Hi All
I dunno, I go away for a few days only to find on my return that some saddo's been bad-mouthing me
again. Tsk! What is the world coming to? <chuckle> Anyway....
I've been reading through the Quality and Information Theory and Definition of Information threads - I think
I've read them all - but have so far found little mention of Noise*, which I would have thought is fairly central
to any Theory of Information. The concept of Signal-to-Noise is redundant without Noise and any Theory of
Information is redundant without some way of determining a Signal-to-Noise ratio.
If a Metaphysics of Information were to be constructed along similar lines to the MoQ then the initial split
would, I think, be into Data and Noise. Data could be considered the equivalent of Static Quality in that it is
decoded/categorised/experienced Information.
Noise could be considered the equivalent to Dynamic Quality and Noise is probably the more interesting
aspect of an information transmission system in that it is not certain that what is contained within the
concept of Noise is redundant/useless Information or Information for which there is no immediate purpose.
In other words Noise may contain potentially coherent Information (Data) but this is not recognised as such
until an application of some form interprets it as such. An example of this is in the beginnings of Chaos
theory where it was not recognised until re-examination of certain systems that what was initially
considered to be Noise (errors) was actually useful data. Today's Noise is tomorrow's Data with an
historic perspective. Sounds DQ-ish to me.
Other examples of Noise are at a biological level where many genes are considered to be redundant or
historic baggage. It may be that this is so or it may be that they are part of an as yet unrecognised pattern.
Noise at a Social level is apparently useless parts of ritual. They had a use once but that use is now
forgotten but to remove those parts would surely destroy the entire ritual.
Anyway just a few thoughts to remind that this important aspect of information isn't neglected.
And then there's redundancy........ ;^)
Horse
* Rog mentioned it initially in his post of [Sun, 23 Dec 2001 10:15:51] but it seemed to peter out quicly
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