jwu:
Could you then please post the official definitions of the first and second law of information theory? I think i already have asked for this repeatedly.
charlie:
Dr. Hawking states information cannot be destroyed. He also states that heat can’t be destroyed.
Additionally he states very low entropy systems are indicative of information (Hawking is looking for signs of intelligence???). The formal First and Second Laws of Information are being written before our very eyes. These are very cool times for those interested in origins. The First and Second Laws appear to govern more than we ever thought.
Quote:
“commonly assumed tenet of scienceâ€â€that information cannot be destroyed.â€Â
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole ... on_paradox
jwu:
Oh, and please define intelligence. To me it appears to be hardly more than a catalyst.
charlie:
Here’s a couple of definitions
...the ability to comprehend; to understand and profit from experience
- wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
... Intelligence is a person's capacity to (1) acquire knowledge (i.e. learn and understand), (2) apply knowledge (solve problems), and (3) engage in abstract reasoning. It is the power of one's intellect, and as such is clearly a very important aspect of one's overall well-being. Psychologists have attempted to measure it for well over a century.
jwu:
Hawking now believes that black holes may allow information to leak out.
That's by means of hawking radiation.
charlie:
Hawking Radiation and information are two different, albeit related concepts:
Quote:
Hawking Radiation:
“However, by doing a calculation in the framework of quantum field theory in curved spacetimes, Hawking showed quantum effects allow black holes to emit radiation in a thermal spectrum.â€Â
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation
Quote:
“The simplest models of black hole evaporation lead to the black hole information paradox. The information content of a black hole appears to be lost when it evaporates, as under these models the Hawking radiation is random (containing no information). A number of solutions to this problem have been proposed, including suggestions that Hawking radiation is perturbed to contain the missing information, that the Hawking evaporation leaves some form of remnant particle containing the missing information, and that information is allowed to be lost under these conditions.â€Â
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation
Note that the information and the radiation are mutually exclusive. Though one speculation is that Hawking Radiation is “perturbed†into containing information, it’s is only one speculation out of many.
Quote:
In July 2004 Stephen Hawking announced a theory that quantum perturbations of the event horizon could allow information to escape from a black hole, which would resolve the information paradox. Basically, his argument assumes the [correspondence] which states that an AdS black hole is dual to a thermal conformal field theory, which is unitary.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole ... on_paradox
jwu:
That's a mechanical process which follows simple rules and does not require intelligence any more than a transistor is intelligent.
charlie:
What sets up the mechanical process. What sets up the rules? What creates the transistor?
jwu:
However, it also takes information to convert that house back into the original pile of bricks. I'd even say more than to build the house, as it's not as efficient to describe.
In case of the plant a ton of energy is wasted to heat to catalyze a little bit of sugar
charlie:
I agree.
jwu:
And in what way is the "code" understood, specifically by the sender?
The sender just copies his own DNA, puts it into a sperm cell and sends it, he doesn't understand anything of it.
charlie:
In a macro sense, the whole organism is the receiver of the information
from the parents, at conception. The organism in turn passes it’s
information along to it’s offspring.
Where in my definition does it state that an organism or system has to understand the information contained within itself in a conscious sort of way? I only contend information is derived from intelligence. A created system can be replicated by means of information, matter and energy: blueprints, material, labor; DNA, matter, energy;....
The “understanding the message part†is at the molecular level in living organisms, where the information stored in the DNA “library†is utilized to replicate “partsâ€Â, systems and whole organisms. The original sender of the information had to “understand†the code exceptionally well...being it's source.
Quote:
Somehow, some of these atoms came to be arranged in the form of molecules of DNA. This has the famous double helix form, discovered by Crick and Watson, in a hut on the New Museum site in Cambridge. Linking the two chains in the helix, are pairs of nucleic acids. There are four types of nucleic acid, adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thiamine. I'm afraid my speech synthesiser is not very good, at pronouncing their names. Obviously, it was not designed for molecular biologists. An adenine on one chain is always matched with a thiamine on the other chain, and a guanine with a cytosine. Thus the sequence of nucleic acids on one chain defines a unique, complementary sequence, on the other chain. The two chains can then separate and each act as templates to build further chains. Thus DNA molecules can reproduce the genetic information, coded in their sequences of nucleic acids. Sections of the sequence can also be used to make proteins and other chemicals, which can carry out the instructions, coded in the sequence, and assemble the raw material for DNA to reproduce itself.We do not know how DNA molecules first appeared.
Dr. Hawking
http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/life.html
