What Is Information? | Video

by Alex Vikoulov

"Information is the resolution of uncertainty."  -Claude Shannon

[Video Transcript] Everything is Code. One of the most astonishing revelations might be that information equals reality. In other words, the basis for our material reality is actually immaterial information. Pattern and flow of information is what defines our experiential reality. 

Video: What is information? - Ecstadelics w/Alex Vikoulov (cc)

Everything boils down to the binary code of Nature. This is a basic tenet of Digital Physics which is the science of information. Nature computes. Deep down we are information technology. We run on genetic, neural and societal codes. Our DNA-based biology is clearly code-theoretic. We are alphabetic all the way down. We communicate intersubjectively mind-to-mind via language-structured exchange of information. 

A recent study shows that human speech is transmitted at about 39 bits a sec. Idealist philosopher Terence McKenna used to say that "The world is made of language and if you know the words the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish."

As human beings we are endowed with self-reflective consciousness. Phenomenological consciousness can be viewed as reverberating holistic feedback loops and meta-algorithmic information processing. That's how information feels like to itself, to one's emergent mind. Information can be loosely defined as distinction between things. 

In his 1948 seminal paper "Information theory of Communication" Claude Shannon suggested that "Information is the resolution of uncertainty." In the 1980s, physicist John Wheeler coined the phrase "It from bit" and cyberneticist Gregory Bateson lucidified it by saying "Information is a difference that makes a difference."

Physical reality is our base reality and we have no choice but to treat it that way. At the same time, we should understand that it’s not the only reality and ours is most probably only one of many in the honeycomb of infinitude of other "in"-formational realities.

Computational thinking entails the notion that the entire universe is the ultimate quantum computer. Most physicists now agree that information is the most fundamental property of our universe -- not space-time, not matter-energy but strings of 0s and 1s. From the Matrix of our daily lives to Apotheosis of the Universal Mind, it's all about consciousness and information that are the two sides of the same coin.

​That's what tickles my brain every single day!

[Video Transcript]

​P.S. Much might seem to be left out of this short video related to the concept of information such as algorithmic information theory and informational entropy, universality of computation and probability, complexity and emergence, the holographic principle and digital theosophy but I hope to cover that in subsequent videos. In the meantime, read it all in my books -- The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution; The Origins of Us: Evolutionary Emergence and The Omega Point Cosmology; The Physics of Time: D-Theory of Time & Temporal Mechanics; The Intelligence Supernova: Cybernetic Transhumanism, The Simulation Singularity & The Syntellect Emergence; Theology of Digital Physics: Phenomenal Consciousness, The Cosmic Self and The Pantheistic Interpretation of Our Holographic Reality. [Links to books]

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