I'm disappointed with Information Flow Theory

[gusl]

It seems that much of my attraction "Information Flow Theory" (by Barwise, Seligman and improved on by Keith Devlin) has been misguided. Afterall, what use is their theory? What does it model? I wanted to interpret it causally, but the instructor said it wasn't meant to be.

The only interesting use I could see was representation systems (Shimojima): we can explain why certain representations are better than others using the math developed from the theory. For example, the natural constraints of 2D maps model the constraints of locations on the Earth: "north of" is necessarily a transitive relation in both the Earth and in 2D maps.

But what attracted me to the "theory of information flow" was formalizing common-sense ideas like "The Law of Diminishing Information". I love this kind of fundamental constraints: we use them in arguments, and yet the concept of "information" we use is not formalized.

You can also see this Law applying in mathematical proofs: sometimes you lose information (irreversible steps), sometimes you don't (you can go back). If an implication proof consists only of the latter kind, then the implication holds both ways.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Funny, my romance with information flow theory ended much the same way—I just couldn't see how it helped us do anything. Generally, philosophically useful theories of information flow have not delivered on their promise. I hold some hope in Barwise and Seligman’s developments in Information Flow : The Logic of Distributed Systems, but I haven’t taken a close look at it yet. It seems like an interesting formal treatement. Still, it a long way from metaphor to interesting results and implementations

John