Does information have mass?

[Magical Realist]

Does learning new information increase the mass of the human brain? Does information contain energy? How can something without mass or energy make a difference? What is the ontic state of information? Does it have objective properties that allow us to measure it, quantify it, and estimate its magnitude? Can it exist without consciousness? Is information about information still information? Is there anything BUT information about information? How much information is contained in a single wave of light? Is lack of information a form of information? If information amount is increased when it is received, why is it not lessened when it is transmitted? If information cannot be destroyed, then where does it go when objects are destroyed?

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[C C]

A challenge is discerning whether any semantic species denoted by "information" is something truly non-artificial or independent of biological origin. Even in physics, the "i-word" seems yet another one of the discipline's yardstick activities that could mistakenly(?) be treated as substantive and prior to humans.

But let's say information refers to measurement of the "structural order" of a system, etc; or a quantitative inventory of all the properties that provide the distinct identity of an item. Takes about as much energy to display part of a data-rich economics paper on a video screen as to exhibit four random blotches that mean nothing. (There's still a physically organized regularity to the symbols on the paper, even when the language isn't understood). The difference between the two images is how the magnitude values of the pixels are arranged, which doesn't significantly alter the TV / monitor's gravitational attraction or resistance to being accelerated.

There are no "intrinsic meanings" carried by either evolution's or technology's everyday examples of information. Since such depends upon either minds or computers to supply the significations, to eventually interpret the received patterns as "whatever". Via application of memory, invented schemes are merely superimposed over the oscillations and mechanistic relational affairs of matter for representational purposes. Liang Chao garners news from a Chinese radio broadcast; Frank Dingle just hears gibberish.