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What really is information?


hallenrm

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Lately I have been discussing "What is Information" with my dear friend Tarun on a science forum for DU (Delhi University) science community - Vimarsh. I believe that my illuminated friends here can perhaps add to the discussion here.

 

The link to the thread is

 

Vimarsh :: View topic - What is information?

 

Anybody caring to join me, in this disccussion?

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Good question!

 

I suppose that "information" could be seen as either the existence or non-existence of something, and attributes thereof, and the relation between sets of the former.

 

But it gets pretty complicated if you consider a complete vacuum. There's nothing there, but the "knowledge" of the nothingness existing, is information in and of itself. So, I suppose it might be said that information is purely a construct of the human mind, and in the absence thereof, there's simply chaos.

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Thank Rade:) But, don't you think that is very Anthropocentric:)
Not at all. I was not saying that only humans have the ability to remove uncertainty, nor that information is conditioned on the existence of Homo sapiens. Lots of information in the universe long before humans evolved. Perhaps I have no idea what you ask me to think about. You asked for a definition of a concept that you called "information". Here it is again: Information is "that which removes uncertainty". Do you have an example where this definition does not apply ? Now, I am not saying that there are not alternative definitions of the concept--information--only that this one meets Occam's Razor (e.g., it says all that needs to be said to define the concept in four words). If you have a definition with less words, please share.
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Here's my definition: "Information is what can be transferred from one object to another, it is a mode by which an object can communicate with another"

 

Mark my words, my defonition is not limited either to human beings, not even to living organisms! I believe that even a dead body or a river has information which it can pass on to other objects around it. Again, notice my use of the verb Can, so I am not saying that every object can communicate with every other object with the same felicity:)

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...Here's my definition: "Information is what can be transferred from one object to another, it is a mode by which an object can communicate with another"...
Yes, there is a 1:1 correspondence between information and communication. As soon as the set of possibilities shrink to 1, communication is blocked, and there can be no transfer of information. Perhaps the only comment I have with your definition is that it is not "clearly" articulated or implied within the definition the concept that information is transferred in degrees of felicity as you say. You suggest that this concept is within the word "can"--but this is not clear on first reading--at least not to me. However, note that within the definition I suggest, that information = that which removes uncertainty, an obvious next thought is then, well, exactly how much uncertainty is removed ? --which then leads one to look for minimal to maximal limits to the information transfer. But, all is all, I think both of the definitions below are accurate, but that the first is more exact vis-a-vis the felicity aspect:

 

Information = that which removes uncertainty

Information = mode of communication between objects

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Maybe I'm not understanding what you're trying to accomplish here, but from an Information Theory point of view, information is just about everything. A rock is a fount of information. So is an ameoba. So are of course books and ideas, but as you say, that's anthropocentric!

 

Anything that lacks patterns--an infinite string of 1's, whether the written kind or a perfect lattice of atoms--has "low information content" in that it can be defined algorithmically as "x * n" where x is the smallest pattern and n is the number of times it is repeated.

 

What am I missing?

 

Not everything has a point, :)

Buffy

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Bacteria 'observe' their environment. Something that 'tracks' chemical gradients must have the equivalent of a memory, or it wouldn't be able to 'respond' to changes.

What information do these things process?

 

Phototropic algae don't grow if there's no light, so do they "remember" where it is? What about zooflagellates that learn how to navigate through a maze? There's a lot more to consciousness that most of us, um, think about.

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Maybe I'm not understanding what you're trying to accomplish here, but from an Information Theory point of view, information is just about everything. A rock is a fount of information. So is an ameoba. So are of course books and ideas, but as you say, that's anthropocentric!

 

Anything that lacks patterns--an infinite string of 1's, whether the written kind or a perfect lattice of atoms--has "low information content" in that it can be defined algorithmically as "x * n" where x is the smallest pattern and n is the number of times it is repeated.

 

Buffy

 

You seem to be confusing Entropy with information as expounded in the Information theory. So when you say "Anything that lacks patterns--an infinite string of 1's, whether the written kind or a perfect lattice of atoms--has "low information content" you are indeed missing the point. The text in a book or a webpage does not have the same kind of order as a perfect lattice of atoms, so does it have low information. An electromagnetic signal carrying a audible sound or a video similarly is not as ordered, but may have much more information than a pure sine wave signal.

 

You need to give it a little more thought dear Buffy!:ud:

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No, Information Theory and Entropy are highly intertwined! In fact they use the same notion of "information" (you have also read my example backward, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader!), whereas several people here have fallen in to the trap of thinking that it is the more colloquial use of the term "information" as "ideas and concepts." When people try to define this more ephemeral notion of "information" they usually get tied up on existential knots about the nature of thought.

 

Your attempt at clarifying it:

Information is what can be transferred from one object to another, it is a mode by which an object can communicate with another
...gets into the trap of limiting the definition of communication as being "between objects" which is totally unnecessary! Information doesn't have to be communicated, it can just sit there!

 

If an idea falls in a closed forest and there is no brain there to perceive it, is its entropy reduced? :ud:

Buffy

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Information is what can be transferred from one object to another, it is a mode by which an object can communicate with another

The other words: transferred, mode, communicate, all imply the idea of a channel, and the 'information', then is the messages that the channel "allows".

 

P.S. We might be headed into the linguistic trap of using the same word for the "thing" as "what the thing does".

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