2004 05 01
Information as a spectrum of sub-sets has been a major metaphor at Macroinformation all along. So has information as a spectrum of complexity and dimensionality. More recently other sprecta have insinuated themselves: objectivity/subjectivity, quality/quantity …
First I intend to make the older files functional in my new organizational system. Then I’ll edit them, hopefully making the sense communicable. New menus may come well after the beginning of that process.
2004 02 18
Spectra: I have labored to introduce macroinformation as manifesting in a complex of spectra: rightward on a conventional X axis. A number of spectra interact, or are simultaneously present: at least in potential. Simultaneously I labor to provide clear examples: mixing theory with illustration. Initially the theory must dominate: till some quorum of essentials has been establshed. Thereafter, illustrations may take the fore: the theory may then tag easily along. Y, Z, and additional axies enter.
We could perhaps consider them in any order, but here’s I think an instructive order:
First we must have the possibility of information. That requires contrast, perceptible difference, a potential for background and foreground. Simultaneously we must have the possibility of probability. If common cannot be distinguished from rare, no information will emerge. We must be able to tell scratches on the rock from the natural rock, must see ink on the paper as distinct from (and more improbable) than dirt on the paper.
Given contrast, we then have a range, a spectrum of complexity: putting Simple to the “left” and increasing Complexity “rightward.”
Orthogonality enters as we discern logical differences. Information becomes multi-dimensional.
Understand at all times: we are dealing with perceived reality. Information exists in a Berkeleyan universe. Creatura may exist physically in a physical universe (Pleroma), but Sentiens can “know” only an informational universe. If we don’t sense it, it has no informational existence. Imagination will never go where there’s no data at all.
Our spectrum of Complexity interrelates to our spectrum of dimensionality: simpler — fewer relevant dimensions; more complex — more dimensions minimally.
Other spectra may be seen to relate: further bulging both complexity and dimensionality: and logic. In data, the simplest, uni-dimensional, information, quantity applies, but quality is hardly relevant beyond the question of whether or not one can “read” the data. As complexity increases, quality emerges as a consideration: is the St. Matthew Passion “better” than “I Wanna Hold Your Hand? With Macroinformation, the question will become answerable: the more information, the better the information. “Opinion” may come to relate to “calculate.” A genetic code that would not just recognize a benzine ring, not just make “blue eyes,” but would “call up all the data in the unvierse” would be a high quality information indeed. (And I say that The St. Matthew Passion calls up a great deal of the data in the unverse: as does Hamlet.)
Contrarily, the further we progress in complexity, the more inextricably we are engaged in interpretation. Objectivity would be forced to be statistical. There’s little subjectivity in agreeing that Brunhilde’s Heil Licht in the Ring is answered with a G chord; objectivity in saying that the Ring is “really” a dramatization of Evolution must remain statistical: and must become more statisical the more we know about it.
Spectrum of Informational Complexity coming up initially as a separate post.
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