Login
You're viewing the appalorchard.com public feed.
  • Mar 11, 2026, 8:45 AM

    @proedie No, that's not how information works. Information is about reducing your uncertainty space. Every time you can exclude half of the uncertainty space, you will have gained one bit of information. If you exclude less than half of the uncertainty space, you will have gained less than a bit of information. Just ask Claude[1].

    Looking at broken clock[2] does not reduce your uncertainty space at all, therefore you gain zero bits of information. The classic formula Claude Shannon is famous for involves dividing the volume of the uncertainty space after gaining information with the volume of the uncertainty space before gaining information, and then taking a base-2 logarithm of the ratio and negating it. If you don't care a minus one bit about negative amounts of data, you can turn the ratio on its top; then, negation won't be necessary. But there's didactic reasons for presenting it in the classic way.

    [1] Claude Shannon, an overall smart human and a measurer of the enthropy of information. Who were you thinking about?
    [2] Well, there's the minor issue of knowing that the clock is broken, lest you erroneously throw out parts of your uncertainty space that might actually be valid. But the problem of information-resembling text is also an issue that applies to chatbots.

    💬 3🔄 1⭐ 6

Replies

  • Mar 11, 2026, 9:10 AM

    @riley That’s the point. You got information theory right. You just misunderstood the expression with the clock.

    When I say: ‘My AI gave me a correct answer once’, you can reply: ‘Sure, even a broken clock is correct twice a day.’ Thus stressing that coincidental correctness is worthless.

    💬 2🔄 2⭐ 22
  • 💬 0🔄 1⭐ 13
  • 💬 2🔄 0⭐ 3
  • Mar 11, 2026, 6:04 PM

    @proedie @riley after obsessing a little over getting to the bottom of this, the answer seems to be that the historical origin (from 1711) is akin to "If you stop chasing trends you will sometimes be fashionable", which is more in line with riley's definition in the OP. The other "official" definitions I've found seem to follow this as well.

    The definition that "coincidental correctness is worthless" seems to be a personal (though common) interpretation.

    💬 1🔄 0⭐ 2
  • 💬 1🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 0⭐ 1
  • Mar 12, 2026, 2:47 AM

    @jonoleth @proedie @riley I always thought of the saying in re those people (often conspiracy theorists) who are singularly obsessed with one thing and always turn to that thing as their explanation for the whole world around them. Occasionally their obsession actually will be the correct answer but it's not like you gain any insight from listening to them.

    It's not an acknowledgement of their insight, but a wry and half mocking acknowledgement that today, for once, they get to be right.

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 0⭐ 3
  • Mar 11, 2026, 10:36 PM
    @riley @proedie the expression is using a coloquial definition of information, not a rigorous one. A clock "gives us information" when we look at it: whether it's right or not, by virtue of being a clock it is asserting that "this is the current time"
    💬 1🔄 0⭐ 0
  • Mar 11, 2026, 10:37 PM
    @riley @proedie don't get me wrong, I agree with your point and the analogy makes sense. I just disagree with your disagreement with the expression, it's a moot point
    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0