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From: fnwlr1@acad3.alaska.edu (RUTHERFORD WALTER L)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,sci.bio,sci.psychology,alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: The Bandwidth of the Brain
Message-ID: <1991Jan8.190245.7360@ims.alaska.edu>
Date: 8 Jan 91 19:02:45 GMT
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In article <2755@infinet.UUCP>, sena@infinet.UUCP (Fred Sena) writes...
> 
>  2. Transmitted "data" depends on what you are looking for.
> 
>>I wouldn't say these pre-understandings are communication, because they
>>are not necessarily the same between the transmitter and the receiver.
> 
>No, I wouldn't say that either.  What I am saying is they are *involved* in
>communication because the effects of stirring up the pre-understanding is the
>smoking gun that suggests something was indeed transmitted, even though it
>was not "data" in the traditional sense of something which you didn't know
>and now you know.  It's more like a trigger and I suspect that it might be
>"invisible" if you don't know how to look for it.


Pre-understanding (or pre-conception or pre-judgement) isn't data, but only
a means (tool) for the receiver to interpret the data - a shortcut sometimes.
Yesterday I was watching the news - on one station was a report about an oil
spill near Tacoma. I switched stations and saw another report in which some-
body said something similar to this; "... we have had larger outflows before
but this time the controller decided to close the banks..."  It took me a
while to realize that this story was about a  bank failure in New England
and not the oil spill story because I was expecting the other story as soon
as I heard the serious tone and the word "outflow".
In this case my "pre-understanding" was incorrect and wasn't a timesaver.


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      Walter Rutherford
       P.O. Box 83273          \ /    Computers are NOT intelligent;
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                               / \      they just think they are!
 fnwlr1@acad3.fai.alaska.edu
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