Information Hypotheses
Apr. 23rd, 2007 03:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tcepsaI'm having a "really can't concentrate at work because there's hardly anything to do right now!" day, so I'm going to write something that has been kicking around in my brain for awhile now. Disclaimer: This is my own rambling, and I may be wrong. Anytime I make a statement of fact please pretend that I prefixed it with, "To the best of my knowledge" and then correct me if you know otherwise ^_^
Almost everything, it seems, can be broken down as information--though that depends largely on semantics, I suppose. A rock, for example... contains the information that it is a rock, in the form of its arrangement of constituent atoms (or whatever collection of subatomic particles you like).
More to the point, life seems to be pretty tightly coupled to genetic information. Our DNA, everything's DNA, contains the information to make that thing. There are some disagreements as to what constitutes life, but I am pretty sure that for all of the possible ways that it is broken down, there is some kind of information, some special sequence of chemicals, driving it. And that information includes things like how to behave/react to stimuli. In many forms of life, I'm pretty sure that information is mostly hard-coded genetically, and regardless of whether it is or not, the amount of information exchanged between the different members is relatively limited (as compared to humans). For example, bees can communicate to each other the locations of flowers, but they probably don't have conversations about how awesome the Queen is. For those types of animals, those that are encoded with information that is more suitable for survival and reproduction do survive and reproduce, ensuring that that information continues to exist. It gets tweaked slightly every time, which sometimes leads to new information that can propagate even better (unfortunately, it also sometimes leads to new information that does not propagate well at all).
As humans, however, we have an additional set of information. We've got our fairly-hard-coded behaviors and instincts and such that we get from our genetic makeup, but we've also got brains that can store and contemplate information, and make decisions about which information to keep and which information to ditch, but overall I think that it's the same concept--some pieces of information survive, and some die off.
One of the most interesting things for me is that some pieces of information basically say "use me to evaluate other pieces of information." The whole field of logic is built on this kind of information--pieces of information (rules) that are used to evaluate other pieces of information. Many religious systems also include information (rules) for determining what information is kept and discarded.
Another really interesting thing for me is that many pieces of information have built-in "replicate me" tags. That, or most people have a piece of information that says "I should replicate information!" That's why this post is getting written--because (based on the information that I have) it seems like it might be important, and if it is important then other people should know about it!
I can't think of a graceful way to set this up, so we'll go with the jarring transition way: concepts are like viruses. Viruses are little packages of information that can't replicate by themselves; they need something else living (a preexisting configuration of information) to transmit them. They hook into that and alter its information structure, using it to make copies of themselves and, ideally, propagate themselves to other living beings. Without living beings, viruses wouldn't have much to do, and probably wouldn't have much of an impact on the universe. Concepts and beliefs are the same way--pieces of information that can't replicate by themselves. They may not even be able to exist by themselves (if a concept is encoded onto the pages of a livejournal, does it exist? Or does it only exist if someone actually reads it? That's a direction to be explored in another entry! ^_^ ). They rely on us to transmit them. They alter our information structure, sometimes displacing or modifying other concepts as we incorporate them into ourselves. Some are highly antagonistic. Some target specific other beliefs.
This feels like it's getting less coherent as I go along, so I'll stop now and leave you with this question: Are you living your beliefs, or are your beliefs living you?
Almost everything, it seems, can be broken down as information--though that depends largely on semantics, I suppose. A rock, for example... contains the information that it is a rock, in the form of its arrangement of constituent atoms (or whatever collection of subatomic particles you like).
More to the point, life seems to be pretty tightly coupled to genetic information. Our DNA, everything's DNA, contains the information to make that thing. There are some disagreements as to what constitutes life, but I am pretty sure that for all of the possible ways that it is broken down, there is some kind of information, some special sequence of chemicals, driving it. And that information includes things like how to behave/react to stimuli. In many forms of life, I'm pretty sure that information is mostly hard-coded genetically, and regardless of whether it is or not, the amount of information exchanged between the different members is relatively limited (as compared to humans). For example, bees can communicate to each other the locations of flowers, but they probably don't have conversations about how awesome the Queen is. For those types of animals, those that are encoded with information that is more suitable for survival and reproduction do survive and reproduce, ensuring that that information continues to exist. It gets tweaked slightly every time, which sometimes leads to new information that can propagate even better (unfortunately, it also sometimes leads to new information that does not propagate well at all).
As humans, however, we have an additional set of information. We've got our fairly-hard-coded behaviors and instincts and such that we get from our genetic makeup, but we've also got brains that can store and contemplate information, and make decisions about which information to keep and which information to ditch, but overall I think that it's the same concept--some pieces of information survive, and some die off.
One of the most interesting things for me is that some pieces of information basically say "use me to evaluate other pieces of information." The whole field of logic is built on this kind of information--pieces of information (rules) that are used to evaluate other pieces of information. Many religious systems also include information (rules) for determining what information is kept and discarded.
Another really interesting thing for me is that many pieces of information have built-in "replicate me" tags. That, or most people have a piece of information that says "I should replicate information!" That's why this post is getting written--because (based on the information that I have) it seems like it might be important, and if it is important then other people should know about it!
I can't think of a graceful way to set this up, so we'll go with the jarring transition way: concepts are like viruses. Viruses are little packages of information that can't replicate by themselves; they need something else living (a preexisting configuration of information) to transmit them. They hook into that and alter its information structure, using it to make copies of themselves and, ideally, propagate themselves to other living beings. Without living beings, viruses wouldn't have much to do, and probably wouldn't have much of an impact on the universe. Concepts and beliefs are the same way--pieces of information that can't replicate by themselves. They may not even be able to exist by themselves (if a concept is encoded onto the pages of a livejournal, does it exist? Or does it only exist if someone actually reads it? That's a direction to be explored in another entry! ^_^ ). They rely on us to transmit them. They alter our information structure, sometimes displacing or modifying other concepts as we incorporate them into ourselves. Some are highly antagonistic. Some target specific other beliefs.
This feels like it's getting less coherent as I go along, so I'll stop now and leave you with this question: Are you living your beliefs, or are your beliefs living you?
