🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Mar04.022358.8026@clarinet.com>, brad@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton) writes:
> To my mind, an encrypted message is as much a thing as a piece of rubber.
> Why is it so different to you?

Rubber is molecules in a specific arrangement.

A message is an arrangement of an unspecified substrate.

It's a difference between whether the substrate is primary or irrelevant,
and whether the arrangement is secondary or primary.  That's about the most
fundamental difference I can imagine.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

I'm unsure as to whether this needs additional explanation.  I like the
simplicity of the above -- a simple explanation in response to a simple
question.  But one person has already indicated feeling the need for more, and
I don't want anyone to miss the point simply because what was brief to me was
obscure to another.

I think Brad's question is very important: the central question in the entire
debate.  Slightly rephrased, the question is "why is information different from
matter?".

Once I rephrase the question, I feel a bit surprised that we still have to
explain this.  It is now well over forty years since Claude Shannon laid the
foundations of information theory, which has been one of the most valuable
tools in computing.  We have a large and successful industry built on treating
information as something distinct from matter.  This thing called information
has firm theoretical and practical underpinnings.  Yes, information is real. 
That does not make it equivalent to matter.

My two initial statements are the simplest definition I have formulated of
the practical distinction between matter and information (represented,
respectively, by rubber and a message).  Information is carried by an
arrangement of some kind of matter or energy, but the nature of that matter or
energy -- the substrate -- is irrelevant.  Whether represented by stone
monoliths, pits on a polycarbonate disk, or electrical phase changes in a metal
wire, the message does not change.  Information is an arrangement of an
unspecified substrate.

Matter is different: the substrate counts.  In fact, one normally views the
substrate as coming first -- in the beginning we have molecules, then we
arrange them to form a specific substance.  The arrangement is still important,
but so is the substrate, a specific mix of molecules.  The arrangement and the
substrate interact essentially, and in doing so exist as matter.

That difference is what I find to be fundamental.

Edward Reid  (8-}>
  eel:   ed@titipu.meta.com  or  nosc.mil!titipu.meta.com!ed
  snail: PO Box 378/Greensboro FL 32330