Re: Would you call this a paradox?

"Doug Wedel" <dougwedel@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:8NOdnXbn37Xx1fzVnZ2dnUVZ_u-dnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> One definition of a paradox is "an apparently true statement or group of

> statements that leads to a contradiction or a situation which defies 
> intuition"

> Both Claude Shannon and Andrey Kolmogorov define the quantity of 
> information contained in a string in terms of the number of bits
required 
> to specify the string.  This seems eminently reasonable -- the fewer the

> bits required to specify a string, the less "information" it contains --
 
> but it leads ineluctably to the conclusion that information is at its 
> maximum in random numbers.

This re-casting of the definition of information leads to bad conclusions.

It is better to just use the word "data" when referring to bit strings.

It is not reasonable to suggest that the length of a data string is 
pro****tional to the information it contains.