If information is the resolution of uncertainty then we are all ignorant or dead. There can always be more data, things can always change, you can always find out later you missed something. If information is the resolution of uncertainty, then information is a choice. It’s the choice to decide the scope of a scientific study or the scope of a software release version. At some point you need to choose when enough is, well, enough, and decide.
Maybe information is the reduction of uncertainty. Maybe it’s both.
Maybe it’s Bayes.
Sometimes it would seem like rationalists treat Bayes as 0⁄1 switch, and Bayes would be dismayed. Probability is not a switch, it’s a gradient. Treating 90% probability as factI is the quickest way to be wrong. 0.1/0.9 is more like it. Updating your assumptions continuously is the way to go.
This is to say, they are both correct. Shannon is right: at some point, you have to resolve. You trust the “sent” message in your app unless something goes wrong that makes you change your mind. And there’s a chance > 0 that something went wrong. But you resolve–not because it’s perfect, but because it’s good enough.
Shannon is correct, less uncertainty = more information.
Bayes is correct, nothing is ever certain, and everything may be updated.
Beyond Shannon and Bayes, lies agency: acting in the midst of uncertainty.
These paragraphs are part of the white paper/manifesto for Wall Street Weather, a free, public dashboard recording market traded entities’ metrics, cryptographically signed and broadcast by economic agents.
Come read more, red team, give your opinion and let’s build it.
Have you actually read The Wealth of Nations? Smith was well aware of how the enterprises of his day were planned, where goods came from, how they were processed, and how markets worked. His argument proceeds from that intimate knowledge. Smith argued, that, counterintuitively to most people of his era, markets should be allowed to work, and that countries shouldn’t engage in mercantilist policies to hoard “specie” (gold and silver). He argued that the true wealth of nations came from trade and industry, not shiny metals, and that the way to increase the wealth of a nation was to encourage the development of markets and commerce rather than mercantilist policies that accumulated shiny metal coins at the expense of trade. While Smith may have seen divine providence in the working of the market, that doesn’t imply that he was unaware of the practicalities of trade, no more than Isaac Newton’s belief in biblical numerology invalidates his ideas regarding the analysis of infinetesimals.
Furthermore, Smith’s belief in the power of free markets and free exchange led him to be a staunch anti-colonialist. Smith was one of the first British writers to speak out against the depradations of the East India Company, arguing that the company was making money because it had the backing of the British monarchy, and therefore was able to engage in state-like looting via its private armies and navies, rather than making wealth from free exchange. He correctly identified that the East India Company would require ever increasing amount of subsidy from the state, which would have deleterious results for both the company and Great Britain.