Seth Lloyd - What is Information?

Information is a common word but has technical meanings so important that our entire world depends on them. What are the kinds of information? How about the scientific definitions of information? How does information figure in the fabric of the world?

[demitrac.]

AWESOME Seth ... !! Your ability to articulate, in layman's terms, what information is ; is superb

[paulg]

If you dont love this interviewer, you dont have a heart !!

[jNode]

I still like Luciano Floridi's explanation: "What is information? This is the hardest and most central problem in the philosophy of information";)

[ramseypietronasser]

We can ascribe bits of information to the water molecule that it itself doesn't have, since it's itself. By describing it, we add information to it

[urielstud]

I think information is like reverse entropy. I view our brief job here on earth as the increasing of information—which cannot be destroyed—about how to live our lives in love, and to reduce entropy in the Akashic recording system. WDYT?

[djacob]

There are three stones on a table. Is that all you can say about them? How about their positions relative to one another? That's information too.

[RalphDratman]

I am terribly jealous of your time at this lovely seaside location! 
Wittgenstein's discussion of the "hammer, slab" etc. scenario is a good deal more subtle than this dialog might suggest. Wittgenstein points out that a word has "meaning" (or function) only in the context of (particular parts of) the physical world -- a physical world in which living beings themselves play a central role as physical objects and associated physical behaviors. One might say that Wittgenstein wants us to be able to see human beings as objects, not in the sense of reducing a human to an object but in the sense of recalling that a human is fundamentally a physical thing with many levels of behavior and action, notably including language behavior.

[ThalesPo]

I wonder if what connects the information is also information. And if what processes information is also information.

[melgross]

At our level, different information has different meanings, and different values. But i believe that at the level of the universe, each bit of information is equal to any other bit of information. There is no distinguishing one bit from another.

[paulwharton]

Shame about the sound quality - obviously a bit windy and the mic set up not ideal - that's the problem with location shoots.

[owencampbell]

I am missing how information influences the brain and why certain kind of information affects the mind.
Are there different receiver corresponding on the importance of information through sound, observance and emotion?

[Nascastmedia]

2:25 ...I think they just glitched the simulation

😳They broke reality...

[inGuy]

I am not buying this everything is information and/or a comand for processing argument. In particular you might calculate the bits of information and ascribe something a value assuming its immediate effect. But many things have a delayed action and how do you know which action it will take? (catalysts, enzyme activation, etc.) The example of a picture and how many pixels it has is a raw count and it might be accurate for 50 years. Until someone realizes it is a photo of a guy with a gun on the grassy knoll in Nov. 1963. Then its information value is vastly different. The values depend on the observer and even whether or not the object is even ever observed. Everything is not just ones and zeros.

[BradHolkesvig]

Anything where there is a change is information such as a 0 and a 1 or up and down or in the case of one wavelength, it has a lower part and an upper part which is similar to a 0 and 1. However in one wavelength, a thought of our Creator exists.

[xspotbox]

Explaining information with exchange of energy is a dead end street, it ends with a strong force, binding quarks together in a proton. Not sure if mater is same as quark either, it kinda is until quark is torn out of a proton and became something else. Maybe it is possible to count gluon interactions, but wouldn't make any sense, we think of information only once forces emit photons. So we end up in two information dimensions, calculating something completely different with our machines. And those depend on phenomena like dimension, there is no up and down for quarks, but our devices can function only if they're perfectly aligned with gravitational distortions. So whatever information is, it must be a lie.
"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

[totalfreedom]

_Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes and the second law of thermodynamics._ –Seth "Quantum Mechanic" Lloyd 💕 ☮ 🌎 🌌

[dreyestud]

It's all metaphor. It's always metaphor.

[williamtaylor]

I’m in need of a bit of information. Why are they wearing the same exact shirt?

[petervandenengel]

Information means a differential. In other words when everything would be completely equal to itself, no information could exist. When mathematics always needs to end up equal in 0, all the information exists around the 0. So is 0 the normal state? No, because otherwise no information could exist.

[wick]

The perspective is good but every question is unanswerable as the true construct of universe is not visible and not obviously obvious to us. Quantum mechanics gives a better view on this question when consciousness enters the discussion . The question what is information might not be the right question as the answer is not obvious if we think we live in a material universe because this will ignore paradoxical laws of quantum mechanics.