What Humans Know

What Humans Know

When he, whoever of the gods it was, had thus arranged in order and resolved that chaotic mass, and reduced it, thus resolved, to cosmic parts, he first moulded the Earth into the form of a mighty ball so that it might be of like form on every side… And, that no region might be without its own forms of animate life, the stars and divine forms occupied the floor of heaven, the sea fell to the shining fishes for their home, Earth received the beasts, and the mobile air the birds… Then Man was born: … though all other animals are prone, and fix their gaze upon the earth, he gave to Man an uplifted face and bade him stand and turn his eyes to heaven (Ovid, Metamorphoses, first Century a.c.).

The measuring rod, the unit of information, is something called a bit (for binary digit). To specify whether a lamp is on or off requires s single bit of information. To designate one letter out of the twenty-six in the Latin alphabet takes five bits (2x2x2x2x2 = 32, which is more than 26). The verbal information content of an average book is a little less than ten million bits. The total number of bits that characterizes an hour long television program is about 10 (12). The information in the words and pictures of different books in all the libraries on the Earth is something like 10 16 or 10 17 bits (thus all the books in the world contain no more information than in broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal valor).

Of course much of it is redundant, but such a number calibrates crudely what humans know. But elsewhere, on older worlds, where life has evolved billions of years earlier than on Earth, perhaps they know 10 20 or 10 30 – not just more information but significantly different information.

Not all bits have equal valor. (Quotations from Megan Jorgensen). Image: © Megan Jorgensen (Elena)