Comment by cgio | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cgio | Hacker News Reader

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From an accounting perspective I am inclined to disagree. Firstly, the way you present functionality as asset and code as liability, you do not make it easy for me to read how they are components of a balance sheet. More specifically, how do you see your balance sheet improving while still being balanced?

Furthermore, both assets and liabilities (including capital) are stock measures. I would consider insight more of a flow than a stock. More specifically, I think it is the process and tools of achieving insights that is the asset. Whether data is part of this asset base is up for grabs, but accountants have not identified any reasonable way to measure it.

"...the light that falls on to your eye, sensory information, is meaningless, because it could mean literally anything. And what's true for sensory information is true for information generally. There is no inherent meaning in information. It's what we do with that information that matters." Beau Lotto

From a very interesting TED presentation.

http://www.ted.com/talks/beau_lotto_optical_illusions_show_h...

And I know I am confusing information with data, but no one has a convincing definition to separate between the two.

I agree with your comment but I wanted to share:

I have constructed the argument before that if you consider functionality as an asset and code as a liability, you can consider a refactor as retained earnings (or stockholder's/owner's equity, whichever you prefer). Along those lines, refactoring code becomes much more palatable.

I know it's a flawed analogy because refactoring costs money, so it isn't really RE. It did help me answer a question along a similar vein to yours ("...how do you see your balance sheet improving while still being balanced?"); where I was assuming a reduction in liabilities satisfied "...balance sheet improving...".

As far as the balance sheet, less code means lower costs and more projects from development. Because it costs less to maintain less code than it does large, convoluted codebases. Are you better off with a codebase that has similar value (functionality) but much lower maintenance costs? The value of a codebase is the functionality it provides, not the number of lines of code in use.

Instinctively management will try to through more resources at a problem instead of paying off technical debt before it becomes unwieldy.

How about "data is the n-dimensionally measured point and information is data plus some reference and dimensional axes" as a working definition?

I don't know if I understand properly, but are the dimensions not implicitly at least defined if we have n-dimensionally measured point? Any additional dimension would be either irrelevant or would be necessitating additional data to populate the dimension

I think this is how Enron did their books.

With respect to your comment about the difference between data and information - I think of information as data that has meaning.

This is a common distinction. The issue is that my information may be your data and therefore any such definition does not refer to data or information but to someone's relationship with it. I allude to that with the quote I included above.

excerpts from http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/02/07/an-information-age-glos...

Data: Any collection of information, bullshit and noise.

Information: Data that has been judged to be true or false through comparison with observed reality at a given point in time.

Bullshit: (1) Data (often a firehose) produced by someone who is indifferent to the truth or falsity of what is being said (2) Data that appears to contain more information than it actually does (3) Noise randomly tagged with truth-values to give it apparent legibility

Noise: The component of data that is neither information nor bullshit and at risk of being prematurely discarded ...

Falsehood: Information that is known to be inconsistent with the observed state of the world.

Truth: Information that is known to be consistent with observed reality at a given time and capable of being unpredictably turned into falsehood by a change in reality in the future.

Illegibility: Information or bullshit that looks like noise to those outside a system, due to the presence of a large amount of metis. (Derived from James Scott).

Metis: A collection of formulas that work to maintain the identity of a system.

Intelligence: The ability to separate bullshit from information.

Belief: Sincere acceptance of the truth or falsity of a piece of information.

Art: the process of creating information starting with bullshit.

I like the definitions, but I can't be the only who notices that according to these definitions data is "information and ...", while information is "data that ...". It looks like a circular definition, which definitely cannot help with distinction.

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