Is all information encoded?

[DanishDynamite]

As I'm sure will be clear, I haven't read the entire thread. Not gonna stop me from giving my opinion, though.

It seems to me that the problem is that we need a clear cut definition of information and of encoded. These are both abstract concepts.

In the real world, all you have are physical states. The photon which bounces off a table leg gets its physical state changed. If the photon hits your eye, your eye has its physical state changed. This in turn will result in a physical change in the state of some neurons somewhere in your brain.

That's it.

Now, if you would like to lay some abstract informational overlay onto these events, be my guest. You can also add a specific subset called "encoded information". But please, whatever these overlays look like, they are based on your definition of these concepts.

I think what I'm saying is that whether the "information" is "encoded" or not, isn't dependent on what physically happens, but on your definitions.

 

[JAK]

...
It seems to me that the problem is that we need a clear cut definition of information and of encoded. These are both abstract concepts.
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I think what I'm saying is that whether the "information" is "encoded" or not, isn't dependent on what physically happens, but on your definitions.

I agree. Soapy Sam said something similar earlier:

Originally posted by Soapy Sam (5/25/2005 @ 3:23pm)
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The information is in the observer, not the transmission.
What passes from the rock to the eye is not information, but energy. The energy does not contain information. It's just energy. It creates information when viewed by a mind able to reverse engineer the energy and work out what it has hit.
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I'm thinking that any definition of "communication," "information," or "encoding," may benefit from a ground-up approach ...

First, a gathering concensus appears to be forming that "information" is not inherent in the energy transmission. If so, then whatever "information" happens to be, that occurs and is dependent upon the observer. (Disagreement from anyone?)

Next, language is a tool. As a tool, the words of language must have utility for humans. If we are to define "communication," "information," and/or "encoding," I believe we need to consider the purpose (or utility) of these words for us.

What are we trying to accomplish or convey when we use the word "information" or "encoding"? What separates the two? (An alphabet is a set of symbols and encoding implies a set of symbols. What's the difference in use?)

Thoughts?

 

[JAK]

Though I'm not comfortable with Shannon's approach, I need to go read some more and think about it.
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I think I'm warming up to Shannon.

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R G Gallager, a colleague who worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote:-

"Shannon was the person who saw that the binary digit was the fundamental element in all of communication. That was really his discovery, and from it the whole communications revolution has sprung."
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- http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Shannon.html

I wholeheartedly agree that the binary digit is fundamental to information and communication.

Besides, it hard not to like a guy who rode his unicycle down the halls of MIT "... sometimes augmenting the hazard by juggling."

 

[BillHoyt]

I think what I'm saying is that whether the "information" is "encoded" or not, isn't dependent on what physically happens, but on your definitions.

DD,

This cannot be. You've disconnected the information from the physical reality. While the problem is partly definitional, I think the larger confusion results from not shifting our perspective. We keep going back and forth from "transmitter" to "receiver" and try to force the information to be an attribute of one or the other. A variation on this is trying to force the information to be an attribute of the vector from transmitter to receiver.

Information, it seems to me, emerges at the system level.

 

[Hellbound]

Try looking at this from another angle, and maybe we can clarify a little bit of our definitions and uses.

Can information exist without being coded/stored/whatever in some sort of physical matrix?

This is the way I approach the idea, and I have to answer this no. Information is, simply, pattern. There is no information without a physical matrix or storage system, be it matter or energy. Even your memories and thoughts are stored in chemical reactions and neural positioning and reinforcement (according to the latest theories, anyway). The information on the much discussed table is encoded in it's physical structure, the structure of its molecules, the pieces of it that fall away and the rate at which they fall (creating smell), it's pattern of motion (sight and sound), and so forth. Even here this can be broken into more basic information, such as the structure and patterns of atomic interactions and, farther down, basic laws of force and particle interaction. Essentially, information is an emergent property that arises whenever there are two or more distinct entities in existence (particles, energy forms, objects, whatever). Information is created whenever any two entities can be compared (not that they must be, but just when the possibility exists...which is all the time for any universe that consists of something besides a single, indivisible, undimensional entity).

Hmm, I dunno. It still seems a nebulous concept as I try to figure out a way to say it. In any case, maybe this will help the discussion along a bit

 

[JAK]

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Information, it seems to me, emerges at the system level.

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Essentially, information is an emergent property that arises whenever there are two or more distinct entities in existence (particles, energy forms, objects, whatever). Information is created whenever any two entities can be compared ...
...

I like the idea of information being an emergent property. But where does it emerge? It seems to me that it emerges in the mind. Again, information is not inherent in the actual physical object or electomagnetic energy, it only exists within our perception, within our cognition, within the systematic processes of our minds.

If that is true, then information, like beauty, is in the "eye of the beholder."

 

[Suggestologist]

DD,

This cannot be. You've disconnected the information from the physical reality. While the problem is partly definitional, I think the larger confusion results from not shifting our perspective. We keep going back and forth from "transmitter" to "receiver" and try to force the information to be an attribute of one or the other. A variation on this is trying to force the information to be an attribute of the vector from transmitter to receiver.

Information, it seems to me, emerges at the system level.

Absolutely. When you break a (cybernetic) system down into components and attribute properties of the system to the components, those attributes are not of the parts, they are of the system, it doesn't work.

The same error of breaking a system down into components and attributing system-properties to the components occurs in the infamous "mind-body split" idea.