dnmlthr
Posts: 565
Joined: Mar. 2008
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| Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ Sep. 22 2009,17:54) | | Quote (dnmlthr @ Sep. 22 2009,10:57) | | Code isn't readable without a compiler? Strange, I'm reading code in a text editor as we speak. |
I think I've worked out what his "point" is.
Joe G On /
Yes, you can read the bits from the disk. But those bits are simply ones and zeros unless they are "surrounded" by the context of programming languages, machines to execute them, the actual understanding of the programming language itself etc etc.
Joe G Off /
So when Joe G says
| Quote | | The code is not reducible to the matter that makes up the disc. |
In one way he's right. You need more then the "code" itself to give the information on the disc meaning. In his "mind" however, no doubt the understanding required to understand the code resides in a human mind which is non-material and therefore it's impossible that the code is reducible to matter.
But so what, all it means is that he says "everything required to understand the code on the disc is not reducible to less then that which is required to understand the code on the disc" really saying nothing at all.
Unless of course the disc is a disc that contains instructions on how to understand the rest of the disc? Starting from the simplest mathematical axoims...
Douglas Hofstader wrote about this, in a way, in Le Ton beau de Marot. I'm sure I'll mangle it, but where does the information and the way the information is instantiated begin and end? Would a record sent into space where grooves physically represent sound waves be any different to a CD-ROM containing the same music but digitised? Does the language a poem is in change the meaning of the poem?
So in way Joe has an interesting point. In a way. Of course saying "The code is not reducible to the matter that makes up the disc" is like saying a space rocket is not reducible to the instructions that tell you how to build a space rocket. You still need some other bits and pieces. Bolts, stuff like that. People.
It's just a shame he's too chicken to come here and debate his grand idea. |
But information exists regardless of meaning to the current observer, or perhaps I'm not following your line of reasoning.
Granted, Big Joey G-funk probably defines information in a different way than Kolmogorov-Chaitin (at least according to my all-too-brief exposure to information theory). If only my exposure to UD was as brief.
Mark Chu-Carroll writes more and better about this topic than I'm capable of.
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Guess what? I don't give a flying f*ck how "science works" - Ftk
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