Mid-afternoon. You and Carol are at the far
north end parking at Pine Hill Lakes Park, facing west toward the hill full of
naked trees. This is after an excellent lunch at Longhorn’s with Jen as your
server. - Amorella
1501
hours. I just stumbled on this article in the latest edition of Edge.
** **
The wisdom of knowing what to ask
By
PAUL ERICSON, Editor, Rochester Business
Journal, January 29, 2016
Here’s a question for you:
“What is information and where does it ultimately originate?”
And another:
“Is the universe a great mechanism, a great computation, a great
symmetry, a great accident or a great thought?”
The first question was
posed by the physicist and writer Paul Davies, the second by John Barrow, a
cosmologist, theoretical physicist and mathematician. Both were posted online
nearly two decades ago at Edge.org, then a fledgling website created by John
Brockman, an author and literary agent for science writers.
Writing back then about
Edge and its World Question Center, I concluded: “If a few of those questions
don’t get the wheels in the brain spinning, sending some thoughts flying out of
the box, nothing will.”
Not long ago I returned to
Edge after a few years’ absence and was happy to find it alive and well. The
site’s mission remains unchanged: “To arrive at the edge of the world’s knowledge,
seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together,
and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.”
One of the site’s top
recurring features is the Annual Question. Over the years, scientists and
thinkers in a range of disciplines have responded to queries such as these:
“What is the most important invention of the last 2,000 years?” (1999); “What
questions have disappeared?” (2001); “What do you believe is true even though
you cannot prove it?” (2005); “What should we be worried about?” (2013); and
“What do you think about machines that think?” (2015).
The question for
2016—“What do you consider the most interesting recent (scientific) news? What
makes it important?”—already has drawn nearly 200 responses from contributors
ranging from 2004 Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek to musician Peter
Gabriel.
Among the others posting
thoughts on this year’s question is Lisa Randall, a theoretical physicist at
Harvard University and author of several books. As it happens, I just started
reading her latest book, “Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding
Interconnectedness of the Universe.” Among the last year’s news she cites are
the discovery of a new species of human and more accurate data of species loss
that could mean the Earth is on a path toward a sixth extinction. But Randall
adds that some of the most important new knowledge likely is not yet apparent.
Revolutionary discoveries are the result of many years’ work and “the headlines
of any given year are not necessarily representative of what is most
significant.”
OK, you might be wondering
how these esoteric musings are relevant to you or me. And in fact, if you want
solutions to key problems, Edge probably isn’t the place to look. Its pursuit
is not answers but questions—in particular, which are the most important ones
to be asking.
Randall in her book notes
that much of what we know about the 13.8 billion-year-old universe has been
discovered only in the last century. Take dark matter, so named because it
doesn’t interact with light; it accounts for roughly 85 percent of the matter
in the universe—a fact not known until the last several decades.
I’d wager that this
breakthrough and others like it originated with scientists asking questions
that at the time sounded offbeat or even ridiculous. But discoveries happen
only when someone, asking why not, scales the walls of conventional wisdom.
Unlike science, politics
these days is awash in certitude. Candidates who admit to any uncertainty or
who don’t know all the answers stand little chance of getting elected. Hubris
also ruled in the run-up to the financial crisis; we all know how badly that
ended.
It’s not wrong to want
elected officials who can get things done; those who are paralyzed by
indecision ought to find another line of work. But curiosity, imagination and a
strong desire to truly understand the nature of things—along with a good measure
of humility—are traits that should be rewarded, not belittled.
What will it take for that
to happen? Good question.
1/29/2016 (c) 2016 Rochester Business Journal. To
obtain permission to reprint this article, call 585-546-8303 or email
service@rbj.net.
Selected and edited from the latest EdgeDOTorg
** **
The question that serves your inner spirit
best is the first one presented, the one by Paul Davis two decades ago.
“What is
information and where does it ultimately originate?”
This is a question you have seen before, more than
once, over the years. You used to use some of Davis’ essays in your classes
from time to time to have students read, think and write in that order. –
Amorella
1510
hours. The first question I have presently is defining ‘information’. For
instance, in context with the greater question I have to say is that the nature
of humankind is the only real we ask the question, so, in a sense, the ‘information’
originates with our species. Otherwise, --
** **
information – noun
1
facts provided or learned about something or someone: a vital piece of
information.
•
Law a formal criminal charge lodged with a court or magistrate by a
prosecutor without the aid of a grand jury: the tenant may lay an
information against his landlord.
2
what is conveyed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of
things: genetically transmitted information.
•
Computing data as processed, stored, or transmitted by a computer.
•
(in information theory) a mathematical quantity expressing the probability of
occurrence of a particular sequence of symbols, impulses, etc., as contrasted
with that of alternative sequences.
ORIGIN
Late Middle English
(also in the sense ‘formation of the mind, teaching’), via Old French
from Latin informatio(n-), from the verb informer.
Selected and edited
from the Oxford/American software
** **
** **
Information (shortened as info) is that which informs. In other
words, it is the answer to a question of some kind. It is also that from which
data and knowledge can be derived, as data represents values attributed to
parameters, and knowledge signifies understanding of real things or abstract
concepts. As it regards data, the information's existence is not necessarily
coupled to an observer (it exists beyond an event horizon, for example), while
in the case of knowledge, the information requires a cognitive observer.
At its
most fundamental, information is any propagation of cause and effect within a
system. Information is conveyed either as the content of a message or through
direct or indirect observation of some thing. That which is perceived can be
construed as a message in its own right, and in that sense, information is
always conveyed as the content of a message.
Information
can be encoded into various forms for transmission and interpretation (for
example, information may be encoded into a sequence of signs, or transmitted
via a sequence of signals). It can also be encrypted for safe storage and
communication.
Information
resolves uncertainty. The uncertainty of an event is measured by its
probability of occurrence and is inversely proportional to that. The more uncertain
an event, the more information is required to resolve uncertainty of that
event. The bit is a typical unit of information, but other units such as the
nat may be used. Example: information in one "fair" coin flip: log2(2/1) = 1 bit,
and in two fair coin flips is log2(4/1) = 2 bits.
The concept that information is the message has
different meanings in different contexts. Thus the concept of information
becomes closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control, data,
form, education, knowledge, meaning, understanding, mental stimuli, pattern,
perception, representation, and entropy . . ..
Selected and edited from
Wikipedia – information (introduction)
** **
1530
hours. The above dictionary and encyclopedia examples are why I have sometimes had
great trouble responding to questions. One has to have a definition first, even
if you are the Paul Davis. To avoid ridicule
I often keep my mouth shut. I blame it on innate arrogance. [This was quite bothersome
on tests from high school through the GRE in college.]
Information encloses in your books. This
complicates the world to you because the novels are mostly based on fiction. –
Amorella
1604 hours. As such I have come to the
conclusion quite some time ago that the whole world if also based on fiction,
how much so, I have no idea but my dark humor innately suggests the world is
more fiction than we might like to think. I also feel that once dead and gone,
so to speak, we are more likely to realize this. Once we no longer have to survive
physically our eyes remain open to see anew.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion even if
it is read as a statement. Post. - Amorella
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