[Fis] Information: a metaphysical word

[Loet Leydesdorff]

Everybody defines information in the way he prefers: subjective, biotic, bit, and so on. 
Therefore, every study that talks about "information" is meaningless.

Dear Arturo, 

The “Therefore” does not follow. It is a non-igitur. For example, Shannon’s information theory is not necessarily meaningless, although the measure (e.g., bits) is devoid of meaning. It provides, among other things,  a statistics. 

On the other side, I suggested in a previous post how the information entropy (such as Shannon's, or Bekenstein's, or Hawking's) may change according to the relativistic speed of the hypothetical observer.  

Rather obscure, in my opinion. 

Therefore, I suggest to fully remove the term "information" from every scientific account.  The term "information" refers, in Popper's terms, to a not falsifiable theory, to pseudoscience: it is a metaphysical claim, like the concepts of Essence, Being, God and so on. 

All mathematical theories are non-falsifiable. Shannon-type information is just a measure. Information can be provided with subjective meaning. Many of our colleagues confuse this subjective meaning of information with information itself. 

Information can also be provided with (inter-subjective) meaning in a discourse such as biology or physics. The discourse then functions as an “observer”. However, the meaningful information (the signal) is to be distinguished from the information as uncertainty (noise; variation) before this selection.

Best,

Loet

Therefore, by now, the term "information" is definitely out of my scientific  vocabulary.  
  

--
Inviato da Libero Mail per Android

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listas.unizar.es/pipermail/fis/attachments/20170327/2b6b574c/attachment.html>