[e2e] About the primitives and their value

[David P. Reed]

Joe Touch wrote:
> David P. Reed wrote:
>   
>> Joe Touch wrote:
>>     
>>> If we saw a paradigm that didn't relocate the problem (e.g., as
>>> publish/subscribe does), sure. I haven't seen one yet. From an
>>> information theoretic view, I'm not sure it's possible, either, but I'd
>>> be glad to see suggestions.
>>>   
>>>       
>> May I suggest that information theory is not the relevant way to think
>> of this?  Information theory is good for lots of things, but it doesn't
>> capture intentionality at all.
>>     
> ...
>   
>> Most *applied* information theory results talk loosely about "sending"
>> and "receiving", but in fact the notion of sending and receiving are
>> arbitrary elements to which information theory's tools are applied.
>>     
>
> Let's just say we differ in our opinions on the impact of info theory
> (and entropy) to this area.
>
>   
You can use category theory or information theory or any damn theory you 
like, if you first map your problem into the term of that theory, and 
map the various assumptions you are making into givens in that theory.   
But the mapping you are proposing is not obvious.   And the word 
"paradigm" you used earlier is not precise enough to describe a 
relationship between a real system and its formal model.

My "opinion" is, I think, the way most mathematicians understand the 
relation between theory and real systems.