On Data
Ideas about Ideas
“On [the] …” are posts based on Apophysics but do not require any previous reading. They are essays that expound on key themes or ideas in philosophy from my own perspective.
In this day and age, data is something to take advantage of. Indeed, in the tech industry, data is considered a powerful force and a valuable asset. Buzzwords related to AI training and (previously) Big Data represent high-level concepts of how data can be used. However, its function in technology and the way we speak of it do not elucidate what data really is. Likewise, the uses of data in technology are merely scratching the surface of the true power of data.
Especially since we consume tremendous amounts of it, the nature of data becomes invisible to us. Data is naturally enigmatic, after all, although it is always right before us. To draw our attention, data must be organized and presented such that it is useful for our goals. Data must convince us that the object of its representation is pertinent in order for us to even perceive it. That’s the trick: when formatted such that it draws our attention, the fact that it is data is not naturally pertinent. Only the importance the thing it represents appears through our faculties. Nevertheless, due to the rise of digital technology, we see data’s true form more clearly now than it has been seen at any other point in recorded human history. Although it still masks itself just as well as it did before in its digital instantiation, the veil is truly thin. It’s time we pull back the veil and take a closer look at data.
What if we try to think of data more abstractly? What would happen if we thought about all of the possible data in the universe? How would this data arise? Does it exist naturally, or is it something that we, as conscious observers, need to create? In order to take a step back, considering data in the abstract sense, the term “data” will need to take on a unique connotation.
It is essential to understand that data is medium agnostic. While it may be understood through either an objective or a subjective lens, I find that it is best to think of data as an activity that can occur through any medium. We will begin by identifying where data occurs in the typical object and subject framework, and later show why the bounds of the typical object–subject framework are an arbitrary limitation on the concept of data. Here are two examples of this that technology has made apparent:
An electrical signal going through a wire
Objectively, there is the wire and the electricity.
Subjectively, there is the reception of the electrical signal, through whatever mechanism or faculty the subject has to receive it.
Data occurs when the subject attributes meaning to the electrical signal.
A series of physical alterations on a hard drive that can be interpreted as 0s and 1s, i.e., bits that are either on or off, triggering or not triggering
The object is the disk with its physical alterations that represent bits.
The subject reads the physical alterations on the disk.
Data occurs when the subject acts as a result of the values of the bits.
Now we might try some more abstract examples:
The faculties of a human, linking senses to the mind
The object is the physical body of the human.
The subject is the consciousness of the human.
Data occurs when the subject is aware of an interaction with the object.
A reader reading a book
The object is the book.
The subject is the reader.
Data occurs when the book is read by the reader.
While each of these cases are interesting examples describing physical phenomena that we associate with data, none of them actually describe data as such. They are, rather, examples of how data is the hidden action behind these commonplace processes. When all one sees are objects and subjects, with the latter directly responding to the former, data goes by undetected; it is only the thing that the data represents that is meaningful in each of these examples. Notably, in the above examples, I am using subject in a bit of an unusual way—not in an unprecedented way, just not in the usual way either. As we continue, it will be more helpful to think of subjects as objects and vice versa; to dispel that division entirely.
If we take the above examples to their natural conclusions, we might consider the interaction of two particles. Say it is a rather “violent” interaction—these two particles are smashed together in a particle accelerator and break down into subatomic particles. Was data exchanged between these two particles? A childlike, but effective way to think about this is to ask the anthropomorphic questions, “What did these particles say to each other? What was communicated? What data occurred?” I suppose the one particle said to the other, “I am HERE!” in the moment of impact, and the other said, “NO! I am HERE!”; thus, the disagreement led to their destruction. I suppose the communication was one of spatial priority, but since neither yielded and each had roughly the same strength of claim on that space, the communication of physical presence led to their destruction. I suppose there was a sort of physics-level exchange of data. In the moment of collision, the moment these particles began interacting, a misnomer we will return to, there is an exchange of spatial-velocity data. Neither particle has any faculties to perceive this data, but they collide nevertheless in something we might call the space–time continuum. In this case, the data that is present is partially observed through instrumentation via the faculties of the particle accelerator, to be then considered by humans. The better our instrumentation is, the more clearly we can observe the data present at the moment of collision.
But we can go further still. Why limit the subject to human scientists and their instruments? Why not, rather, acknowledge the universe as a whole as the subject? Indeed, perhaps it is the perfect subject, that which is objectivity itself. In the universe, there is no need to draw arbitrary lines in the space–time continuum, making claims such as, “the particles began interacting”. Rather, the particles have always interacted, and always will interact—at least since the beginning, and until the end, if there is one. Why is this? Well, each particle, or subatomic particle, or whatever exists, interacts with something else that exists somewhere in the universe at some time. Otherwise, it would not exist, at least so far as the universe is concerned. This interaction affects whatever is being interacted with, and that thing which is being interacted with interacts with some other thing, and so on and so forth until everything has at least indirectly interacted with everything else. Of course, we might measure these interactions and call the result data. Further, we might postulate that that which occurs in the interaction may perfectly be known as “data”. We might even go one step further and say that the interaction may be known only as “data”.
Due to its occurrence in every interaction, data is the mirror entity of reality itself. It is not the existence of the things themselves. However, it is, perhaps we should say, “as a medium”, everything that is knowable about existing things.
If that isn’t mind-bending enough, we have still not taken the above examples to their extreme conclusions, because we are still erring in that we are parsing up the space–time continuum unnecessarily. We are still pretending that discrete “interactions” are occurring, which is no better than using phrases like “began interacting”. To complete this thought, we must admit that data is a continuous event. At least, as continuous as it can be in the universe. Perhaps there is a “tick rate” or a “refresh rate” that may be measured by the time it takes for the speed of light to travel through the smallest unit of space. However, although it may be the frequency of data, it is not the speed of data in light of quantum entanglement. In the typical account, entangled particles must, somehow, exchange data about themselves via “spooky action at a distance”: data occurring over an unbounded space at the speed of, at most, a single tick/refresh of the universe.
The claim I intended to make in this essay is relatively straightforward given the postulations above: I claim that data is always present, all around us, occurring between every existing thing. This is the foundational claim of apophysics. If this is the case, of course data is medium agnostic—it may occur in particles, people, or planets, and it certainly does occur in the very existence of anything.1 While data occurs between physical things, this does not mean that data is physical. While we might use specific media to transmit and receive specific “types” of data, these actual physical underlying mechanisms are not data. The medium is not the message.
Data is as ever-present as existence itself. It is all around us, constantly happening. While we might claim that data arises in or from a particular thing, as I have been alluding to, data is better understood as an active thing. Consider an isolated atom in a system. It is the only atom in the entire universe, as far as it’s concerned. Indeed, this scenario contains within it minimal data. Perhaps data occurs from the existence of the atom itself. But as the atom has no connection to an environment around it, what good is that data? Maybe there is some spatial data regarding “where” the atom is in the universe, but this is truly meaningless, if it even is possible. Indeed, the only reason this thought-experiment is cogent is the fact that there is an observer who is interacting with that isolated atom by observing it. Otherwise, it is entirely devoid of interest and value, debatably not existing in the first place. Perhaps it is useful in the same way that the number 0 is useful: as a thought experiment; as a symbol of naught. Only when observed does it become the number 1, and that number may be even more boring than 0. Indeed, it is not some isolated observation of data that makes it valuable to us, or to the apophysical models, but networked, interconnected, computationally evaluated data. When two 0s get together, the 0s may become 1s as the possibility of interaction arises, and the 1s may begin playing as a 2. The relative nonexistence of the single entity combinatorically explodes as the number of possible interactions with other entities increases.
Put another way, to the extent that a system exists, data occurs. To the extent that data is useful, it is happening, moving, and otherwise interacting, just as the physical world actually happens, moves, and interacts.
On a hard disc, there may be an instantiation that represents much data. However, if that hard drive is disconnected from its computer, that data may as well be uninstantiated, as there exist no faculties through which—no system in which—the data may occur. If the hard disc is shattered, there further exist no faculties to piece it back together, to integrate it into a relevant system. It loses all usefulness when it is removed from the network, when it is isolated from the system. That universe of data has perished, from our perspective, as it is so disintegrated that it can no longer interact. This particular example has some irony in it, as data can never truly perish in the universe, since the universe does not lose or forget data as far as we can tell. The physical alterations on a broken hard disc will go on to engage in meaningful physics-level interactions in the universe, no matter what landfill they ultimately reside in. These interactions will not reach our attention, though, as the data they release will be naught but noise, if perceived by us at all.
Given the examples explored so far, it is fair to say that data is other. Data isn't physical, yet it is difficult to deny its reality. For a physicalist, admitting that something is real, or at least that it should be treated as if it is real, is perplexing. Data isn't even like other phenomenological things; it is not like the typical models of science, with their reductionist yet practical explanations of patterns. Rather, it has, or can in principle have, a 1-to-1 correspondence with reality. The data of reality is definitionally true. How can I deny its reality when it is the only means by which I can perceive existing things?
A distinction must be made between what is real and what has existence. While reality may be multifaceted, not every facet has existence. Existence is an idea that makes sense only in the context of a substrate or medium. Here, in this facet of reality, we call that substrate the space–time continuum, or the universe. In heaven, or some eternal state, perhaps the substrate will be revealed to be God Himself. Data is not like things that have their being in a substrate. Data is the observation about such things, hypothetical or otherwise, occurring only out of the very existence of those things in their respective substrates. Nevertheless, I contest that the realness of data is not predicated on an observer. It is, itself, real, perfectly representative information corresponding to anything that has being. By this line of reasoning, there is a real facet of reality that we might call a data-like non-space (non-substrate) for every existing facet of reality. Both the existing facets and their corresponding data-like non-spaces are real and real facets of reality. It remains to be determined if the data-like non-spaces of different existing facets of reality can be understood in the same non-space, or if they are truly distinct. Actually, it remains to be determined if there really are other facets of reality, and if those facets have things in them that interact in a data-generative way in the first place.
Up to this point, I have attempted to be careful when describing data to describe only true or real data, that is, data that perfectly corresponds to reality; data that is real. This is not the only sort of data. We must categorically acknowledge and define real data in order to distinguish between the other two main kinds of data. Real data is very useful, having substantial power as a concept to the extent that we can represent it in instantiated systems (digital data, digital systems). However, in order to understand the true power of data, we must consider its possibilities beyond our substrate—beyond our universe. These other two types of data correspond to the world of all possibilities in our universe, and to the world of all possible substrates. We may call these three types of data:
Real Data
Hypothetical Data
Dark Data
With real data (hopefully sufficiently) elucidated, hypothetical and transcendent data are relatively simple to understand. Hypothetical data is the set of data which could, hypothetically, be real (realized) in our universe, but may or may not have a 1:1 correspondence with anything that exists in the universe (reality). A simple example of hypothetical data that is not real data can be created with the data of any unique object. A unique object is one that has existence in only a single place in the universe—only a single spot on the space–time continuum. There is only one instance of this object. Hypothetically, we might imagine that this object has moved—its location is different from its actual location in the real universe. There is nothing particularly wrong with the data that occurs from this hypothetically moved object, except that it does not exist in our universe. Of course, it is worth considering how the movement of that object ripples through the data of the rest of the universe and the fact that the hypothetical movement of the object essentially generates a different hypothetical universe, but no alterations in the substrate of reality must occur for this object to be moved; therefore, this is merely hypothetical data. A chair may be placed on any side of a table.
Hypothetical Data must not be called “real” unless it really does have existing things to which it perfectly corresponds. Instead, this type of data may be understood as “hypothetical” so long as it may exist without altering the computational rules of the real substrate that it is hypothetically possible in; the hypothetical universe where the hypothetical data exists must have the same computational qualities as the existing universe but must not be instantiated.2 Humans might try to conceive of hypothetical data, but they do so entirely through real data. What we think might be hypothetical data is actually real, physical interactions occurring in our minds, and, thereby, real data is occurring in our minds that corresponds to the imperfectly rendered hypothetical data that we are trying to conceive of. Unlike the mind of God, our minds emulate and model reality in a reductionist way. Hypothetical data has no data-like non-space to exist in. Well, unless God has thought of every hypothetical reality, and he probably has. Still, I contest, unless these realities are instantiated, the data in them does not occur; therefore, that data remains hypothetical. In this way, hypothetical data implies hypothetical things that have non-existence only as data—hypothetical data—and thereby actually do not exist and are not real.
Dark Data is the third category of data, corresponding to realities, substrates, or facets of existence that are just as real as our own but remain unknowable in our current epistemic position. This data is invisible to our universe, not because it lacks substance, but because it resides in alternative substrates that are not naturally perceivable from within our universe. If such realities exist, then Dark Data is crucial—it represents the information embedded in those alternate substrates, data just as real as real data itself. However, without divine intervention or interdimensional travelers, we can only speculate about its existence, as it may never be accessible to us.
Additionally, there are at least three particularly interesting categories of data that may be found by using simple operations on the above three types.
Transcendent data is a special kind of real data. It is meta-real. Specifically, it is data that occurs in every real facet of reality, in every substrate.3 Given our situation as instantiated whatever-we-are in our own universe, I postulate that there is no reliable way to identify transcendent data. However, the very possibility of its existence is as tantalizing as the possibility of heaven itself. Transcendent data is inherently speculative, just as the existence of other real substrates is speculative. The very category is up for debate. While transcendent data has its purposes in apophysical reasoning in other essays, nothing more needs to be said of it here.
For completeness, there may also need to be a category of data we might call “fake data”. It’s certainly not real, as it is impossible to instantiate within any (hypothetical or real) substrate. However, the very notion of data that is impossible to instantiate is a paradox, a misnomer, an illusion. Any examples one attempts to conceive of become real data that represents hypothetical data, as it seems any idea that one can conceive of is probably instantiable in some substrate and is therefore at least hypothetical. It’s nearly a tautology that conceivable ideas are hypothetical. So, if fake data is a meaningful category, it contains data that is technically impossible for instantiated minds to conceive of.
Finally, we arrive at the space of all possible data. This is probably best understood as a second-order infinite space containing every possible permutation of data of every length, up to and including infinite lengths. Of course, all real data, hypothetical data, and dark data are in this space. Additionally, this space would contain every possible configuration of data, regardless of whether it can ever be realized in any substrate, including fake data, if it is a proper category. It is the totality of all conceivable and inconceivable information, spanning from the smallest, most trivial data points to infinitely complex structures.
This brief article on data is dense. It covers a lot of ground, leaving many arguments, claims, and ideas underdeveloped. As with all of apophysics, this is an intellectual space ripe for vigorous engagement, calling for an immense amount of scrutiny and further refinement. Some of the ideas I’ve developed here and in other apophysics posts will be shown to be wrong. But, as this occurs, I do hope we can all discover more real data.
For clarity, the preposition “in” should be understood here from a subjective standpoint, used here in an attempt to regain, even if briefly, a more normal way of thinking about data. Data may be observed as being “in” something exactly to the extent that that thing is observed. The “between” interaction is still occurring, between the subject and the object.
On Subtrates is probably the next post in this series. Presently, substrates may be understood in the way that I’ve been using the word, namely, as possible realms or facets of reality. The universe is the only substrate that we know of and can perceive data in, as it is the substrate of our own instantiation. If one prioritizes realness of spirit and believes that there is a spiritual substrate, then those with spirits would additionally be able to perceive spiritual data. The perspective of my writing thus far acknowledges the realness of only the material substrate, however, as that is far more agreeable.
Is the set of all data that occurs in every real substrate equal to the exact same set of all data that occurs in every real and hypothetical substrate? I think so, but I’m not sure how to argue for this at the moment.