Notes as I read...

In other words true autopoesis is impossible.

Ok an autopoetic system supports itself, like butter is needed to make more butter. But you get chicken and egg because the first system must have been formed by other means. So it can't really "create" itself, only "support" itself

Alternatively its simply emergent property (almost epi-phenomalism), whereby an underlying dynamic system produces a stable property. But such a property is not involved in the system! Its a higher order.

An interesting possibility then is a system which creates an emergent property which is involved in the autopoesis. i suspect category mistake, but very interesting if this exists. i think immediately of group fitness versus individual fitness in behavioural ecology... however while these 2 levels can be studied i don't see yet how they interact.. if at all. Interesting way forward...

V. INTERSETING actually because this would test absolutely whether structure or "scale" was a product of perception or a reality. The world can be described in the level of atoms. It can also be described on the level of humans. But can it be described on both levels at the same time! This collection of atoms "died" thus leading to rapid dissipation. Does that make sense?

Just to state at this time, I've failed to see any "substance" in ideas of emergent properties. It seems to me to be simply a feature of "classification". Shall determine that belief for sure in this on going...

Just adding... regarding the old question about how remarkable it is that the world makes sense to humans... i wonder what the logical implications of it not making sense would be? What does this sentence really mean? Are we imagining a world that does not make sense? How about a world that makes more sense and in what sense. Obviously predicting the future is the test, and science does well. So in a world where we could not predict the future, or a world where the future was always known what are the logical implications? Well if the future was always known then it wouldn't be th future, and there would be no time (i suspect) and in a world where we simply could not predict the future and every moment was a complete suprise ther would be no memory or past (cos everything would be new). So time itself entails being slap bang in between the two!!! So why maths? That's the other big question... no thoughts yet...

self-organising -> basically decreasing entropy at one level, increasing at another.


Quines. Linked to compression. but first...

Compression a simple proof. If every binary sequence encodes a number, then there are as many binary sequences as N (natural numbers).

Now in compression we are saying that a number can be mapped to a smaller number and back again. In other words it is a 1 to 1 mapping within N. (btw The set of such mappings is the same size as N.) So given a number and a compression algorithm we need a bit of information to know whether the number is meant to be decompressed or not. ok that is not the proof just following a tangent, the proof was that each number by itself might or might-not be useful so compression is not an elimination of useless numbers, but rather a mapping and so it requires an algorithm to compress/decompress and that algorithm effectively generalises the information lost by compression. To develop an algorithm we extract the general information from the code, so that the code is smaller and the algorithm bigger. (We don't usually include the algorithm in the size of the result, but we should to be honest ... something need to just test with zip).

anyway the point and the relationship with Quines is that the code while producing itself is a cheat, because the binary exection code is not reproduced. A machine language Quine would be cute!! i.e. one that truely reproduced itself. And that is in Turing territory cos I need to write a Turning machine which first of all runs a set of Turing tables, and then writes itself. That would be exceptionally cute!!!

Same logic as the Turing machine on a Turing machine, consider a self interpreter... i.e. a compiler compiled by itself. Chicken and egg.

probably useless but tuppers self ref formula : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupper%27s_self-referential_formula

note: an argument I used against Dawkins Memes thus: has a weakness. He says that ideas evolve like genes (I had the idea of viruses). The problem tho is that Memes is an idea so if follows that it has evolved like a gene. Now the fitness of the Meme meme is not what Dawkins is meaning by its truth. I can't see the idea catching on, while it might be true. So we return to truth as a measure of fitness rather than population. Its not a strong argument against it, but it shows up the fact it can't be taken to totality, cos if the Meme meme was floated and then went extinct it loses any notability. This argument needs to be strengthened cos I suspect its a form of a general argument that could be applied to all formualtions including itself!

End. brain ache! off to eat.