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The informational foundation of the act

Flores, Fernando LU and de Marcos, Luis (2015)
Abstract
This paper presents a theory to quantify the informational value of human acts. We argue that living is functioning against entropy. Acting is presented as a set of decisions and choices to create order that we use as the foundation to develop the concept of complexity of human acts. Frequency theory of probability is then applied to characterize human acts in terms of their degree of freedom and to set up a scale of the information and predictability carried out in human decisions. A taxonomy is also included in the scale categorizing acts as destructive, mechanical, ludic or vital according to their complexity. A formulation to estimate the informational value of human individual and collective acts follows. The final part of the paper... (More)
This paper presents a theory to quantify the informational value of human acts. We argue that living is functioning against entropy. Acting is presented as a set of decisions and choices to create order that we use as the foundation to develop the concept of complexity of human acts. Frequency theory of probability is then applied to characterize human acts in terms of their degree of freedom and to set up a scale of the information and predictability carried out in human decisions. A taxonomy is also included in the scale categorizing acts as destructive, mechanical, ludic or vital according to their complexity. A formulation to estimate the informational value of human individual and collective acts follows. The final part of the paper presents and discuss the consequences of our theory. We argue that technological artifacts embed information and that modernization can be understood as a one-way process to embed acts of ever increasing levels of complexity in devices. However, the total amount of information is conserved and modernity only enables us to redistribute our informational potential. Agnumetry is introduced as a method to quantify modernity. Finally we outline the relation between the informational value of production and the informational value of consumption (operative information), and between them and market value, price and money. (Less)
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author
and
organization
publishing date
type
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
publication status
unpublished
subject
keywords
order, information, social value, human acting
host publication
[Host publication title missing]
DOI
10.13140/RG.2.1.3009.9042
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
41d11b5b-5828-466b-a249-38ae1eac2212 (old id 7584448)
date added to LUP
2016-04-04 13:49:40
date last changed
2018-11-21 21:16:34
@inbook{41d11b5b-5828-466b-a249-38ae1eac2212,
  abstract     = {{This paper presents a theory to quantify the informational value of human acts. We argue that living is functioning against entropy. Acting is presented as a set of decisions and choices to create order that we use as the foundation to develop the concept of complexity of human acts. Frequency theory of probability is then applied to characterize human acts in terms of their degree of freedom and to set up a scale of the information and predictability carried out in human decisions. A taxonomy is also included in the scale categorizing acts as destructive, mechanical, ludic or vital according to their complexity. A formulation to estimate the informational value of human individual and collective acts follows. The final part of the paper presents and discuss the consequences of our theory. We argue that technological artifacts embed information and that modernization can be understood as a one-way process to embed acts of ever increasing levels of complexity in devices. However, the total amount of information is conserved and modernity only enables us to redistribute our informational potential. Agnumetry is introduced as a method to quantify modernity. Finally we outline the relation between the informational value of production and the informational value of consumption (operative information), and between them and market value, price and money.}},
  author       = {{Flores, Fernando and de Marcos, Luis}},
  booktitle    = {{[Host publication title missing]}},
  keywords     = {{order; information; social value; human acting}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  title        = {{The informational foundation of the act}},
  url          = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/6214519/7751757.pdf}},
  doi          = {{10.13140/RG.2.1.3009.9042}},
  year         = {{2015}},
}