Interesting discussion - I’d agree with the idea that information is meaning and meaning is information. Gnomon and I have been piecing together this idea here.

I think you got that wrong on basic principles. That is, the "The Meaning Of Life" must have some meaning itself, so any information consumed must have important meaning to the person. So, I'd say the consumption/creation of knowledge (the meaningful upgrading of information) is closer to the truth. However, even closer would be the consumption of wisdom (the meaningful upgrading of knowledge) is even closer to ones truth. Also, I believe you are falsely linking information consumption with happiness, which is no more true that food consumption. The path to healthy happiness is when you selectively produce/consume meaningful knowledge and wisdom that aligns your life/behavior/state of mind with your more true meaning/purpose in life (or at least one that brings you more peace than otherwise). — Sir Philo Sophia

This ties into @softwhere’s point about interpretation, which is another reduction of information - a subjective processing of information that doesn’t quite ‘consume’ or integrate ALL possible information available. Interpretation, reading, knowledge or some other subjective reduction of information appears to be the real meaning, but it’s only because that’s the level that individual humans operate: distinguishing between true/false, good/bad, right/wrong or correct/incorrect information. From there, we can make use of meaning/information in how we interact with the world. The information becomes consumable for us.

But I would argue that relation is meaning is information. We can approach an awareness of meaning itself only through our relation to the world at the level of possibility - even though we’re unable to distinguish that meaning from anything. Then we make use of it by discarding what lacks ‘perceived potential’. We manifest this information, this ‘difference that makes a difference’, as knowledge, understanding and wisdom by reading, interpreting or otherwise relating to information within subjective structures of value/significance/potential.

So, the ‘meaning of life’ as pursuing/consuming meaningful knowledge is a limitation. The ‘meaning of life’ is simply relation to ALL information as possibility - even if it’s false, bad, wrong or incorrect. It all has meaning - just maybe not meaning to you. The more we relate to information, the more meaning that information has. The more information we exclude, the further we get from this ‘meaning of life’, and the more limited our capacity in the world.

"knowledge puffeth up" lol

However if you are looking for a date, insert more and more information into a system (we are all systems) and the more likely that system will "put out".

lol

I wish you the best my friend.

The ‘meaning of life’ is simply relation to ALL information as possibility - even if it’s false, bad, wrong or incorrect. It all has meaning - just maybe not meaning to you — Possibility

So, according to your (and the original poster’s) idea, a teenager spending all day on facebook consuming endless information of relationships between trivia and social gossip is fulfilling the meaning of life (yet they have a higher rate of suicides), but a Buddhist monk that prays and meditates all day, day in and day out, consuming little to no information of the world or its relationships, is not fulfilling the meaning of life?

The more we relate to information, the more meaning that information has. The more information we exclude, the further we get from this ‘meaning of life’, and the more limited our capacity in the world. — Possibility

Not true. Do you really think an idiot savant consuming with photographic memory all info and relationships is the meaning/purpose of human life? I’d argue that consuming and recording meaningless relationships of information reduces your net meaning/knowledge b/c of your very limited capacity, bandwidth, and time to continually process and sift through the ton of meaningless info to behold the little meaningful relationships of information. That is, the better you reject meaningless information and meaningless relationships of information the greater your ability to determine what is the meaning of the truly relevant relationships of information to produce meaningful knowledge to employ at your command. Any definition of meaning and information and life that is not throttle by our very finite mental faculties is certainly not practical as to the meaning of most, if not all, people’s lives.

So, according to your (and the original poster’s) idea, a teenager spending all day on facebook consuming endless information of relationships between trivia and social gossip is fulfilling the meaning of life (yet they have a higher rate of suicides), but a Buddhist monk that prays and meditates all day, day in and day out, consuming little to no information of the world or its relationships, is not fulfilling the meaning of life? — Sir Philo Sophia

A good question. There is a difference between consuming information and relating to information. This teenager you describe is fulfilling the ‘meaning of life’ not in consuming the information but in relating their experience of this information to others. Those at high risk of suicide are failing to relate to others in any meaningful way - they have isolated themselves from the world in many respects, and are no more fulfilling this meaning of life than a Buddhist monk who does nothing but pray or meditate all day, every day.

Those Buddhist monks who are fulfilling the meaning of life are those who take on disciples, who write, speak or otherwise share their experiences of prayer and meditation, who strive to render Buddhist teachings relevant to the world and its relationships NOW and in the future - and you can’t do that by completely isolating yourself from the world. Buddha’s life wasn’t a path to follow, but a map to help us understand how to more accurately relate to information in life. It’s not the only source of this kind of meta-information that’s been misinterpreted over the years, and it’s certainly not meant to be the only source of information.

The more we relate to information, the more meaning that information has. The more information we exclude, the further we get from this ‘meaning of life’, and the more limited our capacity in the world.
— Possibility
Not true. Do you really think an idiot savant consuming with photographic memory all info and relationships is the meaning/purpose of human life? I’d argue that consuming and recording meaningless relationships of information reduces your net meaning/knowledge b/c of your very limited capacity, bandwidth, and time to continually process and sift through the ton of meaningless info to behold the little meaningful relationships of information. That is, the better you reject meaningless information and meaningless relationships of information the greater your ability to determine what is the meaning of the truly relevant relationships of information to produce meaningful knowledge to employ at your command. Any definition of meaning and information and life that is not throttle by our very finite mental faculties is certainly not practical as to the meaning of most, if not all, people’s lives. — Sir Philo Sophia

I don’t think you can exclude an ‘idiot savant’ from an opportunity to fulfil the meaning of life in their own unique way. If their capacity to engage in what you see as ‘meaningful’ relationships with information is impaired, does that make their life less meaningful? Not everyone can be a philosopher - our aim is not to be everything to the world within ourselves, but to contribute our incomplete selves to the world. The ‘meaning of life’ is not an individual achievement, but a collaborative one.

We lament the historical rejection of information judged ‘meaningless’ at the time far more than we’re bemoaning the glut of information now available. From the tragic loss of biodiversity or destroyed manuscripts, lost languages, histories and cultures, to forgotten traditional medicines and ancient remedies - the value of information realised too late to retrieve it from the destruction of colonialism, religion and fear (among others) is up there among the biggest regrets of human progress.

I’m not saying we all have to consume as much information as possible - you seem to think of information as only data or words, but that’s not what I’m referring to. We relate to information, for example, simply by looking a homeless person in the eye and acknowledging them as a fellow human being who happens to be down on his luck. That we often ignore this as ‘meaningless’ information is an example of the many and varied ways that we miss the ‘meaning of life’ - which isn’t about what is ‘practical’ as to a definition of one person’s life.

I agree that we all have finite mental faculties, and that we cannot possibly integrate even a minute percentage of available information from the universe into our physical system in the time available to us. What we can do instead is relate to those systems around us that have already integrated information in such a way that we don’t need to have it all or do it all or be it all ourselves. This is what humans are physically, mentally and potentially optimised to do: relate to every level of existence, from the binary of sub-atomic potentiality to the pure relation of agape. The meaning of life is about relating to information - finding optimal ways to maximise awareness, connection and collaboration.

PS, I'd probably define ‘information’ as a statement with a true/false value (that is allowed to be fuzzy), but I'm still thinking about this one! — Devans99

In my impression, in logic it certainly is.

Other arbitrary, non-logic data can be transformed to logic sentences. For example, the arbitrary statement f(3)=5 can be transformed to the tuple of a logic sentence and its truth value $(\ulcorner s\urcorner,s)=(\Gamma_f(3,5),true)$ with $\Gamma_f$ the corresponding graph predicate .

But then again, everything we write, also corresponds to a numerical encoding, and therefore, to a natural number. For example:

decimal(utf8("hello")) = 104101108108111

The same holds true for every sound and every visual impression. They can all be represented as numbers. That would turn information into a sub-discipline of number theory. All properties of information would be properties of their corresponding numbers.

Then there is also Shannon's information theory:

The basic idea of information theory is that the "news value" of a communicated message depends on the degree to which the content of the message is surprising. If an event is very probable, it is no surprise (and generally uninteresting) when that event happens as expected. However, if an event is unlikely to occur, it is much more informative to learn that the event happened or will happen. — Shannon information theory

So, that is a probabilistic take on information:

The information content (also called the surprisal) of an event E is an increasing function of the reciprocal of the probability p (E) of the event, precisely I( E ) = $− log_2(p(E))$. — Shannon information theory

I find Shannon's approach certainly interesting but I am not sure that his approach to information will ever be the "dominant" one.

I would agree with the original post, but not for a happy long life.

I would emphasize new information. If the meaning of life is information, we are information gatherers, etc.

Information equals life, thus I posit the meaning of life, where any pain exists, is new information. Otherwise what is the relevance of the unknown, if not mystery, to a mind user?

Is there a pain suppresion great enough for this universe to justify?

That's good information.

Of course there is, this is perfect ground for all simulation to be improved, with the right mind it can be conceived.

I would agree with the original post, but not for a happy long life. — Qwex

so, you ascribe the meaning of life to gather endless useless *new* information? Using your (et. al.) logic then food is a greater meaning in life than information b/c a lack of sufficient information will generally not kill you, but a lack of sufficient food will. And humans are generally far more focused on consuming food, whereby they are using information (like a tool) to get to the food. Hence, information/knowledge is merely a tool to humans, and endlessly accumulating useless (even if new) tools only serves to reduce your physical/mental capabilities (i.e., effectively dumb you down). Humans are also far happier (compared to information) when they have lots more food than when starving. If a human does not have enough food it generally does not care to seek any information (thus ignore/filter out) that does not help lead to food. This behavior is programmed in our genes, so I’d argue that is more fundamental as to life’s intent than what some philosophers (with plenty of food in there bellies) say/think. Continuing, IMHO, your flawed line of thinking/logic then one would say that eating endless empty calorie food is the meaning of life. However, the Pima Indians show us clearly that letting genetic urge for something funding take its natural (meaningful?) course in an environment filled with meaningless (i.e., empty calorie) food/information only leads to morbid obesity (like a 1970s PC having to process our Peta bytes of available stored information, which would likely take it millions of years/lifetimes), so no happiness just misery in violating life’s real meaning/purpose, to consume useful calories (information) that take you to healthy states of body (and mind) .

Where is my logic/metaphors wrong here?

some thoughts are good too.

Some food is tasty.

I don’t think you can exclude an ‘idiot savant’ from an opportunity to fulfil the meaning of life in their own unique way. If their capacity to engage in what you see as ‘meaningful’ relationships with information is impaired, does that make their life less meaningful? — Possibility

OK, lets take your (et. al.) line of logic/thinking further. Then, in your (et. al.) terms a modern, top supercomputer has achieved a greater meaning in life because it has accumulated (and can access) more information than any human could in his/her lifetime. So, our a modern, top supercomputers are the epitome of, and superior to, humanity in that they far surpass humans in what you (et. al.) say is the key (if not only) metric of human purpose/happiness? You can't have it both ways... pick one...

no computer can generate unknown shapes.

no computer can generate unknown shapes — Qwex

cognitive ability has nothing to do with this thread. The poster (et. al.) say that endless information accumulation alone is the meaning, goal, and happiness of human life. You (like me), looking to cognitive/practical utility, seem to believe otherwise?

no computer can generate unknown shapes — Qwex

BTW, that is not true. Genetic algorithms have been easily doing that for decades.

they are not as good as a mind is when theorizing new shapes.

There probably are super computers that can, we don't own one. Depends which one's that were discovered.

you have gone off topic. stay focused...

excuse me. Acquiring new information is good. Clearly, new is an important concept as well as other. There are what things represent. You build your own child like you make your future. Is it good or we need something new? You wouldn't be in this position without people's new stuff.

There are also good things about a knowledge gatherer mentality — Qwex

recall the topic is 'Information - The Meaning Of Life In a Nutshell', nothing to do with knowledge. So, I think you are still off topic b/c the poster (et. al.) are talking about the raw consumption of information, not any consideration for its utility in making useful knowledge (let alone wisdom).

Fine, then I will stop talking.

I’m not saying we all have to consume as much information as possible — Possibility

the poster (et. al.) are indeed saying this. So, you disagree with their premise...

you seem to think of information as only data or words, but that’s not what I’m referring to. We relate to information, for example, simply by looking a homeless person in the eye and acknowledging them as a fellow human being who happens to be down on his luck. That we often ignore this as ‘meaningless’ information is an example of the many and varied ways that we miss the ‘meaning of life’ - which isn’t about what is ‘practical’ as to a definition of one person’s life. — Possibility

that state of being you describe is not related to information. that is empathy. Empathy is not info, or knowledge most often is emotive, which suppresses all the conflicting info which would break the (often blind) empathy.

That we often ignore this as ‘meaningless’ information is an example of the many and varied ways that we miss the ‘meaning of life’ - which isn’t about what is ‘practical’ as to a definition of one person’s life. — Possibility

my friend, you are talking about wisdom, so you are completely off topic. recall the topic is 'Information - The Meaning Of Life In a Nutshell', nothing to do with knowledge or wisdom. So, I think you went off topic b/c the poster (et. al.) are talking about the raw consumption of information, not any consideration for its utility in making useful knowledge (let alone wisdom). The poster (et. al.) say that endless information accumulation alone is the meaning, goal, and happiness of human life. You (like me), looking towards wisdom, seem to believe otherwise?

The meaning of life is about relating to information - finding optimal ways to maximise awareness, connection and collaboration. — Possibility

then you disagree with the poster's (et. al.) premise/statement.

All properties of information would be properties of their corresponding numbers. — alcontali

your idea on that is unclear to me. any property has to convey some kind of unique meaning/utility concerning the object it is a property of. How does a number, alone, impart/convey any meaning?

That would turn information into a sub-discipline of number theory. All properties of information would be properties of their corresponding numbers. — alcontali

numbers, alone, have no properties. so, your ideas here seem to be incomplete at best, flawed at worst.

your idea on that is unclear to me. any property has to convey some kind of unique meaning/utility concerning the object it is a property of. How does a number, alone, impart/convey any meaning? — Sir Philo Sophia

numbers, alone, have no properties. so, your ideas here seem to be incomplete at best, flawed at worst. — Sir Philo Sophia

Gödel noted that statements within a system can be represented by natural numbers. The significance of this was that properties of statements - such as their truth and falsehood - would be equivalent to determining whether their Gödel numbers had certain properties. — Wikipedia on Gödel numbering

Arithmetization. A method used in mathematical logic for replacing a reasoning on the expressions of some logico-mathematical language by reasonings on natural numbers. For this purpose the replacement is constructed by some sufficiently simple one-to-one mapping of the set of all words (in the alphabet of the language under consideration) into the natural number sequence. The image of a word is called its number. Relations between and operations defined on words are transformed by this mapping into relations between and operations on natural numbers. The requirement of a "sufficiently simple" mapping leads to the fact that some basic relations (such as the relation of imbedding of one word into another, etc.) and some operations (like the operation of concatenation of words, etc.) are transformed into relations and operations having a simple algorithmic nature (e.g. are primitive recursive). — Encyclopedia of Mathematics on Arithmetization

In 1931, Kurt Gödel published the incompleteness theorems, which he proved in part by showing how to represent the syntax of formal logic within first-order arithmetic. Each expression of the formal language of arithmetic is assigned a distinct number. This procedure is known variously as Gödel numbering, coding and, more generally, as arithmetization. In particular, various sets of expressions are coded as sets of numbers. It turns out that for various syntactic properties (such as being a formula, being a sentence, etc.), these sets are computable. Moreover, any computable set of numbers can be defined by some arithmetical formula. For example, there are formulas in the language of arithmetic defining the set of codes for arithmetic sentences, and for provable arithmetic sentences. — Wikipedia on the arithmetization of logic in Gödel's work

OK, lets take your (et. al.) line of logic/thinking further. Then, in your (et. al.) terms a modern, top supercomputer has achieved a greater meaning in life because it has accumulated (and can access) more information than any human could in his/her lifetime. So, our a modern, top supercomputers are the epitome of, and superior to, humanity in that they far surpass humans in what you (et. al.) say is the key (if not only) metric of human purpose/happiness? You can't have it both ways... pick one... — Sir Philo Sophia

There is no quantity or value to meaning except when limited by our perception, so it makes no sense to say anyone or anything ‘achieves a greater meaning in life’, objectively speaking.

Accumulating and accessing information is not what I mean by relating, either. It’s possible for a program to accumulate and access information in a complex process that far surpasses a human’s mental capacity. But the supercomputer cannot relate to that information at any level, only facilitate a program to produce a result. We can structure the program in a way that simulates relations between quantitative values according to a complex binary logic, but it not only has no access to any qualitative values, but it also has no awareness, no relationship to the process that produced its result - the program at any one time IS the result of its process and nothing else.

So the most a supercomputer can achieve at any one time is the transmission of a final quantitative value, to which it cannot relate.

I find Shannon's approach certainly interesting but I am not sure that his approach to information will ever be the "dominant" one. — alcontali

I expect that Shannon's metric cannot be dominant in the realm of the mind at least because there is no way to a priori know that the ultimate entropy new data/info will have relative to the cognitive agent's existing and future knowledge-base. Moreover, his metric does not apply to single bits/particles of info.

that state of being you describe is not related to information. that is empathy. Empathy is not info, or knowledge most often is emotive, which suppresses all the conflicting info which would break the (often blind) empathy. — Sir Philo Sophia

Well, then you appear to have a limited understanding of what information is, but you’re not alone. Information is ‘the difference that makes a difference’. The complexity of the process that relates information to produce empathy is six-dimensional: it takes into account the conflicting info and finds meaning in relating anyway, regardless of potential conflict.

my friend, you are talking about wisdom, so you are completely off topic. recall the topic is 'Information - The Meaning Of Life In a Nutshell', nothing to do with knowledge or wisdom. So, I think you went off topic b/c the poster (et. al.) are talking about the raw consumption of information, not any consideration for its utility in making useful knowledge (let alone wisdom). The poster (et. al.) say that endless information accumulation alone is the meaning, goal, and happiness of human life. You (like me), looking towards wisdom, seem to believe otherwise? — Sir Philo Sophia

Not off-topic at all. It’s all information, including knowledge and wisdom. My first post here made a specific argument against the OP:

But I would argue that relation is meaning is information. We can approach an awareness of meaning itself only through our relation to the world at the level of possibility - even though we’re unable to distinguish that meaning from anything. Then we make use of it by discarding what lacks ‘perceived potential’. We manifest this information, this ‘difference that makes a difference’, as knowledge, understanding and wisdom by reading, interpreting or otherwise relating to information within subjective structures of value/significance/potential. — Possibility

I hope that clears up my position.

thanks for sharing that. cute, but not very useful in the relm of the mind. That is, my original statement/assessment still stands re " any property has to convey some kind of unique meaning/utility concerning the object it is a property ", except for trivial utility like concatenating, etc.- no meaning is conveyed/preserved to how is that useful to reasoning or the mind?

see "The undefinability theorem shows that this encoding cannot be done for semantic concepts such as truth. It shows that no sufficiently rich interpreted language can represent its own semantics. A corollary is that any metalanguage capable of expressing the semantics of some object language must have expressive power exceeding that of the object language. The metalanguage includes primitive notions, axioms, and rules absent from the object language, so that there are theorems provable in the metalanguage not provable in the object language."

thanks for sharing that. cute, but not very useful in the relm of the mind. That is, my original statement/assessment still stands re " any property has to convey some kind of unique meaning/utility concerning the object it is a property ", except for trivial utility like concatenating, etc.- no meaning is conveyed/preserved to how is that useful to reasoning or the mind? — Sir Philo Sophia

Provability is the property of a number. It is a definable predicate.

Given Gödel's semantic completeness theorem, all provable numbers are also semantically true in their universe. So, even though truth is not a legitimate predicate for all logic sentences in the language of such universe, it is a legitimate one for provable ones.

If provability is not a useful property, then we would have to conclude that mathematics is also not useful to reasoning because provability is what it is all about in mathematics.

"The undefinability theorem shows that this encoding cannot be done for semantic concepts such as truth." — Sir Philo Sophia

Yes, this undefinability drops straight out of Carnap's diagonal lemma. When applied to provability, the diagonal lemma still leaves the door open for a legitimate provability predicate:

"There are provable sentences that are false =OR= there are unprovable sentences that are true."

Carnap's lemma closes the door, however, to a legitimate truth predicate:

"There are true sentences that are false =OR= there are false sentences that are true."

Given the above, the lemma syntactically entails that the truth predicate is undefinable.

So, we assume the truth of the construction logic of a Platonic world and then we can reach derived truths in that world through syntactic entailment. We cannot reach derived truths by using a truth predicate.

so how can any of that be used to explain or reproduce what the (philo of) human mind does? They tried decades ago to use things like symbolic, predicate calculus/logic but failed to anything useful beyond creating automatic theorem provers.

Well, then you appear to have a limited understanding of what information is, but you’re not alone. Information is ‘the difference that makes a difference’. The complexity of the process that relates information to produce empathy is six-dimensional: it takes into account the conflicting info and finds meaning in relating anyway, regardless of potential conflict. — Possibility

empathy could be not much more than an exercise in pattern matching requiring little info but mostly emotive bonding with your (info) projection to see what you want to see and bond with that. emotive states (including empathy via mirror neurons) tend to bypass information usage/processing so I'm personally far less comfortable including them as part of a information/reasoning process/framework.

No doubt everything we do is based on some kind of data/info, but when the outcome action is not a largely data/info/fact reasoning driven process I'll put them in the whimsical/made-up category of emotions/empathy which tend to distort facts/info to suit its desired emotive/empathetic state outcome/conclusion.

Well, then you appear to have a limited understanding of what information is, but you’re not alone. Information is ‘the difference that makes a difference’. — Possibility

BTW, I should have made it more clear in my above reply that you are technically right b/c I said "does not relate to" in "that state of being you describe is not related to information. that is empathy." In the context of my above answer, I should have originally said "that state of being you describe is not a data/]information driven process b/c that is empathy."

However, many in this thread seem to throwing around various definitions of info/data/knowledge/wisdom, apparently thinking that just 'relating' data/info is enough to do the transforms. Yet, that seems way too vague for a concrete discussion of the meaning of life wrt info consumption.

So, I think we should each set forth what we regard as the best definitions and relationships between each.

For me, the below definitions are a good starting place. How about you (all)?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data
Knowledge is the understanding based on extensive experience dealing with information on a subject. For example, the height of Mount Everest is generally considered data. The height can be measured precisely with an altimeter and entered into a database. This data may be included in a book along with other data on Mount Everest to describe the mountain in a manner useful for those who wish to make a decision about the best method to climb it. An understanding based on experience climbing mountains that could advise persons on the way to reach Mount Everest's peak may be seen as "knowledge". The practical climbing of Mount Everest's peak based on this knowledge may be seen as "wisdom". In other words, wisdom refers to the practical application of a person's knowledge in those circumstances where good may result. Thus wisdom complements and completes the series "data", "information" and "knowledge" of increasingly abstract concepts.
Data is often assumed to be the least abstract concept, information the next least, and knowledge the most abstract.[9] In this view, data becomes information by interpretation; e.g., the height of Mount Everest is generally considered "data", a book on Mount Everest geological characteristics may be considered "information", and a climber's guidebook containing practical information on the best way to reach Mount Everest's peak may be considered "knowledge". "Information" bears a diversity of meanings that ranges from everyday usage to technical use. This view, however, has also been argued to reverse the way in which data emerges from information, and information from knowledge.[10] Generally speaking, the concept of information is closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control, data, form, instruction, knowledge, meaning, mental stimulus, pattern, perception, and representation. Beynon-Davies uses the concept of a sign to differentiate between data and information; data is a series of symbols, while information occurs when the symbols are used to refer to something.[11][12]

But I would argue that relation is meaning is information. — Possibility

I disagree. You omit utility. There is no meaning w/o some sense of utility. A mere ontology of info/data does not create knowledge if you have not gained any actionable path to beneficially use it. I look forward to your stab at your definitions re what I pose above, which will help ground all of our lose semantics here.