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What is Information?

Science is a method ready-made for measuring the ‘hardware’ of the universe. But what about the ‘software’?This is a topic that interests me more every day- what is ‘information’? The short video above asks that exact question:

Information is on our phones and in our DNA sequence, but what is it exactly? Is it something subjective or a real quantity?

One can see that if we regard our universe/reality as being a computer simulation – like a super-enhanced game of Doom or Skyrim – then the world is constructed completely by information in a computer program.

The well-known American theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler proposed that information is fundamental to creating the reality of the Universe, coining the short phrase ‘It from Bit’ to describe that function.

It from bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom — a very deep bottom, in most instances — an immaterial source and explanation; that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe.

I know a couple of my favourite authors, Jacques Vallee and Paul Davies, have also covered this fascinating topic. Any recommendations for further reading?

Editor
  1. Yes and No
    Neither Seth nor Jane Roberts (who “channelled” Seth) were physicists (or scientists, period, or engineers) — Jane was a poet and writer, Seth an “energy personality essence no longer focused in physical matter.”

    So you will find little technical information and no reference to information theory in the Seth material (the entire collection of books Seth dictated through Jane and the many sessions not part of “book dictation”).

    Even so, the idea that physical or external reality is an expression of inner reality — symbolizes it — is common throughout the material. Furthermore, each person creates his or her unique physical continuum. “You create your own reality” was originally spoken by Seth but with quite a bit of explanation that was not included by those who appropriated those words as a slogan, usually without attribution.

    One of the unique attributes of the Seth material (often dismissed as New Age nonsense, even though Seth first spoke through Jane in 1963, before the term “New Age” was popularized) is the embedding of exercises throughout the material. (Even though I first came across the material by perceiving, with my “mind’s eye,” a persistent full-color image of the cover of one of Seth’s books then in print the first time I ever tried to meditate, when I stopped and purchased the book and began to read it I thought it was very interesting and sci-fi like but didn’t really fathom how powerful the material was until I did a particular exercise, resulting in a pronounced alteration of consciousness that lasted for about three days and extended into my dreams.)

    For an initial Seth book, I’d recommend _Seth Speaks_, then _The Nature of Personal Reality_. _The ‘Unknown’ Reality_ (published in two volumes) expands on the concepts of probable realities and selves introduced in earlier books and includes the exercise I mentioned above.

    Serious Seth readers find it difficult, if not impossible, to return to the materialist perspective so very prevalent — the official version of reality taught in schools.

    Seth acknowledges that his teachings aren’t new or unique, in fact being his version of very old teachings; some have attempted to reconcile those teachings with modern science, but that’s quite difficult to accomplish, all things considered. (One example: _Bridging Science and Spirit: Common Elements in David Bohm’s Physics, The Perennial Philosophy and Seth_ by Norman Friedman.)

    Others claim that Seth’s explanations (and exercises) involving probable selves and realities can be equated with the Many Worlds QM interpretation or the “multiverse” but that’s not really true, in my opinion, although there are some similarities. One big difference: In the Seth material, each physically embodied “focus personality” is an “aspect” of a soul or entity, roughly equivalent to Gurdjieff’s “essence.” Thus the experience of endless probable selves is accessible to and through one’s entity (and the entity isn’t truly separate from the “outer personality” or conscious self — as Seth says, there is no place where one ends and the other begins, including the intermediate regions of self). There is no equivalent in the MW QM interpretation or versions of the multiverse.

  2. Meaning/Information
    There’s a relationship between information and “meaning.” Meaning is the substrate of matter, and gives shape to material phenomena in much the same way that sound patterns shape metal filings on a Chladni plate. Meaning is also the basis of all synchronistic experiences, and explains how disparate phenomena can be linked in acausal ways through time or space. David Bohm’s “implicate order” (as well as “supra-implicate order”) also hints at deeper layers of information/meaning that underlie and inform our tangible world–see here:

    https://books.google.com/books?id=-ZTIOvDMUWkC&pg=PA313&lpg=PA313&dq=bohm+%22supra-implicate+order%22&source=bl&ots=f5zPAvpngG&sig=Ni_o2ENs6PiZq7WpDw7Q58OpK6M&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwizupWltu3MAhWHGj4KHXBwCisQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=bohm%20%22supra-implicate%20order%22&f=false

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