Muchas gracias señor. The shoe is on the other foot, eh? The judge is on trial. This is a significant development insofar as god & humans are concerned. We've always trusted in god's judgment and that too despite what to even fools would be considered gross misccariage of justice. Well, not anymore! Something has gone horribly wrong, si?

Most Interesting. — Ms. Marple

Your post, if accurate, shows how little I know of God and our relationship with Him. What I find really intriguing is how the Jewish Elohim seems hard to distinguish from pagan god(s) - exhibiting qualities like spite, favor, and everything in between. All that only if you've given a true account of Jewish faith.

There really is no problem reconciling the tragic Jewish history with a God like that.

I suspect another reason why Jews maintain their faith despite what they went through (holocaust, persecution, etc.) is it defines their identity as a people.

Really superb points. G'day.

You ought to read Ecclesiastes; it'll challenge your own intuitive value judgments. Humans have no idea how the world ought to be or whose better off or how good or bad events often are because they can't see long term effects. You can't zoom out, we only see things from our limited perspective. — Moses

Thanks a million for the advice! Will get on it asap!

Yuval Noah Harari says so in his book Sapiens that what we tell ourselves is progress is actually a series of disasters for mother earth; we, he claims, are the global leaders when it comes to miscalculations. Limited perspective? Bullseye!

I went back and reread Verse 22 — T Clark

:snicker:

Moses!

:snicker:

brother Smith! — Hillary

:snicker:

Evolution is laissez-faire. Look at the mess we're in! Just a baby step away from ecological collapse unless...this is part of the Divine Plan. :snicker:

:ok:

That last sentence is just a contradiction. I don't know what you're talking about.

When you say "a get out of jail free" card you're already passing judgement. Humans have no idea. — Moses

You'd better do some reading then.

A ToE has a deceiving name. It explains mechanisms at the fundaments only and it is wrongly thought that from this knowledge everything can be explained. The basic principles are know the. — Hillary

:ok: Good to know.

Well, @Gnomon and I discussed this in another thread. Assume the role of God, a creator deity (Bruce Almighty). Your task is to bring into existence a universe from scratch! How would you do it? Wouldn't you first need info ( a how-to algorithm) to begin & complete your cosmic task? To make the long story short, information is (seems to be) most fundamental, even more basic than (any) substance, as far as I'm concerned. Look at it from a God's eye view. How do coders build virtual worlds? I hope I'm not off-topic. Sorry if I am.

error — Harry Hindu

I'm a prototype. Still needs work! :joke:

Weight is the information. — Harry Hindu

Thanks for clarifying that for me, but I do hope you don't mean that in the literal sense. If I write "my phone weighs 500 gm" does my phone gain 500 gm? :chin:

God moves in a mysterious way. — William Cowper

A get-out-of-jail card for God. Again, a theory that explains everything explains nothing, oui?

Have you ever received help from other humans? — universeness

Good question! Much appreciated.

Excellent point! I could not make sense of that which is, in a way, nonsense! How dumb of me!

However, I feel there's a connection between faith and intuition and we know the latter isn't exactly irrational, there seems to be a hidden logic that at the present moment remains unfathomable.

This is simple to resolve. — Harry Hindu

:snicker:

As we can ourselves clearly see, we are, we remain, utterly baffled by ourselves and the world! It is this, it is that, it is both, it is neither:

Confusion now hath made his masterpiece. — Macduff

:confused:

I said ‘in the philosophical sense’. Go and google ‘substance in philosophy’. Here’s the thing - substance in ordinary parlance means ‘material with uniform properties’ - which is what you’ve said. Substance in philosophy is a translation of Aristotle’s term ‘ousia’, which is actually nearer in meaning to ‘being’ or ‘subject’ than what we call ‘substance’ — Wayfarer

Ok. Will do what you asked.

Au revoir!

A word of caution: Etymological Fallacy

How did he know about the quantum vacuum already back then?
— Hillary

He didn't. — T Clark

He didn't.
— T Clark

It looks as if though. Maybe the two are the same in disguise. — Hillary

The mind's natural habitat is the quantum world. Lao Tzu was onto something i.e. his mind did know about whatever the hell quantum vacuum is. Have you seen gravity (the dominant force at large scales) ever give a consciousness preferential treatment? On the other hand, wave function collapse is effected via consciousness. :snicker:

Poets should be arrested and put away for a million years...for rule-breaking at such scales and severity. Wouldn't you agree? Where's the language police when we need 'em?

:snicker:

G'day.

There are things far more important than truth? :chin:

The answer to the question ‘what is information?’ Is another question: ‘what information are you referring to?’ It is not a substance - in the philosophical meaning of that term ‘the basic constituents of nature’, yet that is how it is being treated. — Wayfarer

Substance? Sorry! File not found!

Searching auxiliary memory...

True, information isn't a substance like, for instance, clay or paper is. If it were matter, my pen drive should gain weight as I continually save files on it. No! Is information energy? Can I perform work with information? How many joules (of energy) is 8 bits of information? Beats me!

End of file!

Yes it has the potential to guarantee the outcome you were looking for, the major component being to either a). establish a set of circumstances in which there is no other logical choice but to react/ behave a certain defined way or b). A circumstance in which it doesn’t matter how you act - that all possible options are anticipated and lead back to the same outcome ie. a false sense of free will within a circular system. — Benj96

I see! According to some sources...the idea is to surrender one's freedom (free will). Islam translates as "surrender" your will to Allah!

As is established, Shannon set out to solve a specific problem, namely, the transmission of information through electronic media, and everyone acknowledges that his work was fundamental to the success of information technology. No question. But to then claim that he has ‘defined information’ in any general sense, or that this has profound philosophical ramifications is what I’m questioning. It seems like hand-waving to me.

I got Paul Davies’ recent book on it, The Demon in the Machine. It’s a fascinating book and I’ve always liked that author. But it too contains a lot of breathless gesturing in the direction of ‘hey, this is something really PROFOUND’ in my opinion. — Wayfarer

I believe I got you. My intuition also concurs. Shannon's definition was tailored to address specific technological issues; don't ask me for details.

You and others who're of the same view are asking a deeper, metaphysical question: what is information...really?

We could keep Shannon's unit to measure information (bit) if it doesn't require us to endorse a metaphysical position that doesn't jibe with our gut feelings.

I'm not entirely sure about this but our instincts that all is not right in re the Shannon definition of information is still very vague/nebulous. I for one am as of now unable to home in on where exactly dear ol' Shannon trips up.

I would've loved to dig a little deeper but alas my math is a bit too rusty to complete the task as it were.

Let's keep it simple. Information as I understand it is just answers to questions.

1. What?
2. Where?
3. When?
4. How?
5. Who?
6. Which?
7. Whose?
8. Why?

An 8-dimensional universe in which information is a particular point described by 8 pieces of information (1 to 8 vide supra).

As you are aware all of the 8 questions above can be reduced to a proposition like so:

9. What is it? = It is an apple OR It is a dog OR...

In my humble opinion, Shannon's theory seems to fit right in - how many yes/no questions do we need an answer to to zero in on the correct answer to question 9? These yes/no answers basically eliminate the possibilities (vide the "OR" in question 9) by halving the possibility space at each step (I was told it bears some resemblance to the game 20 questions).

Basically, if you're familiar with logic, Shannon's notion of information is closely tied to the natural deduction rule called disjunctive syllogism (vide infra)

10. P or Q
11. Not P
Ergo,
12. Q

Please note that this in no way is an official position espoused by philosophers or information theorists. Just how my brain understands it. G'day mate!

@Banno has said, more times than I can count, that logic is a language! Well, we could treat the laws of (natural) deduction as syntax and as far as semantics goes there's a cent per cent overlap between logic & natural languages. That's as far as I could go. However, a question that comes to mind is this: is there logical poetry? Grammar, I believe, is shot to pieces in verse (poetic license). So irrationality could be, in a sense, logical poetry (rules? what rules?)

True, the blank in my mind which you alluded to may not be nothing. That gives me something to think about. I feel like I've been given a loaded gun and told to shoot, but at nothing! How do I shoot? Analysis paralysis. The mind is to be shut down as it were and (simulating what we believe is death - cessation of all thinking). Contrary to what I thought, we can experience death (virtual death).

:chin:

Well, my take is Shannon's mathematization would have to add precision to the definition (of information). Am I wrong?

@Jack Cummins

There are no accidents. — Master Oogway

Everything happens for a reason.

God moves in a mysterious way. — William Cowper

Maybe

There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. "Such bad luck," they said sympathetically. "May be," the farmer replied.

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. "How wonderful," the neighbors exclaimed. "May be," replied the old man.

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. "May be," answered the farmer.

The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. "May be," said the farmer.

Zero-Sum Games?!

:snicker:

Does he pipe for money?

"pijpen: whistle; blow; hum; give a blow-job; suckpijp: tobacco-pipe; pipe; piping; pipage" — Hillary

I dunno! :snicker:

Pro-choicers please kindly inform pro-lifers that choice is so important to God's vision of humanity that he permits the most horrific atrocities to be committed (re free will & the problem of evil)!

I suppose what I'm actually talking about is the famous problem of evil.

life and death issues — Jack Cummins

:up: Spiderman let an armed robber escape and it ended badly - beloved uncle Ben was fatally shot! Life, if it is a game, is in hardcore mode! No second chances!

Maybe try to keep your feelings out of it. — Benkei

:smile:

Language doesn't give a damn about logic!

Oh wow! :sweat: — javi2541997

:snicker:

Back in the days of South African Apartheid people didn't find moral clarity so difficult. Israel is a racist, shit country. — Benkei

I feel you're wrong. I know you're (probably) right! :smile: :sad:

Maybe there's a silver lining to all this senseless killings - the most violent members on both sides of the border are slowly offing each other. Only the peaceful one's will come out of this alive and finally in say about a century or two we can have some peace and quiet in the Middle East! :snicker:

Hasty/Sweeping Generalization.

That's no pipe! — Hillary

No, that's the piper. He wants his money!

:snicker:

Error and mistakes are how we learn — Possibility

:snicker:

To be honest with you my dear friend, it is the first I ever read this word so I would check it out in my English-Spanish dictionary :sweat: — javi2541997

:grin: Wikipedia has more. If memory serves, the name was taken from a movie - Gaslight - in which the rapscallion husband makes his wife think she's insane for his own personal gain! Aaaaah! life! Can't wait to be reborn!

I've noticed (not only) you also can say things that don't mean anything to anybody else. — 180 Proof

I concur! Maybe my logic, my premises, possibly both are a bit off if you catch my drift. Thinking is so hard! :sad: