Mushroom, that book is for laymen and has almost no math in the form of equations. It does have diagrams and line drawings.
Before I respond to Vickster’s larger post directed at me, I want to point out that a rational or even irrational universe doesn’t make sense. Rational or irrational refers to thinkers, or more specifically, intentionality. To say the universe could be either rational or irrational basically assumes the universe is “supposed” to look a particular way and if it doesn’t conform to your expectations, it’s irrational because it behaves as it shouldn’t. What would a rational universe even be? In my mind, you have to assume there is a creator that puts it all together in a rational way, i.e. accomplishes its goal. Even if that were the case, rational according to whom? I would bet Vickster has some hidden premise he didn’t realize.
*edit* I thought you were Vickster somehow, so… I edited wording >_>
*raises hand* 'Scuse me! I think by “the universe is irrational” what is meant is that the law of identity would not always hold true, thus leading to the actual existence of contradictions.
*raises hand* 'Scuse me! I think by “the universe is irrational” what is meant is that the law of identity would not always hold true, thus leading to the actual existence of contradictions.
I didn’t think of it in those terms, so thanks for pointing it out. However, it’s also quite open to misinterpretation and perhaps expectations beyond the law of identity. In a metaphysical sense, rational or irrational would be mostly arguments for god by means of asserting a metaphysical rationality. In an epistemological sense, expectations are rational/sensible to humans, or at least, that’s the most viable way to set standards. Irrational would be about a lack of a standard that does any good. As for how the universe is “supposed” to look, that’s the law of identity, and the only facts people should take as a given are the axioms. But I shouldn’t say that black holes are “supposed” to be a certain way other than they are supposed to have an identity. So, I’m thinking Vickster might have a hidden premise from the start that the law of identity is falsifiable meaning that indeed contradictions might exist, or perhaps that some principles of physics are axiomatic making any violation of them (such as some aspects of black holes) as proof against the law of identity.
I still find (ir)rational universe to be awkward phrasing, given that inanimate objects have no kind of intentionality (“aboutness” to thinking) or rationality.
I guess the Oist defending the black hole unicorn are ok with the idea of an existent with infinite density?
Edit: The real black hole war:
"The notion of black holes voraciously gobbling up matter, twisting space-time into contortions that trap light, stretching the unwary into long spaghetti-like strands as they fall inward to ultimately collide and merge with an infinitely dense point-mass singularity, has become a mantra of the scientific community, so much so that even primary school children know about the sinister black hole, waiting patiently, like the Roman child’s Hannibal, for an opportunity to abduct the unruly and the misbehaved. There are almost daily reports of scientists claiming black holes again found here and there.
It is asserted that black holes range in size from micro to mini, to intermediate and on up through to supermassive behemoths. Black holes are glibly spoken of and accepted as scientific facts and that they have been detected at the centre of galaxies. Images of black holes having their wicked ways with surrounding matter are routinely offered with reports of them. Some physicists even claim that black holes will be created in particle accelerators, such as the Large Hadron Collider, potentially able to swallow the Earth, if care is not taken in their production.
Yet despite all this hoopla, contrary to the assertions of the astronomers and astrophysicists of the black hole community, nobody has ever identified a black hole, anywhere, let alone ‘imaged’ one. The pictures adduced to convince are actually either artistic impressions (i.e. drawings) or photos of otherwise unidentified objects imaged by telescopes and merely asserted to be black holes, ad hoc.
No Escape
The alleged signatures of the alleged black hole are an infinitely dense point-mass singularity and an event horizon. Scientists frequently assert that the escape velocity of a black hole (from its event horizon) is that of light and that nothing, not even light, can escape the black hole. In fact, according to the same scientists, nothing, including light, can even leave the event horizon. But there is already a problem with these bald claims (black holes are also alleged to have ‘no hair’).
If the escape velocity of a black hole is that of light, then light, on the one hand, can escape. On the other hand, light is allegedly not able to even leave the event horizon, so the black hole has no escape velocity. If the escape velocity of a black hole is that of light, not only can light both leave and escape, material objects can also leave the event horizon, but not escape, even though, according to the Theory of Special Relativity, they can only have a velocity less than that of light. This just means that material bodies will leave the black hole and eventually stop and fall back to the black hole, just like a ball thrown into the air here on Earth with an initial velocity less than the escape velocity for the Earth. So the properties of the alleged event horizon of a black hole are irretrievably contradictory.
What of the infinitely dense point-mass singularity at the heart of the black hole? It is supposed to be formed by irresistible gravitational collapse so that matter is crushed into zero volume, into a ‘point’, a so-called ‘point-mass’. One recalls from high school that density is defined as the mass of an object divided by the volume of the object. If the mass is not zero and the volume is zero, as in the case of a black hole, one gets division by zero. But all school children know that division by zero is not allowed by the rules of mathematics. Nonetheless, black hole proponents are, by some special privilege, somehow permitted to flout the rules of elementary mathematics and divide by zero! No, the scientists too cannot divide by zero, despite their claims to the contrary.
Einstein Violated
Furthermore, black holes are allegedly obtained from Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. It is called the General Theory because it is a generalisation of his Special Theory of Relativity. As such, General Relativity cannot, by definition, violate Special Relativity, but that is precisely what the black hole does.
Special Relativity forbids infinite densities because, according to that Theory, infinite density implies infinite energy (or equivalently that a material object can acquire the speed of light in vacuo). Therefore General Relativity too forbids infinite densities. But the point-mass singularity of the black hole is allegedly infinitely dense, in violation of Special Relativity. Thus the Theory of Relativity forbids the existence of a black hole.
Non-event on the Horizon
What now of the event horizon of the black hole? According to the proponents of the black hole it takes an infinite amount of time for an observer to watch an object (via the light from that object, of course) fall into the event horizon. So it therefore takes an infinite amount of time for the observer to verify the existence of an event horizon and thereby confirm the presence of a black hole. However, nobody has been and nobody will be around for an infinite amount of time in order to verify the presence of an event horizon and hence the presence of a black hole. Nevertheless, scientists claim that black holes have been found all over the place.
The fact is nobody has assuredly found a black hole anywhere – no infinitely dense point-mass singularity and no event horizon. Some black hole proponents are more circumspect in how they claim the discovery of their black holes. They instead say that their evidence for the presence of a black hole is indirect. But such indirect ‘evidence’ cannot be used to justify the claim of a black hole, in view of the fatal contradictions associated with infinitely dense point-mass singularities and event horizons. One could just as well assert the existence and presence of deep space unicorns on the basis of such ‘evidence’.
“If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.” - Albert Einstein
It is also of great importance to be mindful of the fact that no observations gave rise to the notion of a black hole in the first place, for which a theory had to be developed. The black hole was wholly spawned in the reverse, i.e. it was created by theory and observations subsequently misconstrued to legitimize the theory. Reports of black holes are just wishful thinking in support of a belief; not factual in any way.
Another major and fatal contradiction in the idea of the black hole is the allegation that black holes can be components of binary systems, collide or merge. Let us, for the sake of argument, assume that black holes are predicted by General Relativity. The black hole is fundamentally described by a certain mathematical expression called a line-element (which is just a fancy name for a distance formula, like that learnt in high school) that involves just one alleged mass in the entire Universe (just the alleged source of a gravitational field), since the said distance formula is a solution for a space-time allegedly described by Einstein’s equations in vacuum (or, more accurately, emptiness), namely Ric = 0.
One does not need to know anything at all about the mathematical intricacies of this equation to see that it cannot permit the presence of one black hole, let alone two or more black holes. The mathematical object denoted by Ric is what is called a tensor (in this case it is Ricci’s tensor, and hence its notation). The reason why Ric = 0 is because in Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity all matter that contributes to the source of the gravitational field must be described by another tensor, called the energy-momentum tensor. In the case of the so-called vacuum field equations the energy-momentum tensor is set to zero, because there is no mass or radiation present by hypothesis. Otherwise Ric would not be equal to zero. So the alleged black hole can interact with nothing, not even an ‘observer’. Ric = 0 is not a two body situation, only, allegedly, a one body situation (and hence quite meaningless).
One cannot just introduce extra objects into a given solution to Einstein’s field equations, because his theory asserts that the curvature of space-time (i.e. the gravitational field) is due to the presence of matter and that the said matter, all of it, must be described by his energy-momentum tensor. If the energy-momentum tensor is zero, there is no matter present. Einstein’s field equations are nonlinear, so the ‘Principle of Superposition’ does not apply. Before one can talk of relativistic binary systems it must first be proved that the two-body system is theoretically well-defined by General Relativity.
This can be done in only two ways:
(a) Derivation of an exact solution to Einstein’s field equations for the two-body configuration of matter; or
( B) Proof of an existence theorem.
There are no known solutions to Einstein’s field equations for the interaction of two (or more) masses, so option (a) has never been fulfilled. No existence theorem has ever been proved, by which Einstein’s field equations even admit of latent solutions for such configurations of matter, and so option ( B) has never been fulfilled either. Since Ric = 0 is a statement that there is no matter in the Universe, one cannot simply insert a second black hole into the space-time of Ric = 0 of a given black hole so that the resulting two black holes (each obtained separately from Ric = 0) mutually interact in a mutual spacetime that by definition contains no matter.
One cannot simply assert by an analogy with Newton’s theory that two black holes can be components of binary systems, collide or merge, because the ‘Principle of Superposition’ does not apply in Einstein’s theory. Moreover, General Relativity has to date been unable to account for the simple experimental fact that two fixed bodies will approach one another upon release. So from where does the matter allegedly associated with the solution to Ric = 0 come, when this is a statement that there is no matter present? The proponents of the black hole just put it in at the end, a posteriori and ad hoc, in violation of their starting hypothesis that Ric = 0.
No Solution
Finally, the fundamental solution to Ric = 0 is usually called the “Schwarzschild solution”. Despite its name, it is not in fact Schwarzschild’s solution. Schwarzschild’s actual solution forbids black holes. The frequent claim that Schwarzschild found and advocated a black hole solution is patently false, as a reading of Schwarzschild’s paper on the subject irrefutably testifies. False too are the claims that he predicted an event horizon and that he determined the “Schwarzschild radius” (i.e. the alleged ‘radius’ of the black hole event horizon). Schwarzschild actually had nothing to do with the black hole, but attaching his name to it lends the notion an additional façade of scientific legitimacy. "
http://www.thunderbolts.info/thunderblogs/archives/guests08/061108_sjcrothers.htm
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vickster:
What do you mean by the “event horizon” preserving information?
Firstly I was never under the impression that the “event horizon” itself was ever postulated as an existent rather than merely a phenomenological consequence of the black hole itself, that is if the term “horizon” refers to coordinates of space as such (relationships between existents).
Second what do you mean by “information” do you mean something from information theory or that physical quantities (linear momentum, angular momentum, charge, strangeness etc.) must be conserved?
Third: assuming something like black holes or at least massive bodies whose gravitational force overcomes all Electroweak and strong forces, exist, has any physical mechanism been discovered (not just postulated)… which causes actual “loss” of information or violates laws of conservation?
The imputing of “information” to mind independent status is rank reification.
The imputing of “information” to mind independent status is rank reification.
This is not correct. What would be rank reification is imputing “knowledge” to mind independent status. Information is an objective and quantifiable facet of existence. Without information theory and the sub-specialty coding theory it would not be possible for us to communicate across the internet like this or even have computers.
The important linking concept between physics and information theory is entropy. Information is physical in the sense of being causal because it can only exist by means of matter or energy, nor can matter and energy exist without having information.as an attribute.
I know no way to transfer meaning from the context “information” was formed in, to the context it is here being used, without denying its contextual roots. Unless one is simply recycling a word with an established connection to a specific set of referents and using it in a context completely unrelated and living with the confusion it creates. However, my read is, the adherents simply fail to apply a valid reduction and contextual analysis of “information” and accept a usage without knowledge of its origin and without guidance from a normative epistemology. The result is an attempt to resolve “paradoxes” ad hoc, caused simply by bad epistemology.
I realize you currently don’t agree and I’d be interested in any sources you think would convince me of the inference that information does not involve a mind to be informed.
I know no way to transfer meaning from from the context “information” was formed in, to the context it is here being used, without denying its contextual roots. Unless one is simply recycling a word with an established connection to a specific set of referents and using it in a context completely unrelated and living with the confusion it creates. However, my read is, the adherents simply fail to apply a valid reduction and contextual analysis of “information” and accept a usage without knowledge of its origin and without guidance from a normative epistemology. The result is an attempt to resolve “paradoxes” ad hoc, caused simply by bad epistemology.
I realize you currently don’t agree and I’d be interested in any sources you think would convince me of the inference that information does not involve a mind to be informed.
There is no need to go beyond the first page of Claude Shannon’s classic paper that founded information theory “A Mathematical Theory of Communication”.
The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately
a message selected at another point. Frequently the messages have meaning; that is they refer
to or are correlated according to some system with certain physical or conceptual entities. These semantic
aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem. The significant aspect is that the actual
message is one selected from a set of possible messages. The system must be designed to operate for each
possible selection, not just the one which will actually be chosen since this is unknown at the time of design.
If the number of messages in the set is finite then this number or any monotonic function of this number
can be regarded as a measure of the information produced when one message is chosen from the set, all
choices being equally likely.
It is a restricted context because semantic meaning is omitted. Actually, the omission of semantic meaning makes this concept of information broader than one which includes it.
Also, consider the Shannon’s diagram of the model of communication over a noisy channel:
This is the same as the object-environment-subject relation in perception. Taking the case of visual perception, things such as rocks and trees do not send messages with semantic content when they appear to us yet their appearance is informative of what rocks and trees are and do. Even more broadly, one needn’t take the subject to be a perceiving consciousness. When one planet gravitationally attracts another planet there is information about the mass of the planet and its distance embedded in that gravitational force.
Information is used fairly synonomously with data.
Things such as rocks and trees provide the data of what rocks and trees are and do. The data about the mass and distance of a planet is embedded in the gravitational force.
I see a problem here, related to a broader context Im working on. I’ll repond more when I formalize my point better.
I have a particular interpretation of “information” which may or may not be relevant to others interpretation of the term.
Information is a potentiality of knowledge, In a sense it is pre-mind, But for information to truly be something connected with knowledge, something which can help give rise to it, it must be causally linked.
So a pattern in the sand is information precisely of what caused it or what the sand is because something did create a pattern in the sand. Knowledge can be gleaned from the pattern, i.e. from the information. this is to be distinguished from mental contents which may or may not be information for other people (imagination is not information .. and is causally not linked to reality) so when someone tells you something it can be information if causally linked or a lie (if imagination etc.).
Is a random pattern information? only insofar as it reveals its source, which would be a contradiction for random “information” (stolen concept). This leads to questions of whether any process is truly random… since only a pattern created by a truly random process would be truly random, and hence contain no information.
Edge cases I have heard of which seemingly are exceptions to the causal definition of information is the purported random information which is somehow actually information (but acausally so).
E.g. Imagine if you will a billion monkeys typing on keyboards or a billion monkeys painting, We could categorize all that they produce as simply random, and since it is causally connected to nothing, simply meaningless (except perhaps as a compendium of knowledge of the tapping or paintbrush waving proclivities of primates).
if in a trillion years one of the monkeys reproduces a Mona Lisa or a Shakespeare sonnet, has “information” magically been created? I would say no. The patterns are still random tappings or brushings of a monkey. why? Because in reality that is all they are… causally speaking they represent physics of paint, or typwriters and biology and psychology of monkeys no other information of reality is contained therein. When someone looks at the words or the paint and identifies them as being coordinate with something else, the words or paint in combination with the identification by the person, becomes information, i.e. capable of being used as knowledge.
How? A person ignorant of the Mona lisa or the sonnet, now can be supplied with the Monkey text or the painted sheet, and assuming they can trust the person as being honest they can know that there is in reality a correspondence between the text or the paint and respectively the mona lisa or Shakespeare. this is causal because the original work (mona lisa or shakespear) and or copies thereof are causally linked to the person who saw or read it and that person after seeing the Monkey work has identified the correspondence.
So information is simply states or arrangements of existents which can be used as evidence or as starting material for an individual’s gaining of knowledge of something in reality, and as such (by implication) information must be causally linked to the entities of which knowledge may be gained.
Just a few ideas.
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So a pattern in the sand is information precisely of what caused it or what the sand is because something did create a pattern in the sand. …
<snip>
if in a trillion years one of the monkeys reproduces a Mona Lisa or a Shakespeare sonnet, has “information” magically been created? I would say no.
This is a contradiction. You were led to this contradiction by taking the idea of “random” seriously, i.e. as if randomness actually existed or in other words as if randomness were metaphysical. Randomness is really only appearance caused by our lack of knowledge or inability to calculate, i.e. it is epistemological. Nothing is actually random.
Shannon’s treatment is short, consistent, rigorous and has been highly fruitful in a multitude of practical and objectively successful applications.
So information is simply states or arrangements of existents which can be used as evidence or as starting material for an individual’s gaining of knowledge of something in reality, and as such (by implication) information must be causally linked to the entities of which knowledge may be gained.
err, all I can say is I second the recommendation of Shannon’s paper. There’s information in everything, but I think Grames elaborated very well already. Basically, knowledge is information actively and cognitively integrated; information is a set of data that is useful for some task whether it be your eyes leading to vision or digital signals converted to analog signals. Data is a “raw” fact like “it rained 10 centimeters last night”. Information and data can be blurry, but the distinction that’s important is that knowledge needs a knower or a mind, but informaton exists without any knower or mind.
err, all I can say is I second the recommendation of Shannon’s paper. There’s information in everything, but I think Grames elaborated very well already. Basically, knowledge is information actively and cognitively integrated; information is a set of data that is useful for some task whether it be your eyes leading to vision or digital signals converted to analog signals. Data is a “raw” fact like “it rained 10 centimeters last night”. Information and data can be blurry, but the distinction that’s important is that knowledge needs a knower or a mind, but informaton exists without any knower or mind.
I do not disagree with Grames. I just wanted to highlight the importance of causality. If information is to be about something, equally if information is to lead to knowledge (hence a knowledge of something.. one cannot have knowledge of nothing… ) that information needs to be somehow linked with reality … and it seems that a causal link is what does it.
This is a contradiction. You were led to this contradiction by taking the idea of “random” seriously, i.e. as if randomness actually existed or in other words as if randomness were metaphysical. Randomness is really only appearance caused by our lack of knowledge or inability to calculate, i.e. it is epistemological. Nothing is actually random.
Shannon’s treatment is short, consistent, rigorous and has been highly fruitful in a multitude of practical and objectively successful applications.
I actually don’t take the idea of randomness seriously. I was sloppy with my wording and for that I apologize. I thought up the ideas of the Monkeys to highlight the difference between coincidence and information. the Moneys do provide information about their chaotic aimless behaviour (not completely random) but the accidental Mona lisa or Shakespeare do not contain information.
just an idea I had I thought someone might find interesting.
Is there a distinction to be made between the concept of information/content and the method of encoding it or the form or simply the amount of that information? If we are only talking about encoding or magnitude of any pattern whether informative or not then I have probably brought up a complete irrelevancy and I apologize.
but the accidental Mona lisa or Shakespeare do not contain information.
Is there a distinction to be made between the concept of information/content and the method of encoding it or the form or simply the amount of that information? If we are only talking about encoding or magnitude of any pattern whether informative or not then I have probably brought up a complete irrelevancy and I apologize.
But the accidental Mona Lisa or Shakespeare work would contain information. Many written works of the same length with the same statistical frequency of appearance of each of the letters will contain very similar amounts of information even if the ‘words’ (strings of characters between spaces) formed were gibberish. The monkeys do not need to create a Shakespeare to produce information.
A selection from a finite set (pick a letter from the alphabet) conveys information. For example, and disregarding upper/lowercase, picking one of 26 letters encodes about 4.7 bits of information, whichever letter it is.
The semantic content, the issue of meaning and intentionality by a writer or reader, is omitted for this consideration. This is the only sense in which it makes sense for physicists to be discussing information and whether it is conserved or not.
The “accidental” Mona Lisa or Shakesphere would only be so because the monkeys were given brushes and paint or typewriters.
In picking one of 26 letters, they are letters because we recognise them as such, thanks to the typewriter, regardless if they form words, sentences or paragraphs as such.
I do not find this clarifying in the sense of the “information” issue.
But the accidental Mona Lisa or Shakespeare work would contain information. Many written works of the same length with the same statistical frequency of appearance of each of the letters will contain very similar amounts of information even if the ‘words’ (strings of characters between spaces) formed were gibberish. The monkeys do not need to create a Shakespeare to produce information.
A selection from a finite set (pick a letter from the alphabet) conveys information. For example, and disregarding upper/lowercase, picking one of 26 letters encodes about 4.7 bits of information, whichever letter it is.
The semantic content, the issue of meaning and intentionality by a writer or reader, is omitted for this consideration. This is the only sense in which it makes sense for physicists to be discussing information and whether it is conserved or not.
From what I gather my use of the word “information”, particularly in the context of Shannon and others treatment of information theory, is inaccurate. What I was referring to was what content is represented by, in the case of digital or analog communications, the bits or modulated carriers, symbols (Q and I modulation etc.), and not the stream of symbols themselves. My error.
When we hear a Physicist talk of conservation of “information” as such, rather than physical quantities, I was understandably interested. What is, in physical systems, information? Surely it has something to do with physical states or arrangements.
But why should one consider information to be a separate quantity that needs to be conserved? Is this from observation? Is it actually a physical quantity?
Sl, the answer to your questions above is central to the exchange we previously had, and to which I have not yet returned. My response will address both this error and that one.
The “accidental” Mona Lisa or Shakesphere would only be so because the monkeys were given brushes and paint or typewriters.
In picking one of 26 letters, they are letters because we recognise them as such, thanks to the typewriter, regardless if they form words, sentences or paragraphs as such.
I do not find this clarifying in the sense of the “information” issue.
Every time a monkey punches one of a possible 26 buttons, that act produces 4.7 bits of information. This is because the base 2 logarithm of 26 is equal to 4.7. The buttons could be blank, and they could be wired up to not produce letters but simply distinct marks of arbitrary design. It is the 26 that matters, which includes the 25 characters not selected when a monkey does punch a particular button.