some informatic notions that apply to us macroscopically

Warning: This post contains idiocies and is best suited for idiots rather than smarter people!

(This particular train of thought is expressed elsewhere in earlier notes of mine from the period 2005 - 2006, which should be incorporated into any future edits of this post.)

There are some analogues to quantum informatic observations that may apply to us as individuals. This is a first (or second) attempt to enumerate them.

But first a recap of the question of scale.

* The wave / particle duality applies to all things. This is not observable for objects that are much larger than the quantum scale precisely because wave properties such as diffraction and interference become negligible as size scale increases. The properties are there, but they are negligible. As a result wave properties and measures like uncertainty are infinitesimal for objects such as ourselves.

uh, End recap.


However , some informatic properties seem to hold across scales such that their measure does not vanish as we increase in size scales.

Thus for instance,

1. A measure of information is the amount of uncertainty as to the possible content of a given "message".

We see the quantum physical manifestation of this in the case of a confined particle.

The more tightly a particle is confined in space - such as the case of an electron confined to the diameter of the atom - the more uncertainty that results in measuring its position or momentum. This is because the volume of confinement is so small that the momentum of the measuring tool (usually an incident body such as photon or some other particle) interferes significantly with that of the object being measured.

Yet an analogue also presents itself in the case of an individual. If we consider a single single individual (a person) in a very large volume (in a city). There is very little uncertainty as to their whereabouts with regards to the confines of the city.

No matter where or how they move , the likelihood is very high that they are anywhere in the confining space (city).

If we reduce the scope of the confinement space (down to a neighborhood, or the volume of the individual's residence) , predicting where the individual will move next, carries more and more uncertainty, and thus a higher measure of information.

2. In another unrelated way of looking at things, the wave nature of matter can be analogous / can be applied to the way information travels among persons, and throughout a social medium.

We see interactions of information that include: exchanges of information; these result in and are caused by changes in energy states; diffraction , such as in the way information radiates from a given individual (a tiny aperture) out onto others; interference which could be construed as how different pieces of information contribute to reinforce or weaken the spread of a given piece of information; we see also that pieces of information , form cummulatively "bigger" ideas , perhaps in a similar way to how a signal's waveform is composed of many harmonic components.

The analogue between information transfer among individuals (at a high semantic level) and wave interactions can be tenuous when we consider things like : what is the analogue of frequency / wavelength , intensity and energy of information that flows between individuals. Yet with some work those analogues could be pinpointed. For instance the energy of a piece of information can be expressible in the "reach " of that information. For instance, a piece of information that gets exchanged between two friends and stops there, has a lot lower energy , than a piece of information such as a news headline, a proverb or a meme that has a reach as wide as an entire society or community.
Another way to consider the energy of a piece of information , is the amount of energy it takes for it to spread to its farthest extent, or the amount of energy that gets unleashed due to the spread of that information.

For instance information (or misinformation) that results in wars or economic upheavals , could be said to carry a lot of energy.

The intensity or amplitude of a given amount of information can also be expressible in the "reach" that amount has, not only in how far the information is carried throughout society, but also in how long that information persists.
For instance a piece of news spreads and dies out in a relatively short period of time, compared to a proverb that keeps moving among people for centuries.

The foregoing thus highlights a few qualities that one can play with in constructing a meaningful analogue for high-level semantic information from wave terminology:

- how far information travels

- how fast it travels

- the energy cost for that information's motion

- the energy cost occuring as a result of that information

- how long the given information persists in motion

- The complexity of a piece of given information in terms of the smaller components of information that comprise it.

Looked at in a very large scale, we can see such information interactions as ripples
throughout society , while at a very small scale we are looking at the very discrete nature of information transfer from one person's mind to the next. The quantization of information transfer is at the level of individual persons who receive process re-transmit or hold a piece of information they receive.