In the Beginning Was Information (16 page)

3. Timeliness t
(subjective concept, mainly concerns the recipient): It is in many cases necessary that relevant information should be available at the required moment. Newsworthiness is time-dependent, so that t = 0 for yesterday’s news, and t = 1 for highly relevant information received at the right moment. When a person is standing in the rain and somebody tells him that it is raining, the newsworthiness of this information is zero (t = 0), although it is topical and relevant.

4. Accessibility a
(subjective concept, mainly concerns the recipient): The most important information is worthless if it cannot be accessed; then a = 0 (no access). On the other hand, a = 1 when the recipient has full access to the information transmitted by the sender. With the increasing flood of information the "know-where" is becoming steadily more important, and aids like catch-word registers, lexicons, card systems, and data banks are available. Associative storage would be a great help, but only the brain can provide this ideal access principle. In many countries there are computer centers with online facilities which provide direct access to information (Internet). These data banks contain information on such diverse topics as technology, physics, materials, books, and the social sciences, etc.

Even if information is accessible, a rating may still be zero when:

– the information cannot be seen by the recipient (e.g., I am dying of thirst in the desert close to a spring but I do not know that it is there.)

– the information is coded in a language that the recipient does not understand (e.g., an English tourist in China who cannot read Chinese)

– the information is coached in technical terms which can only be understood by adepts (e.g., legal texts that laymen cannot follow, or a mathematical book which is "Greek" to the uninitiated)

– the sender deliberately excludes some potential recipients (e.g., secret encrypted information, data protection in EDP systems, and sealing a letter)

5. Existence e
(objective concept, mainly concerns the sender): Whereas accessibility involves the possibility that an individual can lay his hand on information which is in principle available, existence concerns the basic question of whether the information exists at all. Accessibility involves the recipient only, but existence depends solely on the sender. The value of e lies between 0 and 1, and it indicates how much of the available or desired information about the present case can be obtained (e.g., what fraction has already been researched). The existence e is zero for questions which are completely open, and if something is fully known, e = 1. The previously open question of whether there is life on the moon (e = 0) has now been answered completely (e = 1). For information to cure cancer of the liver, e = 0; in the case of stomach cancer it lies somewhere between 0 and 1, depending on the stage of development. It is quite difficult to make an estimate of the value of e, since the totality of relevant information is in general not known at a given moment. The great physicist Isaac Newton (1642–1727) estimated his contribution to scientific research as a very small e value in spite of his many valuable findings. He said [M3], "I do not know what the world thinks of me; but to myself I appear as a little boy playing on the beach and who finds joy in discovering a smoother pebble or a prettier seashell than the ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me."

6. Comprehensibility c
(subjective concept, concerns both the sender and the recipient): This factor describes the intelligibility of information; when the information cannot be understood at all, c = 0, and c = 1 when it is completely understood. Both sides may be at fault if all of the transmitted information does not reach the recipient. The sender might not have expressed himself clearly enough, so that the recipient grasps the intended semantics only partially in spite of being highly intelligent, or the recipient may not be intelligent enough to understand everything correctly. The mental alertness of the recipient is also important for another reason: Verbally formulated information (the explicit part) often contains implicit information which has to be read "between the lines." The recipient only receives this latter part by contemplation and having the required background knowledge.

Note: Many of the above-mentioned factors cannot be distinguished sharply and might overlap. The question of interlinking between the six parameters is not discussed further at this stage; it might be investigated in the future.

Chapter 11

Questions Often Asked about the Information Concept

My talks at universities and technical institutes are usually followed by lively discussions. A small selection of the frequently asked questions are now listed and answered briefly.

Q1:
Have you now proved the existence of God?

A1:
Conclusions must always be based on scientific results and these may give rise to further ideas. It is, however, scientifically impossible to prove the existence of God, but many aspects of this world cannot be understood at all if God is excluded.

Q2:
Do your assertions refute evolution?

A2:
The information theorems are natural laws and many fallacies have been revealed by means of natural laws. The basic flaw of all evolutionary views is the origin of the information in living beings. It has never been shown that a coding system and semantic information could originate by itself in a material medium, and the information theorems predict that this will never be possible. A purely material origin of life is thus precluded.

Q3:
Does the definition of information not depend on the individual? In contrast to matter and energy, information does not exist as such of itself.

A3:
Yes, of course. Consider three persons, Albert, Ben, and Charles who want to inform Dan which one of them was in the room. They decided that colors would be used to distinguish between them: Albert = yellow, Ben = blue, and Charles = red. When Dan arrives later, he finds a blue note, and concludes that Ben is there. Any other person would not regard this piece of paper as information. This code agreement exists only between Albert, Ben, Charles, and Dan (see Theorems 6, 7, and 9). It is obvious that information can only be created by a cognitive mental process.

Q4:
Please give a brief definition of information.

A4:
That is not possible, because information is by nature a very complex entity. The five-level model indicates that a simple formulation for information will probably never be found.

Q5:
Is it information when I am both sender and recipient at the same time? For example, when I shout in a valley and hear the echo.

A5:
This is not a planned case of information transfer, but there are situations like writing a note to oneself or entries in a diary.

Q6:
Is a photograph information according to your definition?

A6:
No! Although the substitutionary function (chapter 5) is present, there is no agreed-upon code.

Q7:
Does information originate when lottery numbers are drawn? If so, then that could be regarded as information arising from chance.

A7:
The information resides in the rules of the game; they are composed of a fixed strategy which includes apobetics, namely to win. The actual drawing of numbers is a random process involving direct observation of reality, and, according to the theorems in chapter 5,we are thus outside the domain of the definition of information, but we do have information when the results of the draw are communicated orally or in writing.

Q8:
Is there a conservation law for information similar to the conservation of energy?

A8:
No! Information written with chalk on a blackboard, may be erased. A manuscript for a book with many new ideas written painstakingly over several years, will be irrevocably lost when someone throws it in the fire. When a computer disk containing a voluminous text is formatted, all the information is also lost. On the other hand, new information can be created continuously by means of mental processes (Theorem 30).

Q9:
Does information have anything to do with entropy as stated in the second law of thermodynamics?

A9:
No! The second law of thermodynamics is only valid for the world of matter (the lower level in Figure 14), but information is a mental entity (Theorem 15). There is, however, a concept on the statistical level of Shannon’s information, which is called entropy (see appendix A1.1). This is something completely different from what is known as entropy in physics. It is unfortunate that two such different phenomena have the same name.

Q10:
Natural languages are changing dynamically all the time. Doesn’t this contradict your theorem that coding conventions should be conserved?

A10:
New words arise continuously, like skateboards, rollerblades, wind surfing, paragliding, etc., but all of them meet a very specific need and perform a real function. There is consensus about their meaning, and nobody would confuse a rollerblade with a switchblade or paragliding with paramedical. If random strings of letters are written on a blackboard, nobody would be able to do anything with them. In this case there will be no agreed-upon convention.

Q11:
Can the randomness of a result be proven?

A11:
In a work of Gregory J. Chaitin (Argentina) [C2] he showed that there is no algorithm for determining whether a sequence of symbols is random or not. One must be informed of the fact if a random process has been involved (e.g., that a sequence was produced by a random number generator).

Q12:
Is the criteria for information mostly subjective?

A12:
Subjective aspects play a significant role when the sender decides which type of code he wants to use. He decides whether to write a letter or make a phone call. Even the way the message is transmitted is colored by his personality and by the circumstances. The transmission may be joyful, stupid, agitated, boring, or may have a special emphasis.

Q13:
Does the synergy of the German physicist Hermann Haken not mean that order can arise from disorder, and that evolution could thus be possible?

A13:
Haken always quotes the same examples for the origin of ordered structures. I once asked him after a lecture whether he could store these ordered structures; his answer was negative. A code is required for storing an achieved state. No codes are found in physical systems and every structure collapses when the causing gradient is suspended (e.g., a specific temperature difference).

Q14:
What is your opinion of the Miller experiments which appear in school texts as "proof" of chemical evolution?

A14:
No protein has ever been synthesized in such an experiment; they refer to proteinoids and not proteins as such. Even if they succeed in obtaining a true protein with a long amino acid chain and the correct optical rotation, it would still not be the start of evolution. There must be a coding system to store information about this protein so that it can be replicated at a later stage. A coding system can never originate in matter as precluded by Theorem 11. The Miller experiments thus do not contribute to an explanation of the origin of life.

Q15:
SOS signals are periodic; does this not contradict your necessary condition NC2 (paragraph 4.2)?

A15:
OTTO is also periodic, but it still is information. It is possible that brief sequences of symbols can contain periodic repetitions, but nobody would regard the decimal number 12.12 as a periodic fraction just because of the repetition of the digits.

Q16:
Can new information originate through mutations?

A16:
This idea is central in representations of evolution, but mutations can only cause changes in existing information. There can be no increase in information, and in general the results are injurious. New blueprints for new functions or new organs cannot arise; mutations cannot be the source of new (creative) information.

Q17:
When the structure of a crystal is studied by means of a microscope, much information may be gained. Where and who is the sender in this case?

A17:
No coding system is involved in this example and reality is observed directly. This case lies outside the domain of definition of information as discussed in chapter 5. The substitutionary function is absent, so that the theorems cannot be applied.

Q18:
Has your definition of information been selected arbitrarily (see chapter 4 and 5)? Could there not be other possibilities?

A18:
Of course, one could select other definitions, as often happens. My purpose was to demarcate a region where assertions of the nature of natural laws can be made. It is only in this way possible to formulate definitive assertions for unknown cases by means of known empirical theorems. The domain of definition is thus not as arbitrary as it might appear, but it has been dictated in the last instance by empirical realities.

Q19:
Biological systems are more complicated than technical systems. So shouldn’t an individual definition be introduced for biological information?

A19:
Biological systems are indeed more complicated than all our technical inventions. However, we do not require a special principle for the conservation of energy, for example, for biological systems. The reason for this is that the principle of conservation of energy which applies in all physical systems is not only applicable in the limited area of inanimate matter but is universally valid and is thus also valid for all living systems. This is noted in the principles N2 and N3 (see chapter 2.3). If the stated theorems about information are laws of nature then they are valid for animate as well as inanimate systems. A different definition and different principles are therefore not necessary for biological systems.