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  Topic: Uncommonly Dense Thread 3, The Beast Marches On...< Next Oldest | Next Newest >  
Hermagoras



Posts: 1260
Joined: June 2007

(Permalink) Posted: Mar. 21 2010,21:43   

Barry brings the stupid:
 
Quote
Think of it this way.  Suppose I wrote the same sentence (“A basketball is round and orange”) on a piece of paper and handed it to you and asked you to read and memorize it.  You proceed to memorize the sentence.  I take the paper back and burn it.  Then I ask you to repeat the sentence into a tape recorder.  You dictate “A basketball is round and orange” into the tape recorder.  What just happened?  The information was in my head.  Then it was on the paper.  Then it was in your head, but not the paper.  Now it is on the tape of the tape recorder.

What is the point of all this?  The point is that information may be transmitted on a physical medium, but it is not reducible to the medium on which it is carried, and it is independent of the medium upon which it is carried.  Information has no mass.  It has no charge.  Indeed, it has no property that can be measured by the same means we measure matter and energy.  We conclude, therefore, that information is not reducible to matter, and it is not reducible to energy, and it is not reducible to a combination of matter and energy.  Yet we know that information exists in the universe.  Therefore, we must conclude that the universe is more than matter and energy, that it is more than mere particles in motion.

If the existence of information cannot be reduced to the properties of matter and energy, where did it come from?  Where indeed?

My God that is dumb.  It's like something you'd think up if you were 15 or 16, stoned for the first time, staring at a basketball.  And then you turn and notice this:


Eureka!  "A basketball is round and orange." Oh man, that is so profound. I better record that.

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"I am not currently proving that objective morality is true. I did that a long time ago and you missed it." -- StephenB

http://paralepsis.blogspot.com/....pot.com

   
  15001 replies since Sep. 04 2009,16:20 < Next Oldest | Next Newest >  

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