They were vague about it, but they said something about converting it to computer code. I would guess they just wrote it out as ASCII text and counted how many bits of ASCII equivalent they transmitted. (Of course this ignores intonation and emphasis, but I’d guess they did ignore those.)
bleistift2@feddit.de 3 months ago
If that’s really what they did, it’s stupid. First, you need to find a translation for every language to ASCII, which will wildly skew the results. Second, there are many ways to express the same concept, which all vary wildly in length. Take “Hi”, 2 letters, which means exactly the same as “How are you doing?”, 14 letters.
merc@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
It’s similar, but not exactly the same by any stretch. But, yeah, it’s not a perfect method. But, there probably isn’t a perfect method. How would you decide what “1 unit of information” is?
bleistift2@feddit.de 3 months ago
I wouldn’t, because I have no knowledge in the field. But since the paper hinges upon that exact definition, and “They were vague about it”, this raises the biggest red flag I’ve seen in science yet.