Connecting Life and Machines： An Introduction to Basic Informatics

Preface §

Chapter 1: Information §

1.1 What is Information (Lecture 1) §

• “The pattern that living organisms create patterns with” is a fundamental premise that it is a subjective existence.
• However, information is often treated as something objective.
  • It assumes a sense of pseudo-objectivity.
    • This is influenced by Inter-subjectivity.

Definition of Information

• The gap between the sciences and the humanities regarding the definition of information.

• • Shannon’s information (quantity) Shannon

  • (Negentropy: Objective world, probability concept)

• • Bateson’s information Bateson

  • (Creating differences: Subjective world, cognitive subject)

• • General definition

• (1) Something that informs about the unknown

• (2) Something that influences the subject’s actions

  • The general definition here often assumes a world with pseudo-objectivity.

1.2 Classification of Information Studies (Lecture 2) §

1.3 Transmission and Accumulation of Information (Lecture 3) §

1.4 Amount of Information (Lecture 4) §

1.5 Body and Biological Information (Lecture 5) §

• Biological information ≥ Social information ≥ Mechanical information

  • Inclusive hierarchy
  • Understandable that life and society are related. The source of social information is often life.
  • However, it’s unclear why machines are included.
    • Thought about whether things other than life also generate information, but based on this definition, information only becomes such when recognized subjectively by life.
      • That seems quite arbitrary.

• It is said that the entire body, not just the brain, is involved in making judgments.

  • Emotions arise because of things like getting goosebumps.
  • Adjustments are made later to maintain the self’s logical consistency.

• Could the same thing be said about medium-chat? (blu3mo)

  • Viewing AI as an extension of the self.

1.6 Symbols and Social Information (Lecture 6) §

• When biological information is shared with others, it becomes social information, well, that makes sense.
  • Social information is a combination of symbols and meanings.
    • Well, without symbols, it cannot be shared with others.
  • Based on Saussure, codes, and subjective symbol understanding.
    • However, it is often mistakenly believed to be clearly linked to objectivity.

1.7 IT and Mechanical Information (Lecture 7) §

• It deals with symbols only, detached from meaning.

  • Assuming pseudo-objectivity, it also assumes an objective correspondence between symbols and meanings.
  • A rather questionable assumption (blu3mo).

• Characters and smoke signals are symbols too, that’s true (blu3mo)(blu3mo).

• When dealing with symbols only, “the content of meaning is discarded, latent”

  • Copying books, TV broadcasts, digital processing, all treat meaning as discarded and handle it as formal data.

• At its core, it should be strongly linked to biological information and subjectivity, but that is not often seen in modern times (blu3mo).

  • The reason being that for effective use of mechanical information, social standardization is in place to ensure that the meaning remains unchanged across time and space.
    • I see (blu3mo)(blu3mo).
    • Society is structured to ensure that pseudo-objectivity is maintained as much as possible because it is convenient in various ways.
    • Or it may be ignoring subjectivity.
    • This connects with the context of Asymmetric Reality (blu3mo)(blu3mo).
      • LLM
  • 
  • 
    • Even without pseudo-objectivity, “mechanical information proves effective.”- With the help of LLM, machines are now able to handle the complexity of meaning, so it seems possible to argue that the “social fixation” that maintains pseudo-objectivity here could disappear.
  • Demonstrating “successful communication through asym-chat” could serve as a demonstration of this argument.

• Machine information is readily replicable, and people are currently being engulfed by this flood.

Lesson 1.8 Digital and Analog (Lecture 8)

• Digital and Analog
• Discrete and Continuous
• It was a discussion that made sense, as blu3mo mentioned.

Column 1: A Lesson in Pity

Chapter 2: Systems

• It’s getting into the discussion of system theory, as mentioned by blu3mo. 2.1 Autonomous Systems and Heteronomous Systems (Lecture 9)
• Autonomous Systems and Heteronomous Systems
  • I feel like I’ve read about this somewhere, but can’t quite recall.
  • It was in “Words that Create the Future,” there was a discussion about cars, as blu3mo mentioned. 2.2 Computer Systems (Lecture 10)

2.3 Organic Composition (Lecture 11)

2.4 Autopoiesis (Lecture 12)

2.5 Mental Systems (Lecture 13)

2.6 Social Systems (Lecture 14)

2.7 Hierarchical Autonomous Communication Systems (Lecture 15)

2.8 Robots (Lecture 16)

Column 2: Searching for Myself

Chapter 3: Media

3.1 Propagation Effects (Lecture 17)

3.2 Resultant Media (Lecture 18)

3.3 Concatenative Media (Lecture 19)

3.4 Serial Media (Lecture 20)

3.5 Mass Media Systems (Lecture 21)

3.6 Web Search (Lecture 22)

3.7 Interactive Media (Lecture 23)

3.8 Internet Systems (Lecture 24)

Column 3: The Mobile God

Chapter 4: Communication and Propagation Let’s start reading from here, as suggested by blu3mo.

4.1 System Operation and Meaning Propagation (Lecture 25)

4.2 The Constructed World (Lecture 26)

4.3 Individual Learning (Lecture 27)

4.4 Organizational Learning (Lecture 28)

4.5 Machine Learning (Lecture 29)

4.6 System Evolution (Lecture 30)

4.7 Digital Divide (Lecture 31)

4.8 Human-Machine Hybrid Systems (Lecture 32)