Macroinformation:Concrete versus Eidetic Information

Macroinformation is my term for that part of information which is constructed in the mind, varyingly implicit in the data. Some information is explicit in the data, the data and the information are the same, coextensive: c-a-t, cat. The bulk of information however is emergent from data but is not at all coextensive with it: the meaning of Shakespeare's salad days, for example.

Some macroinformation is "real" in the sense of relating to physics (illustration in a moment); the bulk of macroinformation is eidetic: existing entirely in the mind, wholly and solely in the mind (illustrations ubiquitous at Mi.org).

A. When kids chant nyah-nyah at someone, universally and without the need of musical instruction, they are chanting the fifth and third of a chord, the root, or tonic, of the chord left unchanted.

Nyah

-

nyah

Tonic

Fifth

Third

C, for example

G

E

silent

uttered

uttered

Orchestrated, the C would be present in the bass, in the continuo. Silent, on the playground, our minds hear it anyway. The relationship to C is not fanciful, not imaginary; Pythagoras established it in the overtones of any vibrating string: and the vocal chords are vibrating strings.

B. In contrast the hypocrisy that movie-goers hear in Captain Renault's utterance, "I am shocked, shocked, to discover that there is gambling going on in here," is wholly eidetic. The macroinformation emerges from the discrepancy between the police chief's utterance and his behavior, cashing in his chips from the roulette wheel he professes not to know the existence of. A C chord can be constructed in the lab; but not morality. Ethics exist only in human talk about things. We weave data and more data, macroinformation and more macroinformation, but it's eideticaly-based first and last.

Some macroinformation bridges the "real" and the eidetic. In the joke where the woman has a B tattooed onto each cheek of her buttocks because her husband likes her "beautiful buns," she strips and bends over, he asks, "Who's Bob?" The "B"s are explicit in the data of the joke; the "O" is seen in the mind of the hearer of the joke. The "O" relates to human anatomy which can be established in the lab, but unlike the root of a chord where the relationship is necessary, relating a sphincter to a letter of the alphabet is not necessary: only sentient creatures in a literate culture would do it.
I expect that dolphins would hear the root in nyah-nyah; I doubt if they would get the joke about Bob.

I select macroinformation's prefix to relate my concept to scientists' concept of the macrouniverse where the bulk of the contents of the world are mental constructs. We see light -- we construct "sun," "stars," "galaxies," a "universe" ... each other ... our selves.

"Cat" can refer to a specific organism; more often we mean a concept. Even with "cat," data gets left far behind.