Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id SAA17087 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 25 Jun 2001 18:03:25 +0100 From: <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 12:06:15 -0500 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: The Guardian on Information Message-ID: <3B372937.25164.2B235C@localhost> In-reply-to: <20010625121301.C1096@ii01.org> References: <20010624194415.AAA3496@camailp.harvard.edu@[205.240.180.176]>; from wade_smith@harvard.edu on Sun, Jun 24, 2001 at 03:44:13PM -0400 X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On 25 Jun 2001, at 12:13, Robin Faichney wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 24, 2001 at 03:44:13PM -0400, Wade T.Smith wrote:
> > Hi Robin Faichney -
> >
> > >(I.e. a
> > >practically universal consensus is reached that treating physical
> > >structure as information is more useful than not.)
> >
> > Yeah, I totally am with you on the not-understanding front, but,
> > hmmm, treating things as being more useful than not is only a handy
> > tool towards understanding, not a property of what is being studied,
> > necessarily.
> >
> > Certainly the structure's structure is informative....
> >
> > But I'm totally with Joe when he says one needs an entity that is
> > being informed, and, I can't see any other entity being informed
> > than, well, homo sapiens sapiens.
>
> That's just terminological conservatism. Maybe it would have been
> better if we said things like "a bit is the basic unit of data" rather
> than "a bit is the basic unit of information", but the latter meme is
> extremely well established now, and the bit concept is essential not
> just in computation and communication theory, but also thermodynamics.
> This ("information" as opp. "data") is a memetic fact, and I'd advise
> you to get used to it, because otherwise, for the sake of your blood
> pressure, you are going to have to ignore great swathes of science, in
> which great strides are being taken.
>
It is best to correct great swaths of science when their foundations
are anchored in a blatant, transparent and obvious definitional
fallacy.
>
> > And it's sometimes dangerous sharing jargons, or to settle with what
> > is convenient.
>
> Dangers are normally considered to be offset by advantages, but you
> never seem to consider the latter. Like I said, terminological
> conservatism.
>
> --
> Robin Faichney
> Inside Information -- http://www.ii01.org -- "a prime source of
> meta-memes"
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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