Saturday 31 January 2015

A fundamental definition of knowledge, What is knowledge?

We can say that knowledge is every bit that we can store in one computer, but this is not as fundamental as the definition that follows.

Knowledge is the information that permits win more that the random in any game.
The concept of game is wide and it is involved in all matter that contains decisions. Every game has different states or different distinguishable situations. The game runs from state to state, until reach one type of state, that is described as final state or result, that ends the game. This final state gives the result of the game; win, lose or some score. 

Every game permits to the players take decisions about what will be the state of the game after the decision is taken. The capacity of the player to change the future state of the game can be much or few, but never none.

If the players use the random to take the decisions, they will win the equivalent of the absolute ignorance. In this case they don´t use any knowledge. If the players uses some kind of information or criteria that drives to win more than the random taken decisions, then they are using knowledge and those criteria or information are knowledge. But if the players get less using some information than using a random criteria, then that information is negative knowledge. As we already know, is better be an ignorant than be wrong.

There are some kind of games that deal about science. In this games the player who wins is the player than better predicts the number that appears in one instrument.

Explained the basis, we can present the next properties of the knowledge.
  1. Two different criteria of the same game, that both of them gives more winnings that random playing, can originate different choices.
  2. One criteria can be unbeatable by another else.
  3. One criteria or knowledge don't have to be presented in formal way, it could be valid a abstract superstition.
  4. The random strategy could get the maximum winning in certain game.

Now, we can say that the fundamental not is that the knowledge has to be falsifiable, the fundamental is that the result of the knowledge in the game has to be compared to the result of the random. When a criteria or theory is presented, they have to have the property of being comparable to result of the random. Or to the results of another theory if we have a previous theory.

Some other relations

If we attend to a Shannon's information theory, then we can understand that one game have a bandwidth. This bandwidth is related to the amount of decisions that one player can take in each state of the game. One player who is more interesting in send a message instead of winning, could use this bandwidth to send it. This can remember us the story about a great chess masters whose ability got down when was hired by the secret services.

The application of one criteria to the game reduces the width of the bandwidth, maximal winning criterias can reduce this bandwidth completely.

¿Can very generalistic perceptions contain knowledge?

When the number of particles grow above certain calculus capacity, we are forced to use more and more generalistic models. Nevertheless in this generalistic levels, the knowledge persist in other forms. For example we have the Darwin and Wallace theory of evolution, biology, animal physiology and so on. Furthermore, when it deals about win more than random in complex issues, like sociology or phycology, nothing appears to prohibit informal criterias like "people run away from burning homes". Of course this is knowledge too.

Friday 30 January 2015

Presentation of site and objectives

My name is IƱigo Azcorra. I was born in 1983 and I am a material and industrial engineer. I live in a noble city of Bilbao in Spain. The purpose of this website is to share with the English speakers the thoughts and reflexions over a wide variety of questions about science and knowledge. I have been writing another web in Spanish since 2007 about the same subject, but certainly it can be reached to more public using English. I will translate my Spanish previos works and publish the new ones in both languages. At least it should be a good way to practice some english writing. So, I hope you can find the articles interesting. You are very welcome and you don't doubt about leaving a comment.