsch can do that, it would be awesome," adds Lloyd.

Theory of everything says universe is a transformer - physics-math - 06 November 2012 - New Scientist

 

[smcder]

Hm, a beautiful idea.

CONSTRUCTOR THEORY | Edge.org

... One of the first rather unexpected yields of this theory has been a new foundation for information theory. There's a notorious problem with defining information within physics, namely that on the one hand information is purely abstract, and the original theory of computation as developed by Alan Turing and others regarded computers and the information they manipulate purely abstractly as mathematical objects. Many mathematicians to this day don't realize that information is physical and that there is no such thing as an abstract computer. Only a physical object can compute things.

On the other hand, physicists have always known that in order to do the work that the theory of information does within physics, such as informing the theory of statistical mechanics, and thereby, thermodynamics (the second law of thermodynamics), information has to be a physical quantity. And yet, information is independent of the physical object that it resides in.

I'm speaking to you now: Information starts as some kind of electrochemical signals in my brain, and then it gets converted into other signals in my nerves and then into sound waves and then into the vibrations of a microphone, mechanical vibrations, then into electricity and so on, and presumably will eventually go on the Internet. This something has been instantiated in radically different physical objects that obey different laws of physics. Yet in order to describe this process you have to refer to the thing that has remained unchanged throughout the process, which is only the information rather than any obviously physical thing like energy or momentum.

The way to get this substrate independence of information is to refer it to a level of physics that is below and more fundamental than things like laws of motion, that we have been used thinking of as near the lowest, most fundamental level of physics. Constructor theory is that deeper level of physics, physical laws and physical systems, more fundamental than the existing prevailing conception of what physics is (namely particles and waves and space and time and an initial state and laws of motion that describe the evolution of that initial state). ...

( @smcder )

In some ways this theory, just like quantum theory and relativity and anything that's fundamental in physics, overlaps with philosophy. So having the right philosophy, which is the philosophy of Karl Popper basically, though not essential, is extremely helpful to avoid going down blind alleys. ...​

Did you edit out the reference to Popper's Wild Geese?

I don't see it - but when I quote your post, It pops up! What manner of strange wirking is this?

Anyway, A little Popper for a Saturday morning:

"At a very general level, Popper argues that historicism and holism have their origins in what he terms ‘one of the oldest dreams of mankind—the dream of prophecy, the idea that we can know what the future has in store for us, and that we can profit from such knowledge by adjusting our policy to it.’ (Conjectures and Refutations, 338).

This dream was given further impetus, he speculates, by the emergence of a genuine predictive capability regarding such events as solar and lunar eclipses at an early stage in human civilisation, which has of course become increasingly refined with the development of the natural sciences and their concomitant technologies.

The kind of reasoning which has made, and continues to make, historicism plausible may, on this account, be reconstructed as follows: if the application of the laws of the natural sciences can lead to the successful prediction of such future events as eclipses, then surely it is reasonable to infer that knowledge of the laws of history as yielded by a social science or sciences (assuming that such laws exist) would lead to the successful prediction of such future social phenomena as revolutions? Why should it be possible to predict an eclipse, but not a revolution? Why can we not conceive of a social science which could and would function as the theoretical natural sciences function, and yield precise unconditional predictions in the appropriate sphere of application?

These are amongst the questions which Popper seeks to answer, and in doing so, to show that they are based upon a series of misconceptions about the nature of science, and about the relationship between scientific laws and scientific prediction."


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[smcder]

"This, then, Popper argues, is the reason why it is a fundamental mistake for the historicist to take the unconditional scientific prophecies of eclipses as being typical and characteristic of the predictions of natural science—in fact such predictions are possible only because our solar system is a stationary and repetitive system which is isolated from other such systems by immense expanses of empty space. The solar system aside, there are very few such systems around for scientific investigation—most of the others are confined to the field of biology, where unconditional prophecies about the life-cycles of organisms are made possible by the existence of precisely the same factors. Thus one of the fallacies committed by the historicist is to take the (relatively rare) instances of unconditional prophecies in the natural science as constituting the essence of what scientific prediction is, to fail to see that such prophecies apply only to systems which are isolated, stationary, and repetitive, and to seek to apply the method of scientific prophecy to human society and human history. The latter, of course, is not an isolated system (in fact it's not a system at all), it is constantly changing, and it continually undergoes rapid, non-repetitive development. In the most fundamental sense possible, every event in human history is discrete, novel, quite unique, and ontologically distinct from every other historical event. For this reason, it is impossible in principle that unconditional scientific prophecies could be made in relation to human history—the idea that the successful unconditional prediction of eclipses provides us with reasonable grounds for the hope of successful unconditional prediction regarding the evolution of human history turns out to be based upon a gross misconception, and is quite false. As Popper himself concludes, “The fact that we predict eclipses does not, therefore, provide a valid reason for expecting that we can predict revolutions.” (Conjectures and Refutations, 340)."


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[smcder]

@smcder

I was just at a seminar for cognitive behavioral therapy. The speaker was a Dr. Aldo Pucci, and his brand of CBT is called Rational Living Therapy. While I've been well aware of CBT for years, it was interesting to consider it in light of the discussion in this thread and what you've shared about your meditation experiences.

Perhaps the core idea of CBT is the so-called ABCs of emotion. The idea is as follows:

(A) Awareness - we become aware of something, an object, event, feeling, or memory, etc.

(B) Belief - we have a conscious or unconscious belief/thought about the thing we've become aware of.

(C) Consequence - As a result of our conscious or often unconscious apprasial in step (B), we have a corresponding emotional and behavioral response.

For example, let's say that Bob's wife dies. After the funeral, his family and friends are surprised to find that Bob seems to be happy. It turns out that Bob believed that his wife was holding him back from fully experiencing life and is therefore feeling positive now that she is dead.

On the other hand, When Sam's wife died, he seems miserable and depressed. It turns out that Sam believes that life is not worth living without his wife.

In short, our appraisal of events — our thoughts about events — directly influence our feelings and behaviors.

For some people, the above makes quite a bit of sense, but others may find it troubling. In one sense, it seems to make emotions epiphenominal (while giving thoughts quite a bit of power). In fact, Mr. Pucci made the statement that all feelings and behaviors are preceded by thoughts. This is of course good for those who want to believe in free will. However, he did qualify his statement later when he introduced what he called "reflexive thoughts" which are essentially automatic, unconscious thoughts.

How does this make feelings epiphenominal? In the following sense:

Someone calls Jim a jerk, and Jim punches the person in the nose. When asked why he punched the person in the nose, Jim might say "he made me mad."

A CBT practitioner would say: he didn't make you mad, you'r thought about what he said made you mad.

The person might remark: what thought?

In this case, when someone calls Jim a name, he has an unconscious thought that being called names is bad because it means people don't respect him. If people don't respect him, than his is not a real man. Not being a real man is awful. Therefore, he became angry and punched the name caller.

Thus, the behavior was ultimately prompted by the — largely unconscious — apprasial and not the emotion.

However, one might argue that the emotional response was still needed to generate the punching behavior.

The helpful aspect of CBT is that people can use it to reflect on their conscious and unconscious appraisals, manipulate them, and thus gain some measure of control over their feelings and their behaviors.

Thus, if one didn't previously, they can gain a measure of control over their emotional reactions to things they become aware of by thinking differently. Thus, when called a name, rather than getting angery and fighting, Jim might think: "he is mad at me right now, thats why he called me a jerk. He might not respect me, but thats ok. My manliness doesn't depend on whether everyone respcts me. Not everyone will, and that's okay. Besides, I know that those I really care about do."

For my own part, as I stated earlier in our discussion about basic emotions versus appraisal emotions, I think it is a case where both are at play. My thought is that some of these "automatic, reflexive thoughts" are innate, archtypes of the human pysche, the collective unconscious if you will.

Thus, when a newborn is seperated from the mother in the hospital, the newborn will begin to cry and — I think — experience sadness. What apprasial is this hours old baby making at step (B)?

My answer would be that an innate, unconscious, instinctual apprasial has kicked in: The newborn is "aware" that it has been seperated from its mother, it is upset, and it cries in an "effort" to be reunited with the mother.

I think there are other, innate, unconscious schemas that come pre-packaged with the human psyche. I think many people — perhaps when they gain a measure of enlightenment — can recognize these innate, instinctual schemas and allow them to fall away.

So what does CBT say about free will. I was deathly ill so I didn't have the energy to ask Dr. Pucci afterward. I think a determinst would agree that our behaviors and emotions might be triggered by unconscious thoughts. But what about when our emotions and behaviors are triggered by conscious thoughts or when we "step in" and correct automatic, unconscious thoughts? Is that free will (as some argue)?

Or are there unconscious, deterministic thoughts underneath all conscious thoughts as strict determinism would demand!?

And this concept of the ABCs reminded me somewhat, smcder, of how you've described the Buddhist concept of awareness. Whereas the CBT practicioner "gets" behind the emotions and watches them, so to speak, the Buddhist practicioner goes a step further and gets behind not just emotion, but thinking as well. It struck me that a Buddhist gets behind steps (C) and (B) and identifies only with awareness. And while a CBT practioner will actively manipulate their thoughts/appraisals, a Buddhist might simply non-judgementally observe them arising.

In this sense, we can sit back perhaps and non-judgmentally watch our body do its thing. We are neither our emotions nor our thoughts, we are only awareness. But, perhaps, when we want,mif we want, we can step in and manipulate our thoughts (are they our thoughts!?). Is this free will? Whose thoughts are they when we don't step in and change them? And who or what are we that can sit back and watch or choose to intervene?

"And this concept of the ABCs reminded me somewhat, smcder, of how you've described the Buddhist concept of awareness. Whereas the CBT practicioner "gets" behind the emotions and watches them, so to speak, the Buddhist practicioner goes a step further and gets behind not just emotion, but thinking as well. It struck me that a Buddhist gets behind steps (C) and (B) and identifies only with awareness. And while a CBT practioner will actively manipulate their thoughts/appraisals, a Buddhist might simply non-judgementally observe them arising."

Here is the Sutra I told you about I think in email:

Cula-suññata Sutta: The Lesser Discourse on Emptiness

The Lesser Discourse on Emptiness

The perception of earth
The infinitude of space
The infinitude of consciousness
Nothingness

... and then three more stages/levels/places

"behind" nothingness!

... a hell of a ride and yet, home in time for supper ...



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[Constance]

Extract from
THE INFORMATION
A History. A Theory. A Flood.
By James Gleick

"An invention even more profound and more fundamental [than the transistor] came in a monograph spread across seventy-nine pages of The Bell System Technical Journal in July and October. No one bothered with a press release. It carried a title both simple and grand — “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” — and the message was hard to summarize. But it was a fulcrum around which the world began to turn. Like the transistor, this development also involved a neologism: the word bit, chosen in this case not by committee but by the lone author, a thirty-two-year-old named Claude Shannon. The bit now joined the inch, the pound, the quart, and the minute as a determinate quantity — a fundamental unit of measure. But measuring what? “A unit for measuring information,” Shannon wrote, as though there were such a thing, measurable and quantifiable, as information.

Shannon supposedly belonged to the Bell Labs mathematical research group, but he mostly kept to himself. When the group left the New York headquarters for shiny new space in the New Jersey suburbs, he stayed behind, haunting a cubbyhole in the old building, a twelve-story sandy brick hulk on West Street, its industrial back to the Hudson River, its front facing the edge of Greenwich Village. He disliked commuting, and he liked the downtown neighborhood, where he could hear jazz clarinetists in late-night clubs. He was flirting shyly with a young woman who worked in Bell Labs’ microwave research group in the two-story former Nabisco factory across the street. People considered him a smart young man. Fresh from MIT he had plunged into the laboratory’s war work, first developing an automatic fire-control director for antiaircraft guns, then focusing on the theoretical underpinnings of secret communication — cryptography — and working out a mathematical proof of the security of the so-called X System, the telephone hotline between Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt. So now his managers were willing to leave him alone, even though they did not understand exactly what he was working on.

AT&T at midcentury did not demand instant gratification from its research division. It allowed detours into mathematics or astrophysics with no apparent commercial purpose. Anyway so much of modern science bore directly or indirectly on the company’s mission, which was vast, monopolistic, and almost all-encompassing. Still, broad as it was, the telephone company’s core subject matter remained just out of focus. By 1948 more than 125 million conversations passed daily through the Bell System’s 138 million miles of cable and 31 million telephone sets. The Bureau of the Census reported these facts under the rubric of “Communications in the United States,” but they were crude measures of communication. The census also counted several thousand broadcasting stations for radio and a few dozen for television, along with newspapers, books, pamphlets, and the mail. The post office counted its letters and parcels, but what, exactly, did the Bell System carry, counted in what units? Not conversations, surely; nor words, nor certainly characters. Perhaps it was just electricity. The company’s engineers were electrical engineers. Everyone understood that electricity served as a surrogate for sound, the sound of the human voice, waves in the air entering the telephone mouthpiece and converted into electrical waveforms. This conversion was the essence of the telephone’s advance over the telegraph — the predecessor technology, already seeming so quaint. Telegraphy relied on a different sort of conversion: a code of dots and dashes, not based on sounds at all but on the written alphabet, which was, after all, a code in its turn. Indeed, considering the matter closely, one could see a chain of abstraction and conversion: the dots and dashes representing letters of the alphabet; the letters representing sounds, and in combination forming words; the words representing some ultimate substrate of meaning, perhaps best left to philosophers.

The Bell System had none of those, but the company had hired its first mathematician in 1897: George Campbell, a Minnesotan who had studied in Göttingen and Vienna. He immediately confronted a crippling problem of early telephone transmission. Signals were distorted as they passed across the circuits; the greater the distance, the worse the distortion. Campbell’s solution was partly mathematics and partly electrical engineering. His employers learned not to worry much about the distinction. Shannon himself, as a student, had never been quite able to decide whether to become an engineer or a mathematician. For Bell Labs he was both, willy-nilly, practical about circuits and relays but happiest in a realm of symbolic abstraction. Most communications engineers focused their expertise on physical problems, amplification and modulation, phase distortion and signal-to-noise degradation. Shannon liked games and puzzles. Secret codes entranced him, beginning when he was a boy reading Edgar Allan Poe. He gathered threads like a magpie. As a first-year research assistant at MIT, he worked on a hundred-ton proto-computer, Vannevar Bush’s Differential Analyzer, which could solve equations with great rotating gears, shafts, and wheels. At twenty-two he wrote a dissertation that applied a nineteenth-century idea, George Boole’s algebra of logic, to the design of electrical circuits. (Logic and electricity — a peculiar combination.) Later he worked with the mathematician and logician Hermann Weyl, who taught him what a theory was: “Theories permit consciousness to ‘jump over its own shadow,’ to leave behind the given, to represent the transcendent, yet, as is self-evident, only in symbols.”

In 1943 the English mathematician and code breaker Alan Turing visited Bell Labs on a cryptographic mission and met Shannon sometimes over lunch, where they traded speculation on the future of artificial thinking machines. (“Shannon wants to feed not just data to a Brain, but cultural things!” Turing exclaimed. “He wants to play music to it!”) Shannon also crossed paths with Norbert Wiener, who had taught him at MIT and by 1948 was proposing a new discipline to be called “cybernetics,” the study of communication and control. Meanwhile Shannon began paying special attention to television signals, from a peculiar point of view: wondering whether their content could be somehow compacted or compressed to allow for faster transmission. Logic and circuits crossbred to make a new, hybrid thing; so did codes and genes. In his solitary way, seeking a framework to connect his many threads, Shannon began assembling a theory for information. . . ."

Extract continued at
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/b...e-information-by-james-gleick.html?ref=review

NYT review of The Information at
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/b...ormation-by-james-gleick.html?ref=review&_r=0

 

[Soupie]

I can see why you like it! ;-)

Tell me more about Popper.

Blind alleys ... by which I assume you mean dead ends? You've mentioned them before and also goose chases. If you're trying to tell me something, just say it! ;-)

See, I've got a lot of geese I've chased down a blind alley and I don't know what to do with them all.

Ive heard of Popper but I dont know his work. I included that part and tagged you because i thought youd appeciate a scientist appreciating philosophy. No goose chases alluded to here.

 

[Soupie]

[1405.5563] Constructor Theory of Information

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1407.0681v2.pdf

I'm just starting to read the second one. The first is beyond me except for a few extracts:


Extracts from the first:

"With hindsight we can now see that the ‘quantisation’ after which quantum theory is named really refers to a property of quantum information. The discrete and the continuous are linked, in quantum theory, in a manner that was not previously guessed at, but is easily understood in terms of constructor information theory: each information observable of a quantum physical system has only a discrete set of attributes, but there is a continuous infinity of such observables, no union of which is an information observable. So in quantum physics, classical information is discrete, and superinformation (quantum information) is continuous."

"Quantum entanglement is an example of a phenomenon that depends on coherence. It is usually characterised in terms of probabilistic quantities such as the correlations referred to in Bell’s theorem. But underlying those quantitative measures is a qualitative property: the presence of locally inaccessible information1 (Deutsch & Hayden 2000). In our terminology, that means that some combined system S1 ⊕S2 has information variables that cannot be measured by measuring Cartesian products (nor subsets thereof) of variables of S1 and S2."
1 Entanglement is not the only property of quantum information for which locally inaccessible information is responsible. There is also the misleadingly named “non-locality without entanglement” of Bennett et al. (1999)."

This sounds a bit like IIT; two systems integrating to create a new system, which is more than the sum of its parts.

In this case, however, if i understand correctly, the two systems share defferent locales (time and space, or just space?).

I recall that one of the criticisms of IIT was that — based on IIT calculations — there wouldnt be enough information to create the richness of subjective experience. Thus, the open question was: where is the missing information?

Could it be that the missing information is non-local (as you have been suggesting @Constance)? Perhaps brains are in a continuous state of entanglement with the local and non-local environment.

This would explain the missing information and some paranormal phenomena.