It may seem surprising that, in a world awash of information, it's become almost impossible to figure out what's true, what's valuable, what's useful. It's not an unexpected result, if we look at some basic tenets of information theory (IT). 1/
From IT pov, what matters when recovering/understanding a message is the ratio b/w the strength of the signal carrying the message (eg radio waves) and the amount of noise distorting the signal. If the noise is high, it's more difficult, even impossible to recover the message. 2/
Communication technologies always try to increase the signal to noise ratio. They do it both by amplification of the signal and through reduction of the noise. 3/
Redundancy, i.e. repetition, has an important role in boosting the signal. High quality media (cables, optic fibers, etc.) or active noise cancellation are common methods to reduce the noise. 4/
If we look at human brains as finite information processors, IT will impose some constraints on our capacity to recover information from the bottomless information ocean around us today. 5/
IT will also impose constraints on how information societies can be organized, and which forms of organization will endure and which ones will lead to decay, dissolution or disintegration. 6/
I don't think the current form of organization, in which signal and noise are amplified indiscriminately, is sustainable. There are many forms of noise that can distort a signal (noise has high entropy). Producing and amplifying noise requires less energy (effort, money, etc). 7/
Systems tend to drift toward low energy states, so a society in which the signal and the noise are amplified indiscriminately, will become flooded by noise. Over time, information, common meaning, will become impossible to recover. 8/
That's one reasons why Russian bots spread bullshit about every topic on Earth. It doesn't matter what the bullshit is, as long as they can cheaply produce a lot of it and flood as many channels as possible. 9/
IT is also one of the reasons I've moved away from free speech absolutism. 10/
For example, a rich/powerful minority flooding the information channels with bullshit (noise) is not a neutral action. It degrades the overall capacity of the society to process useful messages. The same is true for well organized, well funded, extremist groups. 11/
IT has no social prescriptions on how to organize to reduce noise. It only tells that, absent those constraints, societies reach a point when recovery of information is impossible. The signs are we are already in a downward spiral. It'll take effort to pull ourselves back. 12/12
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