Re: MD Quality and information theory

From: Graham Wyatt (graham@gpwyatt.co.uk)
Date: Thu Jan 03 2002 - 13:44:27 GMT


Hi Andrea,

ANDREA:
>
> The idea that information has to do with "meaning" is extraneous to information theory.

GRAHAM:

I think that it is worth remembering that information theory is a SOM based engineering theory that hijacked the word "information"
for its own use. I think it might have been much better if Shannon had called it "data communication theory" or something similar.

Removing meaning (i.e value) is a convention that was introduced to make it easy to think about. Rather than being extraneous, I
think meaning is just assumed to be there, and then ignored because it plays no part in the equations.

It seems obvious to me that there is absolutely no point to information without meaning, In fact, meaning is the whole point. If
there is to be a MOQ theory of information, then probably the first aim of it would be to put meaning back in front where it
belongs.

Graham

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