“Data is discrimination between physical states of things (black, white, etc.) that may convey or not convey information to an agent. Whether it does so or not depends on the agent's prior stock of knowledge.”

Source: Knowledge Assets, 1998, p. 12

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Data is discrimination between physical states of things (black, white, etc.) that may convey or not convey information…" by Max Boisot?

Max Boisot17

British academic and educator 1943–2011

Max Boisot (1943–2011) British academic and educator

Source: Knowledge Assets, 1998, p. 12

“The theory of rational action may therefore fail, because it is unable to produce unique prescriptions and predictions. It may also fail if the agents’ behavior does not conform to predictions, whether these are unique or not; that is, if the agents are irrational. There are multiple sources of irrationality, hot or cold.”

Jon Elster (1940) Norwegian academic

Reason and Rationality (2009)

“And finds, with keen, discriminating sight,
Black ’s not so black,—nor white so very white.”

George Canning (1770–1827) British statesman and politician

New Morality.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“The "meaning" in the title of the book acknowledges the close and familiar connection between intentionality and meaning. The connection holds between the meaning of the sentence Smith utters when he utters "Bigmouth has struck again" and his belief that Bigmouth has struck again. The idea of this close relation is not intended to convey the obvious falsehood that the meanings of the sentences which an agent utters always express the contents of his beliefs. Utterances which are lies or metaphors, for instance, spoil the generality of that relation. Rather, the relation is conveyed by the fact that a sincere, non-self-deceived, utterance of (or assent to) a sentence by an agent is an utterance of something whose literal meaning gives the content of the belief that is expressed by that utterance. The fact that sentences are often not uttered this way does not spoil the connection between belief and meaning, though it obviously makes it necessary to produce an appropriately nuanced formulation of the connection for those utterances. The underlying effect of acknowledging the connection, of course, is to make the study of an agent's mind integral to the study of his meanings, and vice versa.”

Akeel Bilgrami (1950) Indian philosopher

Source: Belief and Meaning (1992), Ch. 1 : Belief, Meaning, and the External World

“Even the White House has a press agent.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[199804150048.RAA08083@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

“Strategic structuring, informal or formal, whereby social agents, including the state, establish a rule regime regulating market access and transactions…”

Tom R. Burns (1937) American sociologist

The shaping of social organization (1987)

“The impulses which flow in the arm nerves of a typist convey to her fingers the translated information which reaches her eye or ear, in order that the fingers may be caused to strike the proper keys. Might not these currents be intercepted, either in the original form in which information is conveyed to the brain, or in the marvelously metamorphosed form in which they then proceed to the hand?”

Vannevar Bush book As We May Think

As We May Think (1945)

“Money, first and foremost, is a medium of communication, conveying the information we call 'price.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

Government control of the money supply is censorship, a violation of the First Amendment. Inflation is a lie.
"Some New Tactical Reflections".

“The devil’s agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Hound of the Baskervilles

Source: The Hound of the Baskervilles

“Nothing conveys the feeling of infinity as much as stupidity does.”

Ödön von Horváth (1901–1938) Austro-Hungarian writer

Motto of Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald (Tales from the Vienna Wood) (1931).

“Data is discrimination between physical states of things (black, white, etc.) that may convey or not convey information to an agent. Whether it does so or not depends on the agent's prior stock of knowledge.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Max Boisot17

Related quotes

Related topics