Information - The Meaning Of Life In a Nutshell?
I and others spend a great deal of time on this site discussing God, time, and infinity and I don’t think that is a problem; all are subjects with a long philosophical history and worthy of extended discussion. However, I would, using a very broad brush, categorise them as related to the ‘meaning of death’. So for a change, I’m posting something relating to the ‘meaning of life’.
I justify my claim that information is the meaning of life as follows:
1. Everything in the universe can be classified as some form of information
2. All our senses are mechanisms for consuming or producing information
3. Our minds, the centre of our being, are information processing machines
4. All our everyday activities are consuming or producing information:
- A. We process information at work
- B. Watching TV, using the internet, reading a book are all information processing
- C. Talking to someone else is the production and consumption of information
- D. Eating is deriving information from our sense of taste
- E. Having sex is deriving information from our sense of touch
5. Producing/consuming information makes our lives happier. The more information processed it seems the happier we get - we get excited by new information - neurotransmitters that raise our mood seem to be released during the production / consumption of information.
6. Producing/consuming information seems to cause an increase in subjective longevity - I am of the opinion (hard to prove) that the neurotransmitters / hormones that are released when we process information also slow down our subjective experience of the passage of time - as if the mind is saying ‘here is something interesting… and here is more time in which to process it’.
7. Producing/consuming information seems to cause an increase in our objective longevity - the mind is like a muscle I feel - it wastes away if not used and gets stronger if exercised. Thinking (=information processing) is how we exercise our minds. If we don’t think enough we get senile dementia which is a killer - so information processing prolongs life objectively.
So there you go - produce and consume a large amount of information for a happy, long, life - my take on the meaning of life. What do folks think?
PS, I'd probably define ‘information’ as a statement with a true/false value (that is allowed to be fuzzy), but I'm still thinking about this one!
I justify my claim that information is the meaning of life as follows:
1. Everything in the universe can be classified as some form of information
2. All our senses are mechanisms for consuming or producing information
3. Our minds, the centre of our being, are information processing machines
4. All our everyday activities are consuming or producing information:
- A. We process information at work
- B. Watching TV, using the internet, reading a book are all information processing
- C. Talking to someone else is the production and consumption of information
- D. Eating is deriving information from our sense of taste
- E. Having sex is deriving information from our sense of touch
5. Producing/consuming information makes our lives happier. The more information processed it seems the happier we get - we get excited by new information - neurotransmitters that raise our mood seem to be released during the production / consumption of information.
6. Producing/consuming information seems to cause an increase in subjective longevity - I am of the opinion (hard to prove) that the neurotransmitters / hormones that are released when we process information also slow down our subjective experience of the passage of time - as if the mind is saying ‘here is something interesting… and here is more time in which to process it’.
7. Producing/consuming information seems to cause an increase in our objective longevity - the mind is like a muscle I feel - it wastes away if not used and gets stronger if exercised. Thinking (=information processing) is how we exercise our minds. If we don’t think enough we get senile dementia which is a killer - so information processing prolongs life objectively.
So there you go - produce and consume a large amount of information for a happy, long, life - my take on the meaning of life. What do folks think?
PS, I'd probably define ‘information’ as a statement with a true/false value (that is allowed to be fuzzy), but I'm still thinking about this one!
Comments (89)
Quoting Devans99
By that, do you mean that our life's purpose is to gather and produce information?
Here is my objection. For any thing that has a purpose, we call that thing "good" when it fulfills its purpose correctly, and "bad" otherwise. E.g. the purpose of a paper-cutter is to cut paper. We call it a "good paper-cutter" when it is able to cut paper correctly, and a "bad paper-cutter" otherwise.
If the purpose of a person was merely to gather and produce information, then anybody that does that should be called a "good person". But that is absurd. I'm sure Hitler gathered and produced as much information as any other person (if not more, being that he is famous), but he is nearly-universally judged to be a bad person.
Hitler was a destroyer of people - our primary source of information - and therefore a destroyer of information - therefore I think I he can be classified as a bad person.
So I think the definition of good / bad person in informational terms is actually recursive: There is the amount of information you produce yourself, but in addition, if you save many lives, then recursively that results in a large amount of additional information. And if, as with Hitler, if you end many lives, then recursively that results in the destruction of large amounts of information.
Is there any inherent difference in human (anthropocentric) processing of information (as if we had free will to do anything else) and the kind that occurs in the natural world for slime mold, trees and colliding galaxies?
So you mean some sort of Terminator/Matrix scenario where the machines take over and enslave us all? If we ever develop AI, I think it will value information too and thus treat humans as a source of information and respect them accordingly.
Quoting Nils Loc
I guess I was trying to get at the meaning of life from the perspective of an intelligent entity (be it an organic life form, an AI or a deity). I am not disputing that information processing continues in the universe, regardless if there is anything to observe and value it.
Slime molds do actually seem to be quite information-savvy:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2000/09/28/189608.htm?site=galileo&topic=latest
That seems consistent. I'll keep testing your hypothesis. Let's say a person did not kill people like Hitler, but tortured people a lot and made them miserable. He also lied, cheated, and kicked puppies in the face. I would imagine it reasonable to call this person a bad person, and yet no information was lost in this case.
I agree with your intuition that Information is essential to Life (Enformy), and the cessation of information processing is what we call Death (Entropy). But the statement above is a "bit" too simplistic. By that definition, an elderly computer will have lived a happy meaningful life. So, if you are interested in a more complete worldview based on the role of Information in the Cosmos, here are some links to my personal understanding of Life, Mind, and Meaning.
The Enformationism Worldview : http://enformationism.info/enformationism.info/
Enformy : "In the Enformationism theory, Enformy is a hypothetical, holistic, metaphysical, natural trend or force, that counteracts Entropy & Randomness to produce complexity & progress."
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
EnFormAction : "the general cause of every-thing in the world. Energy, Matter, Gravity, Life, Mind are secondary creative causes, each with limited application."
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
The meaning of life is the story you write with the information you process.
Fair point. So I qualify my original statement with: Something has to have life in order for the meaning of life to be applicable.
Quoting Gnomon
That's an interesting web site you have! I am having a browse through it.
Amazingly, if you haven't already noticed, there is a rather inexplicable absence of information in things that matter the most:
1. Meaning of life
2. How to live the good life
3. God
4. Afterlife (death)
5. Morality
6. The theory of everything
7. Consciousness
8. Origin of life
Why is it so that in the information age there are gigantic lacunae in our knowledge framework and that too in areas that are of greatest consequence?
Interesting point. I think it could maybe be argued that the unhappiness that results from such behaviour causes a reduction in the amount of information produced - people who are down in the dumps/unhappy/depressed generate less (high quality) information than happy people?
1 and 2 - I feel these are addressed in the OP?
3 and 4 - Seem to relate more to the meaning of death than life?
5 - There appears to be a link between morality and information, see: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/363177
6 - By which you mean a theory that extends QM to include gravity? QM seems to me to be about information (particles) and our ability to measure information (uncertainty principle).
7 - Consciousness seems to be the processing of information as opposed to unconsciousness which is the complete lack of processing of information - the senses (information sources) are deactivated and the mind (information processor) is inactive.
8 - I feel that DNA is information, so the concept of information and the origins of life are intertwined.
I'm not disagreeing with you. The modern world has been aptly described as the information age. I was just wondering about the pockets of zero information in critical areas like the ones I mentioned in my previous post. This could be simply a matter of searching more carefully for the missing information but it could also be because such information is non-existent. There's a big difference between undiscovered information and non-existent information, right? The former can be found but the latter is a fool's errand if you seek it. How, in your opinion, would this affect your thesis that the meaning of life is information?
Hmmm... Is this claim ad hoc, or is it defendable?
On another related note, would you make the distinction between true and false information? Such as real news vs fake news, or correct vs incorrect belief systems.
See the problem? If not you’re just doing physics - by which you’re still left with the unfathomable problem of articulating what ‘information’ means in terms of ‘entropy’ (which is merely a term like ‘gravity’ which is used to describe physical phenomenon NOT meaning.
It seems like you’re trying to smuggle physics into philosophy and pass off observation as an example of ‘meaning’. The natural sciences are set up to discern ‘how’ not ‘why’ - why is the realm of the philosophers, most of whom obsess over ‘meaning’ more than ‘use’ sadly. The ‘meaning’ is more or less the department of ‘ethics’/‘religious institutions’.
I would just switch from information to interpretation. This is an active process. Metaphorically speaking, we are readers, readers, readers making sense of the text of experience, which includes actual texts and provides the metaphor.
This also allows us to make sense of existence-time or reading-time which is not physics time. As you read this sentence, it's beginning is dragged along in expectation toward its end. In reading there is no present, only the expectation of the future shaped from the past. I think we can generalize this to all of existence. Note also that the beginning of the sentence only gets a relatively settled meaning from the end of the sentence, so the (meaning of the) past is not fixed. In terms of the OP, 'interpretation' is less likely to come across as half-physics and half-philosophy in an unstable blend.
You need to read (at least portions of) this book:
[url=https://epdf.pub/philosophy-of-information-handbook-of-the-philosophy-of-science.html]Handbook of the Philosophy of Science
Volume 8: Philosophy of Information
edited by Pieter Adriaans and Johan vanBenthem[/url]
I might use different words, but this roughly gets the joy of reading and writing right. A person should of course exercise and eat well, but beyond the obvious stuff I think endlessly challenging the mind (with interpretation and not just the absorption of facts) not only makes our lives happier but even feels 'essentially' human. And it's a clean form of pleasure: one is drunk on thought and not bourbon. One becomes capable of more kinds of conversation with more kinds of people.
Apparently, some can only think milk.
Perhaps. But 'history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.' People learn by talking as well as reading. That people on this forum vary in terms of exposure is clear. In some ways that's good. We are all forced to interpret the strange idiolects of (often enough) autodidacts. The posts I like best refer me to new thinkers.
Even the 'bad' posts are useful as opportunities for articulating what I think is wrong with them. I've been on and off such forums for years. While I learned more philosophy from books, I benefited from writing, writing, writing. I don't think there's a substitute for writing. It helps one see what, if anything, they have taken from their reading.
It's also a great place to observe and practice social skills. I read all kinds of threads that I don't participate in. To me the style of self-presentation is as interesting as the thoughts presented. Its part of a total projection through the public, written word of an ideal personality.
Off-topic. Thanks for proving my point.
Art is a subclass/subtype of information?
Quoting Wayfarer
Then what is astronomy?
Fields pervade the universe such as the Higgs field etc... these fields fluctuate in line with the uncertainty principle... virtual particles are constantly created and destroyed. So even empty space is information rich.
I guess this makes more sense, respecting a general definition. Information must inform, but the whole world is there waiting to inform us about itself. The sense data which becomes an impression and is used by an agent toward some end (ie. attention, recall, association...) is information (?).
Meaning that only some fool wearing a robe has the authority to say what the meaning of life is? :rofl:
At this point I withdraw from our [s]conversation.[/s]
re "Information - The Meaning Of Life " and "Producing/consuming information makes our lives happier. "
I think you got that wrong on basic principles. That is, the "The Meaning Of Life" must have some meaning itself, so any information consumed must have important meaning to the person. So, I'd say the consumption/creation of knowledge (the meaningful upgrading of information) is closer to the truth. However, even closer would be the consumption of wisdom (the meaningful upgrading of knowledge) is even closer to ones truth. Also, I believe you are falsely linking information consumption with happiness, which is no more true that food consumption. The path to healthy happiness is when you selectively produce/consume meaningful knowledge and wisdom that aligns your life/behavior/state of mind with your more true meaning/purpose in life (or at least one that brings you more peace than otherwise).
Interesting discussion - I’d agree with the idea that information is meaning and meaning is information. Gnomon and I have been piecing together this idea here.
Quoting Sir Philo Sophia
This ties into @softwhere’s point about interpretation, which is another reduction of information - a subjective processing of information that doesn’t quite ‘consume’ or integrate ALL possible information available. Interpretation, reading, knowledge or some other subjective reduction of information appears to be the real meaning, but it’s only because that’s the level that individual humans operate: distinguishing between true/false, good/bad, right/wrong or correct/incorrect information. From there, we can make use of meaning/information in how we interact with the world. The information becomes consumable for us.
But I would argue that relation is meaning is information. We can approach an awareness of meaning itself only through our relation to the world at the level of possibility - even though we’re unable to distinguish that meaning from anything. Then we make use of it by discarding what lacks ‘perceived potential’. We manifest this information, this ‘difference that makes a difference’, as knowledge, understanding and wisdom by reading, interpreting or otherwise relating to information within subjective structures of value/significance/potential.
So, the ‘meaning of life’ as pursuing/consuming meaningful knowledge is a limitation. The ‘meaning of life’ is simply relation to ALL information as possibility - even if it’s false, bad, wrong or incorrect. It all has meaning - just maybe not meaning to you. The more we relate to information, the more meaning that information has. The more information we exclude, the further we get from this ‘meaning of life’, and the more limited our capacity in the world.
"knowledge puffeth up" lol
However if you are looking for a date, insert more and more information into a system (we are all systems) and the more likely that system will "put out".
lol
I wish you the best my friend.
So, according to your (and the original poster’s) idea, a teenager spending all day on facebook consuming endless information of relationships between trivia and social gossip is fulfilling the meaning of life (yet they have a higher rate of suicides), but a Buddhist monk that prays and meditates all day, day in and day out, consuming little to no information of the world or its relationships, is not fulfilling the meaning of life?
Quoting Possibility
Not true. Do you really think an idiot savant consuming with photographic memory all info and relationships is the meaning/purpose of human life? I’d argue that consuming and recording meaningless relationships of information reduces your net meaning/knowledge b/c of your very limited capacity, bandwidth, and time to continually process and sift through the ton of meaningless info to behold the little meaningful relationships of information. That is, the better you reject meaningless information and meaningless relationships of information the greater your ability to determine what is the meaning of the truly relevant relationships of information to produce meaningful knowledge to employ at your command. Any definition of meaning and information and life that is not throttle by our very finite mental faculties is certainly not practical as to the meaning of most, if not all, people’s lives.
A good question. There is a difference between consuming information and relating to information. This teenager you describe is fulfilling the ‘meaning of life’ not in consuming the information but in relating their experience of this information to others. Those at high risk of suicide are failing to relate to others in any meaningful way - they have isolated themselves from the world in many respects, and are no more fulfilling this meaning of life than a Buddhist monk who does nothing but pray or meditate all day, every day.
Those Buddhist monks who are fulfilling the meaning of life are those who take on disciples, who write, speak or otherwise share their experiences of prayer and meditation, who strive to render Buddhist teachings relevant to the world and its relationships NOW and in the future - and you can’t do that by completely isolating yourself from the world. Buddha’s life wasn’t a path to follow, but a map to help us understand how to more accurately relate to information in life. It’s not the only source of this kind of meta-information that’s been misinterpreted over the years, and it’s certainly not meant to be the only source of information.
Quoting Sir Philo Sophia
I don’t think you can exclude an ‘idiot savant’ from an opportunity to fulfil the meaning of life in their own unique way. If their capacity to engage in what you see as ‘meaningful’ relationships with information is impaired, does that make their life less meaningful? Not everyone can be a philosopher - our aim is not to be everything to the world within ourselves, but to contribute our incomplete selves to the world. The ‘meaning of life’ is not an individual achievement, but a collaborative one.
We lament the historical rejection of information judged ‘meaningless’ at the time far more than we’re bemoaning the glut of information now available. From the tragic loss of biodiversity or destroyed manuscripts, lost languages, histories and cultures, to forgotten traditional medicines and ancient remedies - the value of information realised too late to retrieve it from the destruction of colonialism, religion and fear (among others) is up there among the biggest regrets of human progress.
I’m not saying we all have to consume as much information as possible - you seem to think of information as only data or words, but that’s not what I’m referring to. We relate to information, for example, simply by looking a homeless person in the eye and acknowledging them as a fellow human being who happens to be down on his luck. That we often ignore this as ‘meaningless’ information is an example of the many and varied ways that we miss the ‘meaning of life’ - which isn’t about what is ‘practical’ as to a definition of one person’s life.
I agree that we all have finite mental faculties, and that we cannot possibly integrate even a minute percentage of available information from the universe into our physical system in the time available to us. What we can do instead is relate to those systems around us that have already integrated information in such a way that we don’t need to have it all or do it all or be it all ourselves. This is what humans are physically, mentally and potentially optimised to do: relate to every level of existence, from the binary of sub-atomic potentiality to the pure relation of agape. The meaning of life is about relating to information - finding optimal ways to maximise awareness, connection and collaboration.
In my impression, in logic it certainly is.
Other arbitrary, non-logic data can be transformed to logic sentences. For example, the arbitrary statement f(3)=5 can be transformed to the tuple of a logic sentence and its truth value [math](\ulcorner s\urcorner,s)=(\Gamma_f(3,5),true)[/math] with [math]\Gamma_f[/math] the corresponding graph predicate .
But then again, everything we write, also corresponds to a numerical encoding, and therefore, to a natural number. For example:
decimal(utf8("hello")) = 104101108108111
The same holds true for every sound and every visual impression. They can all be represented as numbers. That would turn information into a sub-discipline of number theory. All properties of information would be properties of their corresponding numbers.
Then there is also Shannon's information theory:
Quoting Shannon information theory
So, that is a probabilistic take on information:
Quoting Shannon information theory
I find Shannon's approach certainly interesting but I am not sure that his approach to information will ever be the "dominant" one.
I would emphasize new information. If the meaning of life is information, we are information gatherers, etc.
Information equals life, thus I posit the meaning of life, where any pain exists, is new information. Otherwise what is the relevance of the unknown, if not mystery, to a mind user?
Is there a pain suppresion great enough for this universe to justify?
That's good information.
Of course there is, this is perfect ground for all simulation to be improved, with the right mind it can be conceived.
so, you ascribe the meaning of life to gather endless useless *new* information? Using your (et. al.) logic then food is a greater meaning in life than information b/c a lack of sufficient information will generally not kill you, but a lack of sufficient food will. And humans are generally far more focused on consuming food, whereby they are using information (like a tool) to get to the food. Hence, information/knowledge is merely a tool to humans, and endlessly accumulating useless (even if new) tools only serves to reduce your physical/mental capabilities (i.e., effectively dumb you down). Humans are also far happier (compared to information) when they have lots more food than when starving. If a human does not have enough food it generally does not care to seek any information (thus ignore/filter out) that does not help lead to food. This behavior is programmed in our genes, so I’d argue that is more fundamental as to life’s intent than what some philosophers (with plenty of food in there bellies) say/think. Continuing, IMHO, your flawed line of thinking/logic then one would say that eating endless empty calorie food is the meaning of life. However, the Pima Indians show us clearly that letting genetic urge for something funding take its natural (meaningful?) course in an environment filled with meaningless (i.e., empty calorie) food/information only leads to morbid obesity (like a 1970s PC having to process our Peta bytes of available stored information, which would likely take it millions of years/lifetimes), so no happiness just misery in violating life’s real meaning/purpose, to consume useful calories (information) that take you to healthy states of body (and mind) .
Where is my logic/metaphors wrong here?
Some food is tasty.
OK, lets take your (et. al.) line of logic/thinking further. Then, in your (et. al.) terms a modern, top supercomputer has achieved a greater meaning in life because it has accumulated (and can access) more information than any human could in his/her lifetime. So, our a modern, top supercomputers are the epitome of, and superior to, humanity in that they far surpass humans in what you (et. al.) say is the key (if not only) metric of human purpose/happiness? You can't have it both ways... pick one...
cognitive ability has nothing to do with this thread. The poster (et. al.) say that endless information accumulation alone is the meaning, goal, and happiness of human life. You (like me), looking to cognitive/practical utility, seem to believe otherwise?
BTW, that is not true. Genetic algorithms have been easily doing that for decades.
There probably are super computers that can, we don't own one. Depends which one's that were discovered.
recall the topic is 'Information - The Meaning Of Life In a Nutshell', nothing to do with knowledge. So, I think you are still off topic b/c the poster (et. al.) are talking about the raw consumption of information, not any consideration for its utility in making useful knowledge (let alone wisdom).
the poster (et. al.) are indeed saying this. So, you disagree with their premise...
Quoting Possibility
that state of being you describe is not related to information. that is empathy. Empathy is not info, or knowledge most often is emotive, which suppresses all the conflicting info which would break the (often blind) empathy.
Quoting Possibility
my friend, you are talking about wisdom, so you are completely off topic. recall the topic is 'Information - The Meaning Of Life In a Nutshell', nothing to do with knowledge or wisdom. So, I think you went off topic b/c the poster (et. al.) are talking about the raw consumption of information, not any consideration for its utility in making useful knowledge (let alone wisdom). The poster (et. al.) say that endless information accumulation alone is the meaning, goal, and happiness of human life. You (like me), looking towards wisdom, seem to believe otherwise?
then you disagree with the poster's (et. al.) premise/statement.
your idea on that is unclear to me. any property has to convey some kind of unique meaning/utility concerning the object it is a property of. How does a number, alone, impart/convey any meaning?
Quoting alcontali
numbers, alone, have no properties. so, your ideas here seem to be incomplete at best, flawed at worst.
Quoting Sir Philo Sophia
Quoting Wikipedia on Gödel numbering
Quoting Encyclopedia of Mathematics on Arithmetization
Quoting Wikipedia on the arithmetization of logic in Gödel's work
There is no quantity or value to meaning except when limited by our perception, so it makes no sense to say anyone or anything ‘achieves a greater meaning in life’, objectively speaking.
Accumulating and accessing information is not what I mean by relating, either. It’s possible for a program to accumulate and access information in a complex process that far surpasses a human’s mental capacity. But the supercomputer cannot relate to that information at any level, only facilitate a program to produce a result. We can structure the program in a way that simulates relations between quantitative values according to a complex binary logic, but it not only has no access to any qualitative values, but it also has no awareness, no relationship to the process that produced its result - the program at any one time IS the result of its process and nothing else.
So the most a supercomputer can achieve at any one time is the transmission of a final quantitative value, to which it cannot relate.
I expect that Shannon's metric cannot be dominant in the realm of the mind at least because there is no way to a priori know that the ultimate entropy new data/info will have relative to the cognitive agent's existing and future knowledge-base. Moreover, his metric does not apply to single bits/particles of info.
Well, then you appear to have a limited understanding of what information is, but you’re not alone. Information is ‘the difference that makes a difference’. The complexity of the process that relates information to produce empathy is six-dimensional: it takes into account the conflicting info and finds meaning in relating anyway, regardless of potential conflict.
Quoting Sir Philo Sophia
Not off-topic at all. It’s all information, including knowledge and wisdom. My first post here made a specific argument against the OP:
Quoting Possibility
I hope that clears up my position.
thanks for sharing that. cute, but not very useful in the relm of the mind. That is, my original statement/assessment still stands re " any property has to convey some kind of unique meaning/utility concerning the object it is a property ", except for trivial utility like concatenating, etc.- no meaning is conveyed/preserved to how is that useful to reasoning or the mind?
see "The undefinability theorem shows that this encoding cannot be done for semantic concepts such as truth. It shows that no sufficiently rich interpreted language can represent its own semantics. A corollary is that any metalanguage capable of expressing the semantics of some object language must have expressive power exceeding that of the object language. The metalanguage includes primitive notions, axioms, and rules absent from the object language, so that there are theorems provable in the metalanguage not provable in the object language."
Provability is the property of a number. It is a definable predicate.
Given Gödel's semantic completeness theorem, all provable numbers are also semantically true in their universe. So, even though truth is not a legitimate predicate for all logic sentences in the language of such universe, it is a legitimate one for provable ones.
If provability is not a useful property, then we would have to conclude that mathematics is also not useful to reasoning because provability is what it is all about in mathematics.
Quoting Sir Philo Sophia
Yes, this undefinability drops straight out of Carnap's diagonal lemma. When applied to provability, the diagonal lemma still leaves the door open for a legitimate provability predicate:
"There are provable sentences that are false =OR= there are unprovable sentences that are true."
Carnap's lemma closes the door, however, to a legitimate truth predicate:
"There are true sentences that are false =OR= there are false sentences that are true."
Given the above, the lemma syntactically entails that the truth predicate is undefinable.
So, we assume the truth of the construction logic of a Platonic world and then we can reach derived truths in that world through syntactic entailment. We cannot reach derived truths by using a truth predicate.
so how can any of that be used to explain or reproduce what the (philo of) human mind does? They tried decades ago to use things like symbolic, predicate calculus/logic but failed to anything useful beyond creating automatic theorem provers.
empathy could be not much more than an exercise in pattern matching requiring little info but mostly emotive bonding with your (info) projection to see what you want to see and bond with that. emotive states (including empathy via mirror neurons) tend to bypass information usage/processing so I'm personally far less comfortable including them as part of a information/reasoning process/framework.
No doubt everything we do is based on some kind of data/info, but when the outcome action is not a largely data/info/fact reasoning driven process I'll put them in the whimsical/made-up category of emotions/empathy which tend to distort facts/info to suit its desired emotive/empathetic state outcome/conclusion.
BTW, I should have made it more clear in my above reply that you are technically right b/c I said "does not relate to" in "that state of being you describe is not related to information. that is empathy." In the context of my above answer, I should have originally said "that state of being you describe is not a data/]information driven process b/c that is empathy."
However, many in this thread seem to throwing around various definitions of info/data/knowledge/wisdom, apparently thinking that just 'relating' data/info is enough to do the transforms. Yet, that seems way too vague for a concrete discussion of the meaning of life wrt info consumption.
So, I think we should each set forth what we regard as the best definitions and relationships between each.
For me, the below definitions are a good starting place. How about you (all)?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data
Knowledge is the understanding based on extensive experience dealing with information on a subject. For example, the height of Mount Everest is generally considered data. The height can be measured precisely with an altimeter and entered into a database. This data may be included in a book along with other data on Mount Everest to describe the mountain in a manner useful for those who wish to make a decision about the best method to climb it. An understanding based on experience climbing mountains that could advise persons on the way to reach Mount Everest's peak may be seen as "knowledge". The practical climbing of Mount Everest's peak based on this knowledge may be seen as "wisdom". In other words, wisdom refers to the practical application of a person's knowledge in those circumstances where good may result. Thus wisdom complements and completes the series "data", "information" and "knowledge" of increasingly abstract concepts.
Data is often assumed to be the least abstract concept, information the next least, and knowledge the most abstract.[9] In this view, data becomes information by interpretation; e.g., the height of Mount Everest is generally considered "data", a book on Mount Everest geological characteristics may be considered "information", and a climber's guidebook containing practical information on the best way to reach Mount Everest's peak may be considered "knowledge". "Information" bears a diversity of meanings that ranges from everyday usage to technical use. This view, however, has also been argued to reverse the way in which data emerges from information, and information from knowledge.[10] Generally speaking, the concept of information is closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control, data, form, instruction, knowledge, meaning, mental stimulus, pattern, perception, and representation. Beynon-Davies uses the concept of a sign to differentiate between data and information; data is a series of symbols, while information occurs when the symbols are used to refer to something.[11][12]
I disagree. You omit utility. There is no meaning w/o some sense of utility. A mere ontology of info/data does not create knowledge if you have not gained any actionable path to beneficially use it. I look forward to your stab at your definitions re what I pose above, which will help ground all of our lose semantics here.
It only applies to some human thought processes, i.e. the ones related to reasoning within or about a formal system.
Since the human mind does not only reason from first principles but, for example, also deals with sensory input, using empirically-driven thought processes, formal reasoning was never meant to be the complete picture of human thinking. There are also informal and even tacit thought processes that are not covered by formal knowledge disciplines.
Furthermore, even the discovery of formal knowledge cannot be achieved through formal knowledge. Otherwise, we would never have discovered formal knowledge or else we would have discovered all possible formal knowledge already.
For example, it is not possible to enumerate all numbers that represent theorems in a theory and then locate for each such theorem the number that represents its proof. Discovery of theorems and their proofs is entirely governed by informal thought processes ("creativity", "innovation", and so on).
Not all thinking is formal-deductive. That would be a serious misconception. I guess that most thinking is probably even not.
Utility is the reduction of information from meaning to knowledge via conceptual systems. Determining an actionable path to beneficially use information is a process that ignores, isolates or excludes possible information according to a subjective perception of potentiality. Yes, it’s a necessary process for utilising knowledge at a subjective level, but no, it isn’t necessary for meaning.
Some rough thoughts on definitions:
Information: ‘the resolution of uncertainty’ Is a simplified definition of information, although it invariably leads to a demonisation of entropy and a subsequent rejection of this uncertainty. The difference, as I see it, is in recognising that much of the potential and possible information we have about the world - particularly in relation to our qualitative or chemical relations - are currently irreducible with any accuracy to the same extent as quantitative data. Without a system of reducing information that resolves this uncertainty of qualitative information in subjective experience, we cannot come close to an accurate understanding of the universe. The main error (IMHO) is in the dichotomy of qualitative vs quantitative information, separating ‘mental’ from ‘actual’.
Data: a value signifying a quantitative reduction of potential information. An altimeter measures altitude as a difference in atmospheric pressure in relation to a measurement relative to the volume of certain mercury molecules at a particular relative temperature (ie. molecular velocity, or difference in potential distance in relation to direction over time) and a distance relative to the centre of the earth (sea level). So the ‘abstraction’ of data such as the height of Mount Everest is, well, relative.
Knowledge: Information reduced to relative value/potential structures. We integrate information into our conceptual system by determining its relative utility or potential as new information. A priori knowledge refers to information as a relation existing beyond or at the outer limits of any linguistic/logical or other value system or structure, by which any information may be reduced to ‘knowledge’. The relative potential of a priori knowledge is perceived as infinite: there is no uncertainty of meaning because any possible meaning is limited by the potentiality of the linguistic/logical structure itself.
Mine is not a mainstream theory. I am challenging the current understanding of ‘information’ to be inclusive of meaning without utility and honest about its uncertainty/diversity, as well as clearing up this confusion about the path of abstraction (as described in the quote you offered). Data ‘emerges’ from information via a process of reduction and interpretation, as does knowledge and wisdom and consciousness and life and love and the universe itself.
Information can be acquired through the process of interpretation: one example is by relating to information which has been reduced to potential knowledge and then reduced again via shared conceptual systems to significant sounds or shapes on a page, or reduced even further through a manufactured processing system into, say, binary code to be transmitted in an electrical circuit and then interpreted back through a processing system into sounds or shapes on a screen, to be interpreted by an observer into an experience of potential knowledge (according to shared conceptual systems) which enables us to approach a possible shared meaning. From there, we integrate the information into our own conceptual systems by relating that possible meaning to our own perception of potentiality, which manifests the difference as useful knowledge or new information.
Each dimensional level of reduction or interpretation is a relation that is prone to certain levels of uncertainty/entropy/misunderstanding/noise/diversity - understanding this uncertainty at each dimensional level enables us to allow and adjust for it as part of the processing or relational system we are continually refining. The greatest levels of uncertainty obviously occur at these higher dimensional levels of potentiality and possibility, and we’re continually refining our strategies to recognise, allow for and thereby resolve this uncertainty. But the biggest hurdles are in acknowledging and allowing for the uncertainty and diversity of qualitative information and the inaccuracy of value/conceptual structures by which we reduce the information from our relations to each other.
Meaning of life is the experience the truth and express it as a true human being.
And so, I agree partially with invisibilis, except I think he has worded it improperly.
Because, wouldn't it also be to receive the truth as well as 'express' it.
All data life implies strenious data reception, and structured data transmission?
Probably why, inter alia, eyes can go red because they're good at taking a lot of stress.
I thought that is what you meant. your conclusion above is correct, which is why formal logic has only been useful in math theorem proving. FWIW, the big problem in applying formal logic frameworks to the real world is that it cannot handle context and/or the purposeful ambiguity of humans and the real world .
The true human being is true. Where is the limit of truth.
What is a ‘false human being’? The limit of ‘truth’ is in exclusions implied by the potential of its expression.
A dishonest one.
Quoting Possibility
What are the exclusion implied?
To ‘experience truth’ implies a limitation in how to relate to truth. To ‘express it as a true human being’ implies a limitation in how to express it. Both of these limitations are anthropic: the full ‘meaning of life’ is inclusive of alternative relations to truth than ‘experience’, as well as alternative expressions of truth than ‘as a true human being’, whatever you believe that to be.
Yes, it is the self which is limited, and not the truth. Whenever self looks for truth, and/or expresses it, it is limited by its own limitations. Truth cannot be limited. There is no such thing as a half/part/limited truth, for it then becomes a deception, and not a truth. Truth is the only reality, and what is not true is unreal. The best the limited self can express only seems true and real.
A true human being is a consciousness of honesty, where truth expresses itself onto our thoughts and feelings. The self had no part in creating the thoughts and feelings to make it seem true and real. When truth reveals itself, uncensored, onto our thoughts and feelings, it is understood without reason or logic attached. It is doubtless, obvious, fearless, and restorative. It even heals what limitations the self has at that time.
I applaud where you are trying to go with this, but I have to respectfully disagree with your model/ideas on that. For one thing, I'm not seeing 'utility' as being necessarily based on 'meaning'. I see it more based on pattern matching and degrees of causal correlations.
That is, I do not think that meaning or intelligibility is primal when it comes to building knowledge. I expect utility is much more primal because it requires less energy/work/knowledge to enable us to reduce/increase certain entropy as desired to achieve desired outcomes.
For example, quantum particles and their behavior is completely intelligible and has almost no meaning to us; however, we can develop and detect statistical (math) generalizations that predict their observed behavior good enough to use them in useful devices/methods or to predict when/where they may occur with what likelihood and at what energy level, all w/ little to know understanding of what they really are about.
I can think of practical situations where knowledge is formed from sources of information that has no meaning and is not intelligible; that is, I do not believe that it is a requirement that the info must have meaning or is capable of being understood or comprehended by the cognitive agent.
It only matters, for example, that the info in question can be pattern matched and associated (even correlated) with something useful or meaningful or reduces the entropy of something else.
As another example, consider a pattern/event/object 'A' is observed and found to occur semi-periodically; however, 'A' is not understood in any way and has no intrinsic meaning, we can only detect its occurrence (think like a sub-atomic particle in an accelerator collision). We notice that most of the time shortly after pattern 'A' is observed occurring a desirable, yet otherwise completely temporally unpredictable, resource/object 'B' will be available for a brief moment. Having knowledge of this causal association we prepare ourselves to take advantage of 'B', and right after detecting 'A" we were, finally, able to acquire 'B'. Pattern 'A' is like a sign, we don't have to know what the sign says or means, we just have to uniquely recognize the occurrence of that pattern which we don't at all understand (i.e., pure pattern matching, no comprehension or meaning needed).
what do you say about that?
I think you are defining the meaning of a philosopher's life, not human life. At the risk of sounding like a reductionist, the genetically programmed, thus default, meaning of life is to develop and employ a cognitive framework sufficient to acquire and use information to build enough knowledge on how to gain enough food and shelter sustenance to survive good and long enough to acquire a mate and reproduce. The rest is icing on the human cake, so to speak (in metaphors).
So, the premise of this thread is talking about the icing, think the self-actualization in Maslow's pyramid, not not the primal cake (survival). After survival is fulfilled, then the meaning of that post-survival life can step up once in Maslow's pyramid, where info is used to serve more comfort, personal entropy reduction needs, but that is not the primal meaning of life, by any stretch.
eager to hear any solid counter examples/arguments.
I'm not sure (I'm thinking not at all) they are related as nouns. How would you say they are related?
I can provide information regarding all things I find meaningful. On the hand, the world is full of information the meaning of which I care not.
that is not a meaningful relationship, definition, or framework. What you 'care'' about has nothing to do with the metaphysical/logical/causal/scientific relationship between information and meaning .
Seriously?
The thread is not about "information and meaning."
Instead, it is about information and "the meaning of life."
And when it comes to conversations regarding the "meaning of life", you can rest assured that what I care about matters.
I certainly hope you can say the same.
Truth cannot be limited, sure - but it cannot ‘express itself’. This is a misunderstanding. We can relate to truth only by relating honestly with the universe, beyond reason and logic, and beyond all limitations.
Yet limitations are not deception - the only way that truth can be expressed is reduced through our limitations - language, action, art, etc - the choices we CAN make in our interactions with the world to increase awareness, connection and collaboration. If this is your understanding of ‘truth’, then it IS limited, and I would argue that meaning is beyond that, encompassing ALL possibility: inclusive of what is also untrue, unreal, pure imagination...
I appreciate the thought you’re putting in to challenging my theories here. It has been productive for me. And I can see where you’re coming from, and why it makes sense from your position.
I recognise that the way we tend to think of ‘meaning’ is tied into the process of defining concepts in order to express how we relate to information across experience. In that respect, comprehension is required for ‘meaning’ as definition. But when I talk about ‘meaning’, I’m referring more to pure relation, to what matters, prior to intelligibility. I recognise that this can be confusing, but for me, meaning isn’t definition, so it isn’t about comprehension: definition is a reduction of information/meaning to perceived potentiality and then to a linguistic system enabling others to relate to this potentiality, which points once again to meaning: what matters. I hope this clears up where I’m coming from.
Quoting Sir Philo Sophia
Before we understood anything about quantum particles, we were aware of information that made a difference to atoms. We knew only that this information meant something to our understanding of atomic structure, even if we didn’t know what that relation was or what we could use it for. It was an anomaly, a difference pointing to the possibility of something that previously didn’t matter. But once it mattered, then we looked for how it related to what we already relate to: how this difference related to other interactions.
So I disagree that quantum particles have almost no meaning to us. We struggle to define that meaning because the relations of quantum particles are potential, irreducible; but whatever quantum particles are, they matter to us, and they did so long before we could prove their potential existence using mathematics.
The way I see it, information is meaning is relation - the difference that makes a difference. I agree with you that information doesn’t need to be understood. It matters that it relates to something - it means something to someone or something - and then we determine its relation to us (utility, value, significance) by first relating to that relation as possible meaning (as something that matters), and then reducing it to perceived potentiality.
Quoting Sir Philo Sophia
A couple of points regarding this example, in light of my explanation of ‘meaning’ above.
Firstly, because I see meaning as relation itself, I don’t believe there is any particular ‘intrinsic meaning’ to anything. Everything matters, but it often matters differently to you than it does to me, and so while everything has possible meaning, that meaning is only definable within a linguistic/logical/mathematical system as a reduction of available information.
Secondly, it is in our initial awareness of ‘B’ that it first has meaning for us - that is, it exists in relation to our relation to ‘A’, and this existence matters. It’s really only a possible relation - the supposed ‘causality’ is relative to the perceived potentiality of ‘A’. We don’t observe ‘A’ as an actual object - we have information about the relative potential of ‘A’ - and the more information we gain by diversifying our relation to this relative potential, the more we increase the possibility of ‘B’, whose perceived potentiality can only be determined at this point relative to the perceived potential of ‘A’.
I hope I’m explaining this okay - the basic idea from my position is that the meaning of ‘B’ is its relation to the meaning of ‘A’, which is reducible to its perceived potential, which is undefined.
How can something unreal/untrue have meaning?
Whatever meaning the self attaches to it is fantasy and so is the attached meaning. It becomes meaningless due to its own deception. To claim something untrue/unreal as having meaning is the same as saying nothing is something.
Only the invalid self could deceive itself to believe that invalidity has meaning. But even so, the self knows it is invalid, just a self-fabricated identity story to believe in. That is why it always seeks validity, to gain meaningfulness for its invalidity, but always finds it lacking.
Yes, you do sound like a reductionist (still, I won’t hold it against you). Personally, I don’t buy the ‘default’ program of life as survival and procreation, as defined by classical evolutionary theory. And I no longer subscribe to Maslow’s pyramid. I have put a lot of thought into this, and I certainly wouldn’t overlook these very reasonable theories flippantly. But they are still theories, after all. I’m not clever enough to formally disprove them, but they’re only close approximations of reality based on a reasonable conceptualisation of available information - a bit like Ptolemy’s universe, which served us well for over a thousand years. I’m only suggesting that an alternative way of looking at the information seems IMHO to be less prone to anomaly.
In Thomas Nagel’s book ‘Mind and Cosmos’, he argues against the capacity of Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, naturalism and reductionism to provide a satisfactory account of consciousness and human intelligibility in particular. Equally unsatisfied with theories of intelligent design, Nagel suggests an alternative, yet to be formulated, and sets out what such a theory would need to accomplish.
To me, human evolution and success don’t fit the model of maximising survival, species benefit and genetic proliferation at all. The idea that the universe has either been ‘designed’ for life or has simply fluked it, and this life, having accomplished its own goal of survival, then acquires a new and different motivation towards comfort and entropy reduction, is patched together rather than a comprehensive understanding of the unfolding universe from a singularity.
The way I see it, the human organism has evolved to maximise entropy reduction, not survival, etc. The traits that enable our survival do so only via this capacity for entropy reduction. And when you look at the process of quantum particles to material physics to chemistry to life to humanity to all of our ‘progress’, that same impetus - to reduce entropy, by increasing awareness, connection and collaboration or by ignorance, isolation and exclusion - underlies it all.
I don't see how information is directly and necessarily related to any monotonic change in entropy. I see info as being more about the binding of data values in a certain configuration as a property of something.
information on something might reduce your uncertainty/entropy wrt to knowing that something, which may at the same time increase your uncertainty/entropy (e.g., if the info contradicts many more facts/info you thought were true of that something). So, in this context, please explain by example how you find, by definition "Information is the resolution of uncertainty’".
You’re right, you do sound like a reductionist (still, I won’t hold it against you :razz: ). Personally, I don’t buy the ‘default’ program of life as survival and procreation, as defined by classical evolutionary theory. And I no longer subscribe to Maslow’s pyramid. This might sound like I’ve gone off the reservation, but I have put a lot of thought into this, and I certainly wouldn’t overlook these very reasonable theories flippantly. But they are still theories, after all. I’m not clever enough to disprove them, but I see them as close approximations of reality based on a reasonable conceptualisation of available information - a bit like Ptolemy’s universe, which served us well for over a thousand years. I’m only suggesting that an alternative way of looking at the information seems IMHO to be less prone to anomaly, and is therefore worth exploring.
In Thomas Nagel’s book ‘Mind and the Cosmos’, he argues against the capacity of Darwinian evolutionary theory, materialism/naturalism and reductionism to provide a satisfactory account of consciousness and human intelligibility in particular. Equally unsatisfied with theories of intelligent design, Nagel suggests an alternative, yet to be formulated, and sets out what such a theory would need to accomplish. This is what I’m working on.
To me, human evolution and success don’t fit the model of maximising survival, species benefit and genetic proliferation at all. The idea that the universe is geared for life, and this life, having accomplished a very different goal of survival, then acquires a new and different motivation again towards comfort and entropy reduction, is patched together rather than a comprehensive understanding of the unfolding universe from a singularity.
The way I see it, the human organism has evolved to maximise entropy reduction, not survival, etc. In fact, the traits that enable our survival do so only via this capacity for entropy reduction. And when you look at the process of quantum particles to material physics to chemistry to life to humanity to all of our ‘progress’, that same impetus - to reduce entropy, by increasing awareness, connection and collaboration or by ignorance, isolation and exclusion - underlies it all.
Carlo Rovelli’s book ‘Reality Is Not What It Seems’ contains a chapter called ‘Information’ which I think best describes where I’m coming from in relation to information and entropy. It seems he refers to it more recently as relative information, which might help to clear up the confusion:
Quoting Carlo Rovelli
The process of re-conceptualising the classical world, of three-dimensions in time, into Rovelli’s four-dimensional ‘knit tangle of interacting events’ lends itself to re-configuring for one, two and three-dimensional universe concepts, as well as five and six-dimensional conceptualisations of the potential and possible information we obtain from our subjective experiences. What Rovelli neglects, though, is the relevance of chemical relations, and how they contribute to the qualitative or non-spatial information in the universe at each dimensional level.
Quoting Sir Philo Sophia
It’s the ‘wrt’ that complicates the relationship between entropy and information. Information from interacting with a particular ‘apple’ experience, for instance, reduces your uncertainty wrt that apple, which may at the same time appear to increase your uncertainty wrt knowing the concept ‘apple’. Which is ‘reality’, though - the interaction with experience, or the concept we refer to in our minds to predict an interaction?
You appear to be conflating two different perceptions of ‘truth’. Unconditional love is a relation to all possible information, even if it’s untrue or unreal. ‘Truth value’ refers to a perceived potentiality in relation to possible information. So it’s a conditional relation, limited by our subjective awareness or consciousness.
To love unconditionally, the relation as possible information matters regardless of truth value, and therefore has meaning - even if we never grasp what that meaning is ourselves. To dismiss something as untrue/unreal, on the other hand, is to exclude possible information in relation to a subjective perception of potential - to say that something is ‘nothing’, despite information that it matters to someone/something, even if only existing as a possibility.
Truth as unconditional love is the awareness that I may not experience something as true from my limited perspective, but if it is experienced as true from your perspective, then it is at least possible. Its truth is then relative to my relationship with you.
This is just one type of info. This is not a complete definition of information. Moreover, nothing new about this idea. Seems to be just one type of information where there are cross-correlations or causal dependencies between things.
Quoting Possibility
Not necessarily. Here is an example where uncertainty might increase: assume you believed all apples were red and anything spherical and greenish is a Lime. You go to bite what you thought was a greenish lime, but you discover and confirm it was a green apple. This new info that apples can be other colors now makes you uncertain as to whether other properties you believed apples have are true, and you even question what does it mean to be an apple, let alone the red type. Not a great example, but I hope you get the gist of what I mean that new info on something can also make you more uncertain (lest confident or trusting) in your truth or knowledge of that something.
Again, I'm still looking for your explanation of how you believe "Information is the resolution of uncertainty"
thx.
Actually, you will find that all ‘types’ of information work along the same lines - this is only the most drastically simplified illustration of the process. Information in ‘reality’ is a diverse and multi-dimensional complexity of cross-correlations, manifestation and integration, but the same basic principles apply.
Quoting Sir Philo Sophia
I think I see where the confusion is now: by ‘uncertainty’, I don’t mean an awareness of your own uncertainty, but an objective state of uncertainty or missing information in the system.
This objective uncertainty with respect to what apples can be was always there - you were just unaware of it. The new info that apples can be other colours makes you aware of this uncertainty as to what it means to be an apple. This is called prediction error, and is felt as pain, humility and loss/lack. As a child (or an adult in prehistoric times) we would experience this with almost every interaction with the world around us as we developed and adjusted our conceptual structures, but as adults these days we try to avoid it.
The thing about becoming aware of this uncertainty is that it creates an opportunity (one that wasn’t previously available) to then resolve this uncertainty by interacting with this green apple, and possibly inspiring you to be more curious about what apples can be, and seek out further information. Of course, you could just throw it away as a ‘false lime’ or a ‘false apple’, and ignore, isolate or exclude this new information in order to resolve any threat of uncertainty with regard to limes and apples.