Slashdot Mirror
Information Does Not Exist?
Anonymous Junkie writes "Here is a piece of academic research publised in this month's 'Journal of Knowledge Research' claiming that Information Does Not Exist. The abstract is available freely online. The wording is a little too scholarly for me but it looks like a worthwhile read. I wonder what this new revelation holds for librarians and IT folks."
Information not found.
there is no spoon
/. is not to be used by individuals with high blood pressure or a history of heart attacks
Seriously, this is getting rediculous. Last year, there were jokes, but they weren't every 3 minutes...
Sometimes you've gotta roll the hard six.
Anyone who has tried to read slashdot today can see that there is no information at all.
I am trolling
not on slashdot today anyway
I had a hard time pulling up the article, here is what came up after 5 minutes. I want my time back. Abstract We proffer an epistemological, ontological, and ecumenical analysis of the informatics zeitgeist surrounding librarians and so-called information scientists. A fuzzy systems tautomerism and transformative hermeneutic lexiae with stemming metadata shows that behind an axiometric normalization of mutually reinforcing moieties, institutionalized metaphors, and naïve liturgical dogmas lies nothing more than gormandized aphorisms and pseudoscientific quanta. This endemic helix permeates the koans of nacirema determinates and quidditative paradigms alike. The operationalized gestalt is collapsed, as with its photonic counterpart, via an interaction among the cromulent a priori of epiphenomenal knowledge management and the parsimonious lorem ipsum of atomistic artificial intelligence and its ilk. Neither the nascent yet positivist hyperliteracy movement nor the transactive pedagogical convergence of jingoistic multiliteracies possess the constituent wherewithal for explicating the existence of information per se or affirming the verstehende of contemporary librarianship; you can't eat your cake and have it too. Ramifications for string theory and consciousness studies are also addressed.
mnewberg.com
...dupe the "French Response to Google is Microsoft" thing? It's indistinguishable from an actual April Fools.... joke.
o.O
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
mirrordot doesn't seem to have it either.
I, for one, clicked "Add to Cart" for the full text, and am quite satisfied that I did.
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Well, not that I got anything, information not existing and all, but just like religion and time, I prefer living by the old fallacies
PS: Lord Helmet?? Is that you? It's been a long time
--Wuzoe
I'm a nice person. People like me.
Either information exists or it doesn't.
Say that we have evidence that information does not exist. Then, it can only be expressed through information.
However, if there is evidence that information doesn't exist, then the only real explanation is that we lack the proper language to express that information. Thus, with no proper language to adequately express itself, information appears to not exist.
This reminds me of an anecdote about the famous mathematician G. H. Hardy (it's been credited to others as well):
Hardy once said that he could prove anything if it given a contradiction to begin with. McTaggart denied the consequence: "if 2+2=5, how can you prove that I am the pope?" Hardy replied: "if 2+2=5, 4=5; subtract 3; then 1=2; but McTaggart and the pope are two; therefore McTaggart and the pope are one."
In other words, Hardy argued, and most philosophers would agree, given one false idea or inconsistency you can prove anything.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
The abstract is not only false, it is exceptionally information dense, with many rather esoteric references. For example, it uses the word nacirema, an apparent nonsense word that is actually american spelled backwards. /. firmly in the Guiness book next year. I was very pleased to be able to demonstrate mathematically that this record was a theoretical maximum and will thus stand forever, although the proof is too long to be contained in this post.
This likely comes from a classic parody scientific article "Body Ritual among the Nacirema" from American Anthropologist 58:3, June 1956, Reprinted in "A Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown". Here we have an April Fool that refers to other April Fools.
I have counted 147 such references in this one abstract alone, which is over twice the old world record for an abstract based April Fool and will place
Who is John Cabal?
Wow that's a lot -- I can only see a few dozen, and I wrote it. A few are mentioned elsewhere in this thread, but I doubt anyone has caught them all. I'd list them all in the margin here but there's not enough room.
364 days a year I send out a Library Link of the Day, but like CmdrTaco here, on 4/1 I have a bit of fun.