According to this definition a pattern is not the same as information.
A stream of information:
"whatever whatever whatever"
contains a pattern and it can be compressed to:
"3*whatever".
The resulting stream does not contain a pattern, it is "only" an information
stream. It still contains information.
>I guess maybe what we're really arguing about is the
>nature of information: does it exist "out there",
>independently of us, or is it only in our minds. I go
>along with the information theorists, physicists, etc,
>and say it's out there, though, of course, the
>argument is at least partly about definitions, as
>seemingly always.
We are in fact arguing about three aspects of reality (can anybody think of
other aspects, please?) if they exist "out there", independent of us:
matter, energy, and information. Especially information to many people
seems to be something which does not exist outside of our minds, although
information carried in our DNA, for example, exists "out there" regardless
of what we think of it. I would give information at least the same rights
for independent existence as we give to matter and energy.
I think it was Lord Rutherford who compared equations for particles and
waves, and "just for the fun of it" assumed matter and energy to be the same
thing, which eventually led to Einstein's E= mc^2. Can we, just for the fun
of it, think of equalling information to matter and/or energy?
Regards, Tadeusz (Tad) Niwinski from planet TeTa
tad@teta.ai http://www.teta.ai (604) 985-4159