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The Central Dogma of Information

Article  in  Information (Switzerland) · August 2022

DOI: 10.3390/info13080365

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Jaime F Cárdenas-García
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
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 The Central Dogma of Information
Information 2022, 13(8), 365; https://doi.org/10.3390/info13080365

Open Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/13/8/365

Jaime F. Cárdenas-García
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Maryland—Baltimore County
1000 Hilltop Circle
Baltimore, MD 21250
Email: jfcg@umbc.edu

Abstract
Info-autopoiesis or the self-referenced, recursive, interactive process of information self-
production that engages all living beings in their efforts to satisfy their physiological and/or
relational needs relies on Bateson’s difference which makes a difference. Living beings, as active
manipulators/observers of their environment, derive meaning from the sensorially detected
motion of matter and/or energy in the Universe. The process of info-autopoiesis in humans is
found to be triadic in nature and incorporates the simultaneity of a quantitative/objective
perspective with a qualitative/subjective perspective. In this process of meaningful engagement
with the environment, humans create and transform endogenous semantic information into
countless expressions of exogeneous syntactic information, which is synonymous with ordered
material structure and artificial creation. Other humans can interpret exogeneous syntactic
information and uniquely transform it into semantic information that can take multifarious
forms. This asymmetrical process is the basis to postulate the central dogma of information that
states ‘info-autopoiesis results in endogenous se-mantic information that irreversibly becomes
exogeneous syntactic information’. In other words, once the artificial, syntactic world, including
machines, created by humans comes into being it can only be interpreted by others, i.e., it does
not necessarily convey the same intended meaning to all. Additionally, these artificial creations
only recognize, extract, create, transmit, preserve, store, and utilize syntactic information, unable
to transform syntactic information into semantic information. In other words, our resourceful
capacity for syntactic creation does not allow for creation of artificial beings with comparable
capabilities as us for meaning making. It suggests that our dreams for sentient artificial general
intelligence and superintelligence are misguided and parallel the central dogma of molecular
biology which states that ‘once (sequential) information has passed into protein it cannot get out
again’.

Keywords
Information; Gregory Bateson; Info-autopoiesis; Claude E. Shannon; Syntactic; Semantic

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