(May 18, 2025 at 8:14 pm)Paleophyte Wrote:(May 18, 2025 at 7:49 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: I think most people would agree with this. But, at least conceptually, I don't see how anything could be or exist without information. A simple stone, by its very existence, is rich with information that defines what it is and what it isn't, almost inseparably so. To be is to have information. When physicists study matter and energy what they seem to be doing is observing, or even extracting, their information content. When people talk about the laws of physics (not in the descriptive sense) they are talking about the underlying rules of the universe; if those rules are anything, they have to be information.
I think that you hit it there. The information that is contained within the rock is the rock. Neither the rock nor the information about its long and tawdry history can be separated one from the other without both of them becoming something else. It's probably only with the advent of sentients that the information is able to finally get out and stretch its legs. Prior to that, it was stuck in that rock for all of time, fixed to its medium like a fly in amber.
In a very real sense, information is the language of consciousness. That doesn't mean that it is embedded by consciousness. Consciousness extracts information, but it does not imbue it -- not that you're arguing that.
