ID commentary on animal minds (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, January 13, 2016, 13:58 (3237 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: He says “everything is information”, just as you wrote earlier that information is “the source of life”. We spent a long time discussing this indiscriminate and confusing use of the word, and we agreed that we must distinguish between matter, information and the mechanism that extracts and processes the information. No need to go over all that again, is there?-DAVID: You left out the maker or the source of the information as part of your list, while I agree that the interpretation mechanism is important also. Matter is not planning or informative information, as it contains static descriptive information. The main point of presenting the video is that quite a group of thinking folks feel the recognition of the role of information at the basis if reality is very important. But you are correct, he was evasive.-Vedral says “everything is information”, in which case the source of information could only be information. This is in line with the thread you called “Information as the source of life”, though I would like to think you would phrase it differently now. Yes, information is very important. Matter is also very important (is there any form of information that could not be called “informative”?). And the mechanism that interprets information is also very important. Consequently, the statement that “everything is information” is a typical example of the indiscriminate and confusing use of this word that I keep complaining about and will continue to complain about whenever it crops up.