Where Does Knowledge Come From?

Sometimes we just KNOW things.
Did you ever wonder where the information came from?

Maybe you've wondered what it's made of. 

According to some researchers there's' something to it.

(http://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzicht/)


"One of the first designs of the information theory is the model of communication by Shannon and Weaver. Claude Shannon, an engineer at Bell Telephone Laboratories, worked with Warren Weaver on the classic book ‘The mathematical theory of communication’. In this work Shannon and Weaver sought to identify the quickest and most efficient way to get a message from one point to another. Their goal was to discover how communication messages could be converted into electronic signals most efficiently, and how those signals could be transmitted with a minimum of error. In studying this, Shannon and Weaver developed a mechanical and mathematical model of communication, known as the “Shannon and Weaver model of communication”.



According to the theory, transmission of the message involved sending information through electronic signals. “Information” in the information theory sense of the word, should not be confused with ‘information’ as we commonly understand it. According to Shannon and Weaver, information is defined as “a measure of one’s freedom of choice when one selects a message”. In information theory, information and uncertainty are closely related. Information refers to the degree of uncertainty present in a situation. The larger the uncertainty removed by a message, the stronger the correlation between the input and output of a communication channel, the more detailed particular instructions are the more information is transmitted. Uncertainty also relates to the concept of predictability. When something is completely predictable, it is completely certain. Therefore, it contains very little, if any, information. A related term, entropy, is also important in information theory. Entropy refers to the degree of randomness, lack of organization, or disorder in a situation. Information theory measures the quantities of all kinds of information in terms of bits (binary digit). Redundancy is another concept which has emerged from the information theory to communication. Redundancy is the opposite of information. Something that is redundant adds little, if any, information to a message. Redundancy is important because it helps combat noise in a communicating system (e.g. in repeating the message). Noise is any factor in the process that works against the predictability of the outcome of the communication process. Information theory has contributed to the clarification of certain concepts such as noise, redundancy and entropy. These concepts are inherently part of the communication process.

Shannon and Weaver broadly defined communication as “all of the procedures by which one mind may affect another”. Their communication model consisted of an information source: the source’s message, a transmitter, a signal, and a receiver: the receiver’s message, and a destination. Eventually, the standard communication model featured the source or encoder, who encodes a message by translating an idea into a code in terms of bits. A code is a language or other set of symbols or signs that can be used to transmit a thought through one or more channels to elicit a response in a receiver or decoder. Shannon and Weaver also included the factor noise into the model. The study conducted by Shannon and Weaver was motivated by the desire to increase the efficiency and accuracy or fidelity of transmission and reception. Efficiency refers to the bits of information per second that can be sent and received. Accuracy is the extent to which signals of information can be understood. In this sense, accuracy refers more to clear reception than to the meaning of message. This engineering model asks quite different questions than do other approaches to human communication research."

What about hard science?  What do we KNOW about the brain?

In an article written by: S. Ashraf Ahmed, PhD we'll ponder brain chemistry for a moment.   "OUR failure to recall a memory of the past may be related to a Japanese demonstration of brain's newborn cell function, reported on last November 13. Incidentally two days earlier, Bangladesh lost one of her best scientists, Professor Harun Kader Mohammad Yusuf, an internationally recognized authority of human brain's biochemistry. It is therefore worth recalling his contributions before discussing the new findings. Harun bhai worked out the detailed bio-molecular composition of our brain, and effect of malnutrition on its development. Until his untimely death, he was Chairman of the Bangladesh National Nutritional Council.  As a PhD student at the University of Surrey in UK, he studied several dozen brains of children who died of starvation and malnutrition. The three easily separable parts of the animal brain, forebrain, cerebellum and brain stem, have distinct patterns of development. Although plenty was known about smaller mammal brains, he was one of the pioneers in establishing the development pattern in the 3 regions from 13-week fetus to 26-month toddlers. These regions are made up of largely two types of cells.  Nerve cells (or neurons) receive, process, store and send out information to various parts of the body in the form of electric signals. Among many functions, glial (glue-like) cells make a protective covering around neurons so that signals are not lost, and also prevent a short circuit. Neurons can be compared to a copper wire while glial cells as outer plastic layer in the familiar electric cables. Glial cells are made of several types of fat (lipid) molecules, such as myelin, cholesterol, ganglioside, phospholipid, and others. Professor Yusuf determined the relative amount of these molecules in various parts of the brain, whose disproportionate occurrence (due to malnutrition) make the information processing erroneous. He published his results in several prestigious British and American journals.  Rats serve as a model for humans. At Dhaka University, he fed pregnant rats housed in specially designed cages, with a diet poor in protein. This diet remained same or modified for the mothers and newborns for 0-40 days after stopping feeding on mother's milk. By analyzing lipid composition of the brain, he concluded that malnutrition at any time during early age affect "..myelin development, and nutritional rehabilitation of animals malnourished in early life cannot fully correct this developmental gap". As a rare scientist, he published the results in highly acclaimed international journals, from work done in Bangladesh. His book, "Understanding the Brain and Its Development: A Chemical Approach", published by the World Scientific Publishing in 1992, was used as a text book at foreign Universities. His later fame with iodine malnutrition in Bangladesh will require a separate volume to write.Different parts of the brain have defined functions. For example, neurons of an inner part, known as hippocampus, store short term memory such as what happened in the last few days, while another region, called neocortex, stores long term memory such as that of childhood. The Japanese group blocked formation of new neurons at the hippocampus. They taught mice to be scared of electric shock. The animals with normal neuron formation helped the hippocampus cells to 'forget' the short term scary (shock) memory at hippocampus, yet when tested after 28 days, were scared to "freeze", because they retrieved the memory from long term storage area. On the other hand, the memory stayed in the hippocampus neurons (that normally gets lost over time) in those lacking new neurons. The new cells might transfer memory from short to long term storage area. In effect, the new results suggest that failure of new neuron formation will lead to problems because the brain's short-term memory is literally full. Their results were described in the journal, Cell. Some health professionals believe that physical, as well as brain exercise by learning new knowledge, help develop new neurons. Extending the Japanese findings, one can expect that with the help of these new neurons, we should not forget the precious gifts we received from our leaders in the scientific and social arena." 

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_our_consciousness.html



Dan Dennett made an amazing speech on the topic of consciousness.  Click the link above to watch him on TED.
I hope you've entertained some thoughts you've never had before. 

If Your mind isn't blown yet, click the link below. 

Researchers link brains, control each other's actions via the internet

http://archive.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=120463

Shannon, C.E., & Weaver, W. (1949). The mathematical theory of communication. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Hawes, L.C. (1975). Pragmatics of analoguing: Theory and model construction in communication. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.




http://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzicht/Theory%20clusters/Communication%20and%20Information%20Technology/Information_Theory.doc

The Final FINAL Frontier (Understanding Consciousness.)

Is 'God' the observer causing reality to exist, or  are you an observer acting as 'God'?

(WARNING:Only for the very OPEN MINDED. Readers may find their entire perception of reality is changed. Read at your own risk.)

ENTRY #1. 

Sometimes we're blissfully unaware of things that are right in front of our faces.   (Gravity, for example.) 

Let's think of something else EXTREMELY obvious.  (We know less about it than gravity.  Bask in the irony that gravity is a THEORY.)

WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS?

We've spent so much time looking out into space, we've forgotten how to connect with a virtually endless space within.  

I consider myself to be an observer of society. This has drawn me into some rather interesting questions as well as "trends."  Some might even call them "stereotypes."

Have you ever noticed how humans have a startling way of missing the obvious?  (You've probably been guilty of this a time or two.)

Since you're able to read this right now, you're conscious.  So?
Take a moment to ponder this:

"Why do we KNOW we're here?" 

If you quickly dismiss the question, you're not thinking about it deeply enough.  It should blow your f*ck*ng mind.  If it doesn't blow your mind, you haven't begun to understand it.  (I don't remember who said that...  I probably didn't get the quote quite right either.  Anyway, it applies perfectly.)


I bet you've never thought about many of these things.

Stuart Hameroff M.D.

1. The Problem of Consciousness

Conventional explanations portray consciousness as an emergent property of classical computer-like activities in the brain's neural networks. The prevailing views among scientists in this camp are that 1) patterns of neural network activities correlate with mental states, 2) synchronous network oscillations in thalamus and cerebral cortex temporally bind information, and 3) consciousness emerges as a novel property of computational complexity among neurons.

However, these approaches appear to fall short in fully explaining certain enigmatic features of consciousness, such as:

• The nature of subjective experience, or 'qualia'- our 'inner life' (Chalmers' "hard problem");
• Binding of spatially distributed brain activities into unitary objects in vision, and a coherent sense of self, or 'oneness';
• Transition from pre-conscious processes to consciousness itself;
• Non-computability, or the notion that consciousness involves a factor which is neither random, nor algorithmic, and that consciousness cannot be simulated (Penrose, 1989, 1994, 1997);
• Free will; and,
• Subjective time flow.

Brain imaging technologies demonstrate anatomical location of activities which appear to correlate with consciousness, but which may not be directly responsible for consciousness.

(www.quantumconsciousness.org/presentations/whatisconsciousness.html)

Consciousness is a non-material entity in the quantum domain that is capable of independent existence.  Consciousness can remain localized in the brain so long as the emergent quantum particle state does not change, just as an electron which is a quantum entity can remain localized in an atom so long as the energy of the electron matches the quantum state it occupies.

(http://endgametime.wordpress.com/the-awakening-quantum-mechanics-of-the-human-brain-and-consciousness/)

Getting Excited Yet?

Holonomy in brain function is really achieved at the quantum level. Waveforms embedded and spread throughout the matrix of a neural system allow new patterns to be produced via the transmutation of quantum waves into particles and back again into waves, vice versa, ad infinitum. (Karl Pribram, “Holonomic Brain Theory,” Scholarpedia, 2(5):2735, 2007) http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Holonomic_-Brain_Theory

How does a hologram work?

When you look at a developed piece of film used to make a hologram, you don't see anything that looks like the original scene. Instead, you might see a dark frame of film or a random pattern of lines and swirls. Turning this frame of film into an image requires the right illumination. In a transmission hologram, monochromatic light shines through the hologram to make an image. In a reflection hologram, monochromatic or white light reflects off of the surface of the hologram to make an image. Your eyes and brain interpret the light shining through or reflecting off of the hologram as a representation of a three-dimensional object. The holograms you see on credit cards and stickers are reflection holograms.
You need the right light source to see a hologram because it records the light's phase and amplitude like a code. Rather than recording a simple pattern of reflected light from a scene, it records the interferencebetween the reference beam and the object beam. It does this as a pattern of tiny interference fringes. Each fringe can be smaller than one wavelength of the light used to create them. Decoding these interference fringes requires a key -- that key is the right kind of light. (http://science.howstuffworks.com/hologram3.htm)

Could that "light" be God/collective consciousness?

I hope to answer that question and more in future posts.  Stick around.  It only gets weirder from here.

~Ally White