[Paleopsych] information inflation

[HowlBloom at aol.com]

Joel--All thanks.  You're absolutely right.  
 
The thought, brief as it was, was inspired by Eshel, who asked me roughly  
four years ago to ponder the nature of information.  If I interpreted him  
correctly, he felt that understanding the nature of information would  provide the 
key to understanding the evolution of the cosmos and  of the cosmos' 
creativity.
 
That led to the following bit of musing: 
 
hb: "I’m pondering what value we can derive from regarding time as  an 
information translation and stimulus-and-response process.  One  instant of time 
reads the instant that came before it, presumably in the  tiny dividing line 
between Planck units of time.  The  present translates the previous instant into a 
new pattern.  What are  the rules of this grand translation, of this grand 
interpretation of a previous  instant's implications?"
 
Then add this: hb: "evolution  is a process in which nature admires herself 
in a mirror and compresses what she  sees, then uses that condensation of 
herself to produce new  realities."
 
And  toss in yet another quote from an old posting:  "hb: Patterns repeat on 
many levels because the repetition of  old things on new levels is how this 
cosmos grows new patterns, processes,  and things--from singularity to a sheet 
of time-space expansion, from that sheet  of hurried departure from less than a 
single point to many points, to quarks,  then to nucleons, and onward 300,000 
years later to atoms and  straight-line-traveling photons, then, 700,000 
years down the road to galaxies,  the ignition of stars, and light.  Now we take 
nearly infinitesimal streams of that light and shift if from  one frame of 
reference to another--from the tiny light-twitches the human eye  can't see to the 
twitching of electrons in a CCD sensor to the image made by  luminescent 
particles on a computer monitor, to the pixels of an image, to the  ink of wood 
pulp of a picture, to the mathematics of an astrophysicist and from  there to 
the technical language of a journal article and the colloquial language  of a 
press release.  But that's not  the end of the condensations and translations 
from one from of reference to  another, not be any means.  If the  information 
officer in charge of the press release makes just the right a bursts  of 
electrons and photons move on the telephone lines and rearranges the  
neurotransmissions in a New York Times reporter's mind, the numerous  translations of the 
twitch of light can be reconstructed in the minds of  millions as a vision of a 
process that once occurred on the very edges (or at  the very center) of this 
spreading universe.  Then prophets, preachers, and  politicians can use the 
resulting genesis tale to change the course of human  history.  Compression and 
expansion  all over the place.  Representation  and translation.  Why does it 
all  work?  Because the original  ancestors of stars, of atoms, of photons, 
and of you and me were a handful of  rules that can be expanded and compressed 
iteratively--folded over and under and  upon themselves endlessly."
 
Does a bigger picture begin to emerge, one that comes from an  
eight-year-long colloquy with Eshel?  Or is the bigger picture one I need  to be more 
explicit about, one I need to take the time to write?  Onward--Howard
 
ps for more on this line of thought see Eshel's “Seeking  the Foundations of 
Cognition:From Thermodynamics to Contextual Information and  Back” and his 
paper on linguistics among bacteria.
 
In a message dated 4/24/2005 9:01:14 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,  
isaacsonj at hotmail.com writes:

Howard,

You  echo below certain aspects of Eshel's 3rd principle.   Increased  
complexification in
living systems allows for detection of (latent)  higher-level complexity both 
within and without.
And this is an  ongoing, recursive/dialectical process.  -- Joel

PS  For  reference, here is Eshel's 3rd principle.

"3. The principle of matched  complexity. The system needs an internal level 
of complexity which is  sufficiently high in order to extract latent 
information from the external  complexity.

I view this matched complexity principle the driving force  of evolution that 
explain the ever increasing level of complexity. In a  nutshell the idea is: 
A single bacterium needs some level of complexity to  detect the complexity 
of the surrounding environment and over the time  window between replication. 
To glean more information the bacteria form  cooperative behaviour and 
generate complex colonies. However for that each  individual bacterium needs 
a higher level of internal complexity for  communication and to cope with its 
external environment which is now has  higher level of complexity - the 
environment becomes both the outside and  the rest of the colony. To solve 
the paradox self-organization leads to  the formation of functional modules 
and spatio-temporal patterns. And than  .. (for next time)."


>From: HowlBloom at aol.com
>Reply-To:  The new improved paleopsych list <paleopsych at paleopsych.org>
>To:  paleopsych at paleopsych.org
>Subject: [Paleopsych] information  inflation
>Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 09:47:09  EDT
>
>
>New  ways of interpreting information increase  the amount of 
>information—and
>of  information’s  consequences—in the cosmos.  When photons from a  
>distant
>star hit the face of an empty planet, they  mean  just about nothing.  Give 
>that
>planet 3.85 billion years  or so to evolve star-gazers, mythmakes, and
>astrology, and the  information gleaned from the same photons goes up   
>exponentially.
>  So do the number of  decisions based  on the distant star’s trickle of
>photons.
>Give the   life-forms on that previously empty planet another few  hundred
>thousand  years to evolve astronomy, astrophysics, and  cosmology, and the
>information  gleaned from the star’s photon  trickle goes up by a factor 
>of ten or
>more.  So do the  decisions based on that photon  drip.
>Which means that the cosmos  is not just inflating in  physical space and
>time.  It’s  not  just expanding in the intricacy of its structures and  
>its
>processes.  It’s also expanding in its   information-content…and in its 
>richness of
>causes and  effects.
>New  ways of seeing lead to new ways of being.  And  new ways of being lead 
>to
>new ways of seeing.  Information  chews on what information  spews.  And the
>cosmos fattens as  it  grows.
>Howard
>
>----------
>Howard  Bloom
>Author of The Lucifer Principle: A  Scientific Expedition  Into the Forces 
>of
>History and Global Brain: The  Evolution  of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to 
>the
>21st  Century
>Visiting Scholar-Graduate  Psychology Department, New York  University; Core
>Faculty Member, The Graduate   Institute
>www.howardbloom.net
>www.bigbangtango.net
>Founder:   International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member:  
>Epic
>of Evolution  Society; founding board member, The  Darwin Project; founder: 
>The
>Big Bang Tango  Media Lab;  member: New York Academy of Sciences, American
>Association for  the  Advancement of Science, American Psychological  
>Society,
>Academy of Political  Science, Human Behavior and  Evolution Society, 
>International
>Society for Human   Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org;
>executive editor --  New  Paradigm book series.
>For information on The International  Paleopsychology  Project, see:
>www.paleopsych.org
>for two  chapters from
>The Lucifer  Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into  the Forces of History,
>see  www.howardbloom.net/lucifer
>For  information on Global Brain: The Evolution of  Mass Mind from the  Big
>Bang to the 21st Century, see   www.howardbloom.net
>
>_______________________________________________
>paleopsych  mailing  list
>paleopsych at paleopsych.org
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----------
Howard  Bloom
Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the  Forces of 
History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang  to the 
21st Century
Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York  University; Core 
Faculty Member, The Graduate  Institute
www.howardbloom.net
www.bigbangtango.net
Founder:  International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic 
of Evolution  Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The 
Big Bang Tango  Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American 
Association for the  Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, 
Academy of Political  Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International 
Society for Human  Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; 
executive editor -- New  Paradigm book series.
For information on The International Paleopsychology  Project, see: 
www.paleopsych.org
for two chapters from 
The Lucifer  Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, 
see  www.howardbloom.net/lucifer
For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of  Mass Mind from the Big 
Bang to the 21st Century, see  www.howardbloom.net

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