I think you’re somewhat confused about what “irrational” and “information” means.
this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2024
86 points (87.7% liked)
Showerthoughts
29851 readers
1332 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- Avoid politics
- 3.1) NEW RULE as of 5 Nov 2024, trying it out
- 3.2) Political posts often end up being circle jerks (not offering unique perspective) or enflaming (too much work for mods).
- 3.3) Try c/politicaldiscussion, volunteer as a mod here, or start your own community.
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Is one of them something other than information?
An irrational number is just a number that cannot be expressed as the ratio of two integers. There is nothing deeper about it.
Irrational number do not "create" information, they simply contain every possible combination of digits. Given enought time you could find any pattern you wanted that represents some "information", you could also find an infinite amount of patterns that represent false "information". You cannot pick out a set of digits of pi and use that to learn something other than that set of digits.
According to your reasoning, the Fibonacci numbers, or repeatedly applying a math operation to a number are infinite sources of information
As far as I see through context in science, anything is information. Matter. Energy. Numbers. Words. So an infinite number has to have infinite information, yeah?
No. sqrt(2) is an irrational number characterized as the positive solution to x^2 - 2 = 0. It's described by a very small amount of data. Even its decimal expansion can be determined up to any precision by a simple algorithm.
Nah I replied to someone else with a similar thought. The Notorious Fibs sure I agree with you they are new information, similar to the primes but just adding +1 over an over again or even some repeating pattern doesn't add new information beyond the initial pattern.
🪙 🎲 ???!?
Well, that's certainly a username.
Why, who's Joseph M Basile?
I dunno about the Joseph part but the rest, certainly.
Also did you ladies and fellas know that y=x^x is the ace of spades?
Is it actually information? I can give you the number two, but it's not useful information until I also tell you which digit is significant and what the number means. Communicating information is still limited by the speed of light.
From one of my favorite college professors: apparently in the Chevy Chase days of Saturday Night Live he would do the Weekend Update and had a recurring bit that went like this.
And now it's time for the basketball scores. 98-82; 102-99; 95-76.
That's data. Without context there's no useful information.
Very nice! The Permittivity of Free Space is doing a handstand and would like a word with you.
Is it actually information?
Yes. For every bit of number pi you get one bit of information.
I can give you the number two
You gave me log2(10) bits of information. Thanks.
but it's not useful information until I also tell you which digit is significant and what the number means.
You are misunderstanding what informatiob is.
I can give you √2 which is 16-bits of information as characters. It's also an irrational number. How you express something doesn't change the amount of information is contained in the message.
How you express something doesn't change the amount of information is contained in the message.
Welcome to the world of entropy coding.
How you express something absolutely does change the amount of information in the message. That’s the foundation of compression.
Bitmap image files tend to be larger than png files, even when they both represent the same image.
1.41421… can be thought of as an expanded form of sqrt(2). In this case, the expansion is to an infinite number of digits.
I don't see why not, it's just numbers, which is all we store most data as.
You could use it as a source of pseudorandom numbers to encrypt an infinite data steam, e.g. we'll encrypt using e, starting at position 40468.
Randomness is the opposite of information.
It is not. If I in July in Europe will say "there is no snow outside", I give you very little information. If in same conditions I will say "there is snow outside", I will give a lot of information.
Amount of information is proportional to (logarithm of) improbability of outcome.
It's irrational, which just appears random (which is why I said pseudorandom).
Situationally, yes. "I want the next digit of pi" is information in that sense of the word. It's not a particularly useful piece of information unless you're building something that requires a circle with a circumferential precision larger than the width of our entire universe.
How many digits of Pi would you have to read for you to be able to reconstruct all of the information in the Universe up to this moment?
None, because the digits of π have absolutely nothing to do with the universe.
Any infinite group applies to this too. The group of integers, real numbers, etc. are infinite. Just add 1 👍
True although I would like to note that the digits of Pi are the heart of r-n jesus and the number line just does boring stuff like steadily increasing forever.