Metamodern Spirituality | The Thermodynamics of Meaning (w/ David Wolpert)

Complexity scientist David Wolpert joins me to consider the idea of meaning at its most fundamental level. Historically, information theory has helped us quantify information (e.g., bits), but says nothing about the ways information might be useful, significant, relevant, or meaningful. Recently, however, Wolpert and colleagues have filled in what's missing from that account, offering a theory of "semantic" or "meaningful" information by showing how some information actually has causal power to influence the well-being and viability of systems in context. Here we explore this idea and a number of its implications for what's "meaningful" across the complexity stack, from a whirlpool to a bacterium all the way up to us.

0:00 Introduction
0:46 Meaning and Semantic Information
2:17 Background Context: Information Theory, Utility Functions, and Statistical Thermodynamics
14:03 Meaning FOR a System: What Information Helps One Stay Far from Equilibrium
21:54 Meaning: Mutual Information with Causal Power for Viability
27:57 Meaning and Meaurement up the Complexity Stack
33:42 Indirect Meaning, Chains of Significance, and Intelligence
37:20 A Semantic Information Theory of Individuality?
42:03 Relative vs. Absolute Semantic Information Metrics
49:52 The Complexification of Meaningful Information through Evolutionary Transitions
52:30 Layered Meaning through Evolution

A link to the paper "Semantic information, autonomous agency and non-equilibrium statistical physics":

[sujathaontheweb]

The way Brenadan doesn't shy away from the harder details and guides the conversation to the actual details of the paper is refreshing.

[IproCoGo]

So happy Wolpert planted the conversation with the background

[jerrypeters]

Its a privilege to witness your scholastic hunt for insight, Brendan. I'm looking forward to finding out what your new book will have to offer.

[FootnotesPlato]

Paradoxically, it seems to me that the emergence of agency always involves both individuality and collectivity (ie, Whiteheadian "societies") across various scales, and that this emergence always already presupposes the ingression of novel potentiae (what Vervaeke has been calling "emanation") that are not present in the past environment of said agency. Tim Jackson and I have been covering a lot of what Wolpert was introducing over on my channel. 

Great conversation, btw. The takeaway for me, though, is that there is still no way to get this statistical model going without assuming a "utility function, " ie, that organisms want or desire not only to survive but to maximize their lives (ie, to grow, learn, transform their environments, etc.). You can't explain this function by using the model because the model presupposes it. Such models can then offer wonderful mathematical accounts of how an organism is causally embedded within its past environment, but remain limited by what is *not* present in that past, ie, novel potentiae!

[mikibellomillo]

yass! my conclusion is right! thank you for uploading this video!! God bless you!! 🎉

[BailelaVida]

Great and important interview. Thanks.
Subbed

[a-guess-at-the-riddle]

Fantastic, I love that Wolpert and co. are interested in this topic.

[autismfromtheInside]

I'm a bit surprised natural selection wasn't mentioned (until the very end). The 'trying not to die' seems to be an almost precise parallel.

Also at 50 min mark he doesn't understand the question. I agree with you Brendan. The 'meaning' of the pizza slice has many many many more layers and complexities given the complex social environment background for example.

For me the most interesting part was framing 'intelligence' as the ability to assign and recognise and process meaning.

[jan-peterschuring]

Just finished watching this video and it blew my mind!

Have you possibly considered the handshake QM interpretation (The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics) to help explain how information flows between these domains—that of the infinite equilibrium pool of superpositions (noise) to that of the constricted semantically meaningful web of our lived ground ?

Using Max Velman’s—reflexive monist—ground of being—as one conceptual template, it would seem that a lot of the “features” of our species specific Headset are “events” of our very core attributes as beings—embedded in that sublimated iceberg that is our “formed semantically meaningful” reality. Now that is ontological only in the sense that it captures our “filtered constructed reality”—but of course that is our reality for all intents and purposes. Whether aesthetics, capacity for language, higher cognitive functions—they are part of our filtering apparatus—most of it sublimated

So what does our species specific “reality bandwidth”—and the cognitive semantic “conceptual constructs” derived from that constrained information flow—tell us ? And more important does it capture any true features of the absolute—the thing in itself? Semantic meaning in terms of emotions, ethics, aesthetics and relevant ideals may be completely a functional our species specific headset fiction—BUT perhaps there is bidirectional, and even retro-causal flow ??? —I was about to say platonic forms—but even that is highly questionable—perhaps as David Wolpert suggests it is the much more elemental dynamic of thermodynamics—the statistical process of equilibrium towards self organizing harmony (internal homeostasis) —a self sorting movement from chaos to order. This ordering of semantic meaning within the organism’s closed system—is the necessary boundary “chaos limiting” that comes out from the larger noise of equilibrium in the infinite syntactic pool.

Now as Wolpert stated --attaining a state of thermodynamic equilibrium would obviously mean that you are dead....so it is in the very self ordering dynamics of homeostasis—which is our organism’s boundary state --to be dynamically on this creative boundary tension of chaos as the needed impetus of self organizing to occur and for life itself to exist.

This speaks of perhaps a disjunctive tension --boundary--between that of the absolute—as being an infinite probability distribution as well as being in a state of perfect equilibrium—to that of a “collective world organism utility function"---whereby *being and it's manifest ground* is the very temporally constricted self organizing “dynamic” that needs chaos to get to any ordering of semantically meaningful "complexity” to happen—what springs from this is this “semantic ecosystem” a web of relationship between layered nodes and which forms what we call “grounded lived reality.”

Now here I come to the retro causality feature—namely as a explanatory model for how this syntactic information, between these two domains—Quantum foam to classical world—can flow. If we use this retro-causal Quantum Handshake idea, then that would open up an intriguing “bidirectional channel” of sorts.

So in this picture we see that the self organizing agent is “pulling” syntactic information from the infinite unformed and noisy (chaotic) information pool—but then also crucially the vital retro causal semantic “future morphological patterns” out of its own future! This then allows for the novelty of the chaos (implications for free will) to get filtered through a matrix of future relevance patterns—towards new creative ends.

A Shakespearean play could never be randomly created through the brute power of infinite time together with an infinite pool of typing monkeys if they only have access to using syntactic bits of information —but if they have access to retro causal Morphic semantic “clumps of meaning”—then a new novel “semantically meaningful play” may arise.

This is incidentally what a Michael Levin’s research in novel biological forms is pointing at.

Also what comes to mind is Whitehead’s “Prehension concept” as the binding bridge for the creation of new novel occasions to occur.

[kokopelli]

When I'm crossing the road the sound of a car carries much more semantic information than the pizza on my table at home.

[PhilosopherScholar]

Awesome! Great tie in of information theory, thermodynamics, and causal theory. This makes a lot of sense to me. I agree with others that evolutionary theory should be more explicit.

I appreciate you bringing up the complexity stack, Brendan. You kept trying to get him to scale up his view!

[kallianpublico]

Quantum and quantified. Try to differentiate mathematical and linguistic information. Then try to put them together. Which comes first?
Mr. Wolpert relates a conversation he had with his professor. The gist, i heard, was that math was more "exact" than language. Which corresponds to science's explanation of color as opposed to the conscious experience of color. In other words the frequency of electromagnetic waves corresponds to certain colors. Red is really a range of wavelengths of electomagnetic waves.
Which meaning is more exact and which is more true? Are both meanings true? Are both meanings meaningful? Are both meanings a "means" to an end?
Turning the color red into a number is an axiological exercise of meaning. Turning the number red into a conscious impression red? Turning syntactic information into semantic meaning sounds more plausible than turning numbers into language.
I think the semantic into syntactic information, feedback sounds plausible. Math into alphabet. When i try to put my head around turning information into consciousness? I cannot get around the thought that consciousness must come first. Numbers can't be turned into consciousness without also figuring out where the operations of math come from. Addition, exponentiation, derivative, Wronskian, divergence, etcetera.
Can addition be turned into a number? No it cannot. Not currently, i think. Is there a "means" of turning the operation of addition into a number? Maybe. When physicists find ..."fine-tuning" waves are composed of dark energy and anti-matter interactions maybe we'll finally turn the plus sign, +, into a number.
Math is not a subset of language. Math is a subset of the linguistic mind.
The Contents of consciousness can be correlated. Can correlation be used to "seize" consciousness? It doesn't make sense.
The chicken and the egg are both contents of consciousness. Only consciousness can provide the answer to "which came first". The correlation of causation hidden in the question of "which came first" is given by consciousness. Does causation determine consciousness, chickens and eggs?

[CharlesBrown-xqug]

《 Arrays of nanodiodes promise full conservation of energy》

A simple rectifier crystal can, iust short of a replicatable long term demonstration of a powerful prototype, almost certainly filter the random thermal motion of electrons or discrete positiive charged voids called holes so the electric current flowing in one direction predominates. At low system voltage a filtrate of one polarity predominates only a little but there is always usable electrical power derived from the source, which is Johnson Nyquest thermal electrical noise. This net electrical filtrate can be aggregated in a group of separate diodes in consistent alignment parallel creating widely scalable electrical power. As the polarity filtered electrical energy is exported, the amount of thermal energy in the group of diodes decreases. This group cooling will draw heat in from the surrounding ambient heat at a rate depending on the filtering rate and thermal resistance between the group and ambient gas, liquid, or solid warmer than absolute zero. There is a lot of ambient heat on our planet, more in equatorial dry desert summer days and less in polar desert winter nights.

Refrigeration by the principle that energy is conserved should produce electricity instead of consuming it.

Focusing on explaining the electronic behavior of one composition of simple diode, a near flawless crystal of silicon is modified by implanting a small amount of phosphorus on one side from a ohmic contact end to a junction where the additive is suddenly and completely changed to boron with minimal disturbance of the crystal pattern. The crystal then continues to another ohmic contact.

A region of high electrical resistance forms at the junction in this type of diode when the phosphorous near the ĵunction donates electrons that are free to move elsewhere while leaving phosphorus ions held in the crystal while the boron donates a hole which is similalarly free to move. The two types of mobile charges mutually clear each other away near the junction leaving little electrical conductivity. An equlibrium width of this region is settled between the phosphorus, boron, electrons, and holes. Thermal noise is beyond steady state equlibrium. Thermal noise transients where mobile electrons move from the phosphorus added side to the boron added side ride transient extra conductivity so the forward moving  electrons are preferentally filtered into the external circuit. Electrons are units of electric current. They lose their thermal energy of motion and gain electromotive force, another name for voltage, as they transition between the junction and the array electrical tap. Inside the diode, heat is absorbed: outside the diode, an attached electrical circuit is energized. The net energy in diodes connected in consistent alignment parallel is aggregated. The maximum energy is converted from ambient heat to productive electricity when the electrical load is matched to the array impeadence.

Matched impeadence output (watts) is k (Boltzman's constant, ~1.38^-23) times T  (tempeature Kelvin) times bandwidth (all to a natural limit ~2 THz @ 290 K) times rectification efficiency.

Aloha

[tracek]

Thanks for sharing this. Fun conversation. You might want to edit out the plethora of ums and ughs in the intro.

[triangleunderstander]

i do not understand this lecture. it does not seem to be saying anything new? it is obvious that some information is useful for survival and growth? did this require a paper?

[badoedipus]

I had some art school professors who were big on information theory.. that would vibe with Jung on complexes into archetypes.. and a kinda nominalist prism I was using at the time.

[Michaelfrikkie]

Let's propose that all organisms exist on a spectrum of consciousness rather than simply a spectrum of "success in avoiding equilibrium." On one end of this spectrum is the least conscious organism, while on the other end is the most conscious organism. This spectrum is inversely proportional to the survivability of the organism (or ability to avoid equilibrium), i.e., the least conscious is the most probable to avoid equilibrium and vice versa.
I claim this because, from a purely mechanistic point of view, bacteria and the entire single-celled ecosystem are far better at avoiding equilibrium in any environment than any multi-cellular organism. Species that successfully avoid equilibrium are those with mechanical, chemical, and syntactic information structures that are simply more probable to avoid equilibrium, like bacteria.
If we set aside our human bias, we can see that bacteria-type organisms are the apex predators in all possible ecosystems, even the ones without any multi-cellular organisms or consciousness the way we experience it.

[alykathryn]

A lot of this reminds me of Free Energy Pricipal sort of ideas, but maybe i have spent too much time listening to conversations between Karl Friston and Michael Levin 😅

[hyperduality]

Syntactic information is dual to semantic information -- information is dual.
Syntax (objective, absolute) is dual to semantics (subjective, relative) -- languages or communication.
If mathematics is a language then it is dual.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy) -- physics is dual.
Categories (form, syntax) are dual to sets (substance, semantics) -- Category theory.
"Only the Sith think in terms of absolutes!" -- Obi Wan Kenobi.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
All messages in a communication system are predicted into existence according to Shannon's information theorem -- a syntropic process, teleological.
Making predictions to track targets, goals and objectives is a syntropic process, teleological.
Cause is dual to effect -- causality.

[Achrononmaster]

@14:30 smokin' weed there? Utility functions are not well defined. I quite often put my life lower than other concerns. Luckily utility ranking is not always deterministic for life or death. A science of subjectivity --- which I believe, by definition, can never exist, but if it could... --- can not be founded upon the nebulae of utility functions. Utility functions have a place in modelling, and that's where they should stay.