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

  I don't know what "pure consciousness" is. Can you explain it to me?
And how is it distinct from energy and information?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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> If it exists, the it's part of this
> universe, in other words, it's one component of the universe.

Sure, everything that exists can be called a component of the universe, but 
it doesn't automatically mean that there are existing certain components 
that cannot be made from energy.

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

How about arrangements of energy?  They can be created and destroyed, yet 
are still just energy in the end.

>> >  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?

There's an important difference to what I said and you claimed I said.

Birds are animals, but "bird" has a different meaning to "animal".
Cars could be considered "information", but a "car" is different to 
"information".
Cars are made from atoms, but a car is most certainly different to an atom.

My point is that information is just specific patterns of energy. I know 
"energy" and "information" have different meanings and refer to different 
things, but that doesn't mean information must be made up of something other 
than energy.

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Warp wrote:
>   Time must exist, or else it would be impossible to postulate essential
> properties of physics such as the second law of thermodynamics. 

The second law is statistical.

> You can unambiguously distinguish if a closed system is going forward in
> time by measuring its entropy.)

No you can't, because time is reversible. Entropy is an artifact of measurement.

Take a deck of cards and shuffle it. How likely is the order of cards you 
just shuffled?  It's exactly the same as the likelihood that all the cards 
are in the canonical order (ace to king, sorted by spade, heart, club, 
diamond).  Entropy is a measurement of how interesting to us a particular 
arrangement of atoms is.  The fact that you can't get work out of random 
heat is simply saying that it's really, really unlikely for random heat to 
suddenly all go one direction.

Note that QM has no arrow of time. Reactions going forward are identical 
(altho inverted) to reactions going backwards.

Break a rack of pool balls. (I.e., start the game.) Suddenly, it's much less 
ordered. But if you could measure exactly where everything is at the end and 
how fast it was going before it stopped and exactly how much friction there 
was and etc, you could reverse that. (Modulo QM uncertainty, of course.)

>   Space must exist, or else it would be impossible to postulate essential
> properties of physics, such as the Pauli exclusion principle. 

The Pauli exclusion principle is not part of GR. It's part of QM. :-)

> (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?)

It does in QM. That's the fundamental problem and tension preventing GR from 
being unified with QM.

The *concept* of place exists. It's just a question of whether it's 
something real or something that falls out of our math and "common sense".

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

Maybe I'm misinterpreting stuff like this:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/background.html

It seems to be saying that GR says that space and time exist because matter 
and energy exist. You can't have space or time without energy to be 
experiencing them, just like you can't have sound without air to carry it.

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

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bart wrote:
>> 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?

You're trolling, right?

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

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