Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> wrote:
> >> We all still are just chemical reactions!
> > 
> >   That's like saying that literature is just paper and ink.

> Pretty much.

> That's the thing most people don't get, tho.  The information content is 
> in the *arrangement*, not the *components*. People say things like 
> "there is no soul, because a dead person and a live person have all the 
> same chemicals."  Even tho there's nothing *physical* there more than 
> the chemicals, their arrangement is what's important.

  Information (most prominently written information) is still something
which puzzles me at a conceptual, philosophical or whatever level I can't
really determine.

  Paper and ink is just that, paper and ink. There's nothing else there
than paper and ink. Yet there can be: If there is, for example, some
written text, there is *something* else than just paper and ink there.
It's what is commonly called "information". I simply can't get a mental
grasp of what exactly that is, at the lowest conceptual level possible.
It's something that is and is not there, at the same time. It transfers
something from person to person, something which isn't physical. If it
isn't physical, how can it "exist" at all?

  When I think about written information like that, it starts sounding
really, really whacky.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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