[Fis] 回复： Hello IS4SI?
钟义信
zyx at bupt.edu.cn
Thu Mar 5 07:30:47 CET 2020
Dear Pedro and All,
You are welcome to join in the discussion.
Best regards,
------------------
Prof. Zhong Y. X.
Center for Intelligence Science Research
Beijing University of Posts & Telecom
钟义信
北京邮电大学/教职工/计算机学院
13701230645
北京
------------------ 原始邮件 ------------------
发件人: "Pedro"<pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es>;
发送时间: 2020年3月4日(星期三) 晚上7:33
收件人: "fis"<fis at listas.unizar.es>;
主题: [Fis] Hello IS4SI?
Dear List Colleagues,
Let me remind the desirable seasonal contribution of IS4SI Board members to the vitality of this list. It is not so difficult: any comments on relevant papers or books recently read, any discussion on the problems of the own research, or any reflection on the amazing evolution of our societies... does still exist the aspiration of being a thought-collective? Below I reproduce a very interesting message from Yixin, say his "seasonal contribution" to this winter. It passed undiscussed except by Gordana and by Joseph in his Summary. Part of the problem was that it was sent as an attachment. In any case I think it deserves further discussion as it implies a very holistic view on information (that one can share or not) very useful for our common foundational info purposes.
Best wishes
--Pedro
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Dear Joseph, Dear Pedro, Dear All,
The discussions on the topics of information, disinformation and misinformation have been carried on for a couple of weeks from which I learnt a lot. Let me also share some of my views with friends and colleagues within our society, IS4SI.
1, Why Is The Discussion Important?
The current discussion is important simply because of the fact that, together with matter and energy, information is the most valuable resource for human society as well as for the living world. Particularly, in the stage of information age, the role information plays is even more fundamental. As to the members of International Society for the Study of Information, we are bearing on the special responsibility for making as clear as possible the concepts, properties, utilities, risks, and policies related to information.
2, What Is Information On Earth Then?
For making clear the policies related to information, the first thing we should do (and also cannot be avoided) is to precisely understand what information is – the definition of information. It IS, no doubt, the very foundation for distinguishing the concepts of information, disinformation, misinformation, and etc. Shannon, Wiener, Ashby, Bateson and many others have made contributions to the issue, the definition of information. Negative entropy, variety, and difference that make difference are the mutually linked, and yet different, answers.
But, all the ‘definitions’ mentioned above have certain demerits. Firstly, for example, the concept of entropy in Shannon Information Theory and Wiener’s Cybernetics is based on the probability theory whereas information is not limited to statistical category. Secondly, the concept of ‘variety’ seems much too simple and it cannot distinguish two events having same number of elements and different weights associated to each of the elements. Thirdly, the concept of ‘difference that make difference’ is also not perfect because of the fact that ‘no difference’ does not mean ‘no information’. As a matter of fact, ‘no difference’ itself does give information. To my understanding, there have been two categories of information, rather than one, existed and related to each other in the real world.
The first category of information is the one produced and presented from all things in the real world, which may suitably be termed ontological information(or object information) and the second category is the one perceived and utilized by humans, which may accordingly be termed epistemological information(or subject information). Detailed explanations concerning these concepts can be found below in section 3, or from the book <Principles of Information Science> (Yixin Zhong, BUPT Press, 1988, 1st edition; 1996, 2nd edition; 2002, 3rd edition; 2005, 4th edition; and 2013, 5th edition; all in Chinese). Up to now, unfortunately, people have paid little attentions to the understanding of the two categories of information and the mutual relation between them. Some concerned only with the first category while some others with the second. More often, people just use the same term of ‘information’ to referred to the two. This makes the concept of information extremely chaotic. This is really the root producing variety of the misconceptions related to information.
3, How To Define Different Categories of Information?
The definitions of the two category of information can briefly be given as follows.
The ontological information of any object(including the living and non-living thins)is the object’s formal state and the pattern of the state varying that are produced and presented by the objects in the real world.
The epistemological information perceived by any subject about any object consists of three components: (1)the syntactic information which is the one perceived by the subject directly from the object’s ontological information, (2) the pragmatic information which is the utility of the object’s ontological information towards the subject’s goal, and (3) the semantic information which is the meaning that the subject understand about the object and which is jointly defined by (1) and (2) through the mapping of the Cartesian product of syntactic and pragmatic information into the space of semantic information and then naming it.
The key words in the definition of ontological information are “the formal state and the pattern of the state varying”, neither “negative entropy”, “variety”, nor “difference that make difference”. In fact, when someone received a piece of (ontological) information about a thing, this means that the person knew the thing’s formal state and the pattern of the state varying. It is very clear that the concept of information in Shannon Theory is a special case of epistemological information having only the syntactic information and completely ignoring both the pragmatic and the semantic information. Yet, Shannon information is practically useful because it meets the needs of communication engineering – whenever there is message appeared at the sending terminal of the communication system, just transmit it without asking what meaning and value embedded in the message, as long as there is sufficient channel capacity.
4, How To Classify and Handle the Various Kinds of Information?
According to the definitions of ontological information, epistemological information and the information in Shannon Theory stated above, it is reasonable to have the following points.
(1) Ontological Information: If the term of information is referred to the one only related to objects themselves, either living things or non-living things, without touching the processes of human perception and any processing, it is the concept of ontological information.
(2) Epistemological Information: If the term of information is referred to the one only related to the results of perception and processing, either by humans, living things or machines, it is the epistemological information.
(3) Shannon Information: If the term of information is referred to the one only related to communication process, it is then the Shannon information.
(4) Disinformation: It is a kind of epistemological information produced by someone who is with immoral goal (its pragmatic information is negative to human society).
(5) Misinformation: It is also a kind of epistemological information produced by someone who may not be with immoral goal but have made mistakes in operation.
(6) It is almost impossible to classify the various kinds of information mentioned above merely by analyzing their formal structures (syntactic information). As mentioned above, the major differences among normal epistemological information, disinformation, and misinformation lie on the pragmatic information.
(7) The technology most suitable for handling the disinformation and misinformation is artificial intelligence (AI) based on the natural language understanding (NLU). However, the current state of the art of NLU in AI is still in its stage of infancy due to the fact that the ‘information concept’ applied in AI is limited to Shannon Theory.
(8) The Better solution for dealing with disinformation must rely on the power of advanced artificial intelligence that we have been dealing with for many years and have made good progress (See <Principles of Advanced Artificial Intelligence> by Yixin Zhong, Science Press, 2014, in Chinese)
(9) The Ultimate Solution for successfully dealing with such kind of problem like disinformation would rely heavily on the collectively human efforts worldwide in the fields of honesty, responsibility, ethics, and morality.
Best wishes,
Yixin Zhong, 2020-01-24, Beijing, China
-- ------------------------------------------------- Pedro C. Marijuán Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/ -------------------------------------------------
Libre de virus. www.avast.com
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