Imagine a medical system that categorizes diseases as hot/cold/wet/dry.
This doesn’t deeply describe the structure of a disease. But if a patient is described as “wet”, then it’s likely some orifice is producing lots of fluid, and a box of tissues might be handy. If a patient is described as “hot”, then maybe they have some sort of rash or inflammation that would make a cold pack useful.
It is, at best, a very lossy compression of the superficial symptoms. But it still carries non-zero information. There are some medications that a modern doctor might commonly use on “wet” patients, but only rarely used on “dry” patients or visa versa.
It is at least more useful information than someones star sign, in a medical context.
Old alchemical air/water/fire/earth systems are also like this. “air-ish” substances tend to have a lower density.
These sort of systems are a rough attempt at a principle component analysis on the superficial characteristics.
And the Five Factor model of personality is another example of such a system.
Imagine a medical system that categorizes diseases as hot/cold/wet/dry.
This doesn’t deeply describe the structure of a disease. But if a patient is described as “wet”, then it’s likely some orifice is producing lots of fluid, and a box of tissues might be handy. If a patient is described as “hot”, then maybe they have some sort of rash or inflammation that would make a cold pack useful.
It is, at best, a very lossy compression of the superficial symptoms. But it still carries non-zero information. There are some medications that a modern doctor might commonly use on “wet” patients, but only rarely used on “dry” patients or visa versa.
It is at least more useful information than someones star sign, in a medical context.
Old alchemical air/water/fire/earth systems are also like this. “air-ish” substances tend to have a lower density.
These sort of systems are a rough attempt at a principle component analysis on the superficial characteristics.
And the Five Factor model of personality is another example of such a system.