That sounds reasonable and actually sounds very much like my understanding of truth equals all information.

The only exception being your decision to accept the idea that "false information" is still information, (rather than non-information.)

I don't know of a word that might describe what I mean by non-information other than "junk data."

creativesoul writes:

Universal truth knows no time. It is true now, has always been true, and as far as we know, will always be true.

Jesus says, I am all things, the past, present, and future.

Welcome aboard the Creation Train, creativesoul!!!

If the words have meaning, then the claim has meaning. If the claim has meaning, then it is not meaningless. Meaningless is without meaning, not without truth. Senseless is without sense. Sightless is without sight. Tasteless is without taste. Any term with the suffix "less" attached to it means without whatever the term represents. I mean, that is as simple as it gets, and that is also what "less" is supposed to mean. Now, that is not to say that all definitions/uses are adequate, however, in order to convincingly show the need to change the definition/meaning/use of a term, one must show where that is found to be wanting/lacking. You have not done that.

It is only as a direct result of the curious way that you have equated truth to all information that you can arrive at this need to deny false information it's status as information. One cannot knowingly believe a falsehood, therefore everyone aims at consistency/coherency in their belief, because incoherency suggests something is wrong/false somewhere. Your earlier claim that all information is truth cannot reconcile the fact that false information exists. Therefore, you deny that false information is information at all, and as a post hoc argument meant to support that equation, you've not only erroneously claimed that a false statement is meaningless, but you've now turned to usefulness as a back-up. You're digging a very deep hole in order to defend a clearly false premiss. There are unavoidable and increasingly obvious problems with that premiss. Garbage in---->garbage out.

The claim "Creative has big boobs." is information(data which has been correlated in a meaningful way). It is false. It is meaningful. Those are quite apparent. This claim is information. All information cannot be true. There is plenty of information that is not truth-apt. "Ah shoot!" is information without any possible truth value. It cannot be true, nor false. However, by your equation of truth/information, it cannot be information at all. You attempted to replace false information with "gibberish" by equating false information to meaningless information.

The hole is covered over, filled up, and long forgotten if we apprehend the obvious. All information is not true, therefore information cannot possibly equal truth.

You want to debate semantics, okay. I will narrow the expression to this: The claim's only "meaning" it that it is a false claim or a lie. If that has meaning to you, okay.




If the 'meaning' of the claim is that it is false and it is thus discarded as false then it is useless junk. If you want to call it meaningful useless junk that is your choice of words. I don't think it even deserves the term "meaningful" at all. That is literal semantics. Allow me to use just a tad of artistic licence. I'm sorry my artistic licence confuses you.



Literally, perhaps. But these terms have more than literal meanings. Sightless or Blind can refer to a person who has no vision of the future or who has no imagination. They may have 20-20 vision. Tasteless can refer to a person who burps at the dinner table and wears polka dot ties with striped shirts.



Your literal and restricting use of the term "meaningless" is limiting and restricting. If you want, find a better term, one that fits what I am trying to say. How about:

It is not information it is just useless data or junk. It does not contribute to truth or reality.



I believe that it is your unwillingness give up being the judge over what is true and what is false "information" that you still want to call "useless data" information.

How can "false information" serve truth? How can it deserve the status to be called "information?"





I did not say that "all information is truth." I said that truth equals all information.There is a difference.

All information must contribute to truth. The difference is that a bit of information cannot be ALL information; it can only be part of it, hence if it is true then it is part of universal truth.



You are using only your chosen literal definitions for the way I am using language. Language is not so limited. If you don't like the term "meaningless" then replace it with "useless junk."

I am not defending what you think is my "false premise." That my premise is false is a judgement made by you simply because of the way you think and believe. If you want to communicate with me you need to understand why I am saying what I am saying rather than tell me that I am wrong in the way that I use language to express what I think and believe.



A lie is not information. Its as simple as that.

Your house is on fire.
Your dog died yesterday.
They are coming to arrest you tomorrow.
Nobody really likes you.
You have cancer.

The above are lies. Do you consider them to be information? I could fill pages and pages up with useless junk like that. It is dare I say... meaningless. It is meaningless because it has no relation to the truth. But if you don't like the term meaningless then call it propaganda, lies, junk, but don't call it information. That is the way I think.

Of course you can continue to call it information if you want. I can't do anything about that, its a free country. Yes I am being stubborn on this point. You can be stubborn also and we can just agree to disagree.




"Ah shoot" is not information. But the information derived out of any expression like that is entirely Dependant on personal interpretation of what that might mean in any given situation. It is not the expression itself but the personal interpretation that becomes "information."

According to whom???

Is Satan a thing? Evil? The moss on the tree outside? The gum on my shoe?

Sorry Elmo, but your "train" looks more like a trainwreck to me.

But alas, Creative, you can keep your idea that there is such a thing as "false information" if you want.

In the end I think it is a semantics issue I am not willing to quibble over.

Debate semantics?

Nah. Think what you want. Use words as you see fit. I just showed you how and where your argument fails to match up with reality, even showed you why that is the case. If you choose to equate truth to all information, then in order to be consistent, you'll continue to have to change what meaningless means, what truth means, what information means, what false means, deny the necessity of negation for truth, and on and on and on.

You're entitled to it, it just makes no sense to me, for reasons already explained many times over. It is not a matter of 'right or wrong', it is a matter of intelligibility, coherence.

That is a mouth full of stuff. I'm not sure I understand it, but its difficult to refute. I wish you could learn to write in simple language.




Another very confusing way to define truth.

This seems to mean, what I have said about valid information. If information pertains to truth of what is, then it is valid information. (as apposed to useless junk or false information.)





...and would be a bug in the programing.

Words belong to people who use them. They are created by people and their meanings change because of how people use them. That is how language evolved.




Creative, if what words meant were 100% the same in every case, then there would be no misunderstandings ... ever.




no, its a matter of interpretation and ... your stubbornness. If people don't agree to what you think a word means...or if they do not use it according to your understanding... you naturally think it is their fault, they are wrong.

You expect people to make you understand, and use your language only. You don't make much of an effort to try to understand someone else's use of language.

If they don't speak your language they are **** out of luck talking to you.

I have really gone to the full extent of my time and effort to communicate with you, Creative, but I think I have exhausted my energy and efforts. And after all of this, I still don't have much of a clue about the point you are attempting to make or the reason for your claim that universal morality is objective and not subject to the mind, among other things.

This level of thinking is not in my comfort zone. Its all too mental. It gives me a headache.

Truth is simple.

It is the necessarily presupposed relationship between thought/belief and objective reality. True statements correspond to fact/reality. Fact is the underlying metaphysical properties of the universe and/or it's contents by which true statements are able to correspond.

"The dog has fleas" is true if and only if the dog, the fleas, and the fleas on the dog are properties of the universe and/or it's contents. IOW "The dog has fleas" is true if and only if the dog has fleas.

That is why fact is not opinion. That is also why all conclusions are not opinions. Truth is necessary but separate from belief. If one does not believe that X is true, one does not believe X. Whether or not X is true, is not determined by one believing that it is.

One thing to keep in mind Jb. There are no private languages.

You'll have a very very hard time getting a reasonable person to accept that. It is not only counterintuitive, but it also directly conflicts with current knowledge. Gibberish is information found to be meaningless and/or self-contradictory. Information, in any meaningful use of the term, is organized data. All claims no matter what adjective we use to describe them are information.

The only reason that we can realize that a lie exists is because we know that it is not true. One cannot even describe a lie without necessarily referencing truth, therefore lies necessarily pertain to truth, for without one the other is meaningless. Falsehoods and lies just do not obtain it because they do not correspond with/to relevant fact.

We do not determine fact because facts are properties of the universe. Our statements are true if and only if they correspond to fact/reality.

I'm not so sure about that. There are languages within languages. Every field of study has its own language and terminology.

I had a conversation with my cousin and we are both heavy into computers and stuff and we could not communicate at all.

I am reading a paper by Trevor Pitts about Dark Matter, Antimatter and Time Symmetry and it is a bit scientific. Seems like a different language to me, but I am getting through it slowly.

I am attempting to envision or imagine how you can separate "knowledge" from the human mind. Your aim was originally to define truth as it would exist universally and objectively, not subject to the human mind.

If you have to scrutinize every scrap of information and determine it to be true or false, you are going to waste a lot of time. That is what a computer does. A computer can't think with reason. It can only inspect every element no matter how worthless it is and make mathematical calculations to determine if it is valid information or not. It is not even very good at that. It will often keep a lot of junk data. It has no feeling for the truth, it simply accepts what it is given and gives equal weight to all data. (A computer can have information, but it can't have knowledge and it can't determine what is true. It can only make decisions according to its programming.

In order to decide what is true and what is false information you must have knowledge and the human mind is required for that.

BUT
As I said before, if you want to do that, and if that is how you think it should be or has to be done, that is perfectly fine. I don't think you really get what I am saying anyway. You are content just to think I am wrong.

You can have your "false information" if you want it. It really does not matter. I am not trying to convert you.



Without lies, truth is meaningless? That's a good one.




Falsehoods and lies do not CONTAIN truth. They have no ability to OBTAIN it.




How about this:

We do not determine TRUTH because TRUTH is a natural property of the universe. Our statements are facts if and only if they correspond to truth.

A universal truth is true. It is what it is.

My first husband was a computer programmer, systems analyst with a doctoral degree in math and computer science. He had access to a half million dollar computer that took up an entire room. (They are smaller now)

He wrote a program to try to win a numbers contest, and the computer worked on that program for 4 days at top priority status. In the end, it did not come up with the winning combination of numbers and was beaten by a house wife in New Jersey.

I asked him why. He said because the human mind is actually more efficient in solving problems.

Yep its a mystery...

If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons? LOL!

good one!!

Lemme tell you the difference between human thought and the computer which you're fond of referencing and drawing an analogy between. Computers operate on binary code. All binary code is true in boolean logic. That is why computers cannot tell the difference between the two. That is also one reason why I doubt AI.

'True'... that is. As in there is no reality by virtue of which the code can be compared in order to make a decision regarding whether or not the subject(or computer in this case) believes the claim(code).