Information is the pointing out of one alternative among many. Therefore, there must be several
alternatives. The only way I can find something made up by man's phantasies in which something could
be otherwise is the descision whether one regards a set of object as a collection of individual
things (here, one recognises the DIFFERENCES) or one regards them as groups which share properties
(here, one recognises the SIMILARITIES).
Our thought-up (mental, theoretical, abstract) constructs are considered well-made in that case if
they do not allow for ambiguities. It is a tragedy of our biological heritage that we have the
natural urge to think error-free, and that a deviation is causing a feeling of error, although in
nature quite many things do have a slack and a deviation. We simply over-idealise into a stupid and
useless formalism, which negates the natural imperfection in Nature.
This natural imprefection has the order of magnitude of 3.8 which is not much relative to the two
extents which deviate relative to each other, namely some 10E160 and 3.8x10E160.
Sorry to bore you with actual, factual prosa while you are doubtlessly slaying dragons and hunt for
mysteries.
Still: information is the pointing out of one alternative among several. (This implies that a) the
more alternatives, the more information; b) information is, like as anything really rational,
mappable into additions.) There is absolutely no need to romanticise about information. This makes a
sham extasy like playing peek-aboo with a child. If I pretend that Information iss such a heavy and
complicated matter, then I get very excited if I can hack it. If it is just the pointing out of a
summand among many summands of an addition, then it sizzles and a feeling of "so what"
comes along. Are we in science to have excited inner workings or are we there to work?
Hope you come down from romanticism. Dry and boring stuff does have some merits, too. (Mostly, the
merits are technical and therefore economical. It may be that we lose in the FIS chatroom the
excitement of discussing something mysterious but at the same time we may get along with the boring
and less-than-peppy task of understanding how Nature packages info (be it in the memory or in
genetics) and translates probablities into certainities (be it in physics or chemistry).
Karl
>
> Von: Shu-Kun Lin <lin@mdpi.org>
> Datum: 2005/08/30 Di PM 03:45:14 CEST
> An: Dupagement@aol.com
> Cc: fis@listas.unizar.es
> Betreff: Re: [Fis] Re: What is the definition of information ?
>
> My humble definition: Information is the amount of data compressed.
> The concept of information can also be clarified by checking its
> connection with other concepts, like entropy, symmetry,
distinguishability,
> etc. There are several related papers presented at FIS2005 in Paris,
> see http://www.mdpi.net/fis2005/proceedings.html.
I am glad to see
> this progress and increase in the interest in the clarification of
> this most important concept. Cheers!
>
> Best regards,
> Shu-Kun
>
>
>
> Dupagement@aol.com wrote:
> > I am searching for a critique on the definition of the term:
> > "Information". One definition, I am using is : Information
is a thing
> > which has the only property of conveying meaning. Thus a newspaper
is
> > /not/ information since it also has the property of being made up of
> > paper, it has certain dimensions, it has print ink and so on. It
> > /carries/ information. Shannon's theory basis its definition of
> > information on probability theory. For a thing to be more probable
> > compared to another it has to be different. This differentness means
> > "different". For one unit to be recognizable from another
it has to have
> > some differentness.
> > Can I get a critque of this? Also citations and directions to
> > bibliography will be welcomed.
> > Syed Ali
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Received on Tue Aug 30 16:04:26 2005
