[Fis] defining information

Wed Mar 11 07:36:22 CET 2020

Your approach would place the term 'information' into the family of, say,
following terms:
potential,
success,
expectations,
speed,
equivalence,
etc.

These terms are, similarly to information, only precise, if given a well
defined context. Potential as a collection of talents, abilities, diligence
and support of a youngster is something completely different to the
expected extent of the woom caused by the kinetic impact of a mass.

Similarly, information is something different if understood to refer to the
knowledge about the arrival time of a train, as opposed to the restrictions
on molecular geometry which are at work in genetics.

My definition of information refers to the collection of possible
spatial/temporal realisations from among all alternatives relating to the
interdependence between properties and order. Its background is comparable
to the background of kinetic energy when using the term potential.

To use my definition of information, one has to place the concept into a
framework of reference of arithmetic-based possible coincidences between
elements and places. The woom of kinetic impact, predictable by using
arithmetic, in the context of potential, is here the list of possible
solutions to place/property/time  coincidences. What is there mass,
distance, speed,  is here cycle, order, offsets.

This definition of information has only slight relationship to information
possession as an advantage on investment strategies on the stock market,
e.g.

The definition of information as the description of the collection of the
remaining alternatives is a strictly technical tool. One may wonder, if
there are people in this chatroom, who are interested in it.

Karl

Terrence W. DEACON <deacon en berkeley.edu> schrieb am Di., 10. März 2020,
21:21:

> Dear FIS Colleagues,
>
> My recent post was not intended to provide a definition of information.
> But only to provide a framework to minimize the equivocation
> that comes from uses of the term 'information' that make unmarked
> assumptions about what one is assuming.
> It seems obvious to me that the term is being used in mutually
> incompatible ways
> by different FIS contributors, often with the implied claim that the
> writer's use of the term
> is THE ONE CORRECT USAGE, when in fact there may be no single most useful
> interpretation
> that works across all scientific and technical domains, not to mention the
> social sciences and humanities.
> I do believe that we will make more progress if we are clear about our
> assumed definitions in our different contexts of use.
> For example, as a neuroscientist who has also written about computer
> architecture,
> I find that a good deal of confusion in cognitive science results from
> assuming that we are talking about the same thing
> when using the term 'information' to talk about brain functions and
> computational operations.
> So I think that FIS could provide a service to many fields by working on
> an information vocabulary
> that helps to avoid these sorts of definitional equivocations;
> i.e. not THE definition of information, but definitionS of information
> within a framework that shows their relationships to one another.
>
> Regards, Terry
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 8:16 AM Emanuel Diamant <emanl.245 en gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Dear Pedro, Dear FIS colleagues,
>>
>>
>>
>> I do not share the general excitement about the revitalization of the FIS
>> discussion on information definition.
>>
>> I am not sure that the principle of “three messages per week” or the
>> ITHEA Cloud Forum, with an
>>
>> unlimited number of posts and 1M-large attachments, is our main problem.
>> I think that our discussion (again and again) violates the basic principle
>> of any scientific discourse - the IF-THEN principle - according to which
>> each hypothetical assumption is followed by a suggestion what stems from
>> it, where, and how these expectations could be discerned and observed. If I
>> remember right, Terence and Gordana on several previous occasions have
>> addressed this issue, but their call has remained unanswered.
>>
>> However, refreshing the definitions of information we cannot continue to
>> ignore the IF-THEN rule requirement - How does the defined information look
>> like, how it is represented, what is its real form? The proposed definition
>> of information must be followed by a suggestion of assets that make it (the
>> information) visible, tangible, palpable.
>>
>> Only this kind of information definitions is being urgently needed in the
>> worldwide Human Brain Research programme. Or in the overhyped global
>> Artificial Intelligence race. In both, Artificial Neural Networks (which
>> are data processing number crunching devices) are supposed to emulate human
>> brain biological neurons (which are pure information processing devices).
>> Both fail to fulfill their promises, but do not understand for what reason
>> and why. The current FIS discussion certainly will not help them.
>>
>> Regards, Emanuel.
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
> --
> Professor Terrence W. Deacon
> University of California, Berkeley
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