Do we want to know as little as possible?
Of course we don’t; the more we know the better, you’ll think. Although I agree with you in principle, I wouldn’t formulate it in such absolute terms. There are certainly details which do not interest me, and my brain does not have unlimited storage capacity, either.
Therefore I must economise. And for this purpose, a reduction of the immediately available information is helpful. For this reason alone, the issue of “information reduction” is worth considering. On closer scrutiny, however, the idea of reducing the volume of information does not only prove to be useful in many practical situations but turns out to be a kind of key to how we can sensibly deal with information. This key may appear to be absurd at first sight, but less is often more, and I would like to invite you to reflect on knowing less in order to know more.
Information reduction is the key to how we deal with information
This proposition is the subject of the following internet pages:
IR1: Coding
This is my personal approach to the issue. In 1989, I started to write programs in order to have medical diagnostic formulations encoded by computers. I soon discovered that this type of coding is always an information reduction. And information reduction makes sense. At the time, I also formulated four propositions about information reduction in the field of coding.
IR2: Quantification of information reduction
The extent of the reduction of the data volume in diagnosis encoding is immense.
IR3: Information reduction means selection
As soon as the information volume is reduced, the question arises as to what information will be retained and what information will be lost – a question of selection. At the same time it becomes clear that different selections are possible.
IR4: Framing
Information reduction has consequences. An example from a completely different sphere, namely politics, demonstrates how information reduction and the corresponding selection can determine our perception.
IR5: Information reduction in physics
The classic example of information reduction can be found in thermodynamics. What is the correlation between the information about the movements of molecules in a glass of water (more precisely: in an ideal gas) and the information about the temperature? The answer to this question is arrived at through the concepts of micro- and macrostate.
IR6: The glass of water revisited
The reflections on the glass of water are made more precise.
IR7: Micro- and macrostate
The microstate is richer in detail and closer to reality, but the macrostate, which contains less information, interests us more. The distinction between micro-and microstate is not only applicable to thermodynamics but also to information theory.
IR8: Different macrostates
In thermodynamics, the macrostate is completely determined by the microstate – but is this also true of other micro- and macrostates? Besides the classic case of thermodynamics (where this is the case). In other cases, the macrostates appear to be substantially more “autonomous”, in the field of biology.
This is a page about information reduction — see also overview.
Translation: Tony Häfliger and Vivien Blandford