3 ms·

But what makes the sequence of bits for the input and output informative? The transformation doesn't do that.

• hackinthebochs 7y ago
  The input bits are presumed informative (i.e. have some mutual information with an external structure). The transformative process is one such that information inherent in the input is preserved and transformed into some amount of new information. That this process preserves and transforms information, when almost all physical processes would destroy such information, demonstrates the coherence between the structure of the transformation (i.e. computation) and the information in the input. If it were the case that the computer plays no informative role in the semantics of the input and output, we would be able to make a computer out of any physical process. But we can't. I can't coax my wall into telling me how to invert a matrix, for example. That certain vanishingly rare physical processes can invert a matrix for me implies the coherence between the semantics of the operations and the semantics of the information its operating on.