Information is a Surprise
- This is one of the qualities that I use to highlight the text.
- As I used to call it, a surprise. The first time I stumbled upon this definition was in some long-forgotten book about information.
- And it resonated so much that, since then, I consistently use this as a trigger for an annotation in the book.
- A subsequent search directed me to Claude Shannon and his perspective on information theory, and it turns out it could be measured and predicted.
- Shannon went even further. Instead of merely calculating the line of symbols that conveys meaning, he devised a complex logarithmic equation, as far as I can comprehend. Which I am not going to delve into.
- Instead of that, I go another way around. Shannon, too, avoided this treacherous slope of the concept of meaning.
- Who can definitively say what is meaningful and what is not?
- Let me give you an example of two sentences:
- The Sun will rise tomorrow.
- The world will end tomorrow.
- The same number of words in both, but the meaning they convey differs significantly.
- The first states a fact that is actually irrelevant, the second also states a fact that demands action.
- Maybe, just maybe, the amount of information that is conveyed could be measured by the action a person should take after receiving it?
- The thing is, we find a message, sentence, or statement informative based on whether it is news to us or not.
- As I mentioned earlier, Shannon stayed clear of the concept of meaning and instead focused his attention on the emotional aspect of a surprise, which is also, in my opinion, challenging to quantify.
- Imagine a person reading a news outlet. At some point, say in ten minutes of reading, his brows raise, and he delves deeper into the text.
- There is clearly something intriguing written or spread.
- I read from the same premise. I donβt see prepositions, pronouns, auxiliary verbs, or articles, only who does what, and sometimes the conditions under which this action takes place.
- I openly miss factual or declarative information and try looking into underlying information; for this work, eloquence is an obstacle.
- Though I also use many words to deliver some message, I do it intentionally to provide context, as I am doing right now. But letβs return to the topic of surprise.
- Remember the guy who was reading a news outlet and his brows had risen? What did he read about?
- Imagine that he sees in his text words such as a dog, a man, bites.
- Among the three words, βbitesβ is the most surprising word because we come across it less frequently than with a man and a dog, but there is a nuance that we need to consider.
- If a dog bites a man, itβs hardly news, but when a man bites a dog, it is indeed newsworthy.
- Instead of that, I go another way around. Shannon, too, avoided this treacherous slope of the concept of meaning.
- The combination of words plays a pivotal role in how much information the text holds.
- We have to take into consideration the order of the words: which goes first and which word follows.
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