In the May issue of the magazine “Around the World,” there was… published article Alexandra Sergeeva It will be available to everyone starting in August 2010, however, I thought the essence of this article would be very interesting to my readers. I am publishing it here because I reference it in other publications.
Although for millions of people information is the main focus of their professional activities, very few have a clear understanding of what it actually is. There are widespread misconceptions, most of which stem from the erroneous belief that messages contain information, and that information contains meanings.
They say we live (or are about to live) in an information society, where the most important resource is information. But don’t try to find out what that means from dictionaries and encyclopedias. At best, you’ll be confused; at worst, misinformed. Some sources go in circles: information is data, data is knowledge, knowledge is information. Others scare you: there are many definitions of this term, and they are complex and contradictory. Still, others dive straight into mathematical intricacies. So, for now, let’s set aside definitions and try to understand the properties of information through examples.
The essence of the matter.
- Information is a philosophical category that connects the concepts of signal and meaning. It is equally suitable for describing processes in the objective material world and in the subjective inner world of a person.
- Information is not a substance; it is not contained in messages or records. The transmission of information is merely a convenient way to describe the causal relationships between correlated systems, which have internal similarities.
- The creation of well-correlated systems capable of predictable and useful behavior in response to input signals is a key pathway for the development of information technology.
“RUN — MARCH!”
The sergeant commands—the platoon runs. Elementary? But let’s trace the entire chain of events. It begins with the image of the running platoon in the sergeant’s mind. This image is mentally wrapped in a verbal formula of the command. The words correspond to electrical impulses that travel through the nerve fibers to the muscles, triggering complex biochemical processes that set the vocal cords in motion. Vibrating in the stream of air expelled from the lungs, they create sound waves that penetrate the soldiers’ ear openings and reach the fluid-filled cochlea of the inner ear.
Here, every overtone of the sergeant’s voice sets in motion the tiny hairs of the cells in the so-called organ of Corti, which are tuned to the corresponding frequency. The vibrations of these hairs generate bioelectric potentials that, when amplified, transform into nerve impulses that travel to the auditory center of the brain.
The received signal is compared to known samples—the sounds of familiar words to the soldier. Recognizing a command in them and deciding to obey, the soldier’s consciousness sends new signals, this time to the muscles of the musculoskeletal system. And now sunlight, reflecting off the moving bodies of the soldiers, enters the sergeant’s eye, forming spots on his retina and exciting the light-sensitive cells.
Their nerve impulses are directed to the visual center of the brain, where consciousness recognizes the image of running soldiers and compares it to the original image that initiated the entire chain of events. If there is a match, the command is executed; if not, the process continues.
This description may seem unnecessarily detailed, but in reality, each process mentioned can be broken down into numerous steps. Some stages—such as forming verbal commands and recognizing patterns—are so complex that there is still no approximate scientific description for them.
There is no doubt that the sergeant conveyed information to the soldiers in his platoon and, in return, received from them a response that, while wordless, was nonetheless complete. Interestingly, throughout this account, we never needed to mention information at all. It seems to have vanished without a trace in the physical details of the processes. One might wonder: does it even exist?
NON-OBJECTIVE NON-SUBSTANCE
The most common mistake in understanding the nature of information is to think of it as a substance, similar to matter or energy, but only contained within messages. We tend to talk about collecting, transmitting, and storing information as if it were some kind of valuable resource like gold. Downloading a file from the Internet feels much like filling a car’s tank with gasoline. However, unlike gold or gasoline, information can be easily duplicated, is never consumed in the process of use, and can be effortlessly and completely destroyed. “Decent” substances do not behave this way.
Moreover, upon closer examination, it turns out that the messages themselves contain no information at all. Tourists who have been to Bulgaria are familiar with the characteristic misunderstandings related to gestures. The Bulgarian gesture for “no” — nodding the head — corresponds to the Russian “yes,” while shaking the head from side to side means agreement for Bulgarians. There are often comical situations where hospitable locals try to nod “the Russian way,” while guests, out of respect for their hosts, nod “the Bulgarian way.” Both sides occasionally make mistakes, and it becomes unclear what each gesture means. So, when a Bulgarian customs officer asks you about the presence of prohibited items in your luggage, try to refrain from gesturing.
Such misunderstandings are common in computer technology, where any data is encoded in binary numbers. The value of an individual number does not reveal what was encoded or how. This information must be communicated separately in so-called metadata. An error in the metadata can distort the information beyond recognition. Experienced Internet users, for example, are well acquainted with the term “бНОПНЯ.” It is formed from the word “Вопрос” when one character encoding (Windows-1251) is used for writing, while another (KOI8-R) is used for reading, where different numbers are assigned to the Russian letters.
It turns out that a message in itself, whether it’s a word, gesture, or number, does not carry information. Information only emerges when the message is perceived and interpreted in a certain way. This unexpected conclusion is hard to grasp and seems to contradict everyday experience.
INTERMEDIARY BETWEEN WORLDS
The misunderstanding arises from the confusion of three completely different concepts: signal, information, and meaning. A signal is any influence transmitted from one physical system to another. Information refers to the changes that occur in the receiving system as a result of the signal.
Information is not something you can touch. It’s ephemeral changes within yourself that occur in response to signals.
Meaning is the assessment that a thinking being, endowed with consciousness and will, gives to information. Information is not contained in the signal; rather, it arises in the recipient under its influence. It depends on the state and abilities of the recipient almost more than on the signal itself. The same goes for meaning: it is not contained in the information but is created by those who evaluate it.
Let’s fill our sergeant’s squad by adding a savage, a general, a robot with a dictaphone in its head, a frightened crow, and a writing desk, and see how they react to the command “Run — march!” The writing desk will produce weak sound vibrations in response to the sergeant’s voice, but they will quickly fade away, and the desk won’t perceive any information. The robot will record the command as an mp3 file, and changes will occur in its memory. However, it won’t be able to assign any meaning to it; only its owners can do that. The crow, on the other hand, will not only receive the information (its auditory center will be activated) but, being a living creature with consciousness and will, will interpret it according to its level of “drill training” — it will get scared and fly away. And it will be completely right to do so. The savage, not knowing the language, won’t understand the words but will remember the sound and, seeing the reactions of the other soldiers, will begin to learn. Finally, the general will understand everything but won’t run, reasoning that he is not obliged to obey the sergeant. Thus, one command, one signal, generates different information for different recipients, not to mention the varying meanings.
So, a signal is a physical process occurring in a medium between a source and a receiver: an electrical impulse in a nerve fiber, biochemical reactions in muscle cells, sound waves… The signal is transmitted from point to point according to the laws of physics. This process occurs objectively, meaning it is the same for everyone.
Another matter is meaning. It is created by a person and exists only in the subjective inner world of consciousness, about which science has little to say. It is assumed that each state of consciousness corresponds to a certain state of the brain. But even if this is the case, we do not directly perceive our brain; rather, we perceive states of consciousness—moods, desires, ideas. It is these that hold value and meaning for us. However, the world of our meanings is purely individual. The only way to share them is to transform them into signals, hoping that they will resonate, that is, evoke understanding (meaning) in someone else’s soul.
The external world of things and the internal world of ideas are reliably isolated from each other. Physical signals do not penetrate the incorporeal realm of ideas, images, and meanings, and the images of the subjective world cannot leave consciousness, no matter how much materialists and esotericists might wish it. However, changes occur in both worlds, and information serves as a universal mediator between the objective and subjective realms. A change in a traffic light signal is information for drivers, prompting them to alter their behavior at the intersection. But this change itself is not a thing that can be grasped with a shout: “Catch it!” It “does not exist.” In the past, it was not there— the red light was steadily on. In the present, it is not there either— the green light is equally steady now. But if information is a change that has occurred in the system, then what is its storage, transmission, and processing? Can changes (and not just their traces) be stored? Or transmitted or processed? Literally—no. But one change can trigger another, and so on in a chain.
If some semblance of changes is preserved at the beginning and end of a chain, one can say that they are transmitted, as in the case of a running wave—the simplest of possible signals. Strictly speaking, this process should be referred to as signal transmission, but in common usage, the phrase “transmission of information” (or “storage of information,” if the structure is merely preserved over time but not transmitted in space) has become established.
No one but humans can use artificial signals, assigning them meaning at will.
So, looking at the platoon standing before him, the sergeant mentally (perhaps even unconsciously) alters their image, envisioning the soldiers running. This change serves as the initial information for the subsequent process. If the sergeant were completely unfamiliar with his soldiers, lacking their language and culture, or if he were not even a humanoid but, say, a thinking swarm of locusts, it would be extremely difficult for him to convey to his subordinates what kind of behavioral change he wanted to achieve. He would have to show them pairs of drawings (how it was – how it is now) or create self-moving 3D models of people for the soldiers to imitate, or simply bite them until they started doing what was needed. However, isn’t that how some bosses and parents behave? Fortunately, the sergeant and his platoon are people who share a common language and have similar life experiences, which is why the non-trivial difference between standing and running can be expressed for them in just a couple of words: “Run – march!” Moreover, these words stand out almost unmistakably in the chaos of sound waves. The platoon is a well-prepared system, and only for this reason can a simple command elicit such a significant change in it.
FORM AND CONTENT
However, if you take a closer look, all the soldiers run a little differently. To achieve a strictly defined style of movement from them, like that of professional runners, much longer and more complex instructions would be needed. Even then, complete uniformity in their movements would be impossible to achieve, unless you replaced the soldiers with robotic replicas.
The words of a native language are acquired through communication practice, and their meanings are conventionally (that is, conditionally) a matter of agreement. Where on the rainbow spectrum does blue end and green begin? Opinions will vary slightly. It’s not about individual color perception, but rather about different understandings of the words “blue” and “green.” Of course, among Russian speakers, the range will be small. However, an American would noticeably shift that boundary, as in English-speaking culture, the words blue and green have somewhat different meanings. By the way, this is one of the reasons why language knowledge is so important for personal development: each language offers a different perspective on the world.
But the discrepancies in understanding individual words are trivial compared to the challenges of conveying meaning in more complex cases. A book without a reader is just a collection of symbols. Only at the moment of perception do they generate information in someone who knows the language. Then the mind constructs a thought that corresponds to the read phrase, evaluates it, and connects it with previously accumulated life experiences. And since each person’s baggage of experience is unique, understanding will be purely personal. In this process, new and unexpected meanings may emerge, which the author of the book may not have even considered.
The relationship between a reader and a book is similar to that of a child with coloring books or a musician with a composer’s sheet music. The reader takes the author’s form and fills it with their own meanings simply because meanings cannot be received from the outside; they can only be created from within. This is why attempts at a literal interpretation of great sacred texts are misguided. In doing so, we do not reproduce the original meanings contained within them; instead, we impose the most primitive interpretation, characteristic of the current state of our language, onto the texts.
At the same time, a certain level of preparation is necessary for understanding any book. Without it, symbols and forms will not generate any meanings or, even worse, will lead to the emergence of false ideas. To avoid such distortions, scientific literature employs terms and mathematical notations, which take years to master. With their help, scholars are able to communicate confidently with each other when discussing complex issues that are simply inexpressible in everyday language.
THE WORD IS GOD
For successful informational interaction, it is essential that the sender and receiver of the signal have a lot in common, meaning that, as scientists say, they are correlated systems. Only in this case can we expect that the barely perceptible physical influence of the signal will elicit an adequate response. This is why Etruscan writings provide us with almost no information; we have lost our correlation with the culture of the “senders.” Their language is unlike any existing one, and we have only managed to reconstruct their numeral system and the names of the months from tombstones—one of the few things we have in common. In contrast, we were able to understand Egyptian writing after the Rosetta Stone “correlated” it with ancient Greek culture, which has a continuation in the modern world.
The correlation of complex systems always indicates a certain commonality in their history. For example, in all countries around the world, cats scream at night during mating season and understand each other. This innate preparedness is linked to the commonality of the species’ evolution.
Animals learn other informational responses, such as recognizing danger, in their natural habitats. Many animals can be trained, meaning they learn to respond meaningfully to conditioned signals. However, no one except humans can use artificial signals, assigning them meaning at will.
Perhaps, at the dawn of humanity, the very possibility of receiving an adequate response from a fellow tribesman to a pre-agreed invented signal must have seemed like a miracle. Isn’t this where the famous phrase “And the Word was God” comes from? The truth is, a person could only influence their kin and some animals, while the divine word had power over inanimate matter. This is why all sorts of magical spells and incantations were frowned upon by the jealous gods of monotheistic religions. They were seen as an encroachment by humans on divine prerogatives.
If we create assistants that understand all our desires, will they not become like us? Will they not gain consciousness and an inner world?
But, as Arthur Clarke said, what is magic for an underdeveloped civilization is technology for a highly advanced one. Today, a safe with voice-activated password entry is only surprising for its unreliability—no need for a lock pick, just a recording of the owner’s voice will do. Creating well-correlated systems capable of predictable and useful behavior in response to given signals is the main path for the development of information technology.
The main problem on this path is not so much about making the technical system obey, but rather about making its responses useful. To achieve this, we need to thoroughly understand our own values and meanings, in other words, to understand ourselves.
For an appetizer. Informational myths.
Information is a familiar yet complex concept. This is why a wave of misunderstandings and myths has grown around it.
Spiritual phenomena are often reduced to informational ones. However, the spiritual world revolves around the issues of good and evil, goals and means, while information lacks ethical and meaningful content. The opposite misunderstanding is the notion of the materiality of information. In fact, this is a repetition of the story of caloric fluid. In the 18th century, before the discovery of molecules and atoms, the hypothesis of a thermal fluid was quite scientific, but today, considering information as a substance can only be a misunderstanding.
A myth about the memory of water has been inflated for commercial purposes: supposedly, pure water retains information about past influences. This allows for the sale of structured, magnetized, and other charged waters, as well as devices designed to erase the “bad memory” of water. Water has many amazing properties, but memory is not one of them, as there are no long-lasting formations in its liquid state. Nevertheless, homeopaths still explain the effects of their remedies— which contain no active ingredients but have merely come into contact with them—by referring to the memory of water. This memory cannot be tested in any way, yet people believe in it. Similarly, the belief that holy water, having “remembered a prayer,” acquires bactericidal properties is not only unsubstantiated by science but can also be dangerous to health under certain circumstances.
Many pseudoscientific scams are associated with the term “energy-information exchange.” A signal always carries at least a small amount of energy, so formally, any physical interaction can be considered energy-information. However, physicists do not use this term. It appears only in pseudoscientific works to “explain” various paranormal phenomena—telepathy, clairvoyance, hexing, communication with spirits, and little green men.
To avoid falling for deception, pay attention to the characteristic keywords of informational mythology and pseudoscience: informational field (as a natural entity), charges of negative (positive) information, eniology, informationology, genetic memory of ancestors, informational-energy disease, informational therapy, and so on.