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Life Is Made of Unfair Coin Flips

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Re: Life Is Made of Unfair Coin Flips

#81

Post by throw1234651234 »

dewaka wrote: post #68
throw1234651234 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you break that down? I am eager to learn about Buddhism, because to me, it has some "practical" aspects, but so far every book I have read has been a 100 pages of fluff and a salient point or two. What makes this book good? Just to be clear, I am genuinely interested, but I want to know more as to why you are recommending it.

Since this is an introductory text, it covers things you probably already know about - four noble truths, eight fold path etc. However, there are some practical advice which I found to be nicely explained, - Book has a chapter on meditation and I think it does get to the point without fluff, for example. It talks about Samatha (such as focus on breath) and Vipassana meditation. - Talks about some important sutras suc…

Cool, thanks dewaka, will look into it, though there is a good chance I am familiar with most of it; it would still be nice to have a good introductory test - I don't know of a single Buddhist book I feel comfortable recommending to others, maybe this will be it.

Re: Life Is Made of Unfair Coin Flips

#82

Post by wnoise »

clairity wrote: post #8
captaincole wrote: post #2

I really had fun reading this and thinking deeply about the blurry Ill defined line between things that are alive (an individual) and things that are not. To take this experiment to a conclusion which the author has “left to the reader” as all good texts do, let’s think about a virus. A virus has information, in the form of dna or rna (I believe this is what a coronavirus uses), that it injects into a cell to then ca…

viruses have no agency so they don't attempt to reduce entropy across time. viruses are a reduction of entropy across time, just by being an organized structure (of rna and protein strands folded together) requiring energy to create and maintain. information is encoded in that structure--both in the sequence and in the shape--and that's transmitted through time.

I think it is a mistake to say that agency is a property of a system, rather than a lens through which we can analyze a system. It truly is useful to describe a thermostat and heater as trying to keep a room within a certain temperature range, even though there is nothing actually striving there.

Much like anything under evolutionary pressure, the viruses that propagate are the ones that do manage (in their normal environment) to keep entropy across time from exploding. Are they "alive"? Meh. In combination with their environment, they act like it though.

Re: Life Is Made of Unfair Coin Flips

#83

Post by monadic2 »

selestify wrote: post #27
monadic2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with life increasing entropy; it does do that but it expels the entropy.

Living things are low-entropy internally, but produce higher entropy externally than would have been without life.

Hmm, I don’t follow the comparison. How could, for instance, the sun use “life” to generate more entropy than it already does?

Re: Life Is Made of Unfair Coin Flips

#84

Post by tmcb »

morelisp wrote: post #40
tmcb wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am delving into speculation here, since I am not familiar with AIT and I don’t know any other definition of algorithmic information besides mutual information as defined by Kolmogorov which, remember, relies on Kolmogorov complexity but is a separate concept. My point is that if I ask you, “given a bit sequence A, is it an optimal program?”, your answer would probably be: “I cannot even say if this represents a com…

> “given a bit sequence A, is it an optimal program?” > Kolmogorov complexity of a given program. You seem fundamentally confused about the objects of study of information theory. They're not programs, they're e.g. strings of symbols. We measure by the information content of those strings based on likelihood / programs. Information theory asks "given some bit sequence A, how much information is in it?" not "is it an…

> You seem fundamentally confused about the objects of study of information theory.

It is hard to argue against your slightly condescending remark if my comment is not accurate, which is still up to debate. I am sure I could not observe all due formalities even if I tried. But please understand that my comment was written taking into consideration your previous comment, by which I mean:

- You mentioned that the overall approach in Algorithmic Information Theory is to assume Church-Turing thesis as valid. My understanding is that having a standard representation of data is one among the various accidental benefits of that---raw data could pretty well be represented by a Turing machine itself, as well as any other program representation that could generate it as long as it is a computable function. Notice that, in this scenario, talking about the Kolmogorov complexity of a program is valid, as strings of raw data are also represented as programs.

- The "is it an optimal program?" question was a rhetorical device which apparently did not work well, even due to the fact that I did not define what "optimal" meant in this context---I thought it was given. But I can't understand how you came to the conclusion that I was defining the subject of study of Algorithmic Information Theory there.

Re: Life Is Made of Unfair Coin Flips

#85

Post by tmcb »

nil-sec wrote: post #29
tmcb wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that, in order to recognize information, you should at least compare it to the outputs of a source of entropy. It is a common mistake to conflate information and entropy. A bad analogy to mechanics is that the outputs of an entropy source are the frame of reference, the signal is a body and information might be whatever property you wish to analyze, such as velocity or acceleration.

So if I’m understanding this correctly you have a relativistic understanding of information in which the zero state is observer dependent? Just for my understanding, consider for example the spin of an electron. It can be in one of two states, up or down. In which scenario am I unclear about the absolute information content of knowing the spin state?

It is really hard for me to reply to that comment.

I would say, first, that I need a definition for absolute information, as I have been insisting that information is defined on mutual terms. If we move past that, though, information about the spin state is unclear before measurement.

Re: Life Is Made of Unfair Coin Flips

#86

Post by ppod »

soulofmischief wrote: post #51
ppod wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the least complex entity that you ascribe agency to?

Not OP, but this is something I spend a lot of time with. I have a pet framework called Zodeaism which means "Living Ideas". In my theory, the real "life forms" are ideas which possess the capabilities of information storage, adaptation, self-repair, and transmission. My own consciousness is mediated by thousands of such ideas, some competing and some working in harmony. One such idea -- Do Good Onto Others As Others…

Are you familiar with Friston/free energy/markov blankets?

Re: Life Is Made of Unfair Coin Flips

#87

Post by soulofmischief »

ppod wrote: post #86
soulofmischief wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but this is something I spend a lot of time with. I have a pet framework called Zodeaism which means "Living Ideas". In my theory, the real "life forms" are ideas which possess the capabilities of information storage, adaptation, self-repair, and transmission. My own consciousness is mediated by thousands of such ideas, some competing and some working in harmony. One such idea -- Do Good Onto Others As Others…

Are you familiar with Friston/free energy/markov blankets?

Yes to all three, when I was exposed to Friston's work I found many parallels in my own research and I would like to reach out to him when I've reached a more complete formalization of my ideas.

What do you think of his free energy principle and related concepts?

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