Feb 15, 2025 09:35 PM
(This post was last modified: Feb 15, 2025 10:40 PM by Magical Realist.)
The father of modern information theory Claude Shannon defined the information content of statements and experiences as how surprising they are. So for example if you go out one morning and find your car is still parked in your driveway, that is not surprising and so is not information. But if you go out and find your car is missing, well now THAT's information!
Science has always endeavored to make the universe more predictable. To discover the laws and principles behind phenomena that make it expected, unsurprising, and so non-informative. The ultimate goal is to construct a model of all the universe that makes everything pat, mundane, and as routine as possible. So it focuses on only those phenomena that can be repeated and mathematically formulated, largely dismissing or even just outright ignoring all other phenomena that are not repeatable. What we call anomalous or outlier events.
This to me presents a problem. Because if over time you have acquired reliable knowledge about how everything works and happens, deciphered the algorithms precisely deciding whatever can and will happen, then you have essentially ceased acquiring information about the universe. Everything becomes trite and mechanical, empty of any real meaning to anybody.
But is life itelf like this? No, not at all. Life is constantly catching us off guard, continually surprising us with quirky plot twists and rare flukes of chance and totally baffling outcomes. Thus it is always presenting us with high information content experiences that force us to think and rethink all the things we thought we knew.
So live your life curiously and openly to the strange and unsettling, to the shocking and the flabbergasting, because it's all about what you are learning and never ever about what you believe you know.
Science has always endeavored to make the universe more predictable. To discover the laws and principles behind phenomena that make it expected, unsurprising, and so non-informative. The ultimate goal is to construct a model of all the universe that makes everything pat, mundane, and as routine as possible. So it focuses on only those phenomena that can be repeated and mathematically formulated, largely dismissing or even just outright ignoring all other phenomena that are not repeatable. What we call anomalous or outlier events.
This to me presents a problem. Because if over time you have acquired reliable knowledge about how everything works and happens, deciphered the algorithms precisely deciding whatever can and will happen, then you have essentially ceased acquiring information about the universe. Everything becomes trite and mechanical, empty of any real meaning to anybody.
But is life itelf like this? No, not at all. Life is constantly catching us off guard, continually surprising us with quirky plot twists and rare flukes of chance and totally baffling outcomes. Thus it is always presenting us with high information content experiences that force us to think and rethink all the things we thought we knew.
So live your life curiously and openly to the strange and unsettling, to the shocking and the flabbergasting, because it's all about what you are learning and never ever about what you believe you know.