Human Actions
Last time I talked about physical, informational, and virtual systems.
Summarizing, information is an abstraction of physical configuration, and computation is an abstraction of physical interactions or physics. These abstractions are used to discuss physical phenomenon while ignoring the physical medium.
Abstraction is a conceptual tool we use to understand something by describing rules or patterns while dropping details. For example, “numbers” are an abstraction of distinct physical things we create by counting them. Counting is the physical process that generates the information of the mental abstraction through physical interaction. You look at or touch each object in turn, and update the “count” in your brain simultaneously.
“Numbers” can also be an abstraction of a quantity of a uniform physical thing. In this case, the physical process generating the information of the mental abstraction is measuring.
Notice the how the word information shows up there? All abstractions involve information, because abstractions are a mental tool. Mental tools are employed by the mind. The mind is the virtual computational environment of the human organism. The brain is the organ that hosts the mind. The brain is the physical organ that processes information through computational interactions, similar to how the liver processes “chemicals” through chemical interactions.
This becomes very circular because information itself is a mental abstraction. It is an abstraction we use to understand how physical configurations can create knowledge. Knowledge requires all the complex systems and relationships we have just described.
Information has Origin and Meaning
As humans, we strive for purpose and long for connection. We find these through stories describing where we came from and ascribing purpose to actions.
Our quest for purpose and our desire for connection lead us to conflate meaning and purpose. Information has significance. Humans have purpose.
There is an entire discipline dedicated to the theory of significance, meaning, representation, or reference. This is semiotics. I don’t really know much about it, so you can research it yourself.
Besides the physical description of what information is, which we have discussed at length, there is another aspect to the nature of information: this whole messy deal of significance and meaning.
I just want to point out that information always comes from somewhere, it is created through physical processes. You can trace the path of information from its genesis to its current form by following the physical processes involved.
These processes are closely related to what information represents. Through the history of processes which generate it, information always represents something.
Humans and Information
As humans we use information and computation to act in the physical world without direct cognizance of underlying physical mediums or underlying physics. We mentally process states and events of the physical world abstractly. Our thoughts are concerned with complex patterns, not every physical detail.
By noting abstractions employed, and their connection to physical processes, we can reflectively describe what makes us tick as human beings. We can describe the behavior of individual humans or groups of humans. We can also better describe various complex systems, such as human society, human finance, or computer systems.
One of the goals of the last post was to develop concepts that could be used across domains in this way. I described/defined interpretation as a physical process that maps between informational states encoded in distinct physical mediums. I also stated that information is not a valid abstraction absent the potential for use in computation. The dynamics of computation are an essential aspect of information and its significance.
Virtual systems are built on information, but involve interactions of abstract virtual entities. Virtual systems are abstract environments built on information systems.
Information systems are physical systems with structures for interpretation and computation imposed on the physical system. Your brain is an information system. A computer is an information system. An accounting network of balance sheets is an information system.
Finally, types are abstractions imposed on information constraining or directing the way it is used in computation. Virtual entities are typed information, but not all typed information is a virtual entity. Virtual entities require a context that permits them identity through stable relations to other things, whether those things are virtual, physical, or informational.
Types impose computational constraints on information but don't necessarily require a specific context permitting identity.
Virtual entities are typed informational entities in a specific context. This is because entities are equally defined by their external relationships as they are by their internal states. Humans are fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, citizens, voters, representatives, workers and employers. Without the context, or if the context is displaced, the entity is changed.
Identity, or "Entity"-ness, does not imply something is a conscious actor. It only requires a context with stable relationships to other things. Peers are interacting entities in the same environment with the same type. Because an entity can have more than one type, an entity can be more than one type of peer. For example, siblings are peers and classmates are peers. One person can be both types of peers. These peers’ types are children and students respectively.
Our Virtual Systems are Decision Making Structures
One way to describe a virtual system is that it makes decisions, or rather, virtual entities mediate real world outcomes through a virtual environment. Finance is a system for allocating resources. Politics is a system for deciding how to exercise authority. We ourselves are virtual entities living in a virtual environment called society.
Consciousness is a label we give to a collection of cognitive processes that handle human decision making and create human experience. Experience is created by recording memories, i.e. interpreting information, not just by performing actions. We can recall and replay these memories and "experience" the initial performance again.
Without exploring human mind reflectively, we don't recognize distinct virtual entities behind cognition, but merely ascribe all thought to a single "I". This is inaccurate. "I" is not an valid entity within the human mind, but a virtual entity created by the human mind which is valid in a larger external context: society.
It is much easier for us to identify virtual entities in these social environments than our individual cognitive environments. The abstract computational structures which create the human mind aren’t as clearly boundaried as the mind as a whole in relation to other minds. But there are computational structures that are part of both environments that mediate decisions and outcomes through their interactions.
The title of this post is a reference to Mises' Human Action. What I appreciate about Mises' work is that he undertook exploring human relations philosophically. Classical Liberalism tried to describe the political conditions of individual freedom. It did a good job, but was incomplete, and focused too much on individuals.
The flaw of classical liberalism and Mises' praxeology is humans are defined by their relations to each other and not just by their internal desires. It is through social relations that we create our internal purpose and identity.
Others have been reluctant to undertake a philosophically motivated exploration of the human condition and human relations as the foundation of an economic framework the way that Mises did. I think that is a mistake.
Human actions are created through individuals processing and being influenced by complex social, legal, and political environments. Chartalism describes money as an informational product of these environments. MMT describes implications and true constraints of contemporary political and financial relations. It provides insight as to the flaws of managing resource allocation primarily through banking, finance, and publicly secured private property rights.
Political constituency must be a critical part of resource management, and yet often gets pushed to the side. Social relationships should also be equally important to how we manage resources. Elinor Ostrom did invaluable research exploring social community dynamics around resource use. Her work provides an important foil to the insights and perspective of MMT. While MMT shows us the positive possibilities of political authority exercised from the top down, Ostrom’s work highlights the potential of community impact organized socially from the bottom up.
That's all I wanted to say.
