[Sigia-l] Data, information, knowledge, wisdom

[Boniface Lau]

> From: T. Karsjens
>  
> You are seriously this anti-existentialism, Boniface?

My be we should be reminded of how this discussion was started. It was
started on the example that Tom gave in the thread-starting post. In
that example, "January 1, 2001" was considered more meaningful than
"010101" because of the date format.

But where does that date format come from? It is a part of a bigger
(higher level) convention. IOW, there was this bigger convention
implied in Tom's example. "January 1, 2001" is a date because the
bigger convention has a certain format of date. "010101" is less
meaningful because the bigger convention does not say much about the
format in "010101". 

Thus, the issue of the example was about the differences between
"010101" and "January 1, 2001" under that bigger convention. Dragging
in the issue of a person's presence is totally missing the point.


BTW, Tom had mistakenly thought that the absence of context caused
"010101" to be less meaningful. The truth is that it is due to the
bigger convention. Had the bigger convention said something about the
format in "010101", "010101" would have been as meaningful as "January
1, 2001".


Boniface