Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Informationalism: Examining the Woolsey Interpretation


I first thought of using the word Informationalism to describe a new social philosophy sometime in the year 2005. While I did this independently, I think it is safe to assume that such a word is bound to pop up in other instances in our information driven age. I want to focus on one such instance, which comes from a paper by a philosophy student named Damon Woolsey. A link to the paper which I will analyze can be found here. The paper, titled Informationalism, places a slightly different emphasis on the word than I do. While mine is a social philosophy, his is what I would call a philosophy proper. However, after the reader becomes familiar with the philosophy proper, it is easy to see how the social philosophy is expressible in Woolsey's terms. Let me explain:

First, I will contrast my own definition of Informationalism with Woolsey's.

Informationalism (According to Me): The belief that the primary goal of society should be to maximize the growth rate of the stock of information, while allowing all members of that society to freely and equitably access that stock.

Informationalism (According to Woolsey): "The physical and the phenomenal both supervene on the informational." (pp 2).

Perhaps the first difference that the reader will notice is that my definition is normative i.e. I am making value statements about actions, whereas the second definition is a positive and falsifiable statement.

Furthermore, since the second statement is more philosophically rigorous, the reader might benefit from my attempt at a translation. I interpret this definition of Informationalism as meaning that the material world and the world of sensation both follow from or are contained in the world of Information. It is an attempt to construct a framework where the classical split between the mind and the body is reconciled by allowing them to be expressions of the same thing; in this case information. How does this work? For a comprehensive understanding, I will encourage you to read the paper, as I am going to focus more on the "results".

First, Woolsey makes what I find to be a fairly convincing argument against the necessity of an external world of "matter", by pointing out that our common perceptions of different kinds of "stuff" is not based on some universal or external standard, but can actually be better captured by relativistic definitions that are all easily expressible logically or mathematically.

Second, he points out that our concept of time (while also relativistic) is also predicated on notions of cause and effect, which can be expressed without time as an algorithmic process. This process is really just information about how logical or mathematical definitions behave, and are called iprocesses.

Third, he also touches on the idea of an istructure, which I interpret as a set of iprocesses that are capable of perceiving and thus reacting to certain kinds of information. Woolsey uses the difference between a pile of bricks and a brick building to show the function of istructures. Essentially, any organism can be thought of as a complicated istructure that perceives and reacts to its environment in a particular way. Humans can look at the same quantity of bricks in either format, and their istructure is capable of perceiving them as a certain kind of information. However, humans have the capacity to perceive additional information implied by the organization of the bricks into a building i.e. this is a home. Other istructures won't necessarily recognize this reorganization the same way, or at all.

Finally, now that we have an Informationalist interpretation of all phenomena, Woolsey provides a general definition of reality. He does this by defining what he calls a logical possibility, which is something that contains no inherent contradiction (pp 10). And we are led down the argument that if reality consists of everything that exists, and all things that exist can actually be defined in terms of logical possibilities, then reality is just the set of all logical possibilities. We can build ourselves all the way back to istructures by noting that mathematical definitions, iprocesses, and istructures are all made up of logical possibilities.

My Comments and Critique

Woolsey emphasizes that his paper was just a foray into Informationalism, so I'm hoping to offer some additional considerations should he decide to delve deeper into it.

1. Doesn't this story sound quite a bit like what goes on inside of a computer when it is executing a program? When I think of an instructure, I think of a computer program that I can see on a sheet of paper. To me, the program alone is static. I know its function. I can see the statements and expressions (definitions and iprocesses?) and I know it can only receive subsets of all the possible forms of input of which I am aware. I perceive all of this as a whole. Yet, as the entity that executes the program, I don't perceive this timeless whole. I must execute the program in steps. Thus, perhaps our notions of the physical, phenomenal, and the temporal are artifacts of our being contained in an istructure.

2. How does the problem of Schrodinger's cat fit into the realm of logical possibilities? More specifically, the notion of quantum superposition might mean that: "Schrodinger's cat is alive; Schrodinger's cat is dead" is a logical possibility. If it is a logical possibility, then it is real, and we seem to have something real that is a contradiction?

3. Since instructures can take information as an input, and produce information as an output for other istructures. Isn't there some kind of feedback or reflexive process going on, and how might one characterize it?

Social Informationalism Reinterpreted

Assuming Woolsey is right, I think it is possible and probably beneficial to express the root cause argument behind social Informationalism in his terms. If we look at the collection of humans in society as a larger and fairly complicated istructure, we notice that it is capable of taking in vast amounts of information from other istructures and iprocesses to produce several kinds of outputs. One output that the istructure seems to produce is its modified self over time (remember that periods exist for us inside reality). I would say that living organisms in general are characterized by the fact that they tend to be persistent istructures. In other words, our istructures uses informational input to modify its own structure in order to persist, and all inputs that is receives are, in fact, informational. Not all istructures do this, for instance a Blue Giant Star doesn't seem particularly interested in making more Blue Giant Stars. Social Informationalism then is making the leap from saying that this is what humanity is and does, to this is what humanity should do.


Too Long to Read Summary: Damon Woolsey wrote an independent paper defining the term Informationalism in a positive and philosophically proper way. In this paper he makes a good argument that the material and the phenomenal world both follow from information. This information comes from the interaction of different iprocess and istructures, which are essentially algorithms made up of definitions and logical possibilities. We perceive these things as separate because we are part of them. Social Informationalism can be expressed better using his terminology when we realize that all sources of information taken in from the environment provide opportunities for modifying our position in this world to make it persistent, but choosing to do so is normative.


Thursday, September 9, 2010

Thoughts on Net Neutrality

Given the current popularity of the subject of Net Neutrality, I thought I might present some of my own work on the subject, and point out some of my conclusions. I would first state that the goal of all of my work here is to share knowledge of economic theory and issues that I have acquired from exploring primary sources. Thus, it would be quite hypocritical of me to not urge you to check out my references for yourselves. This literature review is the culmination of my work in a graduate course on Public Economics. As far as peer reviewing is considered, it was criticized and revised according to the instructions of my Professor, and underwent further revision as a result of my correspondence with the author of the primary work I used for my analysis (Special thanks to Dr. Christopher Swann and Tim Wu). Most of the literature review material is my interpretation of other sources; the section on game theory, however, is to the best of my knowledge the result of my own unique application.

Having said all this, feel free to use any part of it at no cost other that the time it would take you to create a proper citation!


Net Lit


Too Long To Read Summary: The principle of net neutrality in the economic sense boils down to determining the effect that allowing firms in this market to differentiate their products would have on social welfare. Supporters of net neutrality claim it is a method of leveling the playing field, which encourages competition, and is beneficial in the short and long run. Opponents assert that forbidding product differentiation destroys the incentive to innovate, and is costly to enforce, making it harmful to social welfare in the long run.

I believe that the case is strong for market failure in internet service, and that specific net neutrality regimes based on price discrimination go a long way to reconciling both sides and providing a solution. This solution involves giving the FCC the legislative authority to preserve net neutrality, when it feels the principle is being violated, without legally compelling them to do so. Using this power as a tool of moral suasion could preserve the incentive to innovate, and protect the consumer.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Theses of Informationalism

Here, I am going to propose some basic theses of Informationalism that I believe can be best expressed by assembling statements that already carry a great deal of historical significance, with some of my own observations.

Term: Information- knowledge gained through study, communication, research, instruction, etc.; factual data.

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Root Motivation

1. It is in the ability to record, pass on, and understand information that the advanced manipulation of material circumstances becomes possible.

2. The best way to value a species is by its ability to expand and perpetuate the information it acquires over time, because a species that cannot do this must in time be overcome and eliminated by its material circumstances.

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Human Applications

4. Allowing all members of humanity access to the total pool of information acquired by humanity maximizes our ability to generate more information, if humanity accepts Informationalism.

5. Ensuring free distribution and acquisition of Information is the only way to maximize the value of a society. Therefore the goal of a human society must be the freedom of information and the pursuit of it in all fields.

6. Social decisions in an informationalist society should be weighted by their ability to ensure the free distribution and acquisition of Information.

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Civil Rights and Diplomacy

7. "The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man; every citizen can then freely speak, write, and print, subject to responsibility for the abuse of this freedom in the cases is determined by law".

-11th Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (August 1789)

"Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view."

-Woodrow Wilson; Point I (1918)

The Root Motivation

By the Root Motivation, I mean the fundamental argument by which I justify the utility and desirability of accumulating information as the highest goal. It does, of course, require the acceptance of subjective criteria, all of which I find reasonable. It goes as follows:

Observation 1: Species can only survive indefinitely by adapting to their environment in some sustainable fashion.

Observation 2: A species can manipulate its environment if it has some useful knowledge about its workings.

Observation 3: The more useful knowledge that a species accumulates, the greater its ability to manipulate its environment will be.

Observation 4: A species with all useful knowledge about its environment knows how to control it completely, if it can be controlled.

Observation 5: If a species can control its environment completely, then it has adapted to its environment in a sustainable fashion, and can survive indefinitely.

From these observations, it seems evident to me that acquiring useful knowledge about one's environment is a valid solution to the problem of perpetuating a species. From here, I need an assumption:

Assume: The highest goal of a species is to perpetuate its own existence.

Conclusion:

If the acquisition of useful knowledge is a valid solution to the problem of perpetuating a species, and perpetuating the species is the highest goal of a species, then the acquisition of useful knowledge is the highest goal of the species. This is the Root Motivation.

Discussion:

What I'm trying to justify here, more or less, is that the perspective which individuals and society should take concerning all relevant decisions concerning general welfare should be one of maximizing the amount of useful information acquired about their environment. To not do so would be placing the continuity of the species at a lower level of priority.
To be clear, this does not mean that this perspective, which I call Informationalism, is the only perspective. I am only asserting that, if you agree that survival of a species should be its highest goal, and agree with these observations, that it is a valid perspective.