minds as information machines, part 2 May 11 2011

some asturian gaita again, this time a pipe band

on part 1 we first discussed the broad definition of observation and mind. today we’ll continue to more complex structures. to summarize, the first observations are the physical patterns due to reality’s laws of nature (the mindless observers of reality), and the first minds are the ones that change their physical structure by using the laws of nature as the feedback loop for their structure.

as we identify more and more complex structures, the pattern is the same: represented information and replicated information through work on itself/others. this work can be done by consequences of the structure itself. for example, a cell whose work is basically chemical and thermodynamical with no “brain” controlling it (we’ll define this soon). we can say that the reason why these regulation processes that allow this to happen exist are the consequence of an evolutionary thought that led there. note that this definition of “thought” is simpler than usual: it is the processing of information through work. it makes no distinction if this processing is done using forces outside of the system (laws of nature for example) or internal forces (the biased expression of internal energy of the system). so a cell thinks through evolution and this allows it to adapt.

as these structures develop growing internal information (quantifiable as the total information of its constituents, which is the information of the arranged molecules), they can interact with similar, work capable, structures. i’m not adding a definition, but merely identifying another feedback that can happen: not only laws of nature apply, but also other things can do work to change information in other things. the chemical communication between cells is an excellent example of this and has incredible effects. if the work loop can be done with “faster” laws, i.e., if information can be processed faster than through evolutionary time, then thoughts can occur more frequently and evolution can move faster. this is evident in single cell organisms that react to their environment and that leave chemical cues to their partners. sexual reproduction is another good example of the first multiple agent thinking. sex is effectively a non-conservative transformation of information: we feed a and b in, and we get a part of a and a part of b mixed in an unpredictable way. this is another type of information processing.

in general, and layer blindly (this is very important), i will therefore give the following definitions:

• an observation is a non-random arrangement of a subset of basic elements of reality (as a written description of a sunset is to the random arrangement of the letters it was written with);
• a thought is a transformation of information from one state to another (this information can be internal or external and transform it into internal and external information, in any order);
• a mind is anything capable of producing work that creates thoughts and/or observations

or, in mathematics just to annoy everyone again, let reality R be the set of all existing elements (does it include itself? not going there, this is an axiom, remember?).

• observation: such that , where indicates the elements of O and I is information (that arrangement is less likely than many random ones of its elements);
• thought: , a function t that takes internal observations O and reality R (note that O is inside R, making the distinction unnecessary, but used for clarity), and generates a new arrangement of O and R, O’ R’ (note that this kind of definition is applicable to almost any physical system that does a work cycle);
• mind: the set , where O is the observation and f is its thought function.

now, this is a bit idiotic again. i am using an abstraction to define O and R as separate things, but it should be obvious that one is a partial copy of another. there is only R, and O is in it. the only apparently special thing is the f, that is hard to understand why it is there. we can both say it is part of R or of some other kind of medium outside R. in my case, i prefer to say these f s are just R ‘s constituents interacting and affecting one another with their own properties. this, obviously, could be a lengthy discussion, so i’ll leave it there. O and f are subsets of R.

now that we formalized thoughts, minds and observation as simpler things, we can understand them in a broader sense. i will tackle bigger and bigger structures in the next parts.