Re: [asa] Information and knowledge

I have no idea what you mean by "ontologically a separate, medium-independent property."

Let's go back to Landauer:

Information is physical. There is no information without a physical medium.
Information is independent of its physical embodiment. That doesn't mean it exists independent of it, it means it doesn't matter which physical embodiment is used. For example, a frequently used channel is optical transmission. The photons that transmit the information can embody the information in several ways. One common way is polarization states. It can be circularly polarized or not. Or it can be vertical vs horizontal polarization. Those are two very different photon states but the information is independent of which one is used.

If you are thinking ontologically, whatever that is supposed to mean, then what would you say was the state of affairs on this earth between 4.5 billion and 3.5 billion years ago when there was no organic life, let alone sentient life? Was there information on this earth?

Randy

Dave wrote:

  My objection is that information theory in general is taken too far when it leads to the view that information is truly ontologically a separate, medium-independent property.

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Received on Thu Apr 12 22:03:46 2007