Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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Any 'creation' of information (pictures, books, code, etc) is just pruning the huge space of possible information to leave just the information you want. (lemm.ee)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

12 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Like carving a block of stone to leave only the form of a horse.

The stone (or the information space) already contained the horse, and a million other possibilities, the job of the artist is to collapse those possibilities into a single reality.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Information has a mathematical definition, if you're interested in that sort of thing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I'm interested but I'm not sure I have the brain cells for this right now.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

i think spongebob covered this well in his attempt to teach squidward how to sculpt

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Ah, I haven't watched The Simpsons.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

my fav bit is when the baby screams 'not the momma'. you should totally check it out.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Kind of like the Library of Babel

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

If you have a block of stone and cut it in two pieces, the position and angle of the cut is information. By carving down a pool of information, you add information to it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Yes, the position and angle of the cut is information, but there are an infinite, or at least very large number of possible cuts. That's what I mean by the possibility space. By carving it, you collapse the information from lots of possible states to one real state, thus pruning the possibilities to get one reality.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Except, ideally, a PhD thesis. Which should contain a completely new piece of information for the world.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Well no. It's still just a list of text, so that text as well as all other text with minor and major variations exists in the information space. As I said, the hard part is getting rid of all the wrong stuff.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

A good portion of any paper is citing references