At Mind Matters News: Information theory: Evolution as the transfer of information

_{Denyse O'Leary

May 30, 2022

Evolution, Information, Intelligent Design}

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Information follows different rules from matter and energy, which might change the way we see evolution:

A new model of evolution relies on information theory, which is itself interesting because information is governed by different rules from matter and energy. For example, it is created by ruling out possibilities, it is relational, not causal, and it is not reduced by being shared. It is also immaterial. For example, Einstein’s bomb equation, e = mc², had a huge impact on the world but by itself, it is an immaterial idea.
Information can be stripped of all matter and appear in a variety of media: I could phone and tell you the winning lottery number or send you an email or a letter about it or discuss it on radio or TV. Vastly different material media; same information.
Reinterpreting evolution as a transfer of information will lead to both different questions and different answers.
The authors of the paper, marine researcher Rasmus Skern-Mauritzen and forester Thomas Nygaard Mikkelsen make clear that they understand information to be immaterial.
News, “Information theory: Evolution as the transfer of information” at Mind Matters News (May 29, 2022)

The paper is open access.

Takehome: A pair of researchers have introduced an Information Continuum Model of Evolution (ICM) which takes into account the fact that information is immaterial.

You may also wish to read: Why AI can’t save us from ourselves — if evolution is any guide Famous evolutionary theorist E. O. Wilson’s reflections help us understand. If selfishness and a sense of superiority are really the driving force of humanity than AI could only be a source of problems. (J. R. Miller)

Comments

LCD, I did not say "matter and energy doesn’t matter". I said, "Immaterial information is now experimentally shown to exist independently of matter and energy." And I used quantum teleportation, where immaterial information is transferred without using matter and energy to transfer the information, to prove my point. Although matter and energy are used to 'read out' the information, no matter and energy are used in the actual transfer of the information. Again, the transfer of information is accomplished via quantum entanglement which has no materialistic explanation. To reiterate. If immaterial information did not exist apart from matter and energy in some meaningful, and physically real, way then the transfer of information via quantum teleportation would simply be impossible. It isn't rocket science.bornagain77_{May 31, 2022
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Bob O'H:
If a physical form is necessary, then is there really any immaterial information?
Yes, because the physical form is not the information. The media is not the information. Paper is not the information. The ink is not the information. Information cannot be reduced to matter, energy and what emerges from their interactions. I would love to see someone try to do that-> reduce information. “Information is information, neither matter nor energy. Any materialism which disregards this, will not survive one day.” Norbert WeinerET_{May 31, 2022
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Bornagain77 transferred from one place to another, but without traveling through any physical medium
The idea is you need "to manage" matter and energy and your experiment is dependent of matter and energy to "prove" your "out of matter and energy" point.
AndyClue He’s very confused. X is the storage, that causes Y. The program doesn’t matter at all. Why the heck does he think we need storages? Just for fun?
Bornagain77: matter and energy doesn't matter. AndyClue: Information doesn't matter. Both points are wrong. @AndyClue:Is there a difference in weight between a formated hdd and the same hdd that is full with data (OS installed , movies, docs,etc) ? Did the PC "behaves " identical when you use a formated vs a full of data hdd? Billions of people must be crazy by giving money to Billy for an windows OS. :) They don't know what you know.Lieutenant Commander Data_{May 31, 2022
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AC: "The program doesn’t matter at all." Really? :)bornagain77_{May 31, 2022
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Well LCD, if information did not exist independently of matter and energy then teleportation would be impossible. i.e. “the photons aren’t disappearing from one place and appearing in another. Instead, it’s the information that’s being teleported through quantum entanglement.,,,”,, and, "information,,, is transferred from one place to another, but without traveling through any physical medium.” Moreover, entanglement itself, (which was used to teleport the information), has repeatedly shown itself to be a 'spooky', 'non-local', beyond space and time, effect that steadfastly refuses to be reduced to any possible materialistic, i.e. 'hidden variable', explanations., and which therefore necessarily requires a beyond space and time cause in order to explain the 'non-local' effect.
Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012 Excerpt: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,” http://www.quantumlah.org/highlight/121029_hidden_influences.php
bornagain77_{May 31, 2022
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Bornagain77 Immaterial information is now experimentally shown to exists independently of matter and energy.
How exists independently of matter and energy when all experiments use matter and energy?Lieutenant Commander Data_{May 31, 2022
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If making a change in a quantity X results in a reliable demonstrable change in a quantity Y in a given context, then X has a causal effect on Y. Example: I press the key labelled “A” on my computer keyboard; the letter “A” appears on my computer screen.,,, Definition 2: Existence If Y is a physical entity made up of ordinary matter, and X is some kind of entity that has a demonstrable causal effect on Y as per Definition 1, then we must acknowledge that X also exists (even if it is not made up of such matter). (...) Both the program and the data are non-physical entities, indeed so is all software. A program is not a physical thing you can point to, but by Definition 2 it certainly exists.
He's very confused. X is the storage, that causes Y. The program doesn't matter at all. Why the heck does he think we need storages? Just for fun?AndyClue_{May 31, 2022
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Bob highlights the first point of their summary, "Information is immaterial by nature but must have a physical form to exist", and then Bob asks the obvious question, "If a physical form is necessary, then is there really any immaterial information?" Yet the first point of their summary is simply wrong. Immaterial information is now experimentally shown to exists independently of matter and energy. Although there are several lines of experimental evidence that now establish this fact, the easiest way to demonstrate that immaterial information is NOT dependent on matter and energy for its existence is with quantum teleportation. The easiest way to prove that immaterial information is an independent entity that can exist apart from its physical representation on a material substrate is with quantum teleportation. As the following experiments demonstrated, information can be instantly teleported between photons and/or atoms without the photons and/or atoms ever physically interacting. For instance, the following article states, “the photons aren’t disappearing from one place and appearing in another. Instead, it’s the information that’s being teleported through quantum entanglement.,,,”
Quantum Teleportation Enters the Real World – September 19, 2016 Excerpt: Two separate teams of scientists have taken quantum teleportation from the lab into the real world. Researchers working in Calgary, Canada and Hefei, China, used existing fiber optics networks to transmit small units of information across cities via quantum entanglement — Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance.”,,, This isn’t teleportation in the “Star Trek” sense — the photons aren’t disappearing from one place and appearing in another. Instead, it’s the information that’s being teleported through quantum entanglement.,,, ,,, it is only the information that gets teleported from one place to another. https://www.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2016/09/19/quantum-teleportation-enters-real-world/#.V-HqWNEoDtR
And as the following article states. “scientists have successfully teleported information between two separate atoms in unconnected enclosures a meter apart,,, information,,, is transferred from one place to another, but without traveling through any physical medium.”
First Teleportation Between Distant Atoms – 2009 Excerpt: For the first time, scientists have successfully teleported information between two separate atoms in unconnected enclosures a meter apart – a significant milestone in the global quest for practical quantum information processing. Teleportation may be nature’s most mysterious form of transport: Quantum information, such as the spin of a particle or the polarization of a photon, is transferred from one place to another, but without traveling through any physical medium. It has previously been achieved between photons over very large distances, between photons and ensembles of atoms, and between two nearby atoms through the intermediary action of a third. None of those, however, provides a feasible means of holding and managing quantum information over long distances. Now a team from the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) at the University of Maryland (UMD) and the University of Michigan has succeeded in teleporting a quantum state directly from one atom to another over a substantial distance https://jqi.umd.edu/news/first-teleportation-between-distant-atoms
As to the claim in the OP that information "is relational, not causal", well, although information is relational, the claim that information is not causal is also simply not a true claim. As George Ellis pointed out, "If Y is a physical entity made up of ordinary matter, and X is some kind of entity that has a demonstrable causal effect on Y as per Definition 1, then we must acknowledge that X also exists (even if it is not made up of such matter).",,, Both the program and the data are non-physical entities, indeed so is all software. A program is not a physical thing you can point to, but by Definition 2 it certainly exists.,,, The mind is not a physical entity, but it certainly is causally effective: proof is the existence of the computer on which you are reading this text. It could not exist if it had not been designed and manufactured according to someone’s plans, thereby proving the causal efficacy of thoughts, which like computer programs and data are not physical entities."
Recognising Top-Down Causation - George Ellis Excerpt: Causation: The nature of causation is highly contested territory, and I will take a pragmatic view: Definition 1: Causal Effect If making a change in a quantity X results in a reliable demonstrable change in a quantity Y in a given context, then X has a causal effect on Y. Example: I press the key labelled “A” on my computer keyboard; the letter “A” appears on my computer screen.,,, Definition 2: Existence If Y is a physical entity made up of ordinary matter, and X is some kind of entity that has a demonstrable causal effect on Y as per Definition 1, then we must acknowledge that X also exists (even if it is not made up of such matter). This is clearly a sensible and testable criterion; in the example above, it leads to the conclusion that both the data and the relevant software exist. If we do not adopt this definition, we will have instances of uncaused changes in the world; I presume we wish to avoid that situation.,,, ,,,However there are many topics that one cannot understand by assuming this one-way flow of causation. The flourishing subject of social neuroscience makes clear how social influences act down on individual brain structure[2]; studies in physiology demonstrate that downward causation is necessary in understanding the heart, where this form of causation can be represented as the influences of initial and boundary conditions on the solutions of the differential equations used to represent the lower level processes[3]; epigenetic studies demonstrate that biological development is crucially shaped by the environment[4] What about physics? In this essay I will make the case that top-down causation is also prevalent in physics, even though this is not often recognised as such. This does not occur by violating physical laws; on the contrary, it occurs through the laws of physics, by setting constraints on lower level interactions. Excerpt: page 5: A: Both the program and the data are non-physical entities, indeed so is all software. A program is not a physical thing you can point to, but by Definition 2 it certainly exists. You can point to a CD or flashdrive where it is stored, but that is not the thing in itself: it is a medium in which it is stored. The program itself is an abstract entity, shaped by abstract logic. Is the software “nothing but” its realisation through a specific set of stored electronic states in the computer memory banks? No it is not because it is the precise pattern in those states that matters: a higher level relation that is not apparent at the scale of the electrons themselves. It’s a relational thing (and if you get the relations between the symbols wrong, so you have a syntax error, it will all come to a grinding halt). This abstract nature of software is realised in the concept of virtual machines, which occur at every level in the computer hierarchy except the bottom one [17]. But this tower of virtual machines causes physical effects in the real world, for example when a computer controls a robot in an assembly line to create physical artefacts. Excerpt page 7: The assumption that causation is bottom up only is wrong in biology, in computers, and even in many cases in physics,,,, The mind is not a physical entity, but it certainly is causally effective: proof is the existence of the computer on which you are reading this text. It could not exist if it had not been designed and manufactured according to someone’s plans, thereby proving the causal efficacy of thoughts, which like computer programs and data are not physical entities. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1212.2275.pdf
Quotes and verse:
"The most fundamental definition of reality is not matter or energy, but information–and it is the processing of information that lies at the root of all physical, biological, economic, and social phenomena." Vlatko Vedral - Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, and CQT (Centre for Quantum Technologies) at the National University of Singapore, and a Fellow of Wolfson College - a recognized leader in the field of quantum mechanics. Why the Quantum? It from Bit? A Participatory Universe? Excerpt: In conclusion, it may very well be said that information is the irreducible kernel from which everything else flows. Thence the question why nature appears quantized is simply a consequence of the fact that information itself is quantized by necessity. It might even be fair to observe that the concept that information is fundamental is very old knowledge of humanity, witness for example the beginning of gospel according to John: "In the beginning was the Word." Anton Zeilinger - a leading expert in quantum mechanics: http://www.metanexus.net/archive/ultimate_reality/zeilinger.pdf 48:24 mark: “It is operationally impossible to separate Reality and Information” 49:45 mark: “In the Beginning was the Word” John 1:1 Prof Anton Zeilinger speaks on quantum physics. at UCT - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3ZPWW5NOrw John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
bornagain77_{May 31, 2022
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I eventually found the paper (the links here are messed up). The first point of their summary was interesting:
Information is immaterial by nature but must have a physical form to exist.
If a physical form is necessary, then is there really any immaterial information? Or is "information" just the concept humans use to help them understand material processes?Bob O'H_{May 31, 2022
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