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Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Dealing with mess

Hop over to Post Darwinist (one of the blogs we watch) for this article on information and life.

3 comments:

neil moore said...

Eric, I am inclined to dipute Shallit's interpretation that the elements meteorologists look for to make weather predictions is actually information.

Sure the prediction is information because it would contain the essential aspects of statistics. syntax, semantics, pragmatics and apobetics. However, the elements they are looking for in the local atmosphere would not contain all these aspects and thus not qualify for the description of information.

Perhaps, Shallit relies too much on Shannon's errant view that statistics are all you need for information. It is a bit like making the false assumption that a snowflake is information.

Neil

Eric said...

Interesting whether measures of phenomena are 'information' in non-shannon terms, or simply representations of the phenomenon themselves that add nothing new. So, I measure a leaf, it is 10cms long, what has been added? I talk about the leaf and provide tips on propogating its plant based on my research. This is more like information that I think you refer to.

neil moore said...

Well observed.

Neil