Bacterial growth patterns toss off a code for sending abstract ideas and only a “powerful AI” can crack it. So we live in a world of information, not matter.
Information
At Mind Matters News: Is information physical? It depends on what you mean by physical…
Information makes things happen but, curiously, it erases its own history. You’ve read a book in order but can’t know if it was written in that order. Maybe the author started with pivotal Chapter 5, then wrote Chapter 1. Design of any kind does not come with a history included.
Did someone mention Bill Dembski’s Being as Communion?
Tucker’s dilemma is easier to interpret if we keep in mind something Bill Dembski stressed in Being as Communion (2014) about the nature of information: it is connective, not causal, and using it wisely is an act of the will.
Eric Anderson: Why randomness is “the wrong tool for the job”
Author and design theorist, Eric Anderson, clarifies the limitations of randomness in producing biological novelty.
At Mind Matters News: Researchers: Humans process information differently from monkeys
The researchers found that, from an information theory perspective, human brains engage in less redundant and more synergistic processing than macaques. So information theory supports human exceptionalism where Darwinism doesn’t?
At Mind Matters News: Information theory: Evolution as the transfer of information
The authors of the open-access paper, marine researcher Rasmus Skern-Mauritzen and forester Thomas Nygaard Mikkelsen make clear that they understand information to be immaterial.
At Mind Matters News: Eric Holloway’s Weasel Libs — a variant of Mad Libs, in honor of Richard Dawkins
Eric Holloway looks at Richard Dawkins’ famous Darwinian evolution-only Weasel program in light of epigenetic information.
Eric Hedin: Information and Nature
The question of the significance of human existence comes sharply into focus as we consider the origin of life itself. Do the laws of nature support the origin of life from nonlife, or do they argue against it?
Theoretical physicist on why she stopped working on black hole information loss
Hossenfelder: …. no one can tell which solution is correct in the sense that it actually describes nature, and physicists will not agree on one anyway. Because if they did, they’d have to stop writing papers about it.
Intelligent Design=Pattern Recognition
This Phys.Org press release isn’t about a particularly interesting scientific paper. However, what the authors tells us about how this paper came to be is very interesting. And, I may add, very revealing. Listen to what they have to say about their “aha” moment: Inside some of the data that a standard mapping algorithm normally Read More…
At Mind Matters News: Does information have mass? An experimental physicist weighs in
Rob Sheldon notes that the more real-world information we have, the less the bits weigh until, at very large amounts of information, they weigh almost nothing.
Eric Holloway: Does information weigh something after all? What if it does?
Holloway: If [Melvin] Vopson is correct we now have a mystery because his theory is in tension with the conservation of energy. The only solution is that the system is not closed. So where is the opening in the system? If the system is physically closed, then the influx of information must come from outside the physical realm.
A new solution for Hawking’s black hole paradox? “Quantum hair”
Catchy, we gotta admit: In 1976, Hawking suggested that, as black holes evaporate, they destroy information about what had formed them. That idea goes against a fundamental law of quantum mechanics which states any process in physics can be mathematically reversed. In the 1960s, physicist John Archibald Wheeler, discussing black holes’ lack of observable features Read More…
Everything is Coming Up “Non-Random”!
On January 12, 2022, Phys.Org had a PR on an article documenting “non-random” mutations found in wild tobacco plants, published by a team from UC Davis. Now, three weeks later (Feb 1, 2022), we have another paper, working with human populations in Africa, and which, according to a team from the University of Haifa, “surprisingly” Read More…
At Mind Matters News: Why neuroscientist Mark Solms is no materialist
Mark Solms: Information, in neuroscience, is a crucial concept, and it’s very hard to think about quantum physics and the big questions that are unsolved that flow from it without the concept of information — which, I hasten to draw your attention to the fact, is not matter. I’m not a materialist for exactly that reason.