[Inquiry] Re: Prospects for Inquiry Driven Systems

[Jon Awbrey]

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

PRO.  Note 22

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

1.2.1.  Functions of Observation

An observation preserved in a permanent record marks the transience
of a certain compound event, the one that an observational account
creates in conjunction with the events leading up to it.  If an
observation succeeds in making an indelible record of an event,
then a certain transient of the total system has been passed.
To the extent that the record is a lasting memory there is a
property of the system that has become permanent.  The system
has crossed a line in state space that it will not cross again.
The state space becomes strictly divided into regions the system
may possibly visit again and regions it never will.  Of course, an
equivalent type of event may happen again, but it will be indexed
with a different count.  The same juxtaposition of events in the
observed system and accounts by the observing system will never
again be repeated, if memory faithfully serves.

But perfect observation and permanent recordings are seldom encountered
in real life.  Therefore, informational content must be found in the
distribution of a system's behavior across the whole state space.
A system must be recognized as informed by events whenever this
distribution comes to be anything other than uniform, or in
relative terms deviating from a known baseline.  As to what
events caused the information there can be no indication yet.
That kind of decoding requires another cycle of hypotheses about
reliable connections with object systems and experiments that lay
odds on the systematic validation of these bets.  The impressions
that must be worked with have the shape of probability distributions.
The impression that an event makes on a system lies in the difference
between the total distribution of its behavior and the distribution
that is generated on the hypothesis that the event did not happen.

Jon Awbrey

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o