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Can or should we count information as physical entity?


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28 minutes ago, studiot said:

+1

 

 

Here is something to think about.

 

What if a theory is wrong?

For example

There is over 2000 years of information about the four Element theory of the Ancient Greeks, though that theory is now known to be wrong.

How does this affect the physical embodiment of either the theory or the history of the theory or the informatuion that asserts the theory is right or wrong.

 

In fact is there any limit to the information that could be stated about said theory?

 

For example

In the year 2525, if Man is still alive the Theory will be 2500 yerars old.

In the year 3535...... the theory will be 3510 year old

In the year 4545...... and so on for ever.

Perhaps we can distinguish between unique information that can be mapped to a particular component (including the overarching state) of a system  and redundant descriptions?

Like the dimensional analysis you showed me in another thread , the LHS and the RHS  of the equation can be rejigged in different combinations  but the core information is unchanged if you dig down.

 

Also do we distinguish between physical information regarding a physical system and the kind of information regarding  .....human history althgugh you have adduced a science based  example.?

 

Hope I am not too convoluted ....or off piste.

 

   

Edited by geordief
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24 minutes ago, studiot said:

+1

 

 

Here is something to think about.

 

What if a theory is wrong?

For example

There is over 2000 years of information about the four Element theory of the Ancient Greeks, though that theory is now known to be wrong.

How does this affect the physical embodiment of either the theory or the history of the theory or the informatuion that asserts the theory is right or wrong.

 

In fact is there any limit to the information that could be stated about said theory?

 

For example

In the year 2525, if Man is still alive the Theory will be 2500 yerars old.

In the year 3535...... the theory will be 3510 year old

In the year 4545...... and so on for ever.

But that would mean that the amount of information is infinite in any system regardless of its size (assuming time is infinite) A single particle would be bearing an infinite amount of information just by the fact that time flows and that would be sloppy imo. So either time is finite or the information type which you refer to is for lack of better word „virtual” Does that make sense?

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"1x0: Hmmm. The whole discussion is about reference points. I say that space(time) itself contains fundamental information about mathematically recognizable reference point"

"Swansont: Please provide evidence that this is the case."

There is the sense of nothing suggested by expanding space and evolving time. Space expands meaning it has been smaller before and the end of a backwards journey on this timeline we reach the smallest space possible: when it did not exist.

The same has to be true for time. Nothing.

This sense could not be perceived if space and time or energy and matter would not exist. This sense is a physical reference point (could have been existed) which can be perceived today almost the same: the lack of energy-matter and information in a given spacetime moment - when the puppy recognizes the absence of the bitch. She is not there, her value is 0 in that moment and note the pups biophysical reacting on the information s/he cries.

We are able to recognize the absence of energy-matter and information and this recognition by definition can happen just in/with space(time)!

Every energy, matter, and information recognized can be observed by definition in/with spacetime. 

So the sense of Nothing which we express with our mathematical realization 0 is perceivable even you will never ever be able to physically observe it. Ever since anything exists nothing cannot be again. It always will be just information. (maybe about space and time)

This is the main reason (without we would pull this thread here) why I have a problem how 1*0 can be 0 or how we could not yet determine what 1/0 is.

Can we say what nothing is?

I went to a business school in the past 2 years with access to philosophy, mathematics, and cognitive sciences. They had a hard time to determine or express what nothing is. Interesting experience....

As far as I am able to recognize or understand the sense of nothing is a basic information. A reference point to reality. Even it cannot exist it is perceivable. If it has never been existing how could we perceive it? If it is Impossible that such a space, time, energy, matter, information-free state existed, then does not that indicate infinity? Would not infinity mean infinite energy, matter, and information as well? Should not the universe has a different presentation if that would be true (everywhere Gods around in absolute energy....) Why and How could infinity be finite so we can recognize something in it?

 

Edited by 1x0
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12 minutes ago, geordief said:

Perhaps we can distinguish between unique information that can be mapped to a particular component (including the overarching state) of a system  and redundant descriptions?

Like the dimensional analysis you showed me in another thread , the LHS and the RHS  of the equation can be rejigged in different combinations  but the core information is unchanged if you dig down.

 

Also do we distinguish between physical information regarding a physical system and the kind of information regarding  .....human history althgugh you have adduced a science based  example.?

 

Hope I am not too convoluted ....or off piste.

 

   

I think we might be trying to say the same thing here. This is exactly the reason I mentioned „information being a human concept” which is not well put. After giving it some thought, I think that we can’t distinguish between information types, data is data and doesnt matter what system it comes from. 

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1 minute ago, koti said:

But that would mean that the amount of information is infinite in any system regardless of its size (assuming time is infinite) A single particle would be bearing an infinite amount of information just by the fact that time flows and that would be sloppy imo. So either time is finite or the information type which you refer to is for lack of better word „virtual” Does that make sense?

Perhaps spacetime will be described eventually as globally based  rather than locally?

 

1 minute ago, koti said:

I think we might be trying to say the same thing here. This is exactly the reason I mentioned „information being a human concept” which is not well put. After giving it some thought, I think that we can’t distinguish between information types, data is data and doesnt matter what system it comes from. 

Can information have more "informational mass" depending on the "closeness" of its description to the phenomenon or physical object being described?

 

So we say 15000 people attended a sporting event  and the calculation of that number is directly descriptive  but the fact that it was calculated in binary form has less "weight"...

 

Is

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It's interesting to describe what exactly happens in terms of 'information' when a photon is travelling towards the event horizon of a black hole. A black hole will become bigger, because the event horizon radius is proportional to the mass of the black hole (and E=MC2). Moreover, a black hole can't decrease in size, only increase.

Stephen Hawking thought that information disappears once inside of a black hole. but Leonard Susskind thought otherwise, namely that information is able to change, become distorted or break up into small bits, but can never actually disappear from the universe. Einstein showed us that energy can become mass and vice versa, so if photons themselves could be considered bits of information (I don't know if this is indeed the case :huh:), they could be converted into mass (and thereby widen the black hole with one Planck length), and thus change information into mass, which would imply that Hawking was right after all. 

What are your thoughts about this? By the way, if you'd like to know more about the science of information, I can recommend you to Benjamin's Schumacher's work on this!

Edited by MarkE
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1 hour ago, geordief said:

Perhaps spacetime will be described eventually as globally based  rather than locally?

 

Can information have more "informational mass" depending on the "closeness" of its description to the phenomenon or physical object being described?

 

So we say 15000 people attended a sporting event  and the calculation of that number is directly descriptive  but the fact that it was calculated in binary form has less "weight"...

 

Is

Information does not have mass, it is not made of matter so trying to disect it in context of matter/mass just doesn’t make sense to me. As for spacetime, as far as I am aware it is uniform everywhere, at least at this point in time. GR’s spacetime applies to everything we know/see in the universe on the large scale, I don’t see the distinction of local/global spacetime. 

Edited by koti
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22 minutes ago, koti said:

Information does not have mass, it is not made of matter so trying to disect it in context of matter/mass just doesn’t make sense to me. As for spacetime, as far as I am aware it is uniform everywhere, at least at this point in time. GR’s spacetime applies to everything we know/see in the universe on the large scale, I don’t see the distinction of local/global spacetime. 

I only meant as an analogy.  It would be really sexy if information was somehow "physical" ....

 

Perhaps the answer lies in redefining the question...Might  "Is the physical informational ?"  be a better ask?

 

After all ,all attempts to define "reality"  meet the turtle response  and are "physicality" and "reality" fairly synonymous ? 

Edited by geordief
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14 hours ago, Gees said:

 I don't think the idea is to "find" these coordinates as much as it is to know that they have to exist. That the information or data exists.

What is the evidence that this is true?

1 hour ago, 1x0 said:

 

"1x0: Hmmm. The whole discussion is about reference points. I say that space(time) itself contains fundamental information about mathematically recognizable reference point"

"Swansont: Please provide evidence that this is the case."

There is the sense of nothing suggested by expanding space and evolving time. Space expands meaning it has been smaller before and the end of a backwards journey on this timeline we reach the smallest space possible: when it did not exist.

Evidence for this claim?

1 hour ago, 1x0 said:

The same has to be true for time. Nothing.

This sense could not be perceived if space and time or energy and matter would not exist. This sense is a physical reference point (could have been existed) which can be perceived today almost the same: the lack of energy-matter and information in a given spacetime moment - when the puppy recognizes the absence of the bitch. She is not there, her value is 0 in that moment and note the pups biophysical reacting on the information s/he cries.

We would not exist if energy and matter and space and time did not exist. But that does not make space or time (or energy) a physical entity.

 

1 hour ago, 1x0 said:

We are able to recognize the absence of energy-matter and information and this recognition by definition can happen just in/with space(time)!

Every energy, matter, and information recognized can be observed by definition in/with spacetime. 

Energy is not a substance. It is a property. We observe it as such — a property of something. Observing (measuring) that does not make it a physical substance, so why would "observing" information make it physical? And observing something within spacetime doesn't make spacetime a physical substance.

1 hour ago, 1x0 said:

 This is the main reason (without we would pull this thread here) why I have a problem how 1*0 can be 0 or how we could not yet determine what 1/0 is.

DO NOT go there.

 

45 minutes ago, MarkE said:

Moreover, a black hole can't decrease in size, only increase.

Um, no.

But discussion of that is OT for this thread.

 

28 minutes ago, geordief said:

I only meant as an analogy.  It would be really sexy if information was somehow "physical" .... 

If something is physical it needs to be able to exist separate from other physical things. If information is physical, you should be able to bring me a bucket of information, and nothing but information. Can you do that?

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51 minutes ago, swansont said:

 

 

If something is physical it needs to be able to exist separate from other physical things. If information is physical, you should be able to bring me a bucket of information, and nothing but information. Can you do that?

Certainly not.(I am not saying that  information is physical....)  But can information about things  be classified in the "direct" vs "grow like topsy" way  I asked?

 

Could  there be  information that can be used to reconstruct a system or a part of a system entirely which might differ from information that might be called "virtual" ?

 

Do I  just seem to be speculating for the sake of speculating  or is there an actual problem in physics  connecting objects with the "information" about them?

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7 hours ago, swansont said:

We would not exist if energy and matter and space and time did not exist. But that does not make space or time (or energy) a physical entity.

 

They feel perceivable, measurable and recognizable to me. What makes something physical? What are the requirements for something to be physical? 

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8 hours ago, swansont said:

Evidence for this claim?

Quote

Hubble's work and the currently observable reality: if something grows by the time, its size was smaller a measurable time before the current observation.

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8 hours ago, swansont said:

Energy is not a substance. It is a property. We observe it as such — a property of something. Observing (measuring) that does not make it a physical substance, so why would "observing" information make it physical? And observing something within spacetime doesn't make spacetime a physical substance.

Quote

Einstein suggested a correlation between energy and matter.

How is it possible that energy is not a substance if electrons have mass? 

Exactly. Observation itself does not make information physical but the application of the information could do that. Could we apply zero as a basic digital matrix to express space, time and fundamental velocity(c2) = 0.0....0....?

What is velocity if not information about/for application? Does application make information physical?

Edited by 1x0
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29 minutes ago, 1x0 said:

They feel perceivable, measurable and recognizable to me. What makes something physical? What are the requirements for something to be physical? 

If you can hand me a bucket of it, I know it physically exists.

29 minutes ago, 1x0 said:

Hubble's work and the currently observable reality: if something grows by the time, its size was smaller a measurable time before the current observation.

What work did Hubble do on the sense of nothing you cited?

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10 minutes ago, swansont said:

What work did Hubble do on the sense of nothing you cited?

He recognized space expands. If space expands from which state to which state is it expanding to? 

Edited by 1x0
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12 minutes ago, 1x0 said:

Einstein suggested a correlation between energy and matter.

How is it possible that energy is not a substance if electrons have mass? 

Exactly. Observation itself does not make information physical but the application of the information could do that. Could we apply zero as a basic digital matrix to express space, time and fundamental velocity(c2) = 0.0....0....?

What is velocity if not information about/for application? Does application make information physical?

Mass is not the same as matter.

What does electrons having mass have to do with this?

Just now, 1x0 said:

He recognized space expands. If space expands from which stat to which stat is it expanding to? 

A state is not a physical entity.

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31 minutes ago, swansont said:

Mass is not the same as matter.

 

This is clear. 

31 minutes ago, swansont said:

What does electrons having mass have to do with this?

Does not mass makes them recognizable substance?

They feel inevitable in the atomic structure, participating in the existence of substance (matter) while adding some level of mass to it as well. 

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8 hours ago, swansont said:

If something is physical it needs to be able to exist separate from other physical things. If information is physical, you should be able to bring me a bucket of information, and nothing but information. Can you do that?

How do you mean this? How can be something absolutely separate from other physical things? Gravity impacts everything.... Can we say that gravity is physical if it impacts everything, i.e. cannot be separate from other physical things? 

I bring an empty bucket. 

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7 hours ago, geordief said:

Do I  just seem to be speculating for the sake of speculating  or is there an actual problem in physics  connecting objects with the "information" about them?

As far as Im aware, this is where physisists experience a romance with philosophy. Especially the ones dealing with strings, quantum gravity or other attempts at GUT’s.

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15 hours ago, Strange said:

What is "absolute" about it if it isn't universal? 

(I will ignore your attempt to drag your pet theory into this. Let's hope the moderators don't notice.)

 Each frame in spacetime has a now that can be temporally separated mathematically.  By absolute I mean mathematically unique.  The frames themselves remain relative to one another (observer dependent) and so are not universal.

12 hours ago, koti said:

There are too many contradictions in your post for me to understand it. It seems you are mixing up direction in space with the time arrow. Spacetime according to GR is inseperable but time and space are different concepts and direction applies very differently to them. Plus I fail to see how this applies to information in the OP.

Information carried by spacetime is position.

1 hour ago, koti said:

As far as Im aware, this is where physisists experience a romance with philosophy. Especially the ones dealing with strings, quantum gravity or other attempts at GUT’s.

I imagine that I have a different way of viewing these things.  Information, to me, is any derived quantity.  Volume is derived from length.  I'm, like you, not onboard with an argument that length is a physical quantity but volume is not.

Once any derived quantity is reduced to a base quantity (mathematically) then any information is lost.  There's nothing to relate it to.

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2 hours ago, 1x0 said:

This is clear. 

Is it? You made an incorrect claim about Einstein, and have said nothing that shows that you have cleared up your confusion 

2 hours ago, 1x0 said:

Does not mass makes them recognizable substance?

They feel inevitable in the atomic structure, participating in the existence of substance (matter) while adding some level of mass to it as well. 

The issue was energy being a substance. We know electrons are, but electrons aren't energy. Energy is a property they have.

2 hours ago, 1x0 said:

How do you mean this? How can be something absolutely separate from other physical things? Gravity impacts everything.... Can we say that gravity is physical if it impacts everything, i.e. cannot be separate from other physical things? 

I bring an empty bucket. 

Water is a physical substance. You can hand me a bucket of water. You can't hand me a bucket of energy or other things that are properties rather than physical substances. 

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1 hour ago, steveupson said:

 Each frame in spacetime has a now that can be temporally separated mathematically.  By absolute I mean mathematically unique.  The frames themselves remain relative to one another (observer dependent) and so are not universal.

Information carried by spacetime is position.

I imagine that I have a different way of viewing these things.  Information, to me, is any derived quantity.  Volume is derived from length.  I'm, like you, not onboard with an argument that length is a physical quantity but volume is not.

Once any derived quantity is reduced to a base quantity (mathematically) then any information is lost.  There's nothing to relate it to.

Again like your previous post which I commented on, I’m barely able to relate as you’re all over the place. You need some basic knowledge/rigour to be able to ask viable questions not to mention providing conclusions or answers. Information is not „carried by spacetime” its like saying butter is carried by my Saab - it makes no sense in a coherent discussion because theres just so much more to that statement. The rest I cant relate to, please try to learn to ask useful questions instead of providing useless answers. 

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Swansont;

 

11 hours ago, swansont said:

What is the evidence that this is true?

Logic. Did you read the rest of that post, or just the first line?

You are a really bright guy, Swansont, but you are such a scientist. :rolleyes:

Quote

From Studiot:
Please remember also that the phrase
"There exists"
Has quite a different meaning in Mathematics and Physics.
You can often even prove the mathematical existence of something (mathematical), without actually finding it.
But in Physics you have to find it before you can claim its existence for definite.
The recent search for the Higgs Boson is a famous case in point.

As Studiot noted, the word exist can mean different things in Mathematics and in Physics; well in Philosophy, the meaning is closer to that of Mathematics. I am not trying to state that information is physical, as I don't know that it is, and it is one of the questions that this thread is trying to determine, but information does exist under the rules of Philosophy. Unless you can dispute my logic, or come up with other evidence, there is no argument that you can make.

You can not use the rules of Physics in a Philosophy forum, any more than I could use the rules of Philosophy in a Physics forum. This thread is finally in the forum where it belongs as categorization and classification falls under Ontology -- Philosophy. 

 

Quote

If something is physical it needs to be able to exist separate from other physical things. If information is physical, you should be able to bring me a bucket of information, and nothing but information. Can you do that?

Do you mean physical or material?

Gee

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1 hour ago, koti said:

Again like your previous post which I commented on, I’m barely able to relate as you’re all over the place. You need some basic knowledge/rigour to be able to ask viable questions not to mention providing conclusions or answers. Information is not „carried by spacetime” its like saying butter is carried by my Saab - it makes no sense in a coherent discussion because theres just so much more to that statement. The rest I cant relate to, please try to learn to ask useful questions instead of providing useless answers. 

How do you carry position information except for in spacetime?  Granted, we can remove the base quantity of time from the information and we have position in space, which is only a partial description of position.

Similar constructs can be made using any of the other base quantities, such as mass, temperature, luminous intensity, or amount of substance.

Another example would be the information contained in the expression of density.  If we remove either component (volume or mass) we no longer have density information.  The ratio between volume and mass "carries" the density information.

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