Knowledge

January 23, 2021

David Deutsch gives definitions of knowledge and information that I like.

Knowledge is a kind of information. Here’s my gloss on his definition of information.

Knowledge is a kind of information that the environment tends to cause to persist.

It can be used to achieve physical transformations. It is necessary to achieve most physical transformations that are possible. The overwhelming number of things that are possible require knowledge.

Knowledge does not require a knower.

The knowledge that a particular organism requires to make a specific protein is encoded in DNA. It is knowledge, not merely information, because the environment has caused that information to persist.

That sort of knowledge has not had a knower—until very recently. And there may still be aspects of that knowledge that are not known by any knower.

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