[Fis] Fwd: What is life?

[Loet Leydesdorff]

The problem is that information is not an absolute. The same code when
measured against different references (English vs. Spanish in this case)
will yield different measures. It's the obverse of the Third Law of
Thermodynamics. See < <http://people.clas.ufl.edu/ulan/files/FISPAP.pdf>
http://people.clas.ufl.edu/ulan/files/FISPAP.pdf>

 

Dear Bob, 

 

It seems to me that you confuse information with what information means for
a system of reference. Different systems of reference, of course, can
attribute different meanings to the same information.

 

@Alex: this confusion is unfortunately pervasive. Unlike Shannon-type
information, "information" is often defined (following Bateson and McKay) as
"a difference which makes a difference", without articulation that the
second difference presumes the specification of a system of reference. 

 

A series of differences of the first type can be considered as a probability
distribution that contains uncertainty. "A difference which makes a
difference", however, can be considered as "meaningful information". In my
opinion, this "meaningful information" should not be equated with
information because one then uses the same word for two different things and
thus generates confusion.

 

Best,

Loet

 

  _____  

Loet Leydesdorff 

Professor, University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)

 <mailto:loet at leydesdorff.net> loet at leydesdorff.net ;
<http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/ 
Associate Faculty,  <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/> SPRU, University of
Sussex; 

Guest Professor  <http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/> Zhejiang Univ., Hangzhou;
Visiting Professor,  <http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html> ISTIC,
Beijing;

Visiting Professor,  <http://www.bbk.ac.uk/> Birkbeck, University of London;


 <http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en>
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en

 

 

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