🚀 go-pugleaf

John,

The Universe is a system.
A computer is a system.

The Universe deals with interaction.
A computer deals with interaction.

Those are the comparisons.
The differences are less easy to describe.

All computers work as a von Neumann machine.
The von Neumann machine is a terrible simple system.

Furthermore, as you are inclined to think of information as some sort of
universal principle, consider this:

The Universe is a system; you are a system.
Both are very complex systems.  Now, somewhere, you have made for yourself a
distinction between what is touching your senses, and what is useful in
this.  The latter you call "information".  Is not then, by applying the
information-concept to universe, a similar distinction made?  Like if there
are interchanges or interactions between objects that are useful and that
are not?  And according to what would they be so?  To us, the human
spectator?

So basically, what you do is describe a complex system by taking the
description for another very simple system.  Then, in describing that simple
system, you use words like information as if they were quantifiable.  Your
problem is this:

    If i give something to you,
    then what happens with you,
    depends on the mechanisms that
    are within you.

Such is also the case within physics.  If i give a particle of light to a
piece of metal, then it depends on the specific mechanisms, at work within
that metal, what happens.  To call that interchange of information does not
add anything to the understanding of it.  In fact, it only blurs our
understanding.  Like if the pixels on your screen would really be
information
instead of pixels, only becoming information within your head.

Greetings,

--
Peter Paul Schuttevaar
the Hague
ppsch@xs4all.nl