Spider of the universe - Information

So don’t focus on the webs.
Focus on the spider.

This time it was ut’s comment on Green September: “Imagine all that money spent at the DOD to blast other people all over the world and they don't have enough employes and logistics to take care of Americans” which made me think, how stupid people act, how unbelievable un-intelligent it is to spend money for wars to kill and maim mothers and children far away instead of spending money to protect my house and the houses of my friends against floods and hurricanes here at home - so i remembered the gain function of intelligence.

I guess, many people think, that intelligence can grow and grow and grow and that the human race will survive every threat just by the power of its high tech game boys: the next invention will solve the problem, so don’t worry, be happy!

That’s simply not true.

Because sophisticated intelligence destroys information – like black holes do – it deletes the precondition for the success of intelligence (that’s by the way the reason why language was so important for the human evolution: the need to protect information).

You’re puzzled? Language is a tool for communication?

It is – but communication is “transport of information” between members of an information processing system and when the members start to destroy information, the group needs to protect it by increasing communication to survive. As we need now...

Still puzzled?

Then, World, may i introduce to you your mother, the creator of the generations?

Information - World.

World – information.

World, you know yourself, you know how knitted the web is connecting each small item with each other. You are son or daughter, mother or father, brother or sister, uncle or aunt. And even if you are all alone, you are part of a life chain which leads back to the beginning of life on Earth. But even the Earth is born, out of the chaos around a young sun, and even the sun is born, out of the chaos of dying suns, but even those suns were born soon after the universe was born in the big bang, creating the natural laws.

Seems, as if the galaxies can’t answer the question about infinity? So let’s look on the small side. Look on the cells in your body – complex manufactories of life, controlled by DNA and RNA, controlling cell and body with the chemistry build from those blueprints, a chemistry based on molecules based on atoms based on protons, neutrons and electrons, based on a particle zoo downwards to nearly not measurable quarks and a theory of multidimensional strings...

vanishing...

World, have you ever thought about the simple truth, that focusing on stability has limits? That for each and every stable thing in the whole universe there is a point of exactness, where stability vanishes away in facelessness, gets lost in Nirvana?

I see, you’ve heard from Heisenberg. His uncertainty relation was the first proof for the true nature of universe: You can’t measure positions and momentums together in any case, locations together with impulses forever, you can’t measure stability together with movement (change) with perfect exactness – either/or.

The experiments of physics demonstrate, that you can’t measure – and relate – everything, with an interesting aside (keyword “quantum eraser”): if you delete your previous measurement, you can measure the complementary observable. But that doesn’t explain, “why the ‘Teeny Tiny’ behaves like jelly which has to be taken with a spoon”. (Physics of information, p. 132).

Yet, there is another truth beyond the vanishing measurability, the loss of stability, of identity – the everlasting, ubiquitous, almighty quantum noise. As Stephen Hawkings told us, the quantum noise may even be able to destroy the greediest black hole.

But...

it can’t destroy information – at least not the whole information.

Hawking cracks black hole paradox
“After nearly 30 years of arguing that a black hole destroys everything that falls into it, Stephen Hawking is saying he was wrong. It seems that black holes may after all allow information within them to escape.”

There is something as mighty as the quantum noise...

information.

The “attribute” of the universe to be measurable, to have values – to have a name and a face, to have an identity, so to be recognized, remembered and related...

Yes, World, here the set comes into the mind:

And inside the set, you know, there is identity – therefore you can track movings, you can follow events, you can construct relations, you can map and store, retrieve and compare.
A set creates order in a random world.

You want to understand information?

Look at the set – it offers you the most characteristic property of anything, which is information: identity, measurability, because it creates reproducible uniqueness. The attribute, which makes elements belong to a set, which “parts the sea”, divides the world in inside and outside, remember? And inside the set, there exists some other attribute, allowing you to identify each element by distinguishing each element from every other, meaning nothing else than that this element is uniquely measurable in the whole universe.

But that isn’t the whole information...

Because we forgot that each and every state – in reality – has to be entered.

Values, faces, even identities may change – however, there’s a significant difference between values, faces, colors of hairs, numbers of electrons in atoms and the identity itself. While values may change without destroying the basic element, identity has to be stable, at least as long as the element exists.

So simply put both together – the set and the change of values of identities. You just have to take two set elements (e and w) and connect them by a “relation” (a well known mathematical construct):

e|w

And then do something, which is not very common in mathematics:

Change it.

Dissolve the relation by cutting off the link between the two set elements, holding one of the elements and then – link another set element to “the one”, replace w with w’. The unchanged element call “element of quality, e”, let it play the role of the stable part. It shall remain stable during all the changes you may now perform, cut relations and link new elements, cut and link new: the identity passing through different states e|w, e|w’, e|w’’, e|w’’’.

Now you can define the representation of that change (cut and replace), in the world of mathematics, just by a “transformation”, deleting and creating a temporary relation:

X(e|w) = e|w’

Boring?

So don’t focus on the webs.
Focus on the spider.

Yes, don’t look too eagerly at the set elements e, w, w’ – watch X.

What does it tell you? States can be entered and left – values can change like the color of your hair. In the youth it is dark, growing old it gets white.

Steps.

X can describe steps. While “e” is stable, “w" can change: from w to w’ to w’’, from dark hair to grey hair to white hair.

And the connection is “X”, in the case of human hairs the biological rules, how DNA and age creates colors of hairs.

It doesn’t really matter, what kind of set it is, to which e or w or w’ do belong. Because the creating power is “X”, not the set. If something in the universe is describable as set element, it can be an element of quality or values or both:

The relationship decides its nature, not the set.

Don’t forget that, because this offers you a freedom usual set mathematics can’t give.

Anything goes.

When there is an “X” which creates relationships, connections between one stable set element “e” and some other “w”s, the temporary relations exist, if we know something about the original sets – or not. Those “e”s and “w”s may belong to different sets or to the same set – the set doesn’t matter, it is only needed to provide identity, measurability, nothing else. And if the “w”s don’t belong to the same set – take the union of the set and call it “set of values”. If new “X” add new w’s to the element of quality, the set of value may grow: X decides, not an a-priori-definition of any set. (Physics of information, p. 127)

Now follow the steps on that set of values – from w to w’, from w’ to w’’, from w’’ to w’’’ – ways. X creates ways, paths because of the steps it makes.

Chaotic paths, starting somewhere, ending somewhere, crossing themselves...

Crossing themselves? What if the paths would be clear, well defined? If everytime, you reach w you know that just one X exists - to reach w’?

Than you would have a true “function” on the set of values, at least on the subset of the different “w”s reachable by some starting point w⁰. A function is a very useful tool in mathematics, World, i guess, you know.

So let us connect both.

The powerful function, able to describe quantum physics and social statistics – and the mighty information, inducted by “e”, “w” and “X”.

What does it need to make the paths of X a function? X has to be able to link every w of a given set of values to the element of quality and it has to be repeatable: everytime X reaches a value w, it has to connect the same value w’ to e. Than the way of the values on the set of values is a function.

Just an aside: this answers the question of Eugene Wigner about “The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences”, because it knits real changes in nature together with the mathematical tool “function”.

And interestingly, this set of all (repeatable and connecting) X of a given element of quality “e” forms a group, one of the basic preconditions for Noether’s Theorem, but that’s also just an aside.

Important is, that this set of X lets you know everything about the element of quality: How you can measure it (because it is a set element), which values it can has (because X connects it to the whole set of values), how those values can be measured (because each is a set element, too)...

and – most interesting – how e will behave in any situation. Because X is repeatable, you know, that reaching w does mean “reaching w’ in the next step” and because X is connecting and repeatable for every w, you know...

there can’t be randomness.

Predicting the future of e: with this set of (repeatable and connecting) X you have the full information about e, nothing can surprise you. That’s why this set is called “information regarding e”.

And because e or w or w’ needs nothing more than to be elements of sets, they can be everything. They just have to be identifiable and connected via repeatable temporary relations.

Like mother and son, father and daughter, husband and wife, Earth and Sun, proton and electron.

The element of quality can be simple or complex, it doesn’t matter – you just have to know how to identify it and how to identify it’s values and how to follow the change of values, creating a path of the set of values: a path which can be stored and mapped and remembered.

You’re not amazed, World?

Rethink it – complex elements of qualities can be anything identifiable, can be me and you, can be your city or my nation, can be the customer or the employer, can be the warmonger or the peacemaker. Anything goes, it just has to have a measurable identity.

And values? The same, just have to have a measurable identity, can be red hair or green hair, can be white skin or dark skin, can be nobleness or greed, can be stupidity or intelligence...

And here we are back to intelligence – and why and when it is able to destroy information. Because what does it need to destroy information? Think of X. You can destroy the connectedness or the repeatability or the identity – in any case you destroy information.

Still not impressed, World?

So imagine a railway. The train is the “element of quality” in our example, the stations are the “values” or “states”, where the train is reachable, and X is the diesel engine or the electric motor or maybe the little green men from the mars, pushing your train forward.

It doesn’t matter, how the divine force looks like which moves your train, because it doesn’t interest you or you are no engineer to understand it or you simply don’t know it.

The only thing you have to know is the number of the train, than you can look on the time table, (the “memory” or “knowledge”) and you know where to go. Because if the train reaches station w you knows it will leave for station w’, everytime you come according to plan.

And any accident destroys your information.

The train doesn’t come – your information “was wrong”, why? There was a tree on the railroad tracks, so the repeatability of the trains course was broken, because the full state of your time table does never include trees on tracks. “Reaching station w” is a quite useful description/mapping of the states of your system “train moving from a to b” to promise you to be able to leave for station w’ - if the states of reality don’t include trees or trucks or something else on the way of the train.

The wrong identity destroys your information, too.

You look for train x, but you mistake it for train y. So you leave the station w, but you will never reach w’. Instead of that, you’ll reach station “far away”.

Last but not least: the loss of connectedness destroys your information.

Your time table (plus map of the stations) tells you, that there is a bridge between two stations. But the bridge was wrecked by a storm, you can’t reach the station w’ any more. Your information, that you will be able to go to w’, if you can take the train at station w - was wrong.

That’s the problem of information processing systems in reality: they need to detect information by states and their relationships and have to store it to be able to find “identity” (objects) and “repeatability” (behavior) – they need intelligence (a detecting system) and knowledge (memory according to your detecting system “intelligence”)

But that’s another story and will be told another time...

One last remark: Because of the connectedness and the repeatability of information every known step of an interesting system helps you to detect more information about it, to understand it better - even if it is not exactly, what you want to know:

Bertrands Paradox:
the more you know about your problem, the better you can evaluate it – with the result, that your prognosis significantly betters, how this problem will develop.

That’s why Leo Trotzki was right: “Maybe i can find the truth by comparing the lies.”

And that’s why Riverbend compares the english and the arabian version of the Draft Constitution (Part I and II) to find the truth behind the words, to find the way, where her country will go – to predict the future.

Fata Morgana

This time it was Robert, who sparked my text, asking:
“Do you believe that people are capable of functioning without the lies of nationalism and religion? These seem to be the myths and opiates that fuel the states' ability to control it's people.”

I rephrased the question to “Do you believe that people are capable of functioning with the lies of nationalism and religion?” and i had to control myself not to write a book. Because pondering about information, information processing systems and the strategy of the latter to detect information in a random world i understood that the whole human life is nothing else than information and information processing.

So i started to see history with other eyes – the DNA? Just a (successful) progress in storing information about the own body. The language? Just a (successful) progress in communicating information between humans. And suddenly i knew that i had to study the earliest findings of human culture, because they would tell me about the thoughts of the early humans with culture as “information processing system between autonomous units”, therefore telling me about their competence to master information.

It was marvellous. Listen and be amazed: Since 400,000 years humans used things the archaeologists couldn’t really understand, decorated with parallels and squares, lines and circles. Because i looked for tracks of information i tried to understand the reasons why people created such things.

The usual wisdom was to categorize the findings in weapons and tools, ornaments and religion, just because?

Yes, just because its natural, self-evident, a matter of course: things are either for use of killing or working, decoration or voodoo-stuff.

300,000 years ago we find round disks with a hole in the middle, 100,000 years ago graves with eggshells, pieces of antlers and the color “Red”. Ornaments are used more and more and then, 40,000 years ago, humans buried their dead with flowers and burial objects and the colors “Red” and “Black”. 20,000 years ago they finally invented division of labor.

Yes, guys, it was not Adam Smith or another European or American: it was a village somewhere in South Russia (Sungir) who realized that with the fabrication of statuettes it can live without hunting and gathering. They build settlements (37 * 21 m), where the factor of about 0,57 gives you a hint about how they constructed their settlements: by using equilateral triangles. Btw: a factor found in many ancient buildings.

And the “division of labor” had the same results as in modern times: more and more efficiency. The ancient people, 20,000 years ago, produced the statuettes in a line of 10 workplaces, using prefabricated parts. 20,000 years ago we find proofs of teamwork and use of mathematics, orchestrated processes and “not useful” things leading to the conclusion, that there had to be a fully implemented trade system.

So question: What do you need if you work in teamwork? You have to communicate between the team partners, you have to plan the job, you have to have bluepints and quality control, because if you don’t do so, your clients may not be satisfied – and you stay hungry.

Therefore, you have to have instruments to measure. To measure at work, to measure after work – to measure and to control. New instruments. Instruments not needed before. And not thought about before, so they may have been a little awkward in the beginning.

And – naturally- they were not made of stainless steel. But they were not made for decoration and for religion and not made for killing – they were made for work. A new kind of work.

To make a long journey short i just want to mention two things: first i found many “ornaments, maybe used for religion”, looking like simple measurement tools and second: you need no “god of cleanliness” if you have a bathroom in your house. Actually that is what some archaeologists think about the Indus Valley Civilization, just because the people there had bathrooms in their houses and a big public bath.

Searching for tracks of information i wondered more and more about the unimaginativeness of the modern scientists, about their inability to abstract from their own lifestyle.

They all use bathrooms in their houses and don’t pray to the “Great Lord of Soap”, they all use laptops and cell phones and no one would believe it is for “ornament” or “religion”. But 20,000 years ago they had no laptops and cell phones – so all they could have was weapons and cookware, ornaments and religion?

Self-evidence, matter of course.

That’s what the conclusion of the archaeologists had coined. Not the facts itself, but their own believings how it had to be in times, when people lived as hunters and gatherers. Primitives don’t have sophisticated tools and ideas.

But that “primitives” invented writing and science, division of labor and mathematics. 20,000 years ago.

The early humans had to be primitive, because they didn’t use the internet, that’s a matter of fact? But something like “self-evidence” doesn’t exist.

Even the natural laws had a beginning, the true moon will leave us, mothers can decide (per thoughts) about the sex of the child (Sarah Jones, University of Kent, published in"Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biology Letters"), people, who never learnt the “number 10” can’t count until 10.

What is a matter of course today, can be meaningless tomorrow – and vice versa.

That’s simply because of the nature of information as process. Processes start and end. As long as the process lasts you can use it to foresee the future.

But you should never be too sure of your knowledge. It may become a Fata Morgana, an image of another place and another time.

Information gives you probabilities, not certainties.

Remember?
Information is repeatable, identifiable – is process, not eternal state. It heralds you the future as it might be, but...
it promises you nothing.

But without stability, how will you have “natural things”, “self-evidence”?

State and religion are nowadays the most coining element of each human culture, so it is “a matter of course”, that the early humans must be religious and patriotic, too? Why? Because we don’t understand their stuff? Are chimps religious? Surely not. So somewhere in the evolution of humankind there must be the point where religion and state were invented. We can’t just say: “because nowadays government and religion rule the human mind, it has to be the same in the past”.

Processes can end – and have to begin.

Disks with holes could be used for building tents, ornaments with regular structures could be used to “stamp” your belongings, used as “names”, as information about the identity of the owner, triangles could be used to measure angles, bathes could be used to wash yourself.

Convictions.

We are so convicted of many things, that those convictions color the whole big picture of the world we live in. Convictions are useful if they describe some existing patterns in our world, like instincts and emotions, like the physically optimized brain of children: if they are “default solutions” for some real existing structures, they fulfill the function of “symbols”: to characterize an event or object by some key signals: short and precise we are able to analyze a situation including those key signals.

That’s why instincts and emotions, convictions and prejudices are so valuable.

If, yes if they are correct.

Otherwise convictions, self-evidences are just that: Fata Morganas, leading us to nowhere.

Figures lie and liars figure

Again, Brenda gave me the cue:
“It doesn't make any sense to evict something like 10,000 people? Why does the military -- yes, the military -- want this whole town vacant? Something's up. I can feel it. Maybe that's the headache, the anvil on my head. I keep feeling as if I'm watching a movie.”

She calls it “a feeling”.

I call it:
“instincts and emotions. Both are information detectors, based on key signals, with a success rate of about 80%”

Never underestimate instincts and emotions – or intuition. Because what those subsystems of brain give to us, is the result of high-sophisticated information processing.

First: the detectors of the physical signals, eyes, ears, skin, tongue, nose. What do they do? They detect, yes, but they also - choose.

Choice is part of each and every information process because of a simple fact: reality is too big for us, too huge for a single object, too large and multifarious for one single point to be caught.

So each and every information process has to choose from what reality offers us.

Therefore – each and every information processing system has to declare:

goals.

The simplest goal surely is: i want to survive, the next is, my race should survive, but then you can have “individual goals” like “i want to support Green September caring about people” or “i just want to be a winner caring about nothing else then myself”.

However, the fact which goal exactly you have, is not that important at the moment. Important is, that:

goals must exist for each and every information processing system.

They are the “bouy in the sea”, the navigation point, where the infinity of the flood of signals are parted to get a manageable load of work. But that’s only the first step, because then you have to “make a set” out of your load of work to be able to perfectly "Part the Sea".

He, he – i hear you say, my eyes don’t choose anything, they simply retrieve signals.

Yes, but only electromagnetical ones – try to hear something with your eyes or try to read with your ears! Convinced?

Back to Parting the Sea: i want to focus you on the next step of your eyes and ears and nose: They are not only choosing the kind of physical signals, they also choose the kind of behavior. Because only information is useful.

So they measure in time-steps. And if signals are not regular, they can’t fulfil the first precondition for information: to be a repeatable process you have to have repeating behavior.

Simple, isn’t it?

Therefore, all not regular events are viewed as “noise” and – ignored. That means, that even on the level of your eyes and ears most of the incoming signals were omitted.

And that sorting and selecting goes on and on and on.

Your brain works with a 3-level memory: ultrashort, short, long.

All controled by time steps, by the regularity of repeating signals. Btw: that's the general strategy of information processing systems to “create order in a random world” by just using the two axes “kind” and “time” to create unique space-time curves.

In simple words: what is able to reach your central brain has been controlled and checked and controlled and checked many times with the result to have a reasonable probability to be a repeatable, identifiable process – to be true information.

True information, according to 1) the current real situation around (at least just some milliseconds before, but the whole situation, don’t forget that) and 2) your own goals...

and 3)?

According to your own abilities, because if you’re blind, you can’t use electromagnetical signals, but that’s just an aside.

All the efforts to gather as much information as possible? Why?

Because of the basic insight of Joseph Bertrand (1822-1900), "Calcul des Probabilites", 1889, called Bertrands Paradox (better known as “Monty-Hall-Problem”), discussing a really “mathematical sounding” problem with an important aspect: the more you know about your problem, the better you can evaluate it – with the result, that your prognosis significantly betters, how this problem will develop.

The more you know about a system, the better you know, how that system will behave.

Which system?

The system you mapped in Part One – the “sensory side” - gathering information to create unique-space-time curves.

Bertrands Paradox simply explains you, why human brain grew so much in the last million years after inventing language, just to be able to gather (and process) more and more information to be able to do better prognosis.

To be able to better foresee the future.

That’s Part One of my answer to Brenda – regarding the sensory side of information processing, where information has to be gathered and structured.

Part Two is about the “motor side” (motor in the meaning of “motor nerve”), is about creating a decision, finding a solution – so Part Two is about the question, what shall we do, no, not with the drunken sailor, but with all the nice unique space-time curves, our brain now has created?

All those curves and paths and nodes, objects and relations, movings and actions – how does such an “ordered chaos” can help us?

Again, the definition of information gives us the right hint – because information is repeatable, it has to be action – in the physical sense, means that it has to follow the principle of least action.

And that is just one path in all our space-time curves – that is the solution, you look for.

Ok, that’s fine, you’ll say, great, but can you please tell me, how that fits with “figures lie and liars figure”?

And i’ll reply “wait a little”.

Our brain is perfectly optimized to analyzing the map of space-time-curves of the incoming events to detect the one single path according to the principle of least action. That is not the point.

The point is – and that’s why the human brain did grow so much – if you have gathered enough information to rightly evaluate the current situation. And Bertrands Paradox tells you, that if you lack some information, your evaluation of the situation therefore isn’t as good as it could be.

Now remember the first part of information processing – the goals.

They are information like any other part of the reality, so if you know goals, you can better decide, where a reality including information processing systems will go.

And here i am:

Back to liars.

A lie is nothing else than an information, which is not based on real events, but on signals sent by the liars to “pretend reality”.

Or in other words: the reality including liars looks different for someone who knows about the lie and someone who doesn’t. So the “curve of least action”, the evaluation of the situation and therefore the results of decisions of someone who doesn’t know about the lie also looks different to the conclusions of someone who knows.

That’s exactly the reason, why a liar lies – he simply tries to force others to decide wrong things. Wrong for the others, not for the liars.

Your defense? Try to detect the lies by understanding the liars. If you know their goals, you know as much as they do and you know what they want you to “evaluate”, to decide.

And here i am back to Brenda:

“I keep getting the message that New Orleans is going to be rebuilt with no room for the poor.”

Thanks to JMF we know that the vultures start circling over New Orleans:

Old-Line Families Escape Worst of Flood And Plot the Future:
“The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically," he says.”

The Voice of the White House
“In that way, we were told (and I was not the only person in the dining room who heard all this), this served to “chase out the niggers” and permit Bush-supporting businessmen from buying up the soon-to-be condemned sodden houses for five cents on the dollar from friendly insurance companies (which one of them was a CEO of) and put up an enlarged and very profitable combination of industrial park and office building section. The money for this would, naturally, come from government grants which a terrified Congress (Mid Term elections are coming) had just voted for and the contracts to demolish the wrecked low-income slums would go, as a no-bid contract, to another stellar Bush supporter.”

Pumping Us Dry
“Katrina tragedy is an absolutely perfect storm for oil companies.”

The vultures circle...

Gimme Shelter
“Trying to force authorities to open an Air Force base as a shelter, Jesse Jackson and other black leaders picked up 150 evacuees at the squalid New Orleans Airport and headed into the night.”

(i stop now, just asking JMF for more links to gather at one single point to show the “big picture”)

That’s the reason, Brenda, why you feel, that “something's up”. It’s not the headache (btw: hope you'll soon be well again), it’s just the knowledge, that those poor guys have, you mentioned:

“Seeing people being handcuffed and arrested for refusing to leave their home” – these people know that the robber barons may take their homes - in one way or the other - and sell them for thirty peaces of silver and that they may never see their homes again.

Thank you, Brenda, for inspiring me – and thank you, Barnita, for inspiring Brenda.

Reductio ad absurdum

Katrina did it again.

Took my plans and washed it away.

I know so clearly what information is, that i often wondered about the fact, how it could be that it was me to find the truth. Just me, a simple human being, not really very lucky, but (looking at all the suffering on Earth) also surely not unlucky, not really a genius, but also surely not stupid. All the pondering was the reason why i understood how it could work, how in the end all the little pieces of puzzle offered me through my whole life could suddenly be put together to create an image no other person could see.

As it was with Darwin. You know, he was privileged – he had to be privileged because otherwise he wouldn’t be able to study and work on natural science in the aristocratic societies of the time – and he was british. And that was also necessary. Maybe if he was Dutch, it wouldn’t have mattered, but if Darwin would have been German or Austrian or Hungarian or Pole, it would have mattered.

Why?

Because Darwin had to sail.

He had to be able to visit Galapagos – the island where evolution is visible.

He had to see the result – of what he had thought about before. He had to see a clear, definite realization, the proof of some thoughts and the hints, where something may have to be rethought.

Some events change everything.

The journey to Galapagos changed our view of life as much as Einsteins Relativity Theory– and Katrina may change it, too.

Brenda, whom i know since just a few days from the internet, quoted a post with these words:

“And since this was the first real test of homeland security, we ALL have every right to be scared shitless.”

We all had waited for a “big bang” in September, but none of us, i guess, had really waited for a big bang driven by Mother Nature. We thought of some spooky terrorist attacks, where one politician can say: “we told you, we should have killed them all” and the other can say: “we told you, we should have be a little wiser in treating foreigners.”

But Katrina can’t be declared as “terrorist” – all the Big Mouthes can’t be able to color this “attack” as arabian. Because the one and only people to be responsible for Katrina are surely the people of the first world, so actually the Big Mouthes have to start to de-color this fact: “No, no, there is no global warming, no proof, no guilt, go on and poison the world, make money! Don’t think, just grab!”

You look for something good, Brenda, in Katrina?

“I've read a lot, nothing much worth passing on, but enough to know people have changed since Katrina, just like they did after 9/11.”

The good is, that this is not perfectly true. Because 9/11 allowed the Americans to look away from the real problems, they could find some scapegoats and play “Game Boy” with their mighty weapons to avoid thinking. Don’t think, just bomb.

Don’t think, just act.

What a mess! How could a nation develop a philosophy like that?

Reductio ad absurdum.

That’s my title.

And that’s the reason why this article really belongs to my blog – because information is not only the creator of worlds, it is also the creator of human mind. Information is not only the genetic plan of your brain – it is also the subject of your brains work.

Genes and brain – both are information processing systems, but with an important difference. Genes work like relational databases, the knowledge of the kind of event, which is to be processed, has to be given. I call that “passive information processing”.

The brain is much more efficient. It is able to detect the kind of event by “virtualizing” strategies, so it is able to handle not just one single type like the genes, which can’t store the DNA of frogs and fishes and birds in one cell - just either/or -, but the brain can store information of nearly any type. About everything. By creating metadatas. That’s “active processing”. In the lingo of data-handling: passive vs. active information processing is like relational databases vs. XML.

However, there’s a problem with metadata-programming: Performance.

And despite the fact, that the human brain is the most complex construct in maybe the whole universe, it isn’t able to process the (nearly) infinity of its reality. It has to make compromises to simply be fast enough in its information processing – resulting in a clear decision - for reality.

Historically, brain uses instincts and emotions. Both are information detectors, based on key signals, with a success rate of about 80%, i guess, by just using the same strategies which worked in former times.

Remember?
"Information only tells you, how the future may look like if nothing will change, because it tells you how the past has looked like."

But history proves, that the 20% failure ratio may be too high:

Remember also?
“It [information] heralds you the future as it might be, but...
it promises you nothing.”

So brain developed a “control station” for instincts and emotions to check the result of its subsystems in a given situation: Awareness. We got “aware” of what was going on. Again with the problem of performance.

Solution?

Brain tried to find again “default solutions” to accelerate information processing, because instincts and emotions worked really fine (and fast!) – in their “scope of application”.

How?

Brain offered neural connections for each and every situation, humankind has ever survived (you know, mutation and selection demands, that experience has to be moved to the next generation).

Then, in childhood, until you are 10 years old, your life destroys some of the neural connections. Huh, you’ll say? Yes, it’s true – the ones you never need. They fade away like muscles you don’t use.

Result?

A brain, perfectly optimized – physically – to your own life, your own mother and father, your own school and friends, your own readings and experiences, the serials you watch and the food you buy, the sports you do and the battles you fight.

Can you see it now? Can you understand now, what is so un-understandable? That the children of war times have “war” in their head and that the Americans prefer “not to think, just act”?

It’s how their childhoods were – John Wayne: “shot, then ask”, the industry, wanting makers, not thinkers, the hire-and-fire-system, which doesn’t care about education of employees, but easily offers you the next job (until now?), the foreign politics, which brought hardship to half of the world, but cheap goods and oil for your SUVs and big screens for your TV.

It seemed to work all the time. Look away, don’t care about the consequences and if you have problems, run and hide – or better rob somebody else, no need to change your life, because all the time all was fine...

it was fine to be strong and the winner and to “can not care less” about the world around...

and it did work until...

Katrina.

That’s the reason, why so many people in America are scared now.

Katrina may be, what World War II was for Europe: the event which taught the people, that no god, no king, no submission to “higher powers” and no “strength”, no credit card and no status symbol can protect them, that..

IT can happen to them.

Stable environments are the dream of every human brain – but they are also nothing more. As much as some people want to believe in stability, the stability of their wealth, their religions, their superpower-nations, their muscles, weapons and “superior genes”, stability is nothing else than a dream, created in our own brain.

Because we mistake the mapping for the mapped.

And the longer the period of stability lasts, the more the difference between mapping and mapped reality will grow. So in the end we need a “proof by contradiction” (reductio ad absurdum) to readjust our brain to reality:

An event which shows us clearly, that we have to change the mappings in our head.

That the world isn’t as neat and easy and small – and manageable - as we want it to be.

Katrina did this for us: The hurricane proved us, that our societies are not that mighty and stable and powerful and rich as we believed. That our societies are as every natural biosphere created by/of thousands and thousands of cycles of information processing. And if we destroy some of the cycles, as we do so easily with environment, we also destroy parts of our own life (keyword scale-free networks).

Nothing or nobody can protect us forever, no money, no nuke, no “superiority” - from the consequences of our own actions. Nothing can protect our lives from being destroyed as any other biological cyle, no law, no police, no god, no gold. Yes, even the rich needed help to escape from New Orleans, remember?

Our life IS destroyable, IT can happen – says Katrina.

That's why we all are scared.

Katrina

It’s a little early...

for what i want to say – because to understand what i’m talking about, you should know what information is. And i couldn’t tell you until now the true nature of information.

Just hints:
Because we forgot that each and every state – in reality – has to be entered.
A set creates order in a random world. That’s the magic.
So don’t focus on the webs. Focus on the spider.

Problem is, that Katrina didn’t ask me.

But demonstrates it in a horrible way: Explosions Fill New Orleans Sky With Smoke

Katrina demonstrates that nothing is isolated. All is intertwined – like a gigantic web. Remember? “Information is like a spider?” Some of the nodes can be deleted without problem, but some carry most of the load. Remove one them and you’ll destroy the whole.

Ever heard from “scale-free networks”?

Katrina shows you what that means. That means, that Biloxi will not hurt the mighty America, but one of the countrys most important harbors can do. And it shows you how many connections spread from New Orleans across the whole continent. Think of the harbor of New York or the Mississipi – all the ships from the river-head to the delta delivering goods from and to New Orleans – where should they deliver now?

That’s information.

Process, not state – repeatable process, identifiable process. Remember the set? The uniqueness of the members? Each ship can be easily identified by its thousands of attributes. And repeatable? The courses of the ships on the Mississipi are not really difficult to understand: from North to South, from South to North day after day, month after month.

Until now.

Because information is only repeatability, not eternity. It is only true for the past, never for the future. One simple event can change everything. What was reliable before, is now gone with the wind.

Information is process, not state. All you can learn from it is hypothesis, assumption, so all you’ve ever learnt you have to check each and every time you use this knowledge. Check, if it is right until now – or if something like Katrina did change everything.

Why and when you use knowledge? To make decisions.

Information only tells you, how the future may look like if nothing will change, because it tells you how the past has looked like.

Never mistake the image of the future for the future itself! Only the past can be described by the wonderful stability humankind loves so much, only the past does never change, only the past is stable enough to be mapped in mathematics – but never the future.

Information is repeatable, identifiable – is process, not eternal state. It heralds you the future as it might be, but...

it promises you nothing.

As nobody promised you that Katrina will spare a huge city just because all the hurricanes before did do that.