3 ms·
If we're in different locations and we run a wire between us, and I send a single pulse down the wire. That's one bit of information. You as the receiver deri
by admax88q 6y ago
If we're in different locations and we run a wire between us, and I send a single pulse down the wire. That's one bit of information.
You as the receiver derive the other relevant information from that. A timestamp was not encoded and transmitted, a single bit (pulse) was transmitted from me to you.
That's the thesis of the article I believe. That single bit can "carry" a lot of additional information due to the context and understanding of the receiver. Information that wasn't actually transmitted in the message, but derived from it.
- SamReidHughes 6y agoThat’s not one bit of information. If there is only one possible message you can send, there’s zero bits in the message itself. One bit would be if you had two messages to choose from. All the information in Yo is in the timing.
- hk__2 6y agoTiming is the context, not the information actually transmitted.
- StavrosK 6y agoYou do have two messages to choose from. One is no message, the other is a message.
- SamReidHughes 6y agoIn that case you have 1 bit per nanosecond of information, or however frequently you want to model sampling the message, not 1 bit of information. I mean ultimately you need to somehow map the sequence of Yo messages into "information" in a fairly precise manner. Receiving the message takes you from one probability distribution about the world -- or some particular question about the world -- to a smaller probability distribution. I'd describe the information the message carries based on that. It's contingent on what the question is.