> David McFadzean wrote:
> >Recently I found a page on the web about "zero point fields" (ZPF) or
> >something like that which claimed that the idea that matter is really
> >nothing but information has a real theoretical basis. Unfortunately I
> >lost the URL before I could finish it. Has anyone else come across it?
>
> This sounds great. I would be also interested to find out more about
> information being in fact matter. It always bothered me how the three can
> be one in The Holy Trinity and one day it occured to me that it must be
> Energy, Matter, and Information -- they ARE one. We know we can convert
> matter into energy and vice versa (we even know the formula E = mc^2).
> Wouldn't it be fascinating to find a formula for converting matter into
> information, etc. ?
I don't know how to convert matter to information, or vice versa.
Here's how to convert between *entropy* and [absence of] *information*[!]
[NOTE: this does NOTHING for semantics.]
w: # of states the system could be in
n: # of states generated by the basis required to describe the system
/ w \ / n \
Def. of information: - log_2 | - | = log_2 | - |
\ n / \ w /
[this is to make life easy in CIS]
Def. of entropy [Quantum version, as in Chemistry]:
/ n \
(klunky positive constant*Planck's constant)* log_e | --- |
\ n-w /
In particular, discarding information results in the immediate creation
of entropy (obvious), which exorcises Maxwell's Demon from Thermodynamics
[???]. [One of my 1995 Scientific Americans....]
The Second Law thus reduces to "closed systems end up in a more probable
state as they go forward in time." This *usually* implies an increase in
disorder, etc.
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/ Towards the conversion of data into information....
/
/ Kenneth Boyd
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