pjknibbs wrote: ↑Wed, 11. Sep 19, 08:44
Observe wrote: ↑Wed, 11. Sep 19, 00:53
Information requires consciousness (an observer) and sense perception.
I disagree. Information can exist if there is no-one to observe it, e.g. in the hard disk of a computer that's switched off. The act of observing is merely one method of *processing* that information.
Perhaps it would be useful if we define the word information.
- knowledge communicated or received
- knowledge gained through study
- the act of informing
- from Old French informacion "advice, instruction"
- from Latin infromationem "outline, concept, idea
The computer hard disk is the same as a flower. There is potential information, but until we study the flower, we have no information about it. If we see a red rose, we now have information that the rose is red or smell it's fragrance etc. Until we observe the rose with one of our senses, there is no information about it. Until we decipher the data on a disk, it is just a collection of atoms.
We don't have
knowledge about the status of Schrodinger's cat until we gather
information regarding it. The information gathering, must involve a conscious observer. Even if we have a digital camera automatically dumping data to a disk, we can't proclaim it as information until we take a look at it.
We can infer information about something that we don't directly observe. We infer that the tree does make a sound when it falls in the forest with no one is around to hear it. In this case, our sense of thought informs us based on our knowledge of physics.