Regularity

[Sergio Navega]

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From: Gerry Wolff <gerry at sees.bangor.ac.uk>
>> [snip]
>> Why is it so difficult to catch the nature of information? Because of
this
>> process duality of information. When we reduce information to 'dead
data',
>> we stop the machine to understand how it runs.
>
>I don't know what you mean by 'process duality of information'.
>Information is simply anything which is observable and which contains
>some variation.
>[snip]

This last sentence contains important points, IMO. I couldn't
resist exploring some related ideas.

Information is something that can be captured by one's senses
(observable) and which contains some kind of variations. I'd like
to suggest some additional ideas about what I think are the
important aspects of this 'variation'.

First, I propose to reduce all the aspects related to 'data'
in the universe as belonging to one of three categories:

a) The totally randomic data
b) The totally regular data
c) All the remainder

(obs: item b, in reality, is something that does not exist; we
can't find nothing that is totally regular, we can find only
things that are regular due to the precision of our senses
or accuracy of our capturing instrumentation, but quantum
variations prevent two really identical instances of an event).

The main idea of my message can be summarized in this assertion:
I would say that information may be derived only from item c).

Examples of item a) are white noise: set your radiotelescope to an
unpopulated area of the sky (difficult to find!) and you'll listen
to that characteristic 'sssshhhhh'. Whether due to thermal noise
of the electronic circuits or to the random signals picked up by
the antenna (often both), this signal, *taken in isolation*, is
able to inform us of nothing.


Examples of item b) are the regular signals of a rotating pulsar
or a binary star: you have that characteristic 'rat  rat  rat'
signal with extremely regular intervals. Again, taken in isolation
this regularity is unable to carry any information.

Anything in between (item c) is what we can find when a previously
random source suddenly becomes regular OR when a previously regular
signal becomes random (or does not repeat in the same rhythm).
It is just during these transitions that information can be extracted.
Here's a simple diagram of what I've said:

                               regularity
                     _________________________
     noise          /
___________________/

       ^           ^               ^
       |           |               |
       |           |               |
      No         Information      No
   Information                   Information


The same diagram may be drawn for the regular->noise transition.
But in nature, what we usually find is this kind of diagram:


                 irregular
   regularity       /\       regularity
___________________/  \_______________________
       ^             ^             ^
       |             |             |
       |             |             |
      No         Information      No
   Information                   Information


Obviously, what we have in nature are not single and isolated
transitions as the one depicted: we have lots of consecutive
and temporally distributed transitions, where the relations
among the 'spikes' is important too. What I believe is the
important point here is that our chances of getting useful
information from the data that impinges on our senses are
derived from these short intervals. And what is the nature of
the operations we have to implement in order to do such things?
Given what neuroscience is slowly discovering about the
behavior of groups of neurons, I can try to conjecture.

Apparently, we have to do whatever is necessary to transform
these transitions into regular things again. This means that we've
got to find out *interpretations* of these transitions in such
a way as to find something *invariant* (which means, we want to
look at the transition as if it were a regular, expected thing).

Sucb interpretations, once discovered and subsequently confirmed
by reinforcing experiences, become part of our perceptual
apparatus and we use them to look again to the universe in search
for other possible candidates to be subject to the process. This
is how I like to see the progressive refinement of the perceptual
abilities of children (which culminate in language learning).

This is also what I think explains our curiosity. We're easily
bored by "known" circumstances. But when we listen to an unusual
sound, or when our computer does something unexpected, or when
someone shows us an 'yellow apple', then our attention is grabbed.
We become 'desperate' to find a way to look at the event from a
point of view that cancels the unexpectedness.

As a simple example, recall when you move to a new house. Usually,
this house "clicks and squeaks" in very specific ways. During
the first night in which you're at that house, every click will
raise your attention. This occurs until some days latter, when
these clicks will be "stored" in our perceptual mechanisms
associated with regular and "explainable" things (the click
of the wood of the door; the click of the aluminum window, etc)
and this transforms it into a "known" pattern, unable to raise
our attention anymore (we finally sleep unconcerned). Moreover,
the perceptual work of deciphering future instances of these
clicks goes from the conscious to unconscious, denoting the
its lack of importance . Only "new" clicks will jump from
the unconscious and "wake" the conscious mind, indicating a
potentially important information on its way.

Much of what I think is learning (in human terms) appears to be
related to this mechanism. We're bored by regularity, but we're
constantly trying to produce it. Learning is, in my way to see it,
the result of our efforts of transforming unknown things into
regular and predictable things.

Regards,

___________________________________________________________
Sergio Navega
Intelliwise Research
http://www.intelliwise.com/snavega