Natural Information: Symbols and Storage Systems

In the previous post I noted that a key difference between natural information and systemic representation of bits in something like a telecommunication systems is formal systems are constrained in time and space while natural information isn't. Animals, obviously, are contrained in time and space and only perceive a filtered version of natural information, and maybe that's what a symbol for animals and humans really is. The active filtering networks of our senses that feed information to the central nervous system are the things that are natural versions of written symbols or words.

When you see a squirrel, for example, you really don't see a mere array of pixels like a digital camera does, rather the nervous system has some built-in representations of a generic animal and probably even some built in representation of a generic "squirrel". If you're not around squirrels very often, for example, you probably won't even perceive the visual differences of different sub-species.

It seems plausible that those built-in representations form the basis of language and the language of our brains and memory. That's probably why our memories are so bad and prone to distortion compared to a photograph.

When I try to recall a squirrel I saw yesterday, my mind's eye really sees squirrelness.