Indeterminacy and Intermediatism
I have an essay on the joys of reserving judgment up at the LOWFI (League of Western Fortean Intermediaists) site. Here’s a quote:
An author whom I admire told me one of the most important things to remember when looking at any issue is this: “In the process of translation, information is lost and gained.” He used the literal example of translation from one language to another, although it can be used for any instance of information transfer. The original message goes through the mind of the translator, picking up meanings, subtleties and cultural references, as well as the personality of the translator, including his or her psychological makeup.
Don’t make the mistake that this is a bad thing. Our instrument for perceiving and thinking about our existence is there for a reason. The richness of information contained in any description or opinion is “biased” for a reason, and something that a computerized, “literal” translation will always miss.
Check it out, and while you’re there, have a look at the other great essays, reports, and links.
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Mar 06 2009 
March 7th, 2009 at 7:27 am
Greg: Your post reminded me of my latest book read — the Black Hole War vis a vis the Hubble telescope documentary. Anyway Stephen Hawking versus “Lenny” Susskind — and the winner is indeterminacy — or quantum mechanics. Well in reality the black hole expands as gravity takes over on the sub-planck length to turn into pure information, but photons are lost in the translation. Something like that — so the black hole expands, then evaporates, but the information gets “translated” via the cosmic horizon. See Susskind points out that the universe is a huge black hole as well and the “cosmic horizon” is accelerating exponentially but just because we can’t verify these galaxies disappearing with visual measurements doesn’t mean that the universe doesn’t exist. Or as George Johnson puts it in his NY Times review of the Black Hole War — the universe is a huge hologram — with 3 dimensional space a projection — stretched out on this membrane of pure information. Yes God is Insane.