25 quotes
In fact, an information theory that leaves out the issue of noise turns out to have no content.
Information, The New Language of Science (2003)
Underneath the shifting appearances of the world as perceived by our unreliable senses, is there, or is there not, a bedrock of objective reality?
Information, The New Language of Science (2003)
An electron is real; a probability is not.
Information, The New Language of Science (2003)
If quantum communication and quantum computation are to flourish, a new information theory will have to be developed.
Information, The New Language of Science (2003)
Nowhere is the difference between either/or and both/and more clearly apparent than in the context of information.
Information, The New Language of Science (2003)
Numbers instill a feeling for the lie of the land, and furnish grist for the mathematical mill that is the physicist's principal tool.
Information, The New Language of Science (2003)
The smell of subjectivity clings to the mechanical definition of complexity as stubbornly as it sticks to the definition of information.
Information, The New Language of Science (2003)
Entropy is not about speeds or positions of particles, the way temperature and pressure and volume are, but about our lack of information.
Information, The New Language of Science (2003)
The solution of the Monty Hall problem hinges on the concept of information, and more specifically, on the relationship between added information and probability.
Information, The New Language of Science (2003)
The problem of defining exactly what is meant by the signal velocity, which cropped up as long ago as 1907, has not been solved.
Information, The New Language of Science (2003)
Information gently but relentlessly drizzles down on us in an invisible, impalpable electric rain.
Information, The New Language of Science (2003)
The switch from 'steam engines' to 'heat engines' signals the transition from engineering practice to theoretical science.
Information, The New Language of Science (2003)
Science has taught us that what we see and touch is not what is really there.
Information, The New Language of Science (2003)
As with all quantum devices, a qubit is a delicate flower. If you so much as look at it, you destroy it.
Information, The New Language of Science (2003)
As every bookie knows instinctively, a number such as reliability - a qualitative rather than a quantitative measure - is needed to make the valuation of information practically useful.
Information, The New Language of Science (2003)
Both induction and deduction, reasoning from the particular and the general, and back again from the universal to the specific, form the essence to scientific thinking.
Information, The New Language of Science (2003)
In order to understand information, we must define it; bit in order to define it, we must first understand it. Where to start?
Information, The New Language of Science (2003)
Claude Shannon, the founder of information theory, invented a way to measure 'the amount of information' in a message without defining the word 'information' itself, nor even addressing the question of the meaning of the message.
Information, The New Language of Science (2003)
Paradox is the sharpest scalpel in the satchel of science. Nothing concentrates the mind as effectively, regardless of whether it pits two competing theories against each other, or theory against observation, or a compelling mathematical deduction against ordinary common sense.
Information, The New Language of Science (2003)
Time has been called God's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once. In the same spirit, noise is Nature's way of making sure that we don't find out everything that happens. Noise, in short, is the protector of information.
Information, The New Language of Science (2003)