Atomic relativism and holistic absolutism

How much information can be contained within a perfectly uniform distribution? Could any single part be said to have more significance compared to any other part of a perfectly uniform distribution? In some sense, the ability to encode information in a signal relies on leveraging probabilistic non-uniformity. A code can only be created if something is more or less likely to happen than something else. The more stark the contrast, the easier it is to create a code. But codes only work if you can leverage the same probability distribution from both the sending and receiving end.

I propose that in a system with interconnected parts, in which you do not know the underlying probability distribution for events, the equivalent of creating a code is structural survival. Whatever entity can prevent itself from being changed, or perhaps allows itself to be changed in a way that always allows it to revert back to a previous state, is similarly establishing a stark contrast to its environment, and therefore creating the equivalent of a code. But whereas a code is merely interested in ensuring the integrity of a message, this new code can also change other entities within the system, and ultimately even replicate itself. Structural survival is then equivalent to darwinian selection. And information can be understood through the lens of darwinian forces, where codes can not only encode information, but can also change the probability distributions for future interpretation.

From this perspective, there seems to be an equivalence between information and mass, and between mass and coordinate systems. Any structure that survives repeated interpretation of outside events can be said to hold structural information. Just as any theory that survives repeated experiments can be said to be an approximation of some physical law. These structures have a mass to them, in the sense that they can be interacted with consistently because they are not changed by their environment. They will not suddenly vanish. And perhaps all coordinate systems depend on things that do not vanish. The larger the structural information, the larger the thing that is unchanging. The larger the thing that is unchanging, perhaps the more complete the coordinate system that is established on top of the unchanging. From a mathematical perspective, a coordinate system cannot be established for something that is larger than itself without introducing anomolies. The simplest example is mapping a space with n elements to a space with n-1 elements. By the pigeonhole principle, one element will have overlap, and this overlapping is what leads to the statistical patterns that allow the creation of codes. Perhaps a perfect coordinate system is one where an external entity cannot find a statistical pattern in its mapping. Moreover, the multiplicative space of numbers generated from the first seven primes is strictly larger than the multiplicative space of numbers generated from the first five primes. It seems that coordinate systems can contain lesser coordinate systems. And if the coordinate system is structurally isomorphic to the structural information that is the foundation for the coordinate system, then structural information can contain lesser structural information.

The contrast between atomic relativism and holistic absolutism is visible almost everywhere. From guitar players who navigate their fretboards by remembering relative structures which they can summon anywhere on the fretboard to guitarists who remember absolute structures that span their entire fretboard. From mathematicians that are analytical and grounded to mathematicians that are continental and flying high. From music producers who produce music by individually recording and layering multiple tracks, often taking multiple tries, to music producers who produce music by capturing the entire performance in one take. From writing and using symbols as an analytical tool to expand thought to speaking and capturing the essence of the thought in the moment. And perhaps even from unstable particles that perform a probabilistic dance to stable compounds that form unique identities.