[Sigia-l] Definitions of noise and data

[Thomas Quine]

When we talk about "noise" here, we are obviously referring to more than
aural stimulation. Really noise is a kind of stimulation of any of our
senses.

What consciousness does is try to pick out patterns in the "noise"
coming in from our eyes, ears, nose, skin, etc. The role of
consciousness is partly to filter out what has no discernable pattern,
and partly to focus, like a lighthouse beacon, on what has a meaningful
pattern to us.

The SETI group, which monitors signals from space and tries to identify
patterns, is filtering out the noise and trying to construct meaning in
a very human way.

So I think the difference between noise and data might be that noise has
no discernable pattern, whereas data does.

I'd like to return to my original definition of data, namely as a
symbolic representation of a physical reality. When we say data is
meaningless outside of context, what we mean is that unless we know what
a given datum is referring to, what it symbolizes, it is meaningless.

As symbols, alphanumerical characters are data by definition. What else
is a symbol but a pattern indicating something?

- Thom

"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then
you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I
have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two
ideas."
- George Bernard Shaw