We have Shannon Information, Quantum Information, Fisher Information, and even Mutual Information and many others. Now let me present another type of information which until I find a better name will certainly be doomed to reduplication induced obscurity: Informative Information.
One of the many insightful takeouts from Douglas Hubbard’s Book—How to Measure Anything for me was that if a measure has any value at all then it influences a decision. It informs a decision.
If I see a link come up on my social media feed “5 rationality techniques you can use today” and I don’t click it, that was a decision. I could click it (and commit to reading it) or I could not click it. We all know what a decision is.
Informative Information is any input that that changes the output of a decision. In the case of the link, maybe it was the promise of a vapid listicle that informed my decision not to click it—making reading it less attractive than passing over it. Informative Information is anything that makes one action more or less attractive than another mutually exclusive action.
Imagine that you receive invitations to both Alice’s Party and Bob’s Party on Friday night, they are at the same time, and on opposite ends of the city from your house making them in a conveniently-contrived-way equally attractive or unattractive. Your friend Calvin messages you, asking if they’ll see you at Alice’s Party. You’re a friend of Calvin, you always have a hoot with him—and the suggestion that he’ll be at Alice’s Party is informative information that makes you decide to go to Alice’s Party.
Of course, a decision always implies the option of not-acting: you can read the listicle or… not, you could go to Alice’s Party, or Bob’s party, or you could stay home and go to neither. That would leave Calvin to stand around awkwardly striking up conversations with Alice’s friends, longing for the easy going banter and general mischief makes your friendship with Calvin so special.
Not all knowledge is informative information. Trivia is not informative information. My knowing that Caesar was assassinated during the Ides of March 44BC is unlikely to influence any important decision I may have (unless you consider a multiple choice question at pub-trivia night important). My opinion that Amon Duul II’s Wolf City is one of my favorite tenuously lupine-themed music titles outside of all of Chelsea Wolfe’s discography is really going to struggle to be informative information.
Is prior experience Informative Information? Good question. I’m going to say “no”.
Prior experience is part of the decision making model, it informs how you weight new Informative Information. I have prior knowledge that articles which promise to be listicles aren’t good reading, and I have prior knowledge that Calvin and I have good time at parties. That isn’t Informative Information, that is part of the decision making model. Knowing that THIS article is a listicle, or that Calvin is attending THAT party (but not Bob’s) is Informative Information.
Sometimes don’t we make decisions based on bad information? Yes, of course.
Informative Information isn’t always good or accurate information, it could be information that was accurate at the time you received it (maybe Calvin catches a cold between now and Friday and can’t go to Alice’s Party), it is any input to your decision which changes the output.
Bad information can inform a decision that detracts from the received value. I suppose if it is perceived to be valuable it still is a useful term—do you think that would get the point across better?
We have Shannon Information, Quantum Information, Fisher Information, and even Mutual Information and many others. Now let me present another type of information which until I find a better name will certainly be doomed to reduplication induced obscurity: Informative Information.
One of the many insightful takeouts from Douglas Hubbard’s Book—How to Measure Anything for me was that if a measure has any value at all then it influences a decision. It informs a decision.
If I see a link come up on my social media feed “5 rationality techniques you can use today” and I don’t click it, that was a decision. I could click it (and commit to reading it) or I could not click it. We all know what a decision is.
Informative Information is any input that that changes the output of a decision. In the case of the link, maybe it was the promise of a vapid listicle that informed my decision not to click it—making reading it less attractive than passing over it. Informative Information is anything that makes one action more or less attractive than another mutually exclusive action.
Imagine that you receive invitations to both Alice’s Party and Bob’s Party on Friday night, they are at the same time, and on opposite ends of the city from your house making them in a conveniently-contrived-way equally attractive or unattractive. Your friend Calvin messages you, asking if they’ll see you at Alice’s Party. You’re a friend of Calvin, you always have a hoot with him—and the suggestion that he’ll be at Alice’s Party is informative information that makes you decide to go to Alice’s Party.
Of course, a decision always implies the option of not-acting: you can read the listicle or… not, you could go to Alice’s Party, or Bob’s party, or you could stay home and go to neither. That would leave Calvin to stand around awkwardly striking up conversations with Alice’s friends, longing for the easy going banter and general mischief makes your friendship with Calvin so special.
Not all knowledge is informative information. Trivia is not informative information. My knowing that Caesar was assassinated during the Ides of March 44BC is unlikely to influence any important decision I may have (unless you consider a multiple choice question at pub-trivia night important). My opinion that Amon Duul II’s Wolf City is one of my favorite tenuously lupine-themed music titles outside of all of Chelsea Wolfe’s discography is really going to struggle to be informative information.
Is prior experience Informative Information? Good question. I’m going to say “no”.
Prior experience is part of the decision making model, it informs how you weight new Informative Information. I have prior knowledge that articles which promise to be listicles aren’t good reading, and I have prior knowledge that Calvin and I have good time at parties. That isn’t Informative Information, that is part of the decision making model. Knowing that THIS article is a listicle, or that Calvin is attending THAT party (but not Bob’s) is Informative Information.
Sometimes don’t we make decisions based on bad information? Yes, of course.
Informative Information isn’t always good or accurate information, it could be information that was accurate at the time you received it (maybe Calvin catches a cold between now and Friday and can’t go to Alice’s Party), it is any input to your decision which changes the output.
Why not just ‘valuable information’, in a Value of Information sense of ‘valuable’?
Bad information can inform a decision that detracts from the received value. I suppose if it is perceived to be valuable it still is a useful term—do you think that would get the point across better?