Saturday, October 09, 2021
Where's Shannon when we need him?
Yeah, I know Shannon was actually talking about signal/noise ratio in cables, but like Heisenberg his highly technical rule has turned into a useful broad definition.
The broad definition:
News is new. Information is surprising.
This is also the natural definition of information, embodied in every level of every nervous system. Neurons are designed to ignore unchanging data and pay SHARP ATTENTION to departures from the unchanging pattern.
"News" media have always violated Shannon, and government "investigations" and "revelations" also turn Shannon upside down. Media try to generate fake deltas and fake surprise from totally old and unsurprising data. Deepstate sometimes "leaks" shocking facts like Heat Is Hot or Gravity Exists, carefully reworded to sound new.
Today's fake "news" is the Pandora Papers, a second chapter of the Panama Papers. Both of these "leaks" tell us that rich fuckheads never pay for anything. Heat is hot. Water is wet.
What's the point of these specific "leaks"? We can safely assume that they are just another way to kill the competition. The "investigators" are funded by Soros, which should tell you everything. These "leaks" give the government a reason to punish dictators and fuckheads who offend Soros.
Analyzing this type of data requires holding an internal template of all the fuckheads who should be included, and comparing this template with the fuckheads who were actually mentioned in the report. We don't have a strong natural talent for "what's missing" questions, so we need external helpers like written checklists or McBee cards or Hollerith's sorter or Reynold Johnson's multiple comparator.
Labels: Sorosia
¶ 5:33 AM
