Posted by
glen e. p. ropella-2 on
Aug 05, 2010; 2:49pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/entropy-and-uncertainty-REDUX-tp5375070p5376783.html
Nicholas Thompson wrote circa 08/04/2010 07:04 PM:
> All of this, it seems to me, can be accommodated by – indeed requires –
> a common language between information entropy and physics entropy, the
> very language which Glen seems to argue is impossible.
This part confuses me. As I understand it, Grant was on one side of the
dialectic, arguing that organization is (or at least can be) independent
of uncertainty. I was on the _other_ side, claiming that they aren't
independent, but can be distinct. I.e. Grant's claiming they are
fundamentally different things. I'm claiming they are distinct aspects
of the same thing.
Grant resolved this (off-list) with his further explanation that he is
treating both meanings (organization vs. uncertainty) as distinct
measures of the behavior of the same system. As measures, he defines
(or wants to define) them with independent co-domains so that they are
_allowed_ to vary independently, if that's how it all turns out when he
applies the measures to the system. That's not to say that, with any
particular system, they will or won't... just that they _might_. Then,
if he studies a huge sample of systems and, in all cases, they vary in a
correlated way, I can step in and make my assertion that they are
aspects of the same thing. If not, then he can step in and make an
assertion that they really measure different things. But until we have
the separated (not conflated) measures for the two separated concepts,
we will stay lost in the conflation.
But, to my knowledge, neither of us have made the case that the the
language used to express the measures is fundamentally different, much
less impossible. In fact, I think the original irritant for Grant was
that because the language used to describe the two is so similar that it
leads directly to the conflation between the two concepts. So Grant is
lamenting the fact that the two (independent) concepts are expressed in
the same language. I would take it even further and say that the two
(distinct but intimately related) concepts _should_ be expressed in the
same language because they measure the same thing, just in different ways.
So, I'm confused why you think I argue that the common language between
the two would be impossible.
--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095,
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