Re: What is Information?
It's late? What are ya, European? Or do you mean "It's late I've been at work all day and have done none..."? Maybe its just me.
ANYway, your point about the computer is just what I mean.
We can design a piece of silicon to do every step of the kind of thinking that is required to play a game with fixed rules like chess, but a computer would never be able to, say create an entirely new move. It can't gather information and process it creatively. It can only regurgitate.
This is sort of a sideline, but it relates to your answer about thinking:
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We don't understand the universe, we interact with parts of it and dimly perceive the rest.
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I think this answer is slightly contradictory.
To interact with some part of the universe, we must be in contact with it. But the WE is our brain. And the IT is the numena of the universe, the stuff. So if our interactions are to be trusted, and the info we gather to be taken as intimately related to the stuff, then we must be said to understand that part of it, no? I think you just rephrased what I was saying, basically. There’s still a disconnect between the input: perception // and the result: information. So far we have not been able to represent that function of humanity, and how could we? It would first require an understanding of understanding which don’t really exist yet, and which I say is improbable.
By the way, watch out for that Exploding Skull Syndrome…it’ll get you even worse if you take the brown acid!
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