Information And Behaviour
Our high bandwith society seems to be working for us, but if we look carefully it is not. It seems that things happen we don't agree on on a larger scale than ever before.The new generation is so used to bein innundated with information that they don't realize that the world is not being controlled by them, but it should. As long as they earn enough and can have fun it won't matter what really happens, something they will discover only in their future.
Information is structure with meaning. The narrow definition of information is differentiating ability, the minimum element is the bit, to distinguish between two states. The information content tells us between how many states we can distinquish using it.
Context adds a preselection so we know how to use the information. If the context is set we may know to select large amounts of information we already know based on one bit of new information. Needless to say the instruction or datatransfer necessary to increase the 'meaning' of bits takes time and energy. A good example is ascii byte code, where nr 65 (9 bits) tells us we need to imagine a letter A, 32 a space, etc. The alphabet could be represented in 5 bits (reaching to 31). Only if you agree to use the ascii lookup table does the number 65 and any code written in series of ascii numbers have any meaning.
Information transfer is a fundamental thing in our univers. Time progresses because all types of matter and energy interact, and those interactions can be understood in terms of their information content. An undecided state (the quantum state matter inhabits between interactions) holds no information (is undecided) but the new interaction will create information (cause it can be checked and read etc), and the total amount has to follow fundamental entropy laws. This is quite far out abstract stuff.
What humans have is behaviour. This in itself is conditional on all kinds of constraints. Health, fitness, planning, luck. To minimize the amount of energy we spend, while maximizing the utility of our actions, we use information.
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