Chaos Forgets and Remembers:
Measuring Information Creation, Destruction, and Storage

Ryan G. James,
Korana Burke, and
James P. Crutchfield

Complexity Sciences Center
Physics Department
University of California at Davis
Davis, CA 95616

ABSTRACT: The hallmark of deterministic chaos is that it creates information—the rate being given by the Kolmogorov-Sinai metric entropy. Since its introduction half a century ago, the metric entropy has been used as a unitary quantity to measure a system's intrinsic unpredictability. Here, we show that it naturally decomposes into two structurally meaningful components: A portion of the created information—the ephemeral information—is forgotten and a portion—the bound information—is remembered. The bound information is a new kind of intrinsic computation that differs fundamentally from information creation: it measures the rate of active information storage. We show that it can be directly and accurately calculated via symbolic dynamics, revealing a hitherto unknown richness in how dynamical systems compute.


Ryan G. James, Korana Burke, and James P. Crutchfield, “Chaos Forgets and Remembers: Measuring Information Creation, Destruction, and Storage”, Physics Letters A 378 2124-2127.
[pdf]
Santa Fe Institute Working Paper 13-10-030. arXiv:1309.5504 [nlin.CD].