Science is moving from Materialism to Idealism and that's good news!

reply to post by Aphorism

Interesting thread. Just a question:

What is information?

I guess the specific arrangement of the material in the material universe is information. Information is position in time and space.

Ideology is about what is where, or what goes where

reply to post by tgidkp


I dont think chaos exists, because if an intelligence was given the complete detailed information of the universe, and the complete details of the laws of physics wouldnt they be able to predict what would happen (consider this argument for non conscious systems)? Its a lot more tricky for conscious beings, and that perhaps is where a term like random may play in, out of all the numbers I know and can name I dont think its possible to ever predict what number I will come up with. But my entire being, and life, and body, and mind, and numbers themselves revolve around order, so how can the action of conscious beings be considered chaotic? And if these two points are intriguing if anything, sweet, but if they are potentially true, what is the true definition of chaos and how and in what kind of ways can it exist, what causes it, how long does it exist, what came first order or chaos, can either exist without the other, can only one exist forever? I know weve had discussions about this sort of thing before but I dont remember reaching any conclusions... so howdy.

reply to post by ImaFungi


I'm thinking along those lines.

Isn't Chaos really the sum total of everything happening in the universe perceived from a specific location?

I suppose, if quantum mechanics is genuinely random, then chaos is real.

I should say, if the processes that quantum mechanics uses randomness to attempt to describe and predict, are actually random. then chaos is real.

Is there a truly random event known to be random and not simply subject to a vast assortment of causes?

reply to post by Semicollegiate


Sounds like the idea of Substantial Forms. If this the case, "information" is an old idea renamed.

reply to post by Astrocyte

For anyone to imagine that things are "just chaos"....
Now, this is how chaos enters a human beings life. Since this emotion has not been integrated -....

from your use of the language, it sounds to me like you have imagined chaos to be that influence in the universe that drives things apart, or differentiates them. random. chance. noise.

this is not the case at all. in fact it is a terribly common mistake, and one which i think everyone in this thread is likely making along with you. similar to the problems we are having in the thread with the colloquial use of "information" and the scientific or mathematical use, your definition of "chaos" is the colloquial one.

In common usage, "chaos" means "a state of disorder". However, in chaos theory, the term is defined more precisely. Although there is no universally accepted mathematical definition of chaos, a commonly used definition says that, for a dynamical system to be classified as chaotic, it must have the following properties:

1 - it must be sensitive to initial conditions;
2 - it must be topologically mixing; and
3 - its periodic orbits must be dense.

chaos theory

among the three properties, number two corresponds approximately with your "differentiation" and the colloquial use. number two (haha) gives the system the appearance of simple random noise or chance. number three gives us the hallmark of all chaotic systems, corresponding with your "integration", and setting it apart entirely from noise.

in the simplest sense, a chaotic system is ordered noise. the ordering of the noise arises from the exact boundary conditions and perturbations of the system. like the ever-popular phenomenon of cymatics (image below), the chaotic system is a self-defining tautology which is capable of acheiving very complex order in spite of its being formed out of noise.



per property #3, all chaotic systems are periodic. this gives a convinient and insightful placement of the ever-popular New Age use of the term "frequency", and the "raising" thereof.

also, Astrocyte, the activity of the complex nerual networks found in the brain are a big favorite in the attempts to match psychology (and consciousness in general) with electrical patterns in the brain. i have excerpted an article that pretty much says what you said in your post, and it was not difficult to find at all....

Abstract Self-organizing and self-tuning neural networks are conceptualized as nonlinear dynamical systems. It is shown that biological psychiatry can be encompassed within this nonlinear dynamical framework, where it becomes coherent with trends in cognitive science. A state space representation that is a hyperspace with an energy topology and a fractal dimension is utilized. The state space representation provides a unifying framework for the classification of mental disorders. Clinical phenomena in schizophrenia can be explained in terms of nonlinear dynamics. The framework is also productive of psychiatric research. These results motivate the development of a nonlinear dynamical psychiatry. Psychiatry and the new dynamics

reply to post by NorEaster

True chaos doesn't and can't inflict itself upon an orderly system, since true chaos is itself the lack of a system of any kind.

chaos IS the system. it is the dynamic pattern which emerges as a direct result of the recursion between system and its members. this is the very process by which the universe transitions from micro to macro, and the nested levels as described by Wilber come about.

reply to post by Aphorism


I was thinking of the information content of any machine. An engine has material and information.

Information + Material = Work

Information is something like force.

Material has position and information is the position.

The substantial forms argument is still analogous I think. It was oriented towards explaining causes from results instead of results from causes. The underlying sense of identity as information is the same.


Thomas Pynchon's book The Crying of Lot 49 has a scene about trying to access pure information to move a piston in an engine. Or maybe the experimenter is just trying to find gullible people. I will read that book again.

reply to post by Astrocyte

We can literally go through each mental disorder, from bipolar, to bpd, to generalized anxiety, social anxiety, obsessive compulsive, ptsd, and we can conceptualize these disorders as basic problems in internal integration.

From the article linked previously:



isnt that pretty much EXACTLY what you proposed in your above quote?

this is chaos, and it is an extremely powerful theory.

and, once again, i would like to stress that chaos is not, nor does it contain, information.

reply to post by ImaFungi

But my entire being, and life, and body, and mind, and numbers themselves revolve around order, so how can the action of conscious beings be considered chaotic?

because chaos is, by definition (property #3 above) ordered. and yet, the exact trajectory of the "orbit" can never be predicted (as per property #2), which allows the 'wiggle-room' which is neccesary to account for the fact that the number you choose can never be predicted.

chaos theory gives us the best of both worlds, and best of all is the fact that it is observable and measurable and model-able and it makes one whole hell of a lotta sense (if you take the time to understand it properly).

Semicollegiate
reply to post by ImaFungi

 

Is there a truly random event known to be random and not simply subject to a vast assortment of causes?

Laplace's Demon is as good as dead.

for a more complete answer to your question (i know you didnt ask me specifically, but i adore this topic) we will take a look at the chaotic system called 'cellular automata':



neoholographic and i have been talking a bit about entropy and how it plays into the definitions of holography, etc. now, it is known that a cellular automaton is generated from a very specific and simple rule set. but strangely, rather than producing something which is predictable, and even takes on the appearance of predictability, it is 100% not predictable.

because it is not predictable, the shortest representation that we can make of this system (from the image) is an explicit pixel-by-pixel representation. the meaning of this is that it is at maximum entropy. another way to talk about a system at maximum entropy is that it is completely random.

so the answer to your question is: whether or not it is actually random is irrelevant. the entropy of the system is equivalent to random. therefore the system does not contain information. but it DOES contain an explicit ordering, which is similar to information, but something else entirely.


this would be a great place to jump off to an explanation of the quantum state space, but i do not wish to completely take over the thread.

reply to post by tgidkp


That is very much, chaos. But not all mental disorders exhibit this dynamic. In fact, bipolar would be the quintessential example of informational chaos within the organism.

Take trauma. There are specific "triggers" for when someone reaches a hyper-aroused state. But in bipolar disorder, this isn't the case. Bi-polar is chaos; trauma is logical. A person with unresolved trauma might be internally integrated one second, and the next second, they hear a plane flying over them and they become seriously hyperaroused. This messes up with the brains integration; the body flies off the handle, muscles tense, heart rate speeds up, the brain becomes overly oxygenated; cortisol and adrenaline cloud cognitions while the specific emotion: I'm in danger - consumes awareness.

Is this not logical? Is not one piece of information - the plane - interacting with the body-brain memory networks - to produce a logical (albeit, illogical in the new context i.e its an unresolved trauma) response?

This is what I'm having trouble understanding. I've read a little bit into systems and chaos theory, but it hasn't changed how I understand information. Information exists - both within physical systems and mental systems, even if it is organized in a seemingly chaotic way.

This is important to point out, because certain things - informational packets - become stressors for certain individuals who have had traumatic experiences related to the triggers. As I mentioned before in the above case, a war vet is tensed and hyperaroused whenever he comes into relation with a reminder. This is LINEAR - not non-linear. Bipolar is nonlinear, but not all mental problems exhibit this dynamic.

reply to post by Aphorism

What is information?

Excellent question, as it straddles epistemology and thermodynamics. I'm not sure if anyone really has a handle on it at the moment. I'll get back to you when I can come up with a halfway intelligible answer.

reply to post by tgidkp


So would you state that Order (as a state/s, and as our concept of said state/s) does not exist?

Though you state the definition of Chaos, is Order.

This is why it becomes semantic. Because humans made the word order, to relate to organization, stability, regularity, groupings, predictability, law and order. And it seems like some of those things do exist in reality, so it can be said order exists. And I understand you provided the definitions of chaos, but the layman definition of chaos, is that which is out of order, that which is disorganized, so I dont understand how you can say Chaos is Order. If that is true there is no need to have the word order, it can be thrown out and replaced by chaos, and then the word chaos would mean order, which you say doesnt exist.

I think I get what you are saying, there is no such thing as order, just different states of chaos, some states of chaos are more stable and organized then others, and we call these highly ordered states of chaos, comparatively and relatively to that which is not as in a high and ordered state, order. But order as a thing does not truly exist. Could be argued because the temporal nature of all structure, but then it could be argued that nothing exists, because eventually everything that exists now will be different, so everything that exists now doesnt really exist, just as order doesnt really exist. But I dont agree with that.

The most fundamental and basic essence of reality, must by the law of obviousness be extremely limited (as seemingly unlimtedness as we know the universe to be...there are an infinite amount of infinite amount of infinite things that infinitely can never occur every infintesmal second), this suggests that as unpredictable as the fundamental nature of nature may be, there is still a finite potential, and a bulk of probability i.e. there is a high probability I will not jump and land on the sun right now. There is a high probability the entire universe will not turn into a purple fish eating a banana soup in the bat mobile. There is a high probability that the planets will not reverse their orbits right now. Because of these unpredictable more likelys, it appears that all though as I conceded above after potentially grasping your chaos view, that reality is chaos, which when compared with itself, can be discovered to contain areas of higher and lower order/organization/stability/predictability, because generally reality has reletively large amount of it containing organized structures and order, that exist for a relatively long time, and follow predictable paths, how for the moment at least, can it not be said that order is something that truly exists, the alignment of electrons in a magnet, Order! The alignment of atoms in a diamond, or graphene or whatever that perfect ordered molecule is. Is there order in the court?

reply to post by tgidkp


If you did jump into quantum space here it would be pretty much lost forever.

I don't know the all definitions of information. If at any time, the value of the function is known, that seems to be information.

Entropy seems to mean an inability to predict, which sounds great for Free Will.

reply to post by Astrocyte

Bi-polar is chaos; trauma is logical.

trauma is an event which changes the state of the system. using the cymatic image, we could say that trauma would equate to kicking the bowl or changing the bowl's position on the vibrating plate. this state change will produce a visible and measurable manifested in the rippling-pattern on the surface.

the reason this is such a great model for the brain is because we know that the brain somehow functions in this way... by associating a specific electrical pattern (rippling-pattern) with a particular event.

A person with unresolved trauma might be internally integrated one second, and the next second....
...a war vet is tensed and hyperaroused whenever he comes into relation with a reminder.

..... and then when the person comes into contact with this event, the brain re-assumes the electrical pattern of the original event.

Information exists - both within physical systems and mental systems

FIXED: Information is an exchange (and the carrier/symbol-set) - between one physical (mental) system to another.

going back to the traumatized brain, we can say that the brain has a functional representation of the event, such that it this representation is capable of reproducing its effects felt within the body. the electrical cascade down the neural pathways involves transfer of information. but the person is not feeling a neural cascade (proper), neural cascades are invisible to people. he is reliving the event... his experience of this event is a STATE.

a STATE can be translated into information, and can even generate information. but the state does not exist in a linearized dimension: it is a total unified thing which is as though all of the information were being 'transmitted' all at once.

this is incredibly similar to the condition of entanglement in quantum physics, and the reason that the time domain (a linear concept) is not part of the mathematics of quantum physics. because quantum physics is a representation of a STATE of an system.


i am sorry if this confuses you further.

reply to post by ImaFungi


i think the resolution of the question of order will be by adding in the concept of determinism.

a chaotic system is not deterministic, but it is well ordered.

information is deterministic and well ordered.

noise is not deterministic and also not ordered.


by your rule of obviousness, the universe is comprised of all three of these phenomena (at least).

reply to post by tgidkp


In reply to that triangle image cellular automaton, you say that it is not predictable, but surely there must be some equations and/or laws which the image follows. So if you truly knew exactly what was occurring in the equation it should be predictable. Laplaces demon for example, and this automaton point, is completely hypothetical and theoretical, of course giving our incomplete awareness we cannot predict what the automaton will do, but in the slowest order of time and space, and according to the equations which create the automaton, it is guaranteed an exact action will occur, step by step, so if the program 'knows' what it is doing, cant it be knowable slightly before it does it, based on recently past conditions, based on orginal conditions, based on total understanding of all material and energy of the system, and based on understanding of the coding/programming/equations which allow/force the program to act?

Also, this has to do with my last post I sent you; If the universe is pure chaos, that can be seen to have areas of less chaos, and those areas of less chaos can be termed order; Why can it not be that the universe is pure order, that can be seen to have areas of less order, and those areas of less order can be termed chaos? This is like a ying yang situation, imo at least.

Irrational numbers are chaotic within the probability of the base number.

Base infinity irrational numbers!

Can the Limit concept from Calculus be used to predict chaotic systems, like ImAFungi said?

tgidkp


noise is not deterministic and also not ordered.

But I think it is ordered, because noise is not choosing what to do, it is being forced, miniscule moment to moment, according to what it is itself, and according to at every moment what surrounds it and how what surrounds it can physically affect it, noise is forced into order. Or is this path of least resistance type talk, if there are a million aspects to an event of noise, they will not be predictable, but the aspects generally will be predictable, and I think I still believe that if all the aspects of the system and noise and environment were fully known and monitored, the action of the noise would be predictable. It would be falling in order, I guess we need a simple definition of noise for me to really understand this and better discuss and argue.

Semicollegiate
Irrational numbers are chaotic within the probability of the base number.

I would say irrational numbers are not chaotic, because they are exact. When you compute them its not like their digits change every time. Pi is always exactly pi, how can something so predictable and exact be considered chaotic?