The Nature of Information by Radu Pintea

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The Nature of Information a personal, eclectic view on the issue by Radu Pintea What follows is not a copy-paste memo written to pass some grade exam. All the references herein follow the natural and unbiased personal memory flow, without any actual references or erudite bibliographical sequentially and alphabetically ordered at the end of the paper, and no footnotes to disrupt this flow. It represents my beliefs on the issue – an exercise of understanding, nothing more and nothing less. This is a white paper based on unfading memories about readings from paper based books in my youth, insights and guesswork rather than diligent and careful research. The references and inferences will be always on the fly not in a neat bibliographical box at the end of the material ticking off in a knee-jerk manner the extensive literary hits and the grandiose scope of an erudite knowledge in these matters. 1) 2) 3) Sandra Bullock wore red bikini as she stepped on the red carpet. The square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the two adjacent cathetes. USA official claimed at a UN press conference yesterday no evidence was found of MDA in Baghdad A Richter scale 5 magnitude earthquake hit Sumatra Thursday at 01:45 a.m. The elephant has a dangling trunk at its front and a dangling tail at its rear. ….

4) 5) 6)

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And so on and on and on – you name it for how long. Feel free to contribute your own information sample under the entry 6) above – a musical score, a mailing list a grocery fiscal ticket, this is up to you. All these – and others you could easily think of – are perfectly valid sentences containing bits of information. Fact is information is never neutral. It serves its purpose and perhaps its meaning resides in just this very quality: purpose. Deprived of purpose, the information is nullified; it becomes noise. Therefore the deductions, inductions and conclusions, inferences and references of this paper are based mainly on memories, readings and personal insight rather than on systematic comparison against other results relevant to the field elusive enough as it is. Of course nothing comes out of nothing - one shares interests and views on a topic with other people discussing the same issue or situation over and over until a point is reached when a jump to the next level is mandatory, a level where, of course, the new problems are different from the original ones and they call for other solutions in another range. My feeling is the more we talk about info the more chances we’ll stand to boggle our minds exactly into the same mire the German philosophers got stuck talking about the Pure Thing eventually just a point where they couldn’t quite tell the difference between the shape and the contents – Gestalt and Inhalt – much as they itched to do so. The point is the information paradigm seems to fall in the same fuzzy type pattern. It seems to fit just about any definition we’d give and take the form and fill up the volume of just about any container we’d set out minds to name and label to corral the concept, encapsulate it and further be able to talk about it in the classical term of frozen “object”.
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However and quite unfortunately the reality is not so. Just to have some idea about how hazy this concept is, let’s try to picket first some sticks as landmarks of the two extreme approaches when we really mean to etch out some workable definition and therefore have some idea – any idea – about what animal we are looking at. The broadest and most farfetched approach when we venture to capture the essence of the Info in a definition would be that info in anything that could be said, mirrored, imagined or in any other conceivable way conceptualized or thought of as any reasonably clear representation whatsoever. Suppose everyone would (and actually and proactively is ) uttering various notes of Bach’s Mass. Without Bach’s control. The result would be a complete Mess! A global scale noise driving everybody nuts. What makes something relevant is not the substance but the structure. At this point we are far off any moral or aesthetical judgments as of good or bad, beautiful or ugly. Meaning is a lower level than judging. In literal communication information should be conveyed by a structured well articulated string of characters. In order to be understood, these characters should be down stepped structured in a language, a grammatically ordered flow of intelligible words, and an intelligible string of words in a syntactically meaningful way. Sense is secondary to meaning. On the other hand, relevant in an info context paradigm should be an offset between the actual content of the string and the expected scope for that same string of characters. Let’s take the first example: maybe a rocket scientist don’t give a blink for the color of Sandra Bullock’s panties, but for a deep, far going fashion analyst the very same bit of knowledge could ring a bell for the next year production of

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intimate apparel – that is a relevant clue, knowing how the world spins … Take the name of Franz Schubert’s strings quartet “The Death and the Maiden”; although the name is just a functional label, it has a somehow sad ring just the same. The contents, however sounds like a torrent of unleashed positive energy and unflinching hope. Hazy as it seems to be, information is one thing, its labeling another thing, info handling is something else, manipulating info is another goose in another pond. There is always a binome at the head and the tail of any information: the emitter and the receiver. Since all of us are both at the same time, we may be generators, pure iterators or just passive receivers of the information at the same time. The definition of information should be contentsindependent and should work no matter whether it applies to an oil painting by Goya, a Bach sonata or a Shakespeare sonnet. Info is the gist of all representation of and about the world as we know it or think we know. Accessing a bit of info does not mean endorsing its purpose. Actually people just “browse” most of the noise flowing through them from everywhere and at various intensity levels. Of course, specializing in a field means to dig in extensively in the available knowledge in store for that particular matter. If one specializes in literature, one should read as much literature as one can get; if another one loves mathematics he/she will probably feed on numbers and numbers only struggling to encompass as many relationships between them as he/she can possibly can have. If painting is the hobby, well, the gist will be made of museums, oil, canvas, brushes, water colors, landscapes, portraits etc. Should you feel like music, well, go for it! He/she would take the 7 celestial notes on the staff (with the semitones included!) and roll and shake them in all
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conceivable harmonically though manner on the human voice, or one instrument, or two, or a full house orchestra. So what makes relevant a bit of information is its relevancy and interest for the supposed recipient or user of that particular info bit; should it is not relevant, it is by default rated as “noise”. Noise is not necessarily a musical term as you can see. On the other hand new constructs are erected on adept and clever blocks of practical or theoretical knowledge, new discoveries and angles through which reality could be scrutinized just to reveal new vistas rich and ripe with new meaning. Chances are the nature of information to be one thing while the info could be another thing. At some point it transcends the linguistic barriers addressing in a shortcut directly to the intellect logic engine. I’m no sculptor but if I’ll be one I’ll represent the human effigy at the onset of this IIId millennium as a silhouette holding one small, thin, rectangular tablet in each hand while the hands are held one vertical, holding the cell phone tablet to the ear and the other hand stretched horizontally pointing its remote controller (second tablet) to an invisible TV set. Obviously we somehow reached the common idea all the problems of humans alive proactively can be solved by pressing in a just right succession the 101 dainty keys on a keyboard as if expecting some kind of magic to kick off right away and solve in the blink of an eye all problems no matter how arcane. The solution might look as powerful and elegant a solution could be – good for games, simulators where everyone knows the matter is a joke, a hoax, a kill time or basically has a training sort of purpose. Unfortunately, at this point, it cannot be the global panacea for the global woes, worries, wears and wars, as mankind faces today. The digital gate is far too small, the data flow too thick and far too
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fast for anyone in his balanced mind to be able to grapple with while hoping to see some human – readable results popping out no matter how tight the sift would be in sorting out the relevant-to-be data. No matter how quick you are at tapping at those keys you can’t match not even by far the lightning speed of the info flow, nor can you withstand the sheer amount of it and its all encompassing pressure. Being so “wired” may be tremendously deceiving. You think you are in the middle of action, that you are in control and even have a better idea about what’s going on. Wrong! Being exposed to a high density of information either sifted or un un-sifted doesn’t mean automatically you got streetwiser then your senior guys on the block. In his Mimesis ,Erich Fromm claimed people in the long run develop the trend to emulate what they like, to become what they love and cherish. A young writer whose idol in the craft of writing is, say, Hemingway, will unawares write like Hemingway, or at least will try to do so - don’t forget there’s always a serious offset between what we do and what we think we do. However the trend is there as in the law in physics stating that if two diapasons are close enough, if one of them is hit, the other one also vibrates. Info has to do with problem – solving algorithm of just any kind conceivable, a complex process of mixing the given data provided by the environment and outputting a practical solution always addressing a practical, urgent issue. In this process the two attributes of the info are redundancy and relevancy. Obviously they are mutually exclusive and at the same time identical as they are always so rated in interested contexts (relevancy) or uninterested contexts (redundancy – or “noise”).

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Excessive information is useless. An information flood is more dangerous than the lack of any information at all. However, under constant pounding something will crack eventually and nobody would know what, when, where or under what manner. Putting not needed info into one’s hands (or rather heads) is like handing down a mechanical saw-chain woodcutter in a surgeon’s hand. At mass scale! Today is increasingly harder and harder to skip unwanted info from hitting you from everywhere. You’re safe nowhere anymore. One of the info’s mainstay characteristic is the fact that’s chopped; it is incomplete. A minced information is worse than the lack of it (Lincoln said: “no law is worse than a bad law” in another context). It is misleading. Always! The clipped large scope in the virtual world of info has a tremendous impact on the real behavior of info consumers – passive or active. Ever increasing speed and pressure of this ethereal ubiquitous flow and clipped property prevents people from digesting what they have just learnt and the result of a hectic digestion is a bad digestion, a half baked opinion inducing a half – assed decision on just any subject of the day we’re talking about. In a way, all of us are passive vectors of information content using the copy-paste algorithm to dispatch as fast as possible our ever pressing issues of the day. Maybe the copy – paste is the very and the one basic brick of the illusive, grandiose temple of knowledge is built on and even made of. It should be obvious that at conceptual level information is rather a container than a content in terms of Gehalt und Inhalt . Under constant pressure of misusage due to lack of education or poetical license the ever increasing amount of deviations from the academically accepted norms contributed to a steady migration and intermingling of categories of any sort, rate and flavor, this mixed breed
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allowing even a deeper degree of freedom in the scalability, overlapping or interchangeability of whole ranges of categories. Under the constant pressure of unwanted information (“noise”) and the ever increasing mobility for no purpose, the decision taking time was dramatically cut down to extremely short interval completely proper for a thorough algorithm, reflection and in due time decision thereof. Both mobility in information ex(change) and in many a time unnecessary travel from one geographical spot to another of most of the individuals made them, as a packed group having the same characteristics, prone to a gas-like behavior to which, mutatis mutandis the Gas Laws should therefore apply. More than ever these days an entire civilization freshly etched to the sunlight based on the unique and iconic concept of all powerful strong belief that everything is actually made possible just by pressing the key ENTER on computer keyboard at the end of typing in one or more strings of characters in any of the many codes devised by people for various purposes … The once solid boundaries between categories (in the old style) turn more and more liquid at a fast pace and all logic seem to lose grip on the most once basic conceptual bricks and a slow but gaining speed shift is to be felt everywhere, menacing to become a global, gigantic landslide of sorts, obviously making all constants impossible as nothing durable can be built on shifting sands. Maybe Emil Cioran’s complaint that “some writers wrote way too much” could be deciphered as “all writers wrote way too much”, and even further yet, and finally, we all have the means to communicate way, way far too damn much for our better understanding and perhaps this real solid and upright credo is the hard core of the issue and a troubling paradox. Very hard to crack and even harder to comprehend: the

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more we communicate the less we understand. Genug ist besser als zu viel. The thesis has the flavor of Heinsenberg’s principle of incertitude transposed here from atomic physics to the actual instrument, vehicle or container of knowledge: the sharing media – whatever it happens to be. Could it be the seeding allegory more effective where knowledge is concerned? Especially in this phase of acute info flow springing from practically everywhere? Up to a certain granularity of perception could be rated as tautological that conceptual chaos will lead in due time to objectual chaos since a melting down, overlapping an “fuzzy” class would normally lead to “flawed” instances of that class, loose, erratically moving objects somehow degraded from their former rank, order, status and characteristics by their intrinsic damaged and hectic heritage. The optical prophet of this liquefaction of the once solid “classical” world of objects was the painter Salvador Dalí trumpeting in his out-of-this-worldly canvases the onset of a new realm of tweaked, wrongly screwed and mangled reality we humans face now point blank and a full awareness of its presence can only enhance the eerie, meskalinelike perception no matter how sober and cool headed you are. Of course dangers lie everywhere both in utter disorder like in a too tight order. Could it be this the twilight of the logic as we’ve come to be used with it for so long? Or perhaps even because we’ve communicated too much and way for too long time came something to give. One avenue seems pregnant with unforeseen, unfurled opportunities, values and scales untold; the other alternative is crystallized in repetitive functionality of some kind or another. Time is pressing on to take a decision in pursuing

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one way or another fast with no middle ground option accepted. The very nature of information upon increasingly deeper probing seems teeming with latent dampers not only of semantics, grammar, morphology. As double edged razor like blade both telling and misleading at the same time building and sowing the seed of disaster in its wake. Its usage seems relevant to everyone and to no one. 1) If somebody puts an artificial flower in a vase, this might look as quite appropriate; however if this person is actually pouring water into that vase, then at least one of his/her bolts is definitely loose! 2) Yago type of information: an innuendo, a whispered slander, half assed and barely expressed in an articulate way. Actually the catch is exactly this: not to articulate in order to be effective . The more hazy it is the implication, the more effective. By sheer notspecifying in the clear the object of the information its payload multiplies a thousand fold affecting whole ranges of paradigms. 3) Frisbee issue in the way of information exchange; metaliteral contents bespeaking however about a perfect timing, a purpose, a right assessment of the angle of gliding, of the spinning speed, the right time of release. It is a metalingual communication exchange between the players. Therefore Frisbee throwing is an informational act of a certain, less obvious species. First, it is an exchange which is a property of just about any information. The flying disc is released back and forth according to communicational act of
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sorts. In order to perform a correct relay - or correspondence – between the launching point and the landing point, the propulsion data set should list the right parameters (that is technical information), the right speed, the right gliding angle, the right spinning speed, the right wind compensation factor, the right timing of release from the finger tips’ grip, the right wrist swinging tension – torsion snap, the right trajectory. So much for the launcher. Let’s view the associated data at the reception side: the right prerequisite position, the right knee balance, the sight lock enabling the right reflex to fire for catching the disc. Another sample of information is the movie. Today, perhaps the most relevant example of composite information is the movie as we all know it too well. The movie makers – a.k.a. “the engineers of emotion” – output the most powerful informational object in the market. Unlike the mute film, the spoken movie pictures actually are of sophisticated, highly composite nature. Let’s explore a bit. The modern movie is invariably a triad. Its three ingredients are: the moving pictures contents creating the illusion of actual movement within the projection screen limits, the background music (or “soundtrack” as it is widely referred to by professionals in the trade) and the dialogue - actually the spoken words uttered by the characters.

5)

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In a broader context information is perception – just any kind of perception at any level of the emitter and the receiver. End piece: However, with all said , had not been for the Swiss intense focus and craft instead of having those wonderful masterpieces tick – tacking away our time, we’d have some extra amorphous iron rich ore plus a bit of silicon chips on the beach among seagull dung. There’s something afoot, to be sure, but the shape of the future looming ahead is still far from clarifying in cross – hairs; at least not in the rampant, roaring full tilt information age. * Technology made authorship dangerously simple. There are even software packages writing the novels, poetry, short stories for you waiting just for a couple of input mainstay data to seed its random generator with and – lo! and behold! – pronto! Basta! The “masterpiece” is ready to ship and hit the market. In time the concept of ”marketplace” drifted, unfortunately, I believe, from egg-plants, turnips, potatoes and cucumbers exhibiting places where it belonged, to more ethereal realms as the products of emotion and intellect are. However the mismatch somehow caught and stuck and is still sticking. Since the making of a “masterpiece” is practically at the tip of anybody’s fingers with a keyboard and a mouse, we shouldn’t smirk as the deluge of pulpy “masterpieces” hit our senses from all 3D-directions at a hallucinating rate and impact that make their digestion outright impossible. Most of them pass right through leaving no ripples or thrills to scar our lasting memory. So everybody writing could this mean do we really have as many writers as keyboard hitters we have round the globe? And sheer quantity of their copy-and-paste clones stored away in the
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servers all over the planet made this package apt enough to be called “pulp” (if printed) - no offence – and, smirk we may, treat it the same like any other tomato juice or mashed potatoes; or “noise” (if in digitally visual or auricular volatile status). Let’s face it, technology made communication extremely easy at the extreme sacrifice of any comprehension destroying in the process all those logical, conceptual borders which helped to cut clean distinctions between those concepts in order to better see and understand them in their interaction and their mutual meanings. Non of this anymore! On-line queries just return randomized samples of the same plasma of half guessed, half-assed “truths” of various flavors seeming to focus at some point, and culture could be termed in today lingo as an honest struggle to dig out of this spectacular, earth-scale mess some scholar issue linked to as many “written” references as paragraphs the paper is supposed to have. What’s the point? Clearly it’s a generation of some kind. A very large generation of something ebullient of another kind, unlike any other kind, reign of species we learned to know so far. What we experience these days, what we see and hear sounds more and more like noise, which could be defined in the old and lo! paradoxical style as a non relevant sound (while a sound should be circularly called as “relevant noise”!) . My hope is somebody somewhere would raise to put again the ideas up side up and start to show people the true, deep relevance of this sophisticated and way out much too expensive mash. And tell people, point blank, what to expect out of it. Or not to expect; old age pension for instance.

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