In my previous entry “Some Guidelines“, I expressed my emotion and anticipation about recording my journey to uncover a mystery. But what is the secret?
Since the information revolution, the information infrastructure built by humanity has constructed a digital world that coexists with the atomic one. This world has a physical shell and a mathematical core, constantly running on the energy supply of the atomic world.
With the further development of communication technology and protocols, the Internet connects computers, becoming an extensive information network covering the whole world, shortening the communication distance between people and machines worldwide.
Data and information flow through the network across devices and people’s minds. No one can deny that the digital world has gradually changed the way humans get along, enabling everyone to socialize and collaborate more conveniently.
The information network is constantly updated and iterative:
Terminal equipment has become various and mobile.
Transmission bandwidth has increased from several Kbps to several Gbps.
Information transmission has changed from one-way to two-way.
Content has changed from static texts to streaming videos.
All these seem to present a thriving scene. On the one hand, data has gradually become a factor of production and a source of revenue for Internet companies. On the other hand, blockchain technology brings information scarcity, providing a system for transferring values in the digital world.
But the problem is also apparent. While the development of the information world has dramatically improved communication efficiency, we are facing the problem of information explosion and privacy leakage. Even as more and faster sources of information flood in, information asymmetry is likely to be more severe than ever. We are placed in a Truman world, passively receiving information fed by algorithms.
Personal privacy leakage incidents have triggered regulation’s movement. Although it has not yet challenged the bottom line of the general public, it maybe the open flank for AI to attack the last line of defense of human beings, affecting the thinking system of our minds and changing the future destiny of humankind in a way like boiling the frog. While pursuing efficiency improvement, we move towards a less objective and more passive world.
Some innovators envision using decentralized information and financial infrastructures to build a better next-generation network for human coordination. These infrastructures involve many new technologies and concepts, including blockchain, smart contract, digital assets including fungible token (FT) and non-fungible token (NFT), decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), etc.
Essentially, the solution is to establish cooperative relationships through smart contracts. Since the smart contracts can be executed within an objective environment without relying on a trusted third party, one can create a new world where “code is law”. In theory, eliminating the centralization factors can create a more objective information and value transaction network. But how complex is the problem that code can exactly solve? What degree of objectivity can code achieve? It probably depends on the code’s ability to interpret the meaning of information, and value’s dependence on the communication channel. It may be necessary to think about the limitation of code as law to avoid too big visions.
As the father of information theory, Claude Shannon provided theoretical guidance on the upper limit of communication channels in engineering. In “The Mathematical Theory of Communication”, Warren Weaver decomposed the communication problem into A, B, C levels and Shannon solved problem A.
How accurately can the symbols of communication be transmitted? (The technical problem).
How precisely do the transmitted symbols convey the desired meaning? (The semantic problem.)
How effectively does the received meaning affect conduct in the desired way? (The effectiveness problem.)
Genius Shannon told us that the efficiency of communication engineering has nothing to do with the meaning of the information. We only need to pay attention to the statistical features of the symbol that carry information and quantify information using probability analysis methods. We can transfer symbols without error in a communication channel up to its capacity limit by properly coding the message. Under Shannon’s theoretical guidance, the communication engineers got the concept and mathematical formula of the communication capacity. They began to improve the signal-to-noise ratio to increase the bandwidth in the communication network.
Questions B and C are no longer purely objective technical issues but involve the interpretation and response of the information receiver to the meaning of symbols. Just as there are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people’s eyes, the understanding of the information will be affected by the configuration of the receiver (such as different experiences and knowledge backgrounds) and results in diverse meanings. The exact meaning received may also trigger different behavioral responses depending on the recipient’s decision-making models. These situations fully demonstrate the mystery of information and the root of its value’s subjectivity.
However, the fact that question B and question C face doesn’t mean that we can’t do anything about it. Another Genius Allen Turing provided an idea and opened up the field of computer science and artificial intelligence. Following Shannon’s separation of symbols and meanings in information and focusing on solving communication problems related to symbols, Turing further separated logic from information’s meaning, opening a new era in which machines can automatically calculate logic problems. This idea tells us that machines can understand and objectively calculate part of the logic of the information. At the same time, scientists are also looking for ways to make machines think like humans, even inferring the causal or emotional meaning of information.
One can’t simply abstract all problems into logical issues. A piece of information with the same logic may have different properties due to specific appellations involved or very different emotional renderings. ”Machines thinking like humans“ is also a very vague vision. How will you define the word think? Scientists have gradually enabled machines to have more powerful thinking abilities, but whether there is a limitation in their ability to interpret information is a critical issue we should seriously consider.
With such a great question coming into my mind, I wondered if I was so ignorant that I hadn't even clearly understood the problem itself and wrote a bunch of bullshit. Fortunately, I am not alone on this long quest. When I was looking for the guidance of like-minded people on this issue, I found that several people had thought about similar problems seriously.
The one that helped me the most was Yang Zhigang with his book “Analyzing Information: The Twice Separations of Information by Shannan, Wittgenstein, Turing, and Chomsky”. His book somewhat persuaded me to go on by sharing a systematic explanation of the question based on several giants’ theories. I’d like to devote a part of my effort to studying and validating this theory and start with thoughts about some specific questions in my mind.
Finally, let me make the goal more concrete: Can we make a third separation of information, further widening and defining the boundary of information that code can understand and process? I will explain the importance of this issue in future entries.
Because there are so many concepts and issues that are not clearly defined and explained, I may not have been able to precisely describe what I am thinking about in this entry. I will diverge a little by discussing specific questions to make a solid foundation for this theory. Then try to form a comprehensive opinion or conclusion on the puzzle presented in this article. More importantly, if these records can provide some significance for the next genius to change the world, that is the point.
This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA.