You should be happy, since as a consequence of starting to consider information as physical, it means I actually agree with your statement that files are physical things.

You should re-read what was written.
I explained in detail how information cannot be physical and can only be inferred by physical things.
A file is something physical since it is a patten.
Information is not.

I’m not starting to consider information physical at all. Learn to read.

You’re abviously not picking up the point Landauer is making. I’ll quote the title:

Maybe you should read more than the title and the abstract and actually try to understand what’s being told.
You stared off by completely missing what I’ve wrote right in your first paragraph, so it’s not surprising you’ve also failed to understand a technical paper.

Landauer’s point and the idea behind his research is that of the impossibility of dataless information.
This means that it is impossible to get information out of nothing, and for information to exist.
The only possibilities are to either represent the information as a something physical: a pattern or to get it off of a pattern.
It is impossible for information to come off of something else but a pattern.

That’s all that’s said.
Don’t get sidetracked.

Statements like that aren’t compatible with your statements that information IS an abstract entity and is NOT tied to the restrictions of our physical universe.

They are if you could actually read properly.

“Information is not an abstract entity but exists only through a physical representation“

If instead of reading the word “exists” and getting all blinded you could actually read the sentence it would be great.
He’s essentially saying that the only way that information can exist is if you represent it somehow.

Obviously, any sane person knows that a representation is not the thing it represents. That’s why it is a representation.
A drawing of a house is not a house, but a representation of it, just like a representation of information is not information but a representation of it. That representation has a name: Pattern.

And you’ve already been shown how patterns are not information. No-one agrees with that.

Essentially that sentence concludes that, since information cannot exist, it has to be persisted to a physical object, through representation.
Simple as that.

I’m no longer claiming that, I clarified that in my last post. Reading Landauer’s paper and thinking about the implications made me revert to my original position that the physical representation (pattern) IS the information.

So, reading about someone who defends the difference between information and patterns, and the impossibility of existence of information made you go back to the claim that goes against that?
Seriously…
It’s pointless to argue with you. Not only you shift topics left and right (which means you argue for the sake of arguing, not because you have any knowledge) but you do so for the wrong reasons.

They are unseparable and therefore can not be considered independent entities.

They are inseparable because one of them doesn’t exist nor is physical.
Only the other part is physical.
That’s pretty much how body and soul are inseparable. The souls doesn’t exist! of course it’s inseparable.

You’re taken a dive in ridiculous pool again.

You are the one who maintains the argument that information is something non-physical.

It’s not just me.
Maybe you should re-read your sources better or actually pay attention to what I write!

In all of them it says that information isn’t physical but can be represented as something physical.
I took the time to actually quote and show that to you and you still ignore it.

You don’t convey the information. The information is conveyed to you, by the flashing light, the primary data. It’s there, made up of that single datum.

A pattern is show to you. That is the red light, or the text, or whatever other pattern you want.
You’re the only one who can convey information from that pattern.

Don’t start making things up yet another time.

Four incredibly confused and contradictory statements.

If you’re confused, re-read that again. Don’t blame others for your ignorance.
Maybe if you hadn’t skipped and ignored the whole part where information was proven to not be physical, and something different than a pattern (which is said representation) you would understand what’s being written here.
But ignorance is bliss right? You rather ignore that and keep repeating the same bullshit.

First of all, words are always concepts. As such they always contain some information.

Not written words, which is what’s clearly being mentioned in my statement.
But of course it’s easier for you to blame it on me…

Secondly, no matter how you write seven or 7 it will always be a concept. It describes something.

And here we have a great contestant for stupidity of the week.

Seriously do you even know what a concept is???
The word or symbol 7 represents something (the concept of 7). It is not describing anything. It’s just the word “seven”, representing the actual concept of seven which describes a certain quantity.

Is there something you can actually claim to know? I lose a bit of faith in humanity every time I read such statements from you.

Thirdly, words are concepts and obviously exist.

Wow and I’m the one who’s contradictory?
Words exist AND are concepts now???
Seriously…

Words are nothing but concepts, which are constructs of the mind, which by definition do not exist.
Hilarious that everytime you call on me as wrong or confused it always turns out to you misreading or misinterpreting something.

Fourthly, an instance of a concept is always the concept it is an instance of.

Ahahahaha
Sorry but absolutely wrong.
An instance of a concept is just that, an instance of it.
You can call it the same thing, since it would be ridiculous to call some of the concepts differently since they don’t exist and therefore don’t matter until they’re actually implemented and materialized but only an idiot wouldn’t see the difference and consider them the same.

7 seen as information about a specific amount of things is also considered data about that group of things.

Absolutely wrong.
7 as information about something will just be information about that something.
In order for it to be data it would need to be represented as something physical, such as text. Then it would be just and simply data from which you could get information about something.

Read the things you quote and understand them don’t go rambling nonsense like that!

No matter how you slice it, the symbol 7 contains some information in itself and can never be pure data.

What you mean is, since the symbol 7 is a representation of a concept, it is impossible for you not to infer some information from it.
That’s good! That’s exactly why it is data! Data is a pattern from which you can infer information from.
That’s exactly what it says on the paper! Information must always originate from the interpretation of some sort of data.

You’re so confused it hurts.
You clearly are convinced that pure data means data with no information. But data doesn’t have information to begin with since information isn’t physical and data which you can’t infer information from is just a pattern.

You’re saying someone or something is interpreting those signals.

Seeing as it is a fairly unexplored process, I don’t see the issue.
It doesn’t need to be interpretation taken literally as we do of our reality, it could be just the collective result of the signals.

He didn’t get a valid set of information.

He did. If you can’t understand what valid information is, then don’t mention it at all in the argument.
The information constitutes a valid concept (Cat) and perfectly represents something to the person who inferred it, therefore the information is 110% valid.

He created a new set of information based on misinterpretation.

Which is irrelevant. He still managed to infer a different set of information from the same pattern, which, were information to be something physical and with an existence, wouldn’t happen.
I’ve already told you that your point is irrelevant several times before and you keep bringing it again and again. You’re more dense than lead….

he could send that on, but compared to the original information, semantic noise had been introduced.

Which I’ve already said as well that is irrelevant.
Why do you need to go full circle to here when you hit your previous wall??
Just shut up or admit you had it wrong, I don’t care which really.

No, the blueprint is the file you store on your computer.

It most certainly isn’t.
Geez, I’m sorry I ever introduced the word blueprint to replace service. You only managed to confuse yourself and replace the wrong word with blueprint.
You’ve got the intellect of a toddler, geez…

I see what you did there however.
I explained to you how it works about 4 or 5 times and the instant your argument hit a wall you ignored it all, went back to the “They send you a file” broken argument, and limit yourself to a simple statement. No proof whatsoever.
But of course how could you…. you were disproven completely already…

Anyway, get this straight for once, I’ve repeated it to you too many times and this’ll be the last time:

iTunes doesn’t send you files.
iTunes is a service where they provide you instructions on how to build the file.
Once the service is over, you gather all those instructions and build the file yourself, at your disk, on your own. At this point the service was already over.
iTunes didn’t provide you the file, you made it yourself.

You’re still allowed to express yourself, even if no one wants to read it.

It takes 2 to communicate and if no-one is getting the message you are not communicating, and expression can only come through communication.
Unless you indeed are schizophrenic… that would explain a lot…

“It doesn’t say that information is something physical”

You’re abviously not picking up the point Landauer is making. I’ll quote the title:

Information is a physical entity.

End quote

Not much doubt there.

And from the abstract:
Quote

Information is NOT (my emphasis) an abstract entity but exists only through a physical representation, thus tying it to all the restrictions and possibilities of our real physical universe.

End quote.

Statements like that aren’t compatible with your statements that information IS an abstract entity and is NOT tied to the restrictions of our physical universe.

“It clearly states that information cannot exist without a physical representation.
You claim it does and you manage to quote something stating the opposite! Incredible!”

I’m no longer claiming that, I clarified that in my last post. Reading Landauer’s paper and thinking about the implications made me revert to my original position that the physical representation (pattern) IS the information. They are unseparable and therefore can not be considered independent entities.

You are the one who maintains the argument that information is something non-physical. (Doesn’t exist as you somewhat confusedly put it)

“So first and foremost sigma is an instance of information. That’s very different from being information.”

No, that’s exactly what it means. Sigma is information. An instance, a case of, an occurence of information.

“They are not the same thing. You convey the information, from the data.”

You don’t convey the information. The information is conveyed to you, by the flashing light, the primary data. It’s there, made up of that single datum.

“I’m not here to discuss philosophy however, but facts and science.”

Discussing how a concept should be used is a philosophical debate.

“Words are always just data and information is always what you get from them.”
“Seven is always a concept.
The only way for it to become data is if you write the number or the word seven.”
“A concept will always be information and therefore something that doesn’t exist.”
“An implementation of a concept is not the concept, but an instance of it and therefore something else entirely.”

Four incredibly confused and contradictory statements.
First of all, words are always concepts. As such they always contain some information.
Secondly, no matter how you write seven or 7 it will always be a concept. It describes something.
Thirdly, words are concepts and obviously exist.
Fourthly, an instance of a concept is always the concept it is an instance of.

So, 7 seen as a concept will be information. It describes what various things organised in groups of a certain size have in common. 7 seen as information about a specific amount of things is also considered data about that group of things.
No matter how you slice it, the symbol 7 contains some information in itself and can never be pure data.

“That’s why people have thoughts (they’re interpreting those signals) but can’t be certain of having a soul since there’s nothing that can be interpreted as such.
My point is still accurate and doesn’t need your ridiculous assumptions that it would imply the “existence” of souls.”

Well, it rather does. You’re saying someone or something is interpreting those signals.
That implies that something separated from the physical reality does the interpretation.
Since there’s nothing physical going on other than the signals, the logical conclusion from a purely physical pov is that the signals are the thoughts.

“That’s what happened in my example. He misread the word, but still got a valid set of information.”

He didn’t get a valid set of information. He created a new set of information based on misinterpretation. He could send that on, but compared to the original information, semantic noise had been introduced.

“Wrong, since the “blueprint” I got from iTunes is destroyed after it’s used.”

No, the blueprint is the file you store on your computer.

“If no one wants to have or read your pamphlet no one can force people to.”
You’re still allowed to express yourself, even if no one wants to read it.

No mate, that’s 20 links you’re choosing to not understand.

Oh please, don’t lie to yourself.
I even pointed out where you failed to understand them.
Some of them you even ignored key parts like when you kept insisting that data and information were the same and quoted wikipedia and ignored the part that said that information is what you infer from data.

I, unlike you, fully understood them to the point of calling you out on your attempt to pass your misinterpretations as actual arguments.
It’s because you’re so unwilling to admit your own mistakes and quick to shift the blame on others that arguing with you is as pointless as arguing with a wall.

I’ll quote a relevant section, which is more than you ever do as support for your statements.

Oh is the recurring trend on this reply to make things up?
I always support my points with facts and, where needed, quotes which you end up failing to understand, like it happened with the wiki.

However I’m curious to see what I’ve missed. Could it be I actually missed something? I’m willing to bet it’s another of your misunderstandings.

Information is inevitably inscribed in a physical medium.

See what I mean?
One sentence in and you’ve already misunderstood something.
It doesn’t say that information is something physical, but something that you “put” or make out of physical things.
That is, when you construct a pattern according to a set of information so that you can later infer it from the pattern.

Seriously. FIRST SENTENCE and you already are misunderstanding things.
It’s so sad to see how ignorant you are.

It can be denoted by a hole in a punched card, by the orientation of a nuclear spin, or by the pulses transmitted by a neuron.

Here we go again.
By analysing the characteristics of your surroundings we can infer information from them. Those characteristics can be patterns holes in the punch card or pulses, or simple isolated characteristics like the spin (which can still be described as a pattern since it describes a trajectory of an electron).

The quaint notion that information has an existence independent of it’s physical manifestation is still seriously advocated.

And this is the crucial part of your quote that I cannot believe you dared quote.
It’s the single sentence that completely proves you wrong, yet you in your ignorance, still went ahead with it.
Unless there is some physical thing to support the information, information cannot exist.

It clearly states that information cannot exist without a physical representation.
You claim it does and you manage to quote something stating the opposite! Incredible!

This sentence essentially ends your ridiculous quarrel that information exists despite having no physical manifestation.
Information cannot exist. What you can do, however, is create or have some physical thing which will be able to represent that piece of information, so that it can be inferred at a later date.

The clear implication here is that this statement in the Stanford essay is something that Landauer agrees with

So it does indeed seem that we’re not talking about 20 definitions I chose to misunderstand, but that you actually failed to.
Don’t mention clear implications when you can’t even see the actual point Landauer wrote let alone its implications.

The implication on that quote is what I’ve been saying from the start and what’s stated in the paper. Information cannot exist but you can have data, that works as an abstraction or physical representation, of it.
Without a pattern to infer information from, you have no information. That’s the point being made.

Maybe now you’ll finally shut up about non-physical things existing.

And the clear implication here is that since information will always be stored as a pattern in a brain, it can never be manipulated without an increase in entropy, ergo information is physical.

But a pattern is not information.
You’ve linked definitions which you agreed with that stated this clear difference.
A pattern is data and data is not information. Storing information as data creates, obviously, data representing the information.
Any manipulation to that data is simply manipulation of the pattern, something physical and not the information itself. You only get the information again, when you interpret the pattern.

Information is not physical. Data is. Information depends of its physical representations in order to be passed along and inferred but it is not physical.

This is stated and explained beyond shadow of doubt on the quotes and explanations I’ve given.
If you cannot understand these at this point I honestly give up, your brain is indeed incapable of holding any knowledge as you’ve claimed before and you are nothing but a lost cause.

Brains store both data, information and knowledge.

I’m getting tired of you constantly making things up.

If information is stored as data like even you claimed, you’re contradicting yourself when you claim both can be stored.
It cannot.
You store knowledge as data since data is the only physical thing of the tree.

Giving someone the numbers 4 and 5 is giving them some data. This in itself is useless.

No it’s not useless.
From that data you can infer two pieces of information: The concept of 4 and the concept of 5.
You just don’t gain any knowledge since there is none to be had.

Place the numbers in some kind of context such as “when you’ve driven 4 kilometers, you’ll have 5 kilometers left to drive” and you’ll be giving them some information.

Wrong again.
You’re very bad and confused at this. Even more scary is how you convince yourself to the point you don’t even notice the constant mistakes and contradictions.

Once you add more data by making a bigger pattern, you’ll be able to infer more information.
Part of that information now offers context, which will allow you to draw relationships between other pieces of information you’ve inferred and gain some knowledge.
If you understood the message, you’ve drawn the proper relationships. If you haven’t you won’t or you will gain the wrong type of knowledge but that’s completely irrelevant here.

I’m tired of explaining to you how this cognitive process works over and over and you constantly forgetting and ignoring it.
It’s amazing to think you’ve (I hope) gotten out of school with the ability to count and read.

And regardless of whether it’s data or information that is received, or knowledge that is gained, it’s all stored in the brain as some kind of pattern, so all these things in fact have physical representation.

What the?
Man there’s some serious confusion going on there. That’s why it’s so hard argue with you. You don’t understand things, people explain them in more detail and the more people explain you things the more confused you get.
Look at that mess of a statement.

First of all you start off based on wrong misconceptions in your head.
You can only receive information or data and infer information from it. You never receive knowledge directly.

Secondly a representation of something is never the same thing it represents. That’s why it’s a representation.
You constantly ignore this key aspect.

Finally, to say you store data as pattern is redundant and shows how clueless you are.
What you do is store information or knowledge as a pattern but that pattern is not information. You get it by analysing the pattern.
This was stated in the paper. Gain some knowledge for once.

Which is essentially a dualist argument. In that case ideas will demand the existance of the soul which is something science indeed never looks for.

I can’t help it to laugh.
You still used some logic in the first replies, even if they were based on completely wrong premisses.
But now you’re all misconceptions and zero logic.

Seriously?? There is nothing dualist at all. You can stop making things up.
How on earth do ideas demand the existence of a soul??? Ideas are nothing but the result of interpretation of bits of information and a soul is nothing but a concept.
You’ve definitely gone completely retarded.

Science is however constantly looking to explain how the brain creates ideas and does not suppose they are in a non-physical realm at all.

More stupidity based on your ignorance.
Science is trying to explain how the brain can create an idea from interpretation of the series of patterns on the brain.
The patterns are very physical, and the fact that ideas aren’t physical doesn’t stop them from trying to find out how they are inferred from such a physical process.

If we assume that there is something interpreting the patterns, then that needs to be the soul.

WHAT?
Dude, don’t go full retard.
Ideas and thoughts are verifiable mental processes while the soul isn’t.
You can think and you can have ideas but there is nothing that proves the existence of a soul so you can stop with the leaps in logic that make no sense. I’m getting tired of those.

Personally I’m agnostic on the question out of principle. There’s always the possibility that the universe is weirder than we ever imagined.

And I’m an Atheist, so be a logical person and don’t simply pull out leaps of logic like those.
The universe can be weirder than we imagine but for don’t assume there is the possibility of something to exist outside the laws of physics such as god.

And we’ll leave it at this. I’m not here to discuss religions or the lack of them.

Science looks for a way to explain how the brain creates ideas, and the simplest way of removing the body/soul dichotomy is by assuming that the patterns are indeed the thoughts.

The only thing of value in that sentence is the bolded part because there’s a serious assumption based on opinion there.
What you wrote is not true.

If it were, you could “make” thoughts by replicating those patterns elsewhere outside the brain however what you get is just a series of signals flowing and no indication of thoughts or information processing going on.
A fairer and more accurate assumption is that thoughts are the result of the interpretation of those patterns.
This is also in sync with a widely accepted point of view that states that you can simulate intelligence but not actually create it, meaning that the thoughts are not the patterns but result from them.

How can the information act as an intermediate if it doesn’t exist?

It acts as an intermediate by being that is used mentally to create knowledge.

A brain can store information without making the transition into knowledge. It’s possible to store the information E=MC2 without ever really knowing what it means.

Of course it’s still knowledge. You don’t need to know what it means which is another set of knowledge referring to the individual meaning of each of the variables but that doesn’t invalidate the fact that it’s knowledge.
It’s knowledge about a relationship between three things, like all formulas out there.

Those implementations are all of concepts.

That’s contradictory to say the least.
You simply lost it at this point.

Language only exists as a conceptual structure in brains, that can’t exist, you’ve said.

Yes language as a concept is a set of rules. But I wasn’t referring to the concept of language but it’s actual implementation, in this case, the Swedish language.

There’s absolutely nothing about the physical geography that makes one rock norwegain and another swedish.

Which is completely irrelevant. Implementation of said concept delimits a certain piece of land as being Sweden. There’s no need to differentiate it from other pieces of land belonging to different implementations of country.
When you check the whole constituent land it is enough to identify it as one or other implementation without actually marking it.

There is nothing physically distinctive about the materials used to build a flat comparatively to that of an estate either and both are different implementations of the same concept: House.
And both exist as well.

Again you keep getting too confused about this and in your head rush of “He’s wrong, he’s wrong, he’s wrong” you fail to properly analyse the situation.

In which case he didn’t read it correctly and thus did not get the information as sent by the source.

Which is exactly what I’ve been saying.
You can get different sets of information from the same pattern, therefore the information isn’t stored in the pattern, but instead is something you infer from the pattern.
That pattern is nothing but a representation.

If he passes it on, he will be passing on the distorted message and not the original message.

That’s still different from getting noise.
That’s just a different message than what the sender intended.

Semantic noise has been introduced.

Ah of course. Why haven’t I seen this sooner…
You went ahead and confused yourself even more.

As I’ve told you before. Just because things have something in their name, it doesn’t actually make them the exact thing that is on their name.
You see, Semantic noise is not actual noise.

Noise is the absence of information. Semantic noise happens when the receiver isn’t able to infer the information intended by the sender.
That is when a different set of information is inferred instead.

This doesn’t change the fact that, like I’ve said, this is a great example of why information does not exist.
Two different sets of information can be inferred from the same pattern and the same information can be represented by different patterns.
Information does not have a physical existence nor a physical manifestation. It doesn’t even behave like any physical thing.

So that’s why you suddenly brought noise randomly. You yet again misunderstood something simple.

Stanford essay definition of information:

Oh please, stop.
Seriously, you’re going to keep going through definitions after definitions after definitions which you don’t understand therefore you link them because you think they prove your point.
And the second you are told what’s actually written there you’ll suddenly realise the definition is wrong and ditch it, and will look for another definition and this will repeat forever.
I’ve had enough. 21 times you’ve done this and failed. Eventually you’ll go to some shady site who knows shit of what it talks about and was randomly put together.

For someone who claims to accept stuff when they’re explained to you, you’ve proven to be the exact opposite of that.

Every single definition so far has clearly stated that data is not information.
That is proven beyond any shadow of doubt.

Yet I’ll do it for you one last time.

*sigma* is an instance of information, understood as semantic content

1- sigma consists of one or more data;
2- the data in sigma are well-formed;
3- the well-formed data in sigma are meaningful.

First of all, please read and understand the whole paper before quoting.
All that you quoted is properly explained and matches my claims, further down in the paper.

It is also amazing to see how most examples you’ve stated come from this paper and yet you completely failed to understand them or worse, selectively quoted parts of it!
But I’ll get there in a while and completely end this argument once and for all.

So first and foremost sigma is an instance of information. That’s very different from being information.

An instance is always a materialization of something or an implementation of a concept.
So essentially sigma, by being an implementation of information (a concept, or something non physical) can be considered data, or several sets of data depending on the information that it represents.

This is exactly why those 3 points are true.
For you to correctly instantiate the information it has to be done with well formed data, so that information can be correctly inferred from it.
The data has to be meaningful, that is, you have to know how to infer from it, otherwise it’s just a regular pattern to the receiver.

The text says “One instance of information is data” and you read “one instance of data itself can be enough to be information”.
For you to even fail to understand what is being instantiated, is very saddening.

But even if you had doubts (despite the previous definitions saying data is not information so the chances of this one saying the opposite were very slim) you could have kept reading the paper!
On so many instances of the text it says very clearly that information is made from data.
That is, you have data, a physical pattern, and you infer information from that pattern. Therefore information being something not physical and therefore inexistent since it has no physical existence to begin with.

Here’s a few:

“According to (GDI.1), data are the stuff of which information is made.”

Having said this, then comes further and final proof that your theory that information exists despite being physical is flawed.

“According to GDI, information cannot be dataless but, in the simplest case, it can consist of a single datum.”

This goes full circle to what was mentioned in Landauer’s paper.
Information cannot exist by itself, it always has to be inferred by some piece of data which, at the very least can be a single datum.
There is always some physical origin to that information.

A datum, just so you don’t miss that part, is the smallest possible pattern you can have.
Or as they very cleverly put it, the least possible lack of uniformity, which is what can constitute a pattern.
If something is absolutely uniform, a pattern is impossible to exist.

Then if you had any doubts of what data actually stands for you also have clear explanations that say that data is essentially, patterns.

And finally

“So, by default, the red light of the low battery indicator flashing is assumed to be an instance of primary data conveying primary information.”

Right there, black in white, data is what you get information from.
They are not the same thing. You convey the information, from the data.

End of discussion and case closed.
You’ve been through 21 quotes and links who actually confirmed my claims and you managed to read them all wrong.
Enough is enough.

The whole purpose of a philosophical debate is to find out what you think about some thing.

I’m not here to discuss philosophy however, but facts and science.
However what is happening is not shifting positions because of new points. It’s you shifting opinions sometimes twice in the same reply, just to argue against me and to always circle back to the same point that copyright is good and piracy is bad.
Those are always the reasons why you shift so quickly, you can stop lying.

Since the contents of a book aren’t generally just rows upon rows of numbers or words without any context, the book contains more than just data. The data has been structured by someone and is now information.

Data by definition is something structured. It doesn’t become information because of its organization whatsoever.
Context is also something completely irrelevant since context only happens in your head, after you’ve inferred information and linked all the pieces of information together.

I’ve already explained this to you before.
It’s explained beyond any shadow of doubt in the text that data is not information.

You don’t get it. It’s a matter of stages. In written language the most basic level are the letters themselves. They can be organised into words. Compared to a jumbled collection of letters a word is already information. Seen from a higher level that word is just data. Place it in a sentence and you have information of a slightly higher order.

Oh I do get it very well.
Apparently, however you don’t get this at all, to the point that you even call a word data and information at the same time, which simply is not true.

Written language at the most basic level are words.
The atomic constituent of language are words.
Letters are the atomic constituent of an alphabet.

Learn the difference.
Words are always just data and information is always what you get from them.

Place the words on a sentence and you’ll infer several pieces of information instead of just a single one from a single word, which will now allow you to further contextualize that information and actually gain knowledge.
That’s how it works.

If the letters are all jumbled up you don’t have a word nor data since there’s a lack of structure (language) in that pattern in order for it to be considered data.

Don’t claim knowledge of something you have trouble understanding. You’ll just pass as arrogant and ignorant.

“Seven” might be just data, but it is also a concept.

Absolutely wrong.
Not even a shred of truth there.

Seven is always a concept.
The only way for it to become data is if you write the number or the word seven.

There’s no one thing in nature that is “a seven”. It’s a concept that we use to describe a collection of a certain size.

It is both data on one level, but already information on another. It describes the “sevenicity” of something, which is a concept.

And more ignorance showing up.
A concept will always be information and therefore something that doesn’t exist.

It cannot be data.
What can be data is the implementation of that concept which, like I said above, can only be the symbol or word seven for this example.
This is not a matter of levels. It’s a matter of concept and implementation of concept. Two completely different things.
An implementation of a concept is not the concept, but an instance of it and therefore something else entirely.

Concepts are essentially compressed information.

Finally a diamond in the rough.

That’s exactly what makes it contain information.

Of course not.
Please don’t confuse yourself.
There’s types of context in this. One is the context of the pattern. This is what allows you to actually spot the pattern (the red light on the black background in the paper’s example)
And the context of the information.

You’re essentially confusing the two.
The first one is irrelevant to the discussion but is the context that makes it possible to spot the pattern which in turn allows you to spot information.

Now when you infer information from text, it doesn’t have to have context to contain information. Proof of this is loose words.
They contain information, but no context.
Now if you add a full sentence, then it’s possible that each of the words relate to each other.
This means that when you infer the information, each of the pieces of information will automatically relate to each other and this link between pieces of information is what you call context.

Again, don’t mix one thing with the other.

Context is not a matter of only the reader. The context and meaning has been created by the writer.

Oh don’t be ridiculous.
The writer created the text with the intent of the reader to infer the the correct set of information so that he could then contextualize all those pieces of information into the meaningful message that the author intended.

But that is completely irrelevant to the fact that context is unnecessary for the ability to infer information.

The only thing the reader needs is the means to decode the message and the information will be available to him. The data has already been organised into information by the writer.

Woooow. C’mon. You’re not making any sense.

Stop throwing random terms you clearly don’t understand, randomly around your text.
First of all, data is not organized as information. That is wrong and proven beyond any shadow of doubt. Don’t even say such thing again as this is no longer under discussion. You can stop that rubbish.
It’s scary to see how you managed to rationalize a whole argument around that misconception like that. You don’t even re-read that and find it the least weird at all!

The reader needs means on how to infer the information from the text. Those means are called knowledge about the language (the rules on how those patterns are organized), or reading capabilities.
The data has already been organized according to those rules which you call language. This is why you can infer information.

No I agreed that knowledge only happens at this point.

Liar liar, pants on fire.

You agreed with this:
“With those pieces of information you connect the separate concepts with each other (context) by analysis of those bits of information so that you can get a meaningful statement (aka knowledge).”

It’s funny how you’ll always agree with something until you find out it goes against your flawed argument.
Then it’s magically and suddenly wrong.

The writer might have knowledge, but he can’t transfer it telephatically, so he’ll have to write it down as information. In doing so he uses various data, placing them in a meaningful context.

C’mon stop with the stupid contradictions.
You can’t write information. Writing involves manipulation of physical things which information is not.
You write down patterns which are data.

To pass down knowledge you write down a pattern according to a set of rules (language) so that the reader, using those same pre-agreed rules, can infer the information from the text and then gain knowledge.

I’m getting rather tired of repeating myself.

The reader can then read that information and has to be able to process that in order to recreate the knowledge. He might need additional information in order to be able to make sense of it and transfer it into knowledge, but whether he’s succesful or not, he’s still been given some information.

NO! Geez. How far can you keep rationalizing the same mistake until you realize you’re spewing garbage!

The reader can read the text (that is data)and has to be able to infer information from it so that it can be processed as knowledge.
He doesn’t need anything else (unless he doesn’t know how to read, in which case he needs knowledge on how to read, obviously) in order to be able to infer information.
If he’s not successful getting the knowledge, he either failed to fully interpret the information he inferred or he inferred the wrong sets of information from the text. But he still has the txt that is, the pattern.

That’s what you actually wanted to write. Not that ridiculous rubbish that goes against all the definitions and papers you linked and didn’t even read or completely misunderstood.

As I pointed out above, unless science wants to go looking for the soul, the only way is to interpret those signals as the actual physical manifestation in the brain of those ideas.

And you pointed out wrong. I’ve already explained you the difference haven’t I??

You can interpret signals as thoughts.
You cannot interpret anything as soul however.

That’s why people have thoughts (they’re interpreting those signals) but can’t be certain of having a soul since there’s nothing that can be interpreted as such.
My point is still accurate and doesn’t need your ridiculous assumptions that it would imply the “existence” of souls.

Data, information and knowledge are all bound by semantics and specific rules. If something is to be expressed (in written language), there needs to be a concept for it.

Only data is bound by semantics.
Knowledge isn’t bound by semantics since it can be stored in a variety of languages (and is if you speak more than one language).
Information goes by the exact same rules as knowledge.

The only thing that has to be bound by semantics is data since those rules are what’s needed by the receiver to infer the intended information correctly.

In the first case two different semantic systems are used.

Exactly, and irrelevant to the topic at hand.

the information has still been stored as something physical, and when read will be stored in the brain as a physical pattern. That’s the main point.

But there is nothing stored.
You can store physical things. Information isn’t physical.

What you did was represent that information using something physical and a set of rules (a language), so that you can later infer it and then create a pattern in the brain which will be able to recall that same information.

You never store information.

The need for a 1-1 relationship when it comes to physical things is somewhat overstated. You can get hydrogen from electrolysis of both water and hydrocloric acid.

Wow you even failed to get that simple conclusion…….
What I meant is that, when it comes to physical things, there is always a 1-1 relationships between origin and result.
In a chemical reaction, the same reagents will always produce the same results.

However, this is not the case with information. The same information will not always produce the same physical pattern. It can produce an infinite number of patterns.
This is because those patterns represent the information, and are not the information. The information breaks this 1-1 relationship since it can be represented in an infinite number of patterns.
Which is, yet again, one of the reasons why information is not physical.

That didn’t happen in the example.

But it could. I just didn’t want to write an infinite number of possibilities.

Within a given semantic system those two patterns weren’t able to produce more than one result each.

Of course it can. Have you never misread a word???
That’s what happened in my example. He misread the word, but still got a valid set of information.

I can see by your response that you managed to pin-point exactly how iTunes does provide you with something that can be considered a good :)

Then you failed at reading once again.
Information is not a good.
Itunes sells me a service where I get information on how to build a file.
The service ends.
Using the information, I build my file.
I read the file so that the song can be played.

Itunes didn’t provide me any good.
Trying to find flaws on others when they only exist on your argument.

You can’t redistribute without distributing the “blueprint”, that which you originally got from iTunes, the thing which is copyrighted.

Wrong, since the “blueprint” I got from iTunes is destroyed after it’s used.

I disagree with the Wiki there. Even if no one wants to hear your ideas, you’re still allowed to communicate them as long as they aren’t actually hurting someone else. You can print pamphlets and promote whatever obscure idea you wish. There might be no one willing to listen, but that is no reason to stop you from expressing it.

It takes two to communicate.
If no one wants to have or read your pamphlet no one can force people to.

No mate, that’s 20 links you’re choosing to not understand. Did you read the PDF where Landauer unambiguosly states “Information is a physical entity” right in the header?
I’ll quote a relevant section, which is more than you ever do as support for your statements.

Quote:
Information is inevitably inscribed in a physical medium. It is not an abstract entity. It can be denoted by a hole in a punched card, by the orientation of a nuclear spin, or by the pulses transmitted by a neuron. The quaint notion that information has an existence independent of it’s physical manifestation is still seriously advocated. This concept, very likely, has it’s roots in the fact that we were aware of mental information long before we realised that it, too, utilized real physical degrees of freedom.
End quote.

The clear implication here is that this statement in the Stanford essay is something that Landauer agrees with:

Quote:
According to GDI, information cannot be dataless but, in the simplest case, it can consist of a single datum. Now a datum is reducible to just a lack of uniformity (*diaphora* is the Greek word for“difference”), so a general definition of a datum is:
*The Diaphoric Definition of Data (DDD):*
A datum is a putative fact regarding some difference or lack of uniformity within some context
End quote.

In other words the most simple form of information is when it consists of one single instance of data.

“Since we’re talking about manipulating physical things, of course there is heat generated and an increase in entropy as a result, since it costs energy to change the polarity of a bit to erase it).
However, this is all related to *data*.”

And the clear implication here is that since information will always be stored as a pattern in a brain, it can never be manipulated without an increase in entropy, ergo information is physical.

“On your brain you store *knowledge*. Information is an abstraction of knowledge and acts as an intermediary between data and knowledge.
I’ve already told you this and more impressively, you yourself said that knowledge was what was stored in the brain.”

Brains store both data, information and knowledge. Information is how you transmit knowledge, but the creation of knowledge demands that the receiver can understand the information. Giving someone the numbers 4 and 5 is giving them some data. This in itself is useless. Place the numbers in some kind of context such as “when you’ve driven 4 kilometers, you’ll have 5 kilometers left to drive” and you’ll be giving them some information. You aren’t giving them knowledge, since that depends on whether they understood the message.
And regardless of whether it’s data or information that is received, or knowledge that is gained, it’s all stored in the brain as some kind of pattern, so all these things in fact have physical representation.

“Except that concepts are precisely in the realm of ideas until you physically implement them.
Until the instant they are implemented, they don’t exist indeed. ”

Which is essentially a dualist argument. In that case ideas will demand the existance of the soul which is something science indeed never looks for. Science is however constantly looking to explain how the brain creates ideas and does not suppose they are in a non-physical realm at all.

“The point about thoughts/ideas and concepts is on a whole new different topic which is if those result from interpreting the patterns or are the actual patterns.”

If we assume that there is something interpreting the patterns, then that needs to be the soul. Personally I’m agnostic on the question out of principle. There’s always the possibility that the universe is weirder than we ever imagined. Science isn’t looking for the soul however, since that will always be possible to define in a way that places it outside science. Science looks for a way to explain how the brain creates ideas, and the simplest way of removing the body/soul dichotomy is by assuming that the patterns are indeed the thoughts.

“Information doesn’t actually exist at any point and acts as the intermediate,”

How can the information act as an intermediate if it doesn’t exist?

“until knowledge is generated from its interpretation and stored in the brain.”

A brain can store information without making the transition into knowledge. It’s possible to store the information E=MC2 without ever really knowing what it means.

“However Sweden exists since it is *an implementation of the concept* of country.
That implementation consists of a set of rules, values, language and a specific geographic delimitation in a specific part of space.”

Those implementations are all of concepts. Language only exists as
a conceptual structure in brains, that can’t exist, you’ve said. There’s absolutely nothing about the physical geography that makes one rock norwegain and another swedish.

“This is not the case, the message was 100% readable but he inferred the wrong set of information.”

In which case he didn’t read it correctly and thus did not get the information as sent by the source. The message is distorted. If he passes it on, he will be passing on the distorted message and not the original message. Semantic noise has been introduced.

“The definitions say information consists of data.

No it doesn’t, don’t lie.
It says information is what you get *from* data.”

Stanford essay definition of information:

Quote

σ is an instance of information, understood as semantic content, if and only if:

(GDI.1) σ consists of one or more *data*;

(GDI.2) the data in σ are *well-formed*;

(GDI.3) the well-formed data in σ are *meaningful*.

End quote

In other words one instance of data itself can be enough to be information, or then a collection of data organised in a meaningful way can be information.

“You agreed with this before, don’t go back on your word now for the sake of arguing.”

The whole purpose of a philosophical debate is to find out what you think about some thing. If I change my mind on something after considering different points, then that’s exactly as it should be.

“A book has data and nothing else. When you read it you infer information which, after proper analysis, is turned into knowledge”

Since the contents of a book aren’t generally just rows upon rows of numbers or words without any context, the book contains more than just data. The data has been structured by someone and is now information.

“So first you say that information isn’t inferred but then you say that information is the individual concepts that the word represents.”

You don’t get it. It’s a matter of stages. In written language the most basic level are the letters themselves. They can be organised into words. Compared to a jumbled collection of letters a word is already information. Seen from a higher level that word is just data. Place it in a sentence and you have information of a slightly higher order.

“Seven” might be just data, but it is also a concept. There’s no one thing in nature that is “a seven”. It’s a concept that we use to describe a collection of a certain size.

It is both data on one level, but already information on another. It describes the “sevenicity” of something, which is a concept.

Concepts are essentially compressed information.

“Context doesn’t make the book contain information. Context is precisely what you get once you analyse the information you inferred from the data!”

That’s exactly what makes it contain information. Context is not a matter of only the reader. The context and meaning has been created by the writer. The only thing the reader needs is the means to decode the message and the information will be available to him. The data has already been organised into information by the writer.

“Ah so you agree that meaning and context only happens at this point, after information analysis ”

No I agreed that knowledge only happens at this point. The writer might have knowledge, but he can’t transfer it telephatically, so he’ll have to write it down as information. In doing so he uses various data, placing them in a meaningful context.

The reader can then read that information and has to be able to process that in order to recreate the knowledge. He might need additional information in order to be able to make sense of it and transfer it into knowledge, but whether he’s succesful or not, he’s still been given some information.

“However since electrical impulses by themselves aren’t concepts/ideas/etc and these don’t generate such things either elsewhere, it is safe to assume that concepts/ideas/etc are the result of the interpretation of these signals and not the actual signals.”

As I pointed out above, unless science wants to go looking for the soul, the only way is to interpret those signals as the actual physical manifestation in the brain of those ideas.

“But information isn’t bound by semantics or specific rules, data is!”

Data, information and knowledge are all bound by semantics and specific rules. If something is to be expressed (in written language), there needs to be a concept for it.

If data or information is to be shared, both sender and receiver need to agree on the semantic system used.

“Two different sets of information can be stored as the same pattern and the same pattern can lead to two different sets of information being inferred.
There simply isn’t a 1-1 repeatable relationship like it happens with everything physical.”

In the first case two different semantic systems are used. The information has still been stored as something physical, and when read will be stored in the brain as a physical pattern. That’s the main point.

If the same pattern leads to two different sets of information being transferred then it’s a case of using two different semantic systems or a case of introducing semantic noise.

The need for a 1-1 relationship when it comes to physical things is somewhat overstated. You can get hydrogen from electrolysis of both water and hydrocloric acid. Two different compounds that, when processed, gives you the exact same element.

“Something that can produce an infinity of different results for the same origin is impossible. ”

That didn’t happen in the example. That was two sets of patterns that produced the same result. Within a given semantic system those two patterns weren’t able to produce more than one result each.

“So first it is Extreme materialism and now it is non-materialism?”

I didn’t consider all the implications. It can’t be materialism as materialism specifically assumes there is no such thing as “the realm of ideas”.

“The blueprint I get is of the file. That’s what I build off of what I receive from the service.
The file then is, if you will, another blueprint on how to “build” the song.
But this is completely irrelevant now”

I can see by your response that you managed to pin-point exactly how iTunes does provide you with something that can be considered a good :)

You can’t redistribute without distributing the “blueprint”, that which you originally got from iTunes, the thing which is copyrighted.

[I suggest we move the debate on property into the newer post, since that's at least relevant to copyright, and this debate on information has gone pretty far beyond that]

A quick one on this bit though:

“Actually it is. I told you to actually avoid pulling things out of your ass.
Quoting wikipedia yet again:

*”Freedom of speech is the political right to communicate one’s opinions and ideas using one’s body and property to anyone who is willing to receive them””*

I disagree with the Wiki there. Even if no one wants to hear your ideas, you’re still allowed to communicate them as long as they aren’t actually hurting someone else. You can print pamphlets and promote whatever obscure idea you wish. There might be no one willing to listen, but that is no reason to stop you from expressing it.

2013/5/17 Disqus

Because apparently information is physical.
Destroying information will increase entropy.

Oh my I almost fell of the chair with this one while laughing.
First of all, congratulations, that’s 20 links you’ve managed to link and completely fail to understand.

Now let me explain to you basic IT, which is what Landauer’s principle is, to any CS student around the globe.
Laundauer’s principle refers to energy consumption on a computation.
The only thing a computer processes is data as I’ve already shown to you (and you agreed).

So, when the article mentions manipulation of information, it’s not talking about actual information (because that is physically impossible) but the only way that information can be physically manipulated, that is, data.
Just so that there’s no doubt about that, it actually mentions erasing a bit or the merging of two threads (which essentially involves writing/updating and deleting parts of an execution’s context, which is stored as data/bits, no need to further confuse you with what a thread is).
Since we’re talking about manipulating physical things, of course there is heat generated and an increase in entropy as a result, since it costs energy to change the polarity of a bit to erase it).
However, this is all related to data.

Even if you had any doubts, it actually stated it right at the top!
“Landauer’s principle asserts that there is a minimum possible amount of energy required to change one bit of information, known as the Landauer limit:”
Bits, data, what you infer information from and save information as.
You were so sure you understood levels of abstraction and yet when one employs one in a text you can’t properly understand it. What a shame.

Yet, in your rush to prove a flawed point you’ve yet again looked for information and entropy together and didn’t even bother to actually understand what’s going on. For the 20th time.
It is impossible to destroy information (actual information, not the physical container) because of this very principle.

It’s either a physical pattern stored on some medium or an equally physical pattern stored in a brain.

You keep repeating the same mistake over and over again.
Physical patterns are data, not information. Information is what you infer from data.
If it’s physical it’s always data and not information.
On your brain you store knowledge. Information is an abstraction of knowledge and acts as an intermediary between data and knowledge.
I’ve already told you this and more impressively, you yourself said that knowledge was what was stored in the brain.
Yet now you’re ok contradicting that previous statement of yours just for the sake of arguing and avoiding to admit you are wrong.

Anything else would lead to them being placed in a metaphysical “realm of ideas”, which would indeed be classic dualism.

Except that concepts are precisely in the realm of ideas until you physically implement them.
Until the instant they are implemented, they don’t exist indeed.

Even the patterns that store your concepts aren’t the concept itself.
The concept appears when your mind interprets those patterns and infers its information.

You have to understand that what stores the information is not the information itself. Information by definition doesn’t exist.

Again you managed to completely misunderstand a topic and draw wrong conclusions on flawed misconceptions.

Well, few materialists take your position and deny the existence of ideas.

Which is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand however, which is that most materials actually agree on what I’ve said regarding information.
The point about thoughts/ideas and concepts is on a whole new different topic which is if those result from interpreting the patterns or are the actual patterns.
That’s still a matter under analysis and study by current science although what you said about reduced support is not true at all.

However when it comes to information, the cognitive process is extremely well studied and explored and the process of data->information->knowledge is widely accepted and backed by science.
Information doesn’t actually exist at any point and acts as the intermediate, until knowledge is generated from its interpretation and stored in the brain.
But of course you had to divert from the main question yet again.

Countries are a completely social construct, an idea, and as such don’t exist according to your argument.

Oh at least read what’s written!
A country is a concept, and doesn’t indeed exist. However Sweden exists since it is an implementation of the concept of country.
That implementation consists of a set of rules, values, language and a specific geographic delimitation in a specific part of space.

It isn’t noise free. Since he didn’t get the message as the sender intended it, that means some noise has been introduced.

That isn’t noise.
Noise would be if part of the pattern was unreadable, that is, if no information could be inferred from it.
This is not the case, the message was 100% readable but he inferred the wrong set of information.
To introduce noise you would need to actually change the pattern, this didn’t happen.

Instead of finding excuses to why it can’t be, accept if for what it is and stop looking ridiculous maybe?

The definitions say information consists of data.

No it doesn’t, don’t lie.
It says information is what you get from data.
You agreed with this before, don’t go back on your word now for the sake of arguing.
This opinion swinging of yours according to what saves your argument is why you hold zero credibility.

A book contains not only data, a book contains information.

Here you go, making things up again with no logic.
A book has data and nothing else. When you read it you infer information which, after proper analysis, is turned into knowledge.
I’ve told you this so many times! Pay attention for once!

Regardless of whether knowledge is gained or not, the information will always be in the book.

And again you go assuming things.
Regardless of gaining knowledge or not, information can always be inferred from the book.
The book contains only data. It’s a physical thing, which information isn’t.

Stop with that trainwreck of a reasoning that even leads to you contradicting yourself.
Look how ridiculous you are

“from which you infer information.”

Nope

“That information is the individual concepts that each of the words represent.”

Yes, as the data (letters) is organised into a meaningful context (words and sentences) that makes the book itself contain information.

See? There you are contradicting yourself.
You don’t even try to hide it at all, you can’t even tell!

So first you say that information isn’t inferred but then you say that information is the individual concepts that the word represents.
So essentially while you say that it isn’t something you infer from the text, you’re ok with saying right away that it is the concepts you get from reading the text, which is the exact same thing worded differently!
You can’t get more ridiculous than this.

Context doesn’t make the book contain information. Context is precisely what you get once you analyse the information you inferred from the data!
You even said that context and meaning came after on previous replies! Now you’re ok with going from step 1 to 3 then back to 2.

You’ve essentially ran out of arguments at this point and have no clue of what you’re saying. You just write whatever opposes my point and make up some far fetched bullshit of an explanation or base it completely off of a misinterpretation of something you’ve been told a thousand times before.

Yep, and that’s the part that happens in the receivers brain.

Ah so you agree that meaning and context only happens at this point, after information analysis and yet a paragraph sooner you said it happened before.
So you managed to contradict yourself 3 times in 3 paragraphs. Amazing.

However on this one (willingly or not, I can’t tell anymore, you’re too dumb) you actually got it right.

Everything processed by a human can be shown to correspond with brain activity, so scientists who actually know what they are talking about shouldn’t have any problem with this idea.

They know that those processes cause the idea. But they don’t know how. Nor what interprets these.
However since electrical impulses by themselves aren’t concepts/ideas/etc and these don’t generate such things either elsewhere, it is safe to assume that concepts/ideas/etc are the result of the interpretation of these signals and not the actual signals.

But more specifically to the topic. No one has been able to scientifically prove that concepts exist. In fact, so far that’s what exactly consists of a concept: Something that doesn’t yet exist.
It is so far physically impossible to prove existence of something that has no physical manifestation and results simply of interpretation of physical things.
Which is why your argument fails and your point regarding brainwaves completely misses the crucial issue yet again.

That’s not a problem. It just means you’re using different semantic systems to store the information.

But information isn’t bound by semantics or specific rules, data is!
The concept of Cat, is independent of language, semantics, etc. Even mute, blind and deaf people have the concept of cat.

Which is precisely why information isn’t physical nor has any physical manifestation. Two different sets of information can be stored as the same pattern and the same pattern can lead to two different sets of information being inferred.
There simply isn’t a 1-1 repeatable relationship like it happens with everything physical.

You still cannot distinguish the difference between data and information and the more you dive into this the more you confirm that information isn’t physical at all.

Same information, different patterns.

Exactly my point.
Something that can produce an infinity of different results for the same origin is impossible.
When it comes to physical things, given the exact same physical conditions the output is always the same.

With the same set of information you can, however, generate a resulting output of data in an infinity of different ways.
Again, information isn’t physical. You were ok with this once before but you’ve gone back on your word when it meant you could drag your flawed argument for a little longer…

Considering you can’t even identify your argument as non-materialistic

Dafuq?
So first it is Extreme materialism and now it is non-materialism?
Make up your confused mind.
This reply of yours beats your the record of contradictions on one reply.

It is materialism, as I’ve already explained.

That’s a dualist argument, not a materialistic one.

No, that’s a very materialistic argument.
Since they are the result of interpretation of something and not something actually physical, they don’t exist.
Only physical things exist and not your interpretations of physical things.

You don’t make the song. That’s the artistic product.

I make the file from which I can then produce the artistic product.
If you prefer, I never make the artistic product (although I’d consider the file the actual artistic product but whatever, really) until the point I read the file I created.

Geez if someone doesn’t explain you anything literally you get confused straight away. You can’t even follow simple trains of thought.

You might argue that you’re being sent a “blueprint”, but at the same time it’s that blueprint

Close, but still wrong.
The blueprint I get is of the file. That’s what I build off of what I receive from the service.
The file then is, if you will, another blueprint on how to “build” the song.

But this is completely irrelevant now. The point was to explain to you that it is indeed a service and you seem to finally agree on that so, point closed.

And when you buy a cd, the artist or the record company still has the original master. That doesn’t seem to be relevant when it comes to information goods.

Because it obviously is irrelevant. Good on spotting that one, but too bad you decide to write it even when you saw it was irrelevant.
In this situation the original is irrelevant because I’m not copying anything, I’m actually paying so I can gain ownership of the information good.
The example I gave is only relevant to services as you so well spotted, that’s why it’s the actual difference between them!

That’s precisely the difference. On one there’s a change of ownership of the information good, on the other there’s no change of ownership, just a service where I’m provided with know-how on how to create a specific file.

The production cost in the quote refers to the cost of developing the iPhone, the cost of which no individual iPhone is expensive enough to cover.

Then you’ve failed to understand what production cost means and managed to misunderstand your own statement.

Development cost is not production cost. Development cost involves R&D while production cost refers to the costs of actually creating a single unit of a product.
On that quote you actually had it right by mentioning production cost AND R&D separately. However the quote is wrong since each unit does actually cover the production costs, but not the R&D, which is spread across all units since it is far more expensive than the production cost.
Which was precisely one of my points on that argument.

I guess you didn’t learn anything in the end. What a shame.

Actually it’s not. Even if you’re the only person on the planet that’s interested in some idea, you’re still quite allowed to express it as long as doing so doesn’t hurt anyone else.

Actually it is. I told you to actually avoid pulling things out of your ass.
Quoting wikipedia yet again:

“Freedom of speech is the political right to communicate one’s opinions and ideas using one’s body and property to anyone who is willing to receive them”

You’ve already lost your credibility months ago for you to be allowed to simply say things like that. Everyone in here knows you’ll deny everything people tell you and make things up first, and then you’ll slowly learn as people tirelessly explain you how it actually is.
Then when you realise it breaks your argument, you find an alternative topic/issue/strawman so that you avoid losing your argument. That’s how you work.

And when you’re filesharing, you’re also using someone else’s song or movie.

Movies, Songs, etc don’t belong to anyone.
What you have is the distribution rights of whatever can reproduce those.
Copyright grants only a monopoly of distribution, not the ownership of anything. Get this right for once, you’ve ignored it 4 or 5 times already.

Your freedom of expression is limited because it protects someone else’s property, something we’ve seen is an acceptable restriction on various kinds of expression.
That is also a fact you can’t deny.

Whoa whoa whoa there.
What you define as acceptable just turned out into something VERY dangerous and scary.

First of all copyright doesn’t protect anyone’s property. It doesn’t give you any ownership, just distribution rights.
It’s about time you stop repeating the same lies continuously and ignoring what you’re told.

So by your claims, you find this restriction acceptable.

As I’ve explained there are only two limitations of freedom of speech: Willingness to partake in the communication, and property, which can only be mine.
To this point we have freedom of speech and it’s limitations as it is defined as a human right.

Any other restriction to this, can only come in the form of law.
Laws however are at a lower legislative level when compared to human rights. Also, laws vary from country to country.
However, like you said, there are some restrictions that are accepted when it comes to freedom of speech since they have proper justifications.

Some of those restrictions are Slander and Libel to protect public image of people and corporations; Obscenity to protect public decency (you can do it in private) and finally sedition to protect public safety and political stability.

These are all very valid justifications for free speech.

Then you have copyright, that limits free speech under the justification of profit.
This is not an acceptable justification. No human right should be limited for the sake of profit, otherwise you could just as well justify worker exploitation, slavery and many other different acts.

If you find copyright acceptable under that justification then you’ve gained +1 on the scale of spinelessness.
It’s incredible how low you can go to justify your claims…

Copyright, as I’ve tirelessly explained to you, sets up the legal framework for how you deal with the kind of property that can be copyrighted.

Ah you hit the nail on the head. But you probably hit your finger as well since you don’t understand what that actually means.

It sets the legal framework by granting a distribution monopoly.
That’s all it does and that’s all it can do. No ownership whatsoever.

It’s precisely because of this that Intellectual Property isn’t globally accepted as property, also because it restricts nothing or in some cases close to nothing of what is restricted by actual property.

At least accept copyright for what it is.
I don’t deny that currently file-sharing is a crime, I just argue that it shouldn’t be.
Likewise I’m not saying that copyright doesn’t exist. I’m just telling you what it actually is and that it is enforceable this way but that it has consequences.
If you can’t accept it that way then maybe you’re not ok with copyright but that’s entirely up to you and doesn’t change what it is, in the end.

Selling rights to something is what selling something is.

You’re absolutely right.
My bad on that statement, I meant to say part of what I’ve said on the previous paragraph on this reply.
That is, you’re selling one specific right not all the rights which makes the whole difference.

It’s quite possible to enforce ownership, the fact that it is easily stolen doesn’t make it unenforceable.

That’s precisely why you can’t enforce it.
You can’t actually steal it, only copy. There’s no loss of property, therefore it becomes impossible and unnecessary to enforce such a protection.

There is absolutely no property that has absolute enforceability.

Which is irrelevant.
Protecting property involves assuring that you don’t lose ownership of it unwillingly. Or that others don’t damage it.
When it comes to IP you can’t steal nor damage it. You can copy and you can create something based off of it which in no way breaks the original.
Essentially it is not enforceable at all.

By that argument anything that can be shoplifted can’t be considered property as shoplifiting will never be completely stopped.

Nah that’s just you being ridiculous once again after failing to understand what it means to protect property.

Property has a multitude of rules to it, varying according to the nature of the property.
A piece of land has different rules from an appartment which has different rules from a chair.

Bullshit.
Both abide by the exact same rules.
Property essentially grants you the rights of to use, consume, sell, rent, mortgage, transfer, exchange and destroy for you and to forbid whoever you want from performing any of these same acts.
This applies to every single thing that is ownable.
Copyright, interestingly forbids none of these.

You don’t even know what the rules of property are. Incredible how you’re caught lying constantly and you remain indifferent to it.

Except for when it comes to making and distributing additional copies.

That’s not a property right however as I’ve explained above.
It’s a right you have been given through copyright, only and simply.
It’s a limitation imposed by copyright that limits the use of my property, but doesn’t give you ownership of it, nor makes me lose ownership of it either.

That particular property right is something someone else owns in your copy.

Fixed that for you.

Or, more like a great way of respecting people’s property.

What people?? I don’t know who it belongs to, nor if it belongs to anyone.
As far as I’m concerned it is public domain, and therefore, everyone’s property.

Just because someone has left their bike unattended, it doesn’t mean they’ve abandoned it.

Ahhh you had to end with a strawman hadn’t you?

Bikes are always private property.
Creative works can either be or not be copyrighted.
It can’t be copyrighted if you don’t know who the creator is but also in case like Shakespeare’s, they also aren’t copyrighted despite you knowing the author since they’ve been created for a long time already.

I swear you don’t even think half of your claims and examples through…

What gives you that idea? I was talking about information in a pattern or in the memory of a human being.

The fact that you mentioned that to destroy a piece of information you had to do it on every place it exists.
Which is essentially multi-presence or omnipresence, a property no physical thing has.

Yet you’re still bent on saying information can be destroyed as if it was physical, despite being shown impossibilities after impossibilities of it being physical.

That means that in order for information to be stored it has to be done as a physical thing.

No it doesn’t mean that at all.
All it means is that if you want to pass information along you do it by creating an something from which it can be inferred, since information doesn’t hold a single property in common with physical things.

You can stop trying to find loose similarities in order to pass a flawed argument.

The destruction of stored information always involves the destruction or alteration of physical things.

Except there is no destruction of information going on, because it is not a physical thing.
Just the destruction of the physical thing you infer it from.

You already understood that information isn’t physical. Why do you insist in applying physical properties to it regardless??

Where we seem to differ on this is that you’re taking a materialistic worldview to it’s absolute end point, where nothing that isn’t a physical process itself can exist.

Because that’s what it means to exist.
There is no other definition!
You’re the only one who denies this just to avoid admitting you had a flawed argument.

If something doesn’t have a physical manifestation it doesn’t exist!
That’s the basic requirement for something to exist in the first place!

Instead of criticizing others, take a hard look at yourself and stop denying reality!
Have some decency for once.

That leads to some slightly absurd situations where thoughts don’t exist, information doesn’t exist, songs don’t exist etc.

There is nothing absurd. If you could put your lobotomised brain to work you’d see it but you have a tendency to automatically deny everything that clashes with your world view.

Just because a concept doesn’t exist it doesn’t make it invalid or absurd.
The fruits of your imagination don’t exist unless you actually decide to create them, yet they’re valid concepts regardless of your decision to implement them or not.
Those concepts are precisely the things you’ve mentioned. Songs, information, thoughts are nothing but concepts in your head. They don’t exist yet.

The problem is you don’t know what logic is, therefore if something can’t be just simple logic it has to be the only other thing: something that exists, and that’s where you start looking ridiculous.

That’s “extreme materialism” so to speak.

No that’s just reality. Totally based on science.
And it’s actually called Reductive Materialism or scientific materialism, exactly because it’s what is currently scientifically accepted, unlike your para-physical rubbish.

From the pov of even a slightly less extreme materialism all those things do in fact exist since they are the result of physical processes, primarily the processes in a brain.

The problem is you’re denying scientific facts in order to bring meta-physical concepts that have no proven scientific evidence so that you can support a flawed argument.
Those things are the result of the interpretation of those processes, not a direct result of them.

Until you can change the scientific view at a global level regarding this matter, you don’t have a point.

From that pov processes in the brain are physical so they exist, and everything resulting from those processes exists as well.

Except that you’re confusing what the result of those processes are and generalizing to all processes.
The process is a signal passing through a neuron.
The result is the consumption of potassium so that the signal can flow, and the creation of neurotransmitters at the end of the cell so the process can be repeated by the next neuron.
The interpretation of the collective of similar processes happening at a certain instant in time is what is currently considered a thought.

If the result is something physical it exists, in this case the result you’re considering isn’t physical so it doesn’t exist.
Simple as that.

Another consequence of your approach to existence is that Sweden doesn’t exist, for instance, since a country is merely a concept.

Now you’re just being stupid. But you’ve been doing this a lot when you’ve ran out of arguments.

Like all concepts they don’t exist but you can implement them. Sweden is the name you give to one implementation of the concept of country.

Instead of being absolutely retarded try to think before writing.
Or just shut up if you don’t have a point instead of bringing fallacies to the argument.

That’s not a concept of existence that fits in with the world we’re dealing with on a daily basis.
Sweden doesn’t exist as a physical object, but if you try to avoid paying tax based on that claim, you’ll find that the government tends to disagree.

Seriously stop being retarded.
A country is a physical, well defined and observable thing. You’re the one being absolutely ridiculous and finding problems where they don’t exist.

Just because you don’t understand a globally accepted concept it doesn’t make it wrong, it just makes you retarded.

That just isn’t a very working definition of existence.

It is if you apply it properly. Since it is the globally accepted definition.
If you purposely use it wrongly in a fallacious way just in hopes of passing your flawed point across, it will obviously look wrong but the only one being ridiculous is you.

Actually data isn’t something physical, data is an abstraction.

Those are not mutually exclusive, dumbass.

A TV is something physical and yet it’s an abstraction of a lot of other things.
Even matter has levels of abstraction.
An atom is something physical yet it’s an abstraction from electrons, protons and neutrons which in turn are an abstraction from quark UP and quark DOWN.

Data is something physical and an abstraction from information.

Nowhere in the quote does it say it’s not something physical.
Actually values of variables, that is, numbers are patterns which are indeed something physical, just like graphs and images.

For the n’th time use your lobotomised head and think before writing rubbish.

Data, information and knowledge are all abstractions. We already went through that.

We did and yet you’ve still have not fully understood what this means.
Yet you’re quick to make the loosest of the connections if it means you save your flawed point of view yet another day.

Which is what information is according to just about every definition we’ve seen.

So you quote a definition that says that information is something different from data, and then you say processed data (which is still data) is information?
Not only do you not think, but you also contradict yourself on a constant basis!

Data in binary is processed so it can be shown in a way that humans can infer information from it.
1111 is data.
7 is that data after being processed. It’s still data however and not information.
From that piece of data you infer information: The concept of 7; and from that information you contextualize it with remaining pieces of information previously inferred (“X=” for example) so that you can infer knowledge from it.

How you can say one thing one paragraph and the exact opposite the next I’ll never understand. Either you’re incredibly clueless and dumb or you don’t really care as long as you avoid admitting you’re wrong.

That means a computer can process data in order to create information which then can be presented to the human operator, who in turn can use it to gain knowledge. That last step is the only part of this process that’s strictly a case for the mind.

No, this just means you’ve misunderstood a definition you’ve linked for the 17th time and then proceeded to dogmatically draw wrong conclusions from your misconceptions.

A computer displays processed data to you. You’re the one who infers information from it.
Information and its interpretation into knowledge is what happens in your head.

As it is, nothing I’ve read so far really supports your defintion.

Because you’re so very dumb.
Every single definition you’ve linked, the 17 of them, confirm my point.

I took the effort of explaining them to you and showing where you misunderstood them and yet again you disregard all of that.
You’re wilfully ignorant and beyond repair. You rather be stupid and right in your bubble than wrong and knowledgeable.

And the best part is, not a single quote of yours says that information exists outside of your head. Not a single one.
This is why you’ve came to agree that information isn’t physical. Yet now, just to avoid having to admit you were wrong, you’re ok with contradicting your statement on the beginning where you said it wasn’t physical, by saying it actually exists outside of your head.

You’ve completely lost it.
I can find you using two different points for the same argument in almost every topic you put forward. You simply jump between them as you see fit, losing any shred of reason you might have ever had.

The point is that the information carried, when that word is used in biological contexts, is never information that’s intended for conscious minds.

It is, since consciousnesses are the only things that can infer it.
The information isn’t used in the process because the information isn’t physical, while the process is.
The process is just a reaction and doesn’t need information in order to happen.

It’s information intended for and used by the cell and carried across generations of cell duplication. It’s not about information for a conscious mind. Read it again.

You read it again and actually pay attention while doing so.
You’re too quick to throw in the “AHA, Gotcha” card that you jump to wrong conclusions and don’t even notice them.
Repeating the same mistake won’t make it right.

The information isn’t used in the process because the information isn’t physical, while the process is.
That process doesn’t need the information in order to happen, just the reagents and it can happen regardless of the information, for example it can happen outside of the cell in the exact same fashion.
Therefore there is no information intended for anything. You as a consciousness infer information from a structure that is supposed to be used in a process by the cell.

When it comes to messages, that’s hghly relevant. The whole purpose of a message is to get the information to the receiver in unaltered form.

It’s completely irrelevant to whether the receiver can infer the the right set of information or not.
You’ve missed the point yet again.

If the message doesn’t get through as intended, then the information hasn’t been passed.

It has. Not the intended set of information. But information has indeed been passed.
You cannot deny this fact like that and hope it sticks.

What it means is that one person did indeed get the valid set of information while the other person got parts of the information and part errors

So you’ve gone from he got no information, to he got information and errors? Even when the set of information is perfectly valid and with no noise?
It only isn’t the intended one, but it’s still valid and noiseless.

Explain to me why, when your initial point fails, you rather find some other far fetched excuse with no justification rather than actually accept the point presented to you?

What it means is that one person did indeed get the valid set of information while the other person got parts of the information and part errors

That’s absolutely wrong.
No error was introduced in the information at all. Just a different set of information was inferred. The error was in the interpretation process.
Both sets are valid pieces of information.

You clearly don’t understand what you’re talking about. But you rather make stuff up instead.

As I said above, this is a fundamental difference in view.

Which is very important.
Because I’m using a view based on science and you’re using a view based on meta-physics and suppositions that aren’t verifiable or scientifically provable and that defy the accepted definition of existence.

Therefore, your view cannot hold any gound on a scientific argument like this one.

From a less extreme materialistic pov information exists because it is the result of physical processes

.

If you’re ok with ignoring science to pass a point go ahead but not with me. Until your flawed view is scientifically accepted and verifiable it can only be disregarded.
If those processes don’t produce anything physical then they produce nothing.

Exactly. Knowledge stored in physical format. It’s not just data, it’s ordered and structured data, i.e. information.

Oh geez you managed to contradict yourself tree times on the same point in one reply.
So you’re again saying that data is information just to pass an flawed argument across even though it completely undermines your previous one and you’ve quoted something that says they’re something different?

Oh well what can I do… you’re that “special” guy….

Sorry but data is not information.
Ordered and structured data is just data. Data is ordered and structured by definition. Data is a pattern and patterns are ordered and structured by default.
I’ve lost track of the countless times I’ve explained this to you and yet you’ve constantly ignored it.

That data is what you infer information from like your definition says.
And knowledge is later inferred from that information like your definition says.

How can you quote one thing, agree with it and then contradict it a few paragraphs later?????????
This is more than enough for someone with a spine to have a strike of sanity and shut up, but not for you…

To infer means to deduce or conclude (information) from evidence and reasoning rather than from explicit statements.

So can this be the 18th thing you failed to understand?? I guess it is. Are you aiming for a quarter of a hundred mistakes?

Most importantly, it means to derive from something by reasoning.
A pattern is not an explicit statement. It’s just a pattern!

A statement requires meaning, and context. Two things you can only get after information is inferred. This was already explained to you!
First you infer information from the pattern (Text), then you analyse those bits of information to get a statement.

That’s what you do when you’re reading! I’ve explained this to you before and yet now you randomly decide to ignore all the steps and say we’re reading statements?
The more things are explained to you the less you understand. You’re ridiculous!

the text itself is just that: an explicit statement.

The text is nothing but a pattern from which you get a statement at the latest stage.
You’re ignoring levels of abstraction you yourself admitted that existed just for the sake of disagreeing!

You have the text/pattern (data) from which you infer information.
That information is the individual concepts that each of the words represent.
With those pieces of information you connect the separate concepts with each other by analysis of those bits of information so that you can get a meaningful statement (aka knowledge).

That’s the three levels of abstraction right there.

Like most of the terms we’re debating, existence has a wider range than you’re letting on.

Except you were ok with my claims when you were misunderstanding your links and thinking they were something else but the instant you were shown they confirmed my claims you decided they were wrong and you had to find a scapegoat.
The problem with that scapegoat is you’ve now abandoned any scientific fact and are now justifying your claims with meta-physics.

We’re discussing things according to accepted, scientifically proven concepts. If you’re going to ignore science and bring scientifically unproven and dubious terms, for the sake of arguing against me you can stop.
You can’t counter science with meta-physics, that makes no sense and only shows how desperate you are to prove a point you can’t prove, to the point you have to ignore science itself.

Concepts (or imaginary creatures) don’t exist as physical things, but they exist as expressions of the human experience.
Two different modes of existence, but existence nontheless.

Which is completely irrelevant.
We’re discussing physical existence as it is the only way that’s currently accepted for existence by any scientific community.

Whatever else you claim to exist can’t be proven or scientifically verifiable at this point, and certainly you in your infinite ignorance aren’t the one who’s going to present this change in the worldview to them.
So if your argument is based on something that can’t be proven it is essentially dead on arrival because for it to hold any ground you have to abide by the burden of proof in your claims, which is the problem with your argument, it’s impossible to prove.

That means not all patterns are “real”. You can perceive patterns that do not exist.

What’s the problem with the word real now? Is your argument starting to clash against your previously far fetched claims about existence?
You obviously have severe problems understanding what’s being told.

It means all patterns are real but your perception of them can be flawed.
But when you’re perceiving something wrongly it doesn’t change reality in any way.
The pattern doesn’t change, reality doesn’t change, your perception of it is just flawed. That’s why it’s called an illusion. Because it isn’t real and therefore doesn’t exist.
But there’s still only one pattern. Your brain just can’t interpret it properly.

When you construct a face in the bark of the tree that’s a subjectively created pattern. You’re imposing something on reality that isn’t there.

Are you absolutely retarded??
When you draw a face in bark it is there. It’s a simple pattern who you identify as a face because it has the basic characteristics of a face and it most certainly exists.
It doesn’t have to be an exact representation of a face for the pattern to be called a face, it’s still a pattern and a face!

If you can’t understand what representations are just say so instead of spewing the dumbest things.

The first sequence given in the clustering illusion link showed we have a tendency to assume there’s a pattern to things that are actually random.

Which is why it’s called an illusion.
If you’re somehow proposing that illusions are real now I’ve got bad news for you.

Precisely because it’s an illusion it doesn’t exist.
We aren’t inclined to create patterns at all. We however can wrongly perceive reality but that in no way changes reality.

You can’t even understand how the real world works!

That’s the patterns you store on various media.
Without a physical manifestation of information, it could never be stored.

Which is exactly why it is never stored to begin with!
You just create a pattern from which you can infer information from!

You sometimes get to the right conclusions and till can’t see how they completely undermine your argument.

The patterns are not a physical manifestation of information because the same information can come from different patterns.
If a pattern was the physical manifestation of information, then equal sets of information would always manifest themselves in the same way, that is, with the same pattern.
This clearly doesn’t happen, because information has no physical manifestation. It doesn’t even exist in the first place.

Which means they exist, even according to materialism, since they are the result of physical processes.

Please, if you don’t know what you’re talking about, just shut up.

According to materialism, they don’t exist. Because they are the result of interpretation of physical processes, not the actual matter/energy involved in the processes.
You don’t even know what materialism is!
Read what is written, don’t assume!

And yet again, since materialism is the currently accepted scientific explanation for existence because the alternatives can’t be scientifically proven, your argument hold no validity whatsoever.

I see your point, but if they don’t provide you with artistic products, how do you manage to get them at all?

I make them. I’ve already explained this.
Once I’ve gathered all the needed information I use it to build the file myself.

The information good is on iTunes, after you buy it, it appears on your hard drive.

No, it doesn’t magically appear on my hard drive.
Itunes provides a service where they send me information according that template in their servers.
As I receive that information I use it to create My file.
There is no change of ownership going on, because the original is still on itune’s servers, so it can’t be a sale of a good to begin with.
Therefore it can only be a service. The resulting good is created by my machine, according to what the service provided.

Other than that the product is the same.

The ending result is irrelevant. A lot of things can be provided both as goods or as services.
What you described is exactly the reason why one is a good and the other is a service.
On one I gain ownership of something that previously belonged to someone else while on the other there is no change in ownership, I create my own according to what is provided to me by the service.

Actually a service is also being performed. The guy accepts your money and gives you change, he might even give you a plastic bag for the cd.

Don’t be ridiculous just for the sake of arguing.

Accepting my money and giving me the respective good is the act of purchasing.
It’s not a service. Additional free goods provided along with the purchase are irrelevant to change this fact.

Yes, but what it hangs on is if you’re winding up with a product that you didn’t have before using the service and that you can continue to use when the service is over.

Which is completely irrelevant.
A lot of services end up with resulting goods.
If someone pays me to provide a software development service, the exact same thing is going on.
I provide the service where software is developed and, in the end, the customer keeps the resulting product: The software.
Just like what happens with the “barista” and a lot of other services.

With iTunes and the barista you do, with the car mechanic /moving guy not.

Which is exactly why it’s completely irrelevant.
Don’t get confused now.

So, how do you think that contradicts what I wrote 2 posts ago?

You’re clearly saying they sell under the production cost and that each iPhone unit doesn’t pay its own production costs.
This is the opposite of what you wrote 2 posts ago saying that the price includes production costs.

It’s about communicating one’s opinions and ideas. That’s a very wide area. All the things I listed were about expressing some kind of idea.
The willingness of someone to receive the idea isn’t a primary concern.

It is a key necessity.
Again, if you don’t fully understand what you’re talking about, don’t.

Lot’s of ideas are expressed that some individual might prefer not to receive, and they’re still protected under the freedom of expression.

Some, not all.
But when you “speed to show your joy” you aren’t passing any message along, and if you were, you’d still be imposing it on someone.

It’s not an absolute right however, and as you correctly point out one of the possible restrictions is if the expression makes use of someone else’s property.

Nor have I said it was. It’s well defined that it has to be done with my property and to those who are willing to partake in it.
Those are the only situations I am defending because all the remaining aren’t even covered to begin with and rightly so, otherwise, like you said, vandalism would be allowed.

Which of course using copyrighted material to express yourself does.

I could see this coming from a mile away.
No, file-sharing does not break freedom of expression. The opposite is true however, copyright enforcement goes against freedom of expression.

When I’m filesharing I’m using my files (which are my property) to send information to someone who is willing to receive it.
Copyright limits the use of my property in this case, effectively going against my freedom of expression. This is a fact you cannot deny.

Copyright, like I’ve tirelessly explained to you, doesn’t grant you ownership of anything, just a distribution monopoly.
You don’t own all the files you have the copyright to, no matter how many times you try to spin this, it simply isn’t true.

Actually, no such legal limitation exists. The only thing limiting people from creating additional distribution channels is their willingness to invest money into setting them up. Anyone can negotiate a business deal with rights holders and start selling music.

That sounds like a big legal limitation to me.
You’re only allowed to do so with an authorization from someone, like the only state-authorized newspaper.
The only difference is actually on WHO grants the authorization.

If the rights holders on the other hand wish to limit the amount of places that can distribute their products, that’s absolutely no different than what ANY business anywhere is allowed to do.
Ford retailers have neither an obligation nor an automatic right to sell BMWs and if Ford decides to not set up a retailer in some specific location, that’s certainly not considered a restriction of expression.

What an incredibly huge strawman!
There’s an incredibly huge difference you’re ignoring!
Those are two absolutely different cases!

Rights holders limiting the distribution of their products is ok. Rights holders limiting the distribution of other people’s property is not.
I don’t need license from ford to sell my car. I however need a license to sell ford’s cars.

There’s a huge difference.
If I don’t have a ford’s reseller license they won’t sell them to me in the first place. However, once I’ve got them I can sell them since they’re already my property.
There’s no private property being limited in here. Which is why no restriction on freedom of expression is going on.
With copyright you’re limiting both the goods you own and the ones you no longer own. This is wrong.

The person who wrote the song owns the rights to it.

Owning the rights to it is obviously not owning it.
Stop confusing something so simple.

They can decide how, where and when it gets distributed. Those rights can be sold and bought. That makes it property. You’re working to change that, but currently that’s how it is.

I’m not looking to change anything.
You’re the one who can’t see the difference in what you write and what you actually think it means.

Selling rights to something is different from selling something.
You can say the rights are property, even though it’s still a bit far fetched but at least rights are enforceable by law.
But copyright still doesn’t give you ownership of the song. Just all the distribution rights which essentially makes it a monopoly on distribution.
Something very different.

When you distribute a copy, you’re distributing the song. Every copy is of the same song.

You’re indirectly distributing the song.
You’re indeed distributing copies of the same thing.
Still what you’re distributing is information goods from which the song can be played. Not the actual song.

The reason there are no complete analogies with tangible property is because it isn’t tangible property.

It isn’t property, period.
No other type of property exists.

It is physically impossible to enforce ownership of intangible things which renders intangible property an impossibility.

Intangible property can’t be logically expected to work the same way tangible property does.

Actually it can.
Property only has one single set of rules.
In order for something to be considered property it has to abide by those rules.
The fact that intangible property cannot is the reason why IP is not considered property to begin with.

The owner of the song still has a property stake in every copy of the song. You’re allowed to use it under certain conditions, but not under other.

That’s complete bullshit. The owner has nothing on the copy.
The copy is solely and exclusively my property. He couldn’t even enforce said stakes even if he had it.

But if the account holder can’t be reached, what then

What does it matter? The copyright belongs to the account and the account belongs to someone.
There’s no need to contact the person. The link exists regardless since only one person can access the account.

If something is relatively new it’s assumed to be under copyright.

Which is a terrible assumption.
If something is new but you don’t know who the creator is and it doesn’t say who it is in the place you got it from nor in that something itself, then there’s no possible way to know who the copyright is attributed to or if it is, even.
So to assume the opposite is a serious error of judgement.