···
At 03:04 PM 11/21/2010 +1300, Gavin Ritz wrote:
GR: Information is not an
analytic, the very model of PCT doesn’t allow for the concept of information
(as in Information theory). The input function is a transducer (like a
microphone) of incoming energy signals. Every single incoming signal is an
energy signal all transduced to an electrical signal that goes to the brain.
This is just a fact of PCT.
BP: You’re using the word “energy” in a strange way (not to mention
“analytic”). The response of a sensory neuron to a stimulus is not to
the energy carried by the stimulus, but to the amplitude of the stimulus.
GR: All
incoming forms are energy. Not sure why you say I’m using it in a strange
way. Light coming into the eyes is from electromagnetic waves this is a form of
energy. Sound is another form of mechanical energy. ‘Vibration of a
medium”. The eyes and ears transform this energy into an electrical signal.
The sensing organs transduce these energy forms to an electrical signal. Amplitudes
and frequencies and wavelengths are ways to measure this energy. The electrical
impulses that are moved in the neural system are a transduction of this energy.
A steady force applied to
a touch receptor produces (after an initial higher peak) a steady stream of
neural inpulses, which are produced and propagated by drawing chemical energy
from the surrounding tissues.
Okay so it’s
still a transduction no matter what ay you look at it.
After
the first compression of the skin, no energy at all is transmitted
It’s
not transmitted its sensed and transduced.
into
the body from the applied force, since mechanical energy = force x distance,
and the distance through which the force moves after the initial touch is zero.
A slowly decreasing force is reflected in a slowing of the rate at which
impulses are being generated, and because the distance traveled is now in the
outward direction, energy is being drawn from
the body from energy stored in the compressed skin and underlying tissues. The
same happens with “cold receptors,” which respond to a loss of heat
to the environment by generating neural signals. Energy is traveling from the
warm receptor to the cold environment.
I would
say we are saying almost exactly the same thing.
A microphone is indeed a transducer, but in a capacitive microphone it is a
transducer of a displacement (of one plate of a capacitor) to a voltage, not an
energy to a voltage.
Of
course it’s an energy. Sound waves are a form of mechanical energy.
In
a dynamic microphone, it is a transducer of velocity, not energy, to voltage
since it is the motion of the sensitive
element in a magnetic field that generates the output signal.
Not sure
how you can say this. It’s not only the velocity.
Sound is
a wave propagation. The wave (alternation in pressure and particle displacement
or particle velocity propagated in an elastic medium).
In fact
photons and phonons (long wavelengths gives rise to sound) can be calculated using
the same formulas.
It is true that all transductions involve at least a transient flow of energy,
but the direction of the flow doesn’t mean that the transfer of effects from
source to destination goes the same way. And whatever energy transfer occurs at
the sensory interface, the energy is quickly dissipated and is not the energy
that travels through an axon carrying the sensory signal.
But if
there is no incoming energy forms (no Perceptual controlled variable) no selection
no action, nothing happens.
That
energy comes from ions moving in and out across the cell membrane and ultimately
from metabolism.
Of course
it does. But there is also energy coming in from the environment which is
transduced by the organism.
I’m being told by Richard Kennaway and others that energy per se
has nothing to do with information transfer.
This is
not entirely true because it does take a certain amount of energy to send one
bit. 0.693kT joules.
If
information can flow one way while energy flows the other way, it would seem
that information is not a physical variable – it is a flow of something that
is neither energy nor matter or any combination of the two. This makes me wonder,
perhaps in agreement with you, whether information is anything but an
intellectual exercise, a quantity which can be calculated but which has no
physical significance. I once wrote a little piece about another such quantity
which I called “flenishness,” defined (if I remember right) as the
local time of day (0 to 23:59:59.9999…) divided by the
Centigrade temperature. This is clearly a measurable quantity, but its
relationship to other physical variables, while highly significant
statistically, is meaningless.
I think
we are saying exactly the same thing.
I’m not saying that the word information is meaningless; only that the word
Information (capital I, Shannon Information) is meaningless even though it can
be computed and obeys laws that can be worked out. I will be quite happy to eat
those words (they’re small) if someone can tell me what Information (or for
that matter, information) means outside the circular definitions by which it is
defined.
Ever since I fell under the spell of Korzybski in high school I have been aware
that the word is not the object it is used to indicate. I discovered not long
afterward that many words do not indicate any object at all, except other
words.
This way
to
That way to
the sign that
------>
<--------- The sign that
says that
way
says this way
Intelligence is the
<-----------------> The score on an I.Q.
score on an I.Q.
test
test is Intelligence
The statement over
<------------------ The statement over
there is false
------------------>
there is true
These statements are not about anything. They aren’t true or false; they just
are. If you start puzzling about that last pair, you’ve trapped yourself in the
same illusion that makes people think that the active elements in the Crowd
demo have intelligent strategies, plan their movements, or anticipate outcomes.
The only active ingredient in illusions is your own imagination. The only
meanings the above words “have” are the meanings you give them. If
you want to imagine that the last pair is a paradox, it’s a paradox. If you
don’t, it’s not.
Now fill in this one:
Information
is
_______________ is
<------------------->
Information
Those are imperative logic statements as you are
asking me to do something, so they can’t be true or false you are
correct. As I have said many times imperative logic is the key to mathematical circumscribing PCT.
Regards
Gavin
