Any 'creation' of information (pictures, books, code, etc) is just pruning the huge space of possible information to leave just the information you want.

Like carving a block of stone to leave only the form of a horse.

The stone (or the information space) already contained the horse, and a million other possibilities, the job of the artist is to collapse those possibilities into a single reality.

52 points · 12 comments · view on lemmy.world

12 Comments

ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works · 9 pts · 2y (2 replies)

Information has a mathematical definition, if you're interested in that sort of thing.

JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee · 2 pts · 2y

Thanks!

Xariphon@kbin.social · 2 pts · 2y

I'm interested but I'm not sure I have the brain cells for this right now.

originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com · 6 pts · 2y (2 replies)

i think spongebob covered this well in his attempt to teach squidward how to sculpt

JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee · 10 pts · 2y (1 reply)

Ah, I haven't watched The Simpsons.

originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com · 5 pts · 2y

my fav bit is when the baby screams 'not the momma'. you should totally check it out.

mp3@lemmy.ca · 5 pts · 2y

Kind of like the Library of Babel

intensely_human@lemm.ee · 1 pts · 2y (1 reply)

If you have a block of stone and cut it in two pieces, the position and angle of the cut is information. By carving down a pool of information, you add information to it.

JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee · 1 pts · 2y

Yes, the position and angle of the cut is information, but there are an infinite, or at least very large number of possible cuts. That's what I mean by the possibility space. By carving it, you collapse the information from lots of possible states to one real state, thus pruning the possibilities to get one reality.

TheOneCurly@lemmy.theonecurly.page · 1 pts · 2y (2 replies)

Except, ideally, a PhD thesis. Which should contain a completely new piece of information for the world.

JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee · 3 pts · 2y

Well no. It's still just a list of text, so that text as well as all other text with minor and major variations exists in the information space. As I said, the hard part is getting rid of all the wrong stuff.

algorithmae@lemmy.sdf.org · 1 pts · 2y

A good portion of any paper is citing references