What came first, matter or information?

Good question.

I guess it kinda depends on your definition of information.

If you allow 'the laws of physics' to be classed as information then at the point of the big bang, the instant of the trigger the laws were being followed. Thus information first.

Even more simply; laws can exist independent of matter, but not vice versa.

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Originally posted by free_thinker:
Good question.

I guess it kinda depends on your definition of information.

If you allow 'the laws of physics' to be classed as information then at the point of the big bang, the instant of the trigger the laws were being followed. Thus information first.

Even more simply; laws can exist independent of matter, but not vice versa.

Surely that's a pretty academic distinction? What's behind your question, greenbelt?

It's academic but it is in a sense a new "lens" to look at the universe that has been thrown up by the IT revolution. I agree with Freethinker that information has to come before matter.It seems impossible to get anything complex out of matter without some information input at least in the form of physical laws and constants.The next question is where Freethinker and I may part company:

What came first, information or mind ?

quote:

Originally posted by free_thinker:
Even more simply; laws can exist independent of matter, but not vice versa.

But they'd be pretty meaningless. It is a universal law that fruglarkons will always repel tilliards.

Meaningless, unless fruglarkons and tilliards exist.

This might be an interesting debate if you could define information.

I'm with Hezza. Define your terms first.

thirded.

From wiki:

quote:

Information is the state of a system of interest. Message is the information materialized.

Information is a quality of a message from a sender to one or more receivers. Information is always about something (size of a parameter, occurrence of an event, etc). Viewed in this manner, information does not have to be accurate. It may be a truth or a lie, or just the sound of a kiss. Even a disruptive noise used to inhibit the flow of communication and create misunderstanding would in this view be a form of information. However, generally speaking, if the amount of information in the received message increases, the message is more accurate.

My bold. Presumably systems had states before people were around otherwise there could be no way for people to be around, and a stateless system cannot change. With this definition, it's clear information existed before people and minds; only when viewed as a message does it require sender and receiver - and even then, a "sender" or "receiver" could be a single cell or even an atom.

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Originally posted by smokeAndMirrors:
From wiki:

[QUOTE]
Information is the state of a system of interest. Message is the information materialized.

I prefer:
Information is data interpreted within a common frame of reference.
Data is the symbolic representation of information.

This comes from an MSc course I studied, I don't have references to hand.

In the context above, information means nothing without humans to agree a frame of reference and to interpret the data. Thus, mind first.
The course was however, about databases, not philosophy.

A couple more definitions that I've come across:

From the journal of the american society of information science:

"Information may be defined as the characteristics of the output of a process, these being informative about the process and the input."

and from the Linux information project:

"Information can be broadly defined as any pattern that can be recognized by some system (e.g., a living organism, an electronic system or a mechanical device) and/or that can influence the formation or transformation of other patterns."

I particularly like this second one as it is accessible and broadly applicable for the purposes of this discussion. What does everyone else think?

quote:

Originally posted by greenbelt:
A couple more definitions that I've come across:

From the journal of the american society of information science:

"Information may be defined as the characteristics of the output of a process, these being informative about the process and the input."

and from the Linux information project:

"Information can be broadly defined as any pattern that can be recognized by some system (e.g., a living organism, an electronic system or a mechanical device) and/or that can influence the formation or transformation of other patterns."

I particularly like this second one as it is accessible and broadly applicable for the purposes of this discussion. What does everyone else think?

I think you are trying to find a creator

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I think you are trying to find a creator

Nooooooo...

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Originally posted by greenbelt:

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I think you are trying to find a creator

Nooooooo...

I can't get the image out of my head of Dougal in Father Ted cutting the jigsaw pieces with scissors so that they fit together.

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I can't get the image out of my head of Dougal in Father Ted cutting the jigsaw pieces with scissors so that they fit together.

Smoke and mirrors- it's a great scene from one of my favourite programmes but a little premature of you to quote it. We're only just getting the pieces out on the table here

quote:

Originally posted by greenbelt:
What came first, matter or information?

Matter, of course. Is this a trick question?

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Matter, of course. Is this a trick question?

It's not a trick question, its an area of scientific/philosophical controversy with potentially profound consequences. I guess it also depends when exactly matter comes into existence - does the singularity pre-big bang represent matter or energy? (and we don't really know what energy is ). It is clear that as soon as matter starts expanding into a universe it is obeying physical laws and constants. These constitute a form of "information" which is why I agree with Freethinker that information probably comes before matter. The interesting thing is quite how finely tuned that "information" is to produce the kind of universe that is capable of supporting life. If many of the laws or constants had been different by the tiniest of fractions then life would be a non-starter. This phenomenon of "anthropic fine tuning" is described very well in Paul Davies book " the Goldilocks enigma". It raises the question: is there "mind before matter" ? ie is there some sort of "universal mind" responsible for the information? If you are a theist this is obviously "God" but there are mathematicians and physicists such as Paul Davies who would tend to support the concept without going this far.If you are an atheist I guess you might want to just accept this information-laden universe as brute fact. The only other satisfactory explanation which I have heard of is multi-universe theory but to account for the fine tuning you need an awful lot of universes and Paul Davies suggests that " a new universe with every quantum event" is the kind of scale you are looking for! This is postulating something much more complex than a "Universal mind".
The other strand of evidence pointing to a "universal mind" is the extraordinary intelligibility of the universe. We take it for granted that the human mind is capable of doing complex mathematics which explains physical laws but why should this be so? Much of the mathematics was worked out before the physics and found application later. Mathematics appears to be an informational system which is "out there" and independent of human consciousness. Mathematicians describe their work as discovery rather than creation. A universal mind would give an explanation for this in providing information which is both fundamental to physical laws and human cognition/consciousness.

This is an interesting point, but the most this gets us to is deism, if that.

It is possible that an almost infinite number of other combinations of physical constants produced an almost infinite number of big phutts before a big bang happened.
It is also possible that the physical constant are in some way locked together.
It is also possible that if one were to change other would change to accommodate it.
I'm sure there are many other possibilities that would explain this.
With only this universe to study it's really difficult to know.

Whatever, a statistical analysis of something that has already happened is looking at it with the wrong end of the telescope.

quote:

Originally posted by greenbelt:


It is clear that as soon as matter starts expanding into a universe it is obeying physical laws and constants.

No, it is not clear at all. When we say that matter "obeys physical laws" we are using a metaphor or at least a shorthand expression.

Matter behaves in the way it does because its nature determines the way in which it behaves. We observe that the matter -and the universe in general- behaves in a regular way and so we generate a series of mathematical expressions and models, which we call "laws". So, "laws" are simply descriptions o f the way in which matter behaves. They are descriptive, not normative.

To infer that the laws predate matter is beyond ludicrous.

There are people like Paul Davies, of course, who try to find god, or at least to find some post hoc reasons for their irrational and embarassing belief in god, and they come up with this kind of garbage. Just ignore it.

By the way, if you want to read more absurd garbage by Paul Davies go here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/opinion/24davies.html...f=slogin&oref=slogin

quote:

Originally posted by free_thinker:
This is an interesting point, but the most this gets us to is deism, if that.

There is hope for you yet

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It is possible that an almost infinite number of other combinations of physical constants produced an almost infinite number of big phutts before a big bang happened.
It is also possible that the physical constant are in some way locked together.
It is also possible that if one were to change other would change to accommodate it.
I'm sure there are many other possibilities that would explain this.
With only this universe to study it's really difficult to know.

Even if all your examples were true it still brings you back to 'why'. Why should they be that way? what or who provides the impetus? why should there be anything at all? why should matter conform to any set of 'laws'?

I think the whole concept of a 'multiverse' is a non-starter. It strikes me as a rather desperate attempt to avoid the whole creation implication of the Big Bang and one that fails at the Occam's Razor hurdle. Even if you argue that Occam's Razor doesn't apply it still fails in that it doesn't provide an answer to 'where does the mechanism of universe generation come from?'.

Also the implications of such a theory on the face of it are utterly absurd. For example the number and form of potential universes is limited only by your imagination; so let us postulate that in a multiverse there are an infinite number of universes that contain superintelligent beings with the capability of generating virtual universes containing virtual life forms with virtual intelligence able to study their virtual universe but being completely unaware that both they and their universe are nothing more than a very sophisticated simulation running on the pc of some superintelligent being. That being the case the number of simulated universes would vastly exceed the number of actual universes and as such you are faced with the problem that you and I are vastly more likely to be mere fabrications; virtual intelliences occupying a virtual world suspended in a virtual universe generated in the pc of some superintelligent being completely undetectable by us. Let's just hope that he/she/it has paid the electric bill

Just a couple of others just for fun; you could imagine a universe where pink unicorns, pixies, faires and trolls do exist governed by a benevolent flying spaghetti monster In addition you can have a universe that resembles in every respect the christian vision of heaven and also one that resembles hell......and so on, and so on. I think it takes a lot more 'faith' to believe in something like the multiverse than to believe in God. (I'm not assuming you believe in the multiverse BTW)

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Originally posted by Milan K:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by greenbelt:



Matter behaves in the way it does because its nature determines the way in which it behaves.

That doesn't explain anything. That's just a shrug of the shoulders 'it just does' reply. What do you mean by 'its nature'? What are the factors that determine its nature and where do they originate?

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To infer that the laws predate matter is beyond ludicrous.

Please show how it is ludicrous

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There are people like Paul Davies, of course, who try to find god, or at least to find some post hoc reasons for their irrational and embarassing belief in god, and they come up with this kind of garbage. Just ignore it.

Paul Davies doesn't believe in God so your ad hominem is unjustifiable. Secondly as he is a very respected cosmologist who has spent many years studying the Universe I'm not of a mind to simply disregard his opinion and observations on the say so of an anonymous poster to a C4 forum. If you were to demonstrate that you had some expertise in the field, or maybe point me in the direction of some research that you are aware of that is at odds with Davies' assertions I'd be happy to chase it up.

Originally posted by Freethinker:

quote:

This is an interesting point, but the most this gets us to is deism, if that.

That's quite a concession on this forum