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I recently read Cesar Hidalgo’s 2015 book: “Why Information Grows”, which I heard about recently on Sean Carroll’s podcast (I like it).
It’s mostly an economics book that derives its main ideas from how information underlies organization in the universe, as well as in economic dynamics.
I like how it considers life from an informational point of view and will mostly discuss biological implications. Interested in feedback on this.
Main Three Part Origin Concept:
In a Goldilocks region of energy flux (not too much, not too little), dissipative structures can form, that in effect bring structural information into existence at the cost of the energy flow. See See Prigogine: who wrote a book, literally named Order Out of Chaos.
An arrangement of matter such as this, contains (has embedded) information in the spatial ordering of its atoms. Dissipative structures, like whirlpools in a draining bathtub, are ephemeral and will go away if the energy flow is shut down. If dissipative structures are made of “solids” (work used symbolically), they are preserved from the rapid entropic degradation that would occur if the flow were turned off.
I interpret "solids", in kind of symbolic conceptual way, as a more stable form of information storage that makes the dissipative structures are more resistant to the degrading effects of entropy. This concept seems to come from Schrödinger's book What is Life? (an influence on Hidalgo) where he compares stable molecular properties with solids. The solid like molecules being more stable and less ephemeral.
Further modification of these more stable dissipative structures allow elaboration of increasingly complex structures.
Eventually these structures become complex enough to be able to compute (to generate different outputs depending on their input conditions). Computation then can generate increasing complexity leading to positive feedback loops producing increasing complexity.
This, at the molecular level, seems to be what is going on in living matter.
Other interesting concepts in the book are:
Information vs. knowledge/knowhow:
Information, as structural arrangements of atoms, can be read off as an encoded message, but it does not intriniscally without any ability to do anything with the message. This would be like a DNA molecule.
Knowledge/Knowhow: represent the ability to take appropriate actions in response to an input (like the information described above). This would be like a cell making using the information (unpacking the information) encoded in DNA to produce (generate) particular molecular/cellular structures.
Knowledge: explicit knowledge of how to do something, such as a written procedure of how to make some product.
Knowhow: tacit information (not easily articulated; learned by doing not by reading, like bicycle riding). In biology, this is equivalent to selection choosing among genetic variants, as successful, that are reproducibly effective in their particular environment. These variants that embody infromation of how to successfully accomplish a task, in a particular environment, that were selected from the evolving group.
The resulting knowhow would be embedded into the structural complexity of the selected entity (which may be generated by the a combination of information stored in DNA and the knowhow of the cell/organism to read off that information).
Person-byte and a Firm-byte concepts:
These are the upper limits of the amount of knowledge/knowhow a person or firm can embody (know about how to do a particular job or make a product). Requiring greater levels of knowhow can than is available in an indvidual person or firm, thereby selects for greater capacity by building networks.
These can be compared to:
His book discusses how these concepts work together to generate economic dynamics.
It’s mostly an economics book that derives its main ideas from how information underlies organization in the universe, as well as in economic dynamics.
I like how it considers life from an informational point of view and will mostly discuss biological implications. Interested in feedback on this.
Main Three Part Origin Concept:
In a Goldilocks region of energy flux (not too much, not too little), dissipative structures can form, that in effect bring structural information into existence at the cost of the energy flow. See See Prigogine: who wrote a book, literally named Order Out of Chaos.
An arrangement of matter such as this, contains (has embedded) information in the spatial ordering of its atoms. Dissipative structures, like whirlpools in a draining bathtub, are ephemeral and will go away if the energy flow is shut down. If dissipative structures are made of “solids” (work used symbolically), they are preserved from the rapid entropic degradation that would occur if the flow were turned off.
I interpret "solids", in kind of symbolic conceptual way, as a more stable form of information storage that makes the dissipative structures are more resistant to the degrading effects of entropy. This concept seems to come from Schrödinger's book What is Life? (an influence on Hidalgo) where he compares stable molecular properties with solids. The solid like molecules being more stable and less ephemeral.
Further modification of these more stable dissipative structures allow elaboration of increasingly complex structures.
Eventually these structures become complex enough to be able to compute (to generate different outputs depending on their input conditions). Computation then can generate increasing complexity leading to positive feedback loops producing increasing complexity.
This, at the molecular level, seems to be what is going on in living matter.
Other interesting concepts in the book are:
Information vs. knowledge/knowhow:
Information, as structural arrangements of atoms, can be read off as an encoded message, but it does not intriniscally without any ability to do anything with the message. This would be like a DNA molecule.
Knowledge/Knowhow: represent the ability to take appropriate actions in response to an input (like the information described above). This would be like a cell making using the information (unpacking the information) encoded in DNA to produce (generate) particular molecular/cellular structures.
Knowledge: explicit knowledge of how to do something, such as a written procedure of how to make some product.
Knowhow: tacit information (not easily articulated; learned by doing not by reading, like bicycle riding). In biology, this is equivalent to selection choosing among genetic variants, as successful, that are reproducibly effective in their particular environment. These variants that embody infromation of how to successfully accomplish a task, in a particular environment, that were selected from the evolving group.
The resulting knowhow would be embedded into the structural complexity of the selected entity (which may be generated by the a combination of information stored in DNA and the knowhow of the cell/organism to read off that information).
Person-byte and a Firm-byte concepts:
These are the upper limits of the amount of knowledge/knowhow a person or firm can embody (know about how to do a particular job or make a product). Requiring greater levels of knowhow can than is available in an indvidual person or firm, thereby selects for greater capacity by building networks.
These can be compared to:
- individual organisms, vs. herds or colonies (ants, bees) or species
- or individual prokaryotic cells vs. eukaryotic cells (an archaeal-derived host cell housing a population of bacteria derived endosymbionts)
His book discusses how these concepts work together to generate economic dynamics.