What is "Information"?

Information isn't matter or energy. It doesn't exist, and yet it's there.

Information might only exist because we can perceive it, but information is stored in the DNA which builds life, and which build our ability to perceive information.

ANTON ZEILINGER (ANTON ZEILINGER is a physicist who has held teaching and research positions at M.I.T., the Universities of Innsbruck and Oxford, at the Technical Universities of Vienna and Munich, at the College de France in Paris. Presently he is a Professor of Physics at the University of Vienna.) wrote:

What I believe but cannot prove is that quantum physics teaches us to abandon the distinction between information and reality.

The fundamental reason why I believe in this is that it is impossible to make an operational distinction between reality and information. In other words, whenever we make any statement about the world, about any object, about any feature of any object, we always make statements about the information we have. And, whenever we make scientific predictions we make statements about information we possibly attain in the future. So one might be tempted to believe that everything is just information. The danger there is solipsism and subjectivism. But we know, even as we cannot prove it, that there is reality out there. For me the strongest argument for a reality independent of us is the randomness of the individual quantum event, like the decay of a radioactive atom. There is no hidden reason why a given atom decays at the very instant it does so.

So if reality exists and if we will never be able to make an operational distinction between reality and information, the hypothesis suggests itself that reality and information are the same. We need a new concept which encompasses both. In a sense, reality and information are the two sides of the same coin.

I feel that this is the message of the quantum. It is the natural extension of the Copenhagen interpretation. Once you adopt the notion that reality and information are the same all quantum paradoxes and puzzles disappear, like the measurement problem or Schrödinger's cat. Yet the price to pay is high. If my hypothesis is true, many questions become meaningless. There is no sense then to ask, what is "really" going on out there. Schrödinger's cat is neither dead nor alive unless we obtain information about her state.

By the way, I also believe that some day all computers will be quantum computers. The reason I believe this is the ongoing miniaturization of electronic components. And, certainly, we will learn to overcome decoherence. We will learn how to observe quantum phenomena outside the shielded environment of laboratories. I hope I will still be alive when this happens.

Information is a pattern of matter/energy that can have some effect on other bits of matter/energy.

John, start shredding if you don't mind. I'm curious about that.

twyvel, I don't buy that. All creatures, not only humans, give off and recieve information. Come to think of it I'm inclined to say that everything in the universe is information (on to of whatever else it might be). To make distinctions between what we see and what is actually there is too far fetched to me. The only way I have to recieve information is to trust that my senses accurately convey what my surroundings are telling me at all times.

If objects radiated information then a snail would recognise a chair as it recognises light. Words would radiate meaning, we would understand all languages

Information has to be information To Someone

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If objects radiated information then a snail would recognise a chair as it recognises light. Words would radiate meaning, we would understand all languages

Yes, that is correct. Are you suggesting that objects do not radiate information? Even now, there are radiowaves going right through your head. Can you pick them up? You need a radio, don't you?

And if you don't convey what you percieve there is still information, there's just not communication. But even percieving is communicating... This turned out to be a tricky subject. Guess I'll just have to open my mind to recieve the proper information...

As Terry pointed out, information (or perhaps "pattern") exists, and has an effect on things whether we observe it or not (evolution of life for example).

"But we know, even as we cannot prove it, that there is reality out there."

The basic question I'm asking is how to quantify that non-material essence which inhabits the Universe that leads to many things (life and awareness to name just a few).

I call that thing "information", but maybe I should be calling it just "pattern", but the point of the question remains the same.

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"But we know, even as we cannot prove it, that there is reality out there."

BS.

The basic question I'm asking is how to quantify that non-material essence which inhabits the Universe that leads to many things (life and awareness to name just a few).

Your underlying assumption that life and awareness are emergent properties of a Universe + a non-material essence, is not something that should be assumed as having universal acceptance, which you appear to be doing.

Does pattern suggest intelligent design?

So a "pattern" is not simply something which we perceive, but something which affects something else.

"Pattern" doesn't have mass. But is Pattern (or the lack of it) an intrinsic quality of matter/energy? Is it the tip of another dimensional iceberg, like time, or energy?

Books, DNA, computers, objects etc. don't contain any information.

Information is not something found, it's created.

The world is void of meaning, until we and others create it.

I do not perceive information. What counts as information and what does not count as information is based on what I perceive. If I do not convey what I perceive then there is no information.

If objects radiated information then a snail would recognise a chair as it recognises light. Words would radiate meaning, we would understand all languages. The meaning of an animals dance would be known. We would know what the brain is thinking simply by looking at the brain.