A physicist argues that information is at the root of everything
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Re: A physicist argues that information is at the root of everything
#2It's a book review -- doesn't really explain what the physicist is arguing in any meaningful sense.
Re: A physicist argues that information is at the root of everything
#3Does it mean everything is addicted? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1293262
;-)
Re: A physicist argues that information is at the root of everything
#4A link to the book in question (clean btw, no referral):
http://www.amazon.com/Decoding-Reality-Universe-Quantum-Info...
Re: A physicist argues that information is at the root of everything
#5It's a book review -- doesn't really explain what the physicist is arguing in any meaningful sense.
"It's a book review -- doesn't really explain what the physicist is arguing in any meaningful sense."
Indeed, the review ends with this:
"Mr Vedral makes a persuasive argument for a third option: information can be created out of nothing."
That's a remarkable claim, and the review says zip about how it is presented. It seems that it would also be the key concept of the book, making this a pretty lame review.
Re: A physicist argues that information is at the root of everything
#6From the most useful Amazon.com review of the book (http://www.amazon.com/review/R15E7HO19A2FQF/ref=cm_cr_rdp_pe...):
"The core of the argument (on page 201) I will not spoil here, but it's not wholly convincing on several grounds. First, although he does not further dwell on it, the author favors the 'Copenhagen' (or observer effect) interpretation of quantum physics, which is used to buttress & underpin his argument."
Oops. Or at least say I, not liking the Copenhagen interpretation at all. (Perhaps the most frightening thing to me about quantum mechanics is that I've found the many worlds interpenetration to be the best ... then again, in this area I'm a chemist, so these issues are "above my pay grade".)
Re: A physicist argues that information is at the root of everything
#7So close. It's actually math.
Re: A physicist argues that information is at the root of everything
#8No surprise here... Edwin Jaynes called this the mind projection fallacy whereas Ayn Rand called it the primacy of consciousness, an epistemological error. If everything is "information" then what are the physicists studying? To quote AR "A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms". Full quote here;
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/consciousness.html
Re: A physicist argues that information is at the root of everything
#9So close. It's actually math.
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Re: A physicist argues that information is at the root of everything
#10This article seems to imply that the author equates Shannon entropy with information. Is that so? It has always struck me that Shannon entropy is a good measure of information, but is not a good definition of information itself. Like the difference between a vector and the magnitude of a vector, information and its measure are not the same. What is information itself? If this author actually has a definition of that, I would like to see it.