<div style="font-size:large;;"><div>Dear Pedro and All,</div><div><br></div><div>You are welcome to join in the discussion.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Best regards,</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><sign signid="99"><div style="color:#909090;font-family:Arial Narrow;font-size:12px"><br><br><br><br>------------------</div><div style="font-size:14px;font-family:Verdana;color:#000;"><div style="overflow:hidden;"><div class="l_box" style="float:left;height:100px;margin:35px 10px 10px 0;padding:0 10px 0 15px;border-right:1px solid #dedede;"><div class="logo" style="max-height: 150px;overflow: hidden;margin:35px 0 0 0;float:left;"><div><b>Prof. Zhong Y. X.</b></div><div>Center for Intelligence Science Research</div><div>Beijing University of Posts & Telecom</div><div><br></div><div><img onerror="" src="https://exmail.qq.com/cgi-bin/viewfile?type=logo&domain=bupt.edu.cn"></div></div></div><div class="c_detail" style="float:left;padding-top:35px;line-height:22px;color:#a0a0a0;zoom:1;"><h4 class="name" style="margin:0;font-size:14px;font-weight:bold;line-height:28px;color:#000;zoom:1;">钟义信<br></h4><p class="department" style="margin:0;">北京邮电大学/教职工/计算机学院</p><p class="phone" style="margin:0;"></p><p class="mobile" style="margin:0;">13701230645</p><p class="addr" style="margin:0;line-height:22px;color:#a0a0a0;">北京</p></div></div></div></sign></div><div> </div><div><includetail><div> </div><div> </div><div style="font:Verdana normal 14px;color:#000;"><div style="FONT-SIZE: 12px;FONT-FAMILY: Arial Narrow;padding:2px 0 2px 0;">------------------ 原始邮件 ------------------</div><div style="FONT-SIZE: 12px;background:#efefef;padding:8px;"><div id="menu_sender"><b>发件人:</b> "Pedro"<pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es>;</div><div><b>发送时间:</b> 2020年3月4日(星期三) 晚上7:33</div><div><b>收件人:</b> "fis"<fis@listas.unizar.es>; <wbr></div><div></div><div><b>主题:</b> [Fis] Hello IS4SI?</div></div><div> </div><div style="position:relative;"><div id="tmpcontent_res"></div>
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</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:18.0pt;mso-line-height-rule:exactly">Dear
List Colleagues,</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:18.0pt;mso-line-height-rule:exactly">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. <br>
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:18.0pt;mso-line-height-rule:exactly">Best
wishes</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:18.0pt;mso-line-height-rule:exactly">--Pedro
<span lang="EN-US" style=" ; "><br>
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:18.0pt;mso-line-height-rule:exactly"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">----------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:18.0pt;mso-line-height-rule:exactly"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">Dear Joseph, Dear
Pedro, Dear All,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:18.0pt;mso-line-height-rule:exactly"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:18.0pt;mso-line-height-rule:exactly"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">1,
Why Is The Discussion Important?</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:18.0pt;mso-line-height-rule:exactly"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">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. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:18.0pt;mso-line-height-rule:exactly"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">2,
What Is Information On Earth Then?</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:18.0pt;mso-line-height-rule:exactly"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">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.</span><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; "> 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.</span>
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:18.0pt;mso-line-height-rule:exactly"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">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.</span><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; "> To my
understanding,
there have been two categories of information, rather than
one, existed and
related to each other in the real world.</span>
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:18.0pt;mso-line-height-rule:exactly"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">The first category
of
information is the one produced and presented from all things
in the real world,
which may suitably be termed <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">ontological
information</b>(or <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">object
information</b>)
and the second category is the one perceived and utilized by
humans, which may
accordingly be termed <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">epistemological
information</b>(or <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">subject
information</b>).
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, 1<sup>st</sup> edition; 1996, 2<sup>nd</sup>
edition; 2002, 3<sup>rd</sup>
edition; 2005, 4<sup>th</sup> edition; and 2013, 5<sup>th</sup>
edition; all in
Chinese).</span><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; "> 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.</span>
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:18.0pt;mso-line-height-rule:exactly"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">3,
How To Define Different Categories of Information?</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:18.0pt;mso-line-height-rule:exactly"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">The definitions of
the
two category of information can briefly be given as follows.</span></p>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">The
ontological information</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">
of any object(including the living and non-living thins)is the
object’s <u>formal
state and the pattern of the state varying</u> that are
produced and presented
by the objects in the real world.</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; "><br>
</span></b><p></p>
<p><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">The
epistemological information</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">
perceived by any subject about any object consists of three
components: (1)<u>the
syntactic information</u> which is the one perceived by the
subject directly
from the object’s ontological information, (2) <u>the pragmatic
information</u>
which is the utility of the object’s ontological information
towards the
subject’s goal, and (3) <u>the semantic information</u> 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.</span><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; "></span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:18.0pt;mso-line-height-rule:exactly"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">The key words in
the
definition of ontological information are “<u>the formal state
and the pattern
of the state varying</u>”, 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 t<u>he thing’s
formal state and
the pattern of the state varying</u>.</span><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; "> It is very clear
that <u>the
concept of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">information
in Shannon Theory</b>
is a special case of epistemological information having only
the syntactic
information and completely ignoring both the pragmatic and
the semantic
information</u>. 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.</span><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; "> </span>
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:18.0pt;mso-line-height-rule:exactly"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">4,
How To Classify and Handle the Various Kinds of Information?</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">(1)
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Ontological
Information: </b>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. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">(2)
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Epistemological
Information: </b>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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">(3)
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Shannon Information:</b>
If the term of
information is referred to the one only related to
communication process, it is
then the Shannon information.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">(4)
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Disinformation:</b> It
is a kind of
epistemological information produced by someone who is with
immoral goal (its
pragmatic information is negative to human society).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">(5)
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Misinformation:</b> It
is also a kind of
epistemological information produced by someone who may not be
with immoral
goal but have made mistakes in operation.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">(6)
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">It is almost impossible</b>
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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">(7)
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">The technology</b> 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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">(8)
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">The Better solution</b>
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)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">(9)
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">The Ultimate Solution</b>
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. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">Best
wishes,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style=" ; ">Yixin
Zhong, 2020-01-24, Beijing, China</span></p>
<p></p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es">pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/">http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/</a>
------------------------------------------------- </pre>
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