Re: The difference between a human and a rock

From: Hal Ruhl <HalRuhl.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2004 19:44:19 -0400

At 09:15 PM 4/17/2004, you wrote:


>I believe it is a mistake to concentrate only on the reductionist theory
>of the "very small", and to assume that there
>is nothing else interesting about systems that are larger.

I do not necessarily disagree.

> Theories of spacetime and matter's "unit" composition
>are not the be all and end all. To explain emergent system behaviour, you
>have to have a theory whose language
>is a vocabulary of various kinds of complex properties. This is because
>emergent systems, as one of their
>interesting properties, do not depend on all of the properties of their
>substrate. They only depend on those properties
>of the substrate which are essential to the interaction constraints that
>determine the macro behaviour of the system.
>Thus, in theory, you can change the system's substrate and still have the
>same complex system, at its relevant
>level of description.

I am trying to identify those components of the substrate that support
"observation". I am currently of the opinion that these components are
shared by all dances or alternatively there are no such components. Either
way "observer" would not be a useful label for any dance.

>However, that being said, I think, Hal, that we're on a similar
>wavelength re. "fundamental" "info" physics.
>Ref. my previous everything-list posts on the subject:
Snip

I took a quick look. My approach is to forge a system containing no net
information that nevertheless expresses no net information in the form of a
randomly shifting "normal" real.

Yours

Hal
Received on Sun Apr 18 2004 - 19:47:49 PDT