Thank you! I’ve been lurking here wanting to chime in with something to help define information, but I have such a primitive layman’s understanding of it that I kept my mouth shut.
Please correct my ignorance, but I’m thinking that basically anything “real” is information. All that we consider having a state of being, as well as any [actual] actions or affects on anything we think of as real, is information. Ironically, we can use the concept of information to theorize about things we can’t detect, such as what happens around a black hole–but that theorizing itself is not information.
When I say “real” I don’t include consciousness or any internalized thought–no figuring out, quantifying, surmising, formulizing, or writing down of anything qualifies as what I would think is “real”. Actions resulting from these may perpetuate information, but I don’t know of any reason we have to believe that thought itself is real outside chemical/electrical processes.
Sorry to go on about it, but I find this irresistibly intriguing. Not trying to hijack this thread, just genuinely thought that an understanding of the term information is important, here.
And please let me know if I’m just dead wrong.
Edit: Grammar.