Warp wrote:
>   Would you agree that the information portrayed by the text exists?

Now you have to define "exists." :-)

The text "exists" only because I look at it and the light from the ink and 
paper stimulates the neurons in my brain into a different pattern.  The 
information represented by the text does not "exist" if there's nobody to 
read it.

> We know the information exists because of the causality effects it can
> produce. The outcome of events can be affected by the information that
> is portrayed by the text.

Sure, in some sense.  The arrangement of the atoms of ink and paper have a 
surprisingly large causal effect when they are (for example) a declaration 
of war. I don't know that you can say the *information* exists independent 
of the text, for example.

>   If something exists in this universe, then it is part of it, and hence
> the universe is made of it (among other things).
> 
>   Also, if information exists, it cannot be the same thing as energy
> because information can be created and destroyed (or, more specifically,
> the amount of information can be changed, as it's basically tied to
> entropy, while the amount of energy cannot, as it stays constant).

Entropy is order, not information.

>   Hence there exists at least two different things in the universe:
> Energy and information, and they are not the same thing.

 From lots of stuff I've read, information can't actually disappear. Or, to 
put it another way, the "information" measured by entropy is only 
"information of interest".

Certainly if you take a dynamic but deterministic system, like perfect balls 
bouncing around inside a perfect box, and you start with all the balls on 
one side and none on the other, entropy will increase even tho there is no 
state of the box you cannot deduce from looking at any two moments of state.

QM does have a concept of "information" as well, and it's a symmetry (i.e., 
it might change form but the total amount stays the same).  Indeed, that 
gives rise to one or the other of the conservation laws that everyone accepts.

>   The third thing I postulated that exists, and which is neither energy
> nor information, is timespace. You would agree that timespace exists.

My understanding is that spacetime (aka timespace ;-) doesn't actually 
exist, and the lack of its existence is the difference between SR and GR. If 
you reformulate special relativity in such a way that you don't have a 
"background" coordinate system but only the interactions between what's 
there, you get GR.  (I may be misunderstanding this, tho.)

> The only other question is whether timespace is distinct from energy.
> As far as I can see, it is (although my arguments of why I think so
> are admittedly less thought-out and thus weaker).

I think that it's more a question of definitions than facts. :-) We have 
names for all sorts of things that don't exist in the way they're defined, 
like "meaning".

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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bart wrote:
>  >bart <bar### [at] homeorg> wrote:
>  >> >  >  What else?
>  >> > pure consciousness?
>  >
>  >  What is that?
> You know what is that, everyone does.

I don't know about "pure" consciousness. It's pretty easy to understand what 
self-awareness is, and hence get an idea of what consciousness is.

>  >How do you define it?
> The one can feel it as a kind of "self-existence".

That's self-awareness, not consciousness.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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>>  >How do you define it?
 >> The one can feel it as a kind of "self-existence".
 >
 > That's self-awareness, not consciousness.
 >
Probably a question of terminology;
here these terms were considered as synonyms
(pure consciousness = self-awareness, nothing more, no structures)
as in one of the definitions of consciousness on the Web:
"an alert cognitive state in which you are aware of yourself and your 
situation".

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bart wrote:
>  >>  >How do you define it?
>  >> The one can feel it as a kind of "self-existence".
>  >
>  > That's self-awareness, not consciousness.
>  >
> Probably a question of terminology;
> here these terms were considered as synonyms
> (pure consciousness = self-awareness, nothing more, no structures)
> as in one of the definitions of consciousness on the Web:
> "an alert cognitive state in which you are aware of yourself and your 
> situation".

I think you can be conscious without being self-aware. I'm pretty sure that, 
for example, chickens would be considered conscious, even tho they're 
probably not self-aware.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Warp wrote:
>   Would you agree that the information portrayed by the text exists?

Or, more specifically, we have mass/energy, and we have relationships 
between bits of mass/energy. While those relationships exist, they're not 
"made of" anything beyond what they're relating. We think of relationships 
(like information, "force", etc) but they doesn't exist outside our own 
conceptions of them.  If there were no thinking beings, there would be no 
text, even if the paper with the ink on it was unchanged.

Sound exists as a pattern of air molecules. But it's made out of air 
molecules, just like the molecules are made out of atoms, and the atoms are 
out of protons and electrons and such.  If you beleve that sound is made out 
of something other than air, then you believe that air is made out of 
something other than atoms.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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> Sound exists as a pattern of air molecules. But it's made out of air
> molecules, just like the molecules are made out of atoms, and the atoms
> are out of protons and electrons and such. If you beleve that sound is
> made out of something other than air, then you believe that air is made
> out of something other than atoms.
what happened to the sound under water? Is it made of "air molecules" 
too?

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> I think you can be conscious without being self-aware. I'm pretty sure
> that, for example, chickens would be considered conscious, even tho
> they're probably not self-aware.
Yes, it is convenient to think so, but on the other hand they probably are.

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>  Would you agree that the information portrayed by the text exists?

Yes, it exists and it's made up of atoms.  The atoms can either be part of 
ink on the paper, transistors in a computer, or neurons in an animal brain. 
It's like saying "happyness" exists, it only exists conceptually, physically 
it's just represented by atoms.

>  Also, if information exists, it cannot be the same thing as energy
> because information can be created and destroyed

Cars exist, and they can be created and destroyed, so cars cannot be the 
same thing as energy.  I don't get your point.

>  Hence there exists at least two different things in the universe:
> Energy and information, and they are not the same thing.

Cars also exist, and they are not the same as energy or information, so we 
have at least three different things.  I'm not convinced by your logic 
here...

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> >   The third thing I postulated that exists, and which is neither energy
> > nor information, is timespace. You would agree that timespace exists.

> My understanding is that spacetime (aka timespace ;-) doesn't actually 
> exist, and the lack of its existence is the difference between SR and GR. If 
> you reformulate special relativity in such a way that you don't have a 
> "background" coordinate system but only the interactions between what's 
> there, you get GR.  (I may be misunderstanding this, tho.)

  Time must exist, or else it would be impossible to postulate essential
properties of physics such as the second law of thermodynamics. (In fact,
the concept of a closed system "going forward in time" is completely
equivalent to its entropy increasing; the two things are tied together.
You can unambiguously distinguish if a closed system is going forward in
time by measuring its entropy.)

  Space must exist, or else it would be impossible to postulate essential
properties of physics, such as the Pauli exclusion principle. (How could
you state that two particles cannot be at the same *place* at the same
time if the very concept of "place" wouldn't exist?)

  Just because space and time are relative doesn't mean they don't exist.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> >  Would you agree that the information portrayed by the text exists?

> Yes, it exists and it's made up of atoms.  The atoms can either be part of 
> ink on the paper, transistors in a computer, or neurons in an animal brain. 
> It's like saying "happyness" exists, it only exists conceptually, physically 
> it's just represented by atoms.

> >  Also, if information exists, it cannot be the same thing as energy
> > because information can be created and destroyed

> Cars exist, and they can be created and destroyed, so cars cannot be the 
> same thing as energy.  I don't get your point.

  You can measure the entropy of text or a car, and you can compare it to
the entropy of something else. You could even ostensibly define a unit
of measurement for this.

  If something is observable and measurable, and the properties of that
something can be well-defined, then that something is rather obviously
real, in other words, it exists. If it exists, the it's part of this
universe, in other words, it's one component of the universe.

  If it exists and it can be created and destroyed, that makes it distinct
from energy, which cannot be created nor destroyed.

> >  Hence there exists at least two different things in the universe:
> > Energy and information, and they are not the same thing.

> Cars also exist, and they are not the same as energy or information

  On what do you base the claim that they are not information?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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