Part I

Chapter VI

• Epigenesis is incredibly complex and recursive process, mechanisms more complex than the genotype itself must act on it
• Genotype serves as triggers for those complex mechanisms, producing further complex mechanisms
• Revelation: the final product (phenotype), “pull-out” of info that was latently present in original genotype

Dialogue

• Achilles and Tortoise discuss Haiku on fortune cookie which “encodes” its own commentary; also a matter of interpretation, the meaning of the fortune lies within the reader.

  Fortune lies as much in the hand of the eater as it does in the cookie.

• They also discuss the crab’s jukebox. It’s a jukebox with only one record, but several record players on rails that slide in to play the same record. Each is built to play the same record in different ways (B-1, C-3, etc). This further highlights the question surrounding the relationship between the message and the mind; where does the meaning live? Does the message (record) convey the necessary information, or is it up to the mind (record player) to interpret and extract meaning?

Chapter

• Main dichotomy: is meaning inherent in messages or is it a byproduct of interaction between observer (information-receiver) and message (information-bearer)?
• Genotype and phenotype: single molecule of DNA is converted to an organism via epigenesis. Such a process is incredibly complex, and the final product is very different from the original DNA. Yet it remains the case that the structure of the DNA entirely encodes the outcome, and thus one might relate genotype and phenotype via an isomorphism, albeit an exotic (highly nontrivial mapping) one.
• Prosaic and exotic isomorphisms
  • Prosaic isomorphism: an isomorphism where the pieces of one structure are mapped in an intuitive way to the pieces of another structure. For instance, between a record and the sounds of music, one can easily map any instance of sound back to a groove on the record with arbitrarily good accuracy. This gives a sense of continuity across structures (in the sense it reminds me of the epsilon-delta limit definition).
  • Exotic isomorphism: an isomorphism where the pieces of one structure are mapped in a nontrivial way to the pieces of another structure. The relationship between genotype and phenotype is an example of such an isomorphism. (Does continuity exist across such a mapping? Why shouldn’t it just because it’s nontrivial?)
• Isomorphism Granularity: in the case of an exotic isomorphism where it is unclear as to the mapping between structures. Unlike a prosaic isomorphism, the
• Universality of meaning and context: suppose a record containing Bach’s music were sent through the galaxy; does this record contain information if the alien species for which it was intended have no way of decoding it? And what constitutes a successful “decoding” of the record? Do the aliens have the appropriate emotional triggers in their brains to interpret the piece as intended? If, perhaps, the cognitive structures of intelligent beings universally contain overlapping emotional interpretation, then in some regard the record can never truly be taken out of context. That is, its context is nature itself, encoded into the laws of the universe itself. In this case we might hope for a successful decoding after all.
• Compelling inner structure: does Bach’s pieces have any more “compelling inner structure” than a randomly generate piece of music (Cage)? Intuitively there are patterns and structure present in Bach that seem absent in Cage, but who’s to say these patterns are universally appealing? This dialogue begs the question of whether there exists any message with enough compelling inner logic such that it is able to restores its own context context upon contact with sufficiently intelligent beings.
• Three Layers of a Message: three distinct levels of information present in out-of-context messages
  1. Frame Message: understanding the frame message implies the recognition of the need for a decoding mechanism
  2. Outer Message: understanding the outer message implies the successful construction (or knowledge) of the correct decoding mechanism for the inner message
  3. Inner Message: understanding the inner message implies the successful extraction of meaning as intended by the sender
  • Aperiodic Crystals: structures without a consistent intervalic repetition. Such objects, contained in neat geometrical forms, appear to be likely places for inner messages; books, DNA, to name a few. Note the non-repetitive requirement implies something of a sequential or continual uniqueness in the message. True repetition conveys no additional information; if the position of repetition is entirely expected there is no surprise (and thus no information) conveyed upon its observation. However, the number of repetitions can convey information in itself

Vocab

• Isomorphism: an information preserving transformation; similar to bijection definition in math; a direct mapping between complex structures such that for each part of one structure there is a corresponding part in the other structure with similar respective roles.
• Epigenesis: the process of “unrolling” the phenotype from the genotype

Chapter X

• In Achilles and the Tortoise’s conversation, the idea of MU is discussed:

  “In order to understand the answer, the question must not be asked”