Well-informed vs. Well-dated
Let me go into psychology on the distinction Krassimir raised. We have quite different associations on “She is a well-informed person” compared to “She is a well-dated person”. One wonders, whether the connotations of “even” and “odd” (in German: “gerade” and “ungerade” , ca. “straight” and “crooked”; in Hungarian “paired” and “lacking a match”) have been created around the neutral meanings of the numbers 2,4,6,… vs. 1,3,5,… or the other way around: once the Sumerians, Phoenicians, Indians, Chinese, or whoever had accomplished giving these descriptive names to the subsets of N, the emotional insinuations of fine, ok, as-it-should-be vs. extra, loose, unfinished have been wearing off by use post factum. The situation may be similar today with informative and factual, instructive and dry, descriptive and actual, information-oriented or data-oriented. Maybe we have not yet accepted the set of connotations that distinguish the two concepts: information and data. Stating, as Arturo does, that not only we are not able to figure out and give a clear definition to the meanings covered by the words “information” and “data”, but that there is no clear idea behind the word “information”, is a defeatist approach in my eyes. We are on a good trail by smelling the difference, even if we might not be able to come to a consensus on the wording of the distinguishing semantic markers. Information is something that needs to be actionable to act on, while data has no such properties. Whether we act on data is purely our own decision. Information can be true or false, while data are facts, therefore beyond questioning regarding their truthfulness. Let me try to sell my proposal of a definition: data are the foreground, the text, which are put into a context by the information, which is the background. In Wittgenstein terms: Sachverhalt and Zusammenhang (which I translate – unofficially – as facts /data/ and context /relationships/). Of course, if we had accepted the proposals contained in “Learn To Count In Twelve Easy Steps”, if we counted in terms of consolidating of displacements, that is: in terms of cycles of cyclic permutations, the difference would be as easy to point out as the difference between odd and even numbers: data is the element with sequential number x and information is in which cycle(s) this element is included in. But that may take some while yet, until people get used to the idea that straight and crooked are not only personality traits but also applicable to abstract entities like numbers. So, we will keep phantasising about a beautiful maiden who is well-dated but not well-informed and her nemesis Papageno, who is well-informed but not well dated. We shall return to the subject, hopes yours truly: Karl
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