Let’s recap:
1. It’s really hard to break into someone’s garage by randomly entering numbers on the keypad and also get quality sleep.
2. Information tends to be more complex than random data, but random data can sometimes be complex, too.
3. Leibniz may have invented differential calculus before Newton, but he was bad at keeping notes and often suffered from bed-head.
4. Information also differs from random data because information is specified.
(Also, Newton did not have coruscating locks of breathtaking pony hair and so probably burned with jealousy every time he even thought about Leibniz.)
Leibniz circa 1676: An apotheosis of pony hair ….
Information is specified when it conforms to a pattern that exists independent of the data event. I realize that sounds really boring abstract, but it’s a super-important concept in science because “finding” patterns in data that aren’t independent of the data event is a severe form of scientific malpractice called fabrication, which nullifies your experiment and its conclusions (and your credibility, unless your “research” is deemed fashionable and politically correct by eminent scientists like Leonardo DiCaprio).
Here’s another illustration: Imagine you’re a shiftless drunk scientist who wants to determine how badly drinking beer will impair your ability to play darts. So you set up an experiment with two groups of people. Both groups will throw darts at a makeshift target that you’ve drawn on the wall with billiards chalk (someone stole your dart board), but only one group will drink beer first. Lots and lots of tasty beer. So the dart throwing is the data event, where the darts land is the data set, and the target on the wall is the pattern. But you’re far from an impartial scientist here because someone made a sarcastic comment earlier implying that you could play much better if you drank in moderation (fat chance), so you rig the experiment: You wait for the joyless sober group to finish throwing their darts, and then you erase the targets. After the beer drinkers throw their darts, you redraw the targets around where their darts have landed (except for the darts that landed in a potted fern above the bar and one that went into the street) and give almost every one an unjustified bull’s eye. Your pattern is therefore not independent of the data event, you’ve fabricated data, and you can discern no real information from the experiment.
Way to go, pal. You just made science cry. Are you happy?
If you’ve managed to read this far, there’s probably a voice in your head saying things like, “This guy is all over the map. Elves, pony hair, garage-door access codes, talking soup. He’s totally wackadoo. Watch, next he’ll be writing about aliens.” Well, you should never totally stifle that voice in your head, because sometimes it could be on to something.
And now a word about ALIENS ….