Here's a summary of my argument:
1. All sentences are instructions.
2. An XML document is a sentence.
3. Instructions elicit behavior.
4. Instructions have semantics.
5. Semantics can be represented by an interpreter. This is called interpreter semantics.
6. To understand a sentence -- to understand its semantics -- run it through the interpreter.
Do you agree with my argument?
/Roger
Absolute statements are generally not true. Even mathematical "facts" like "the sum of all angles of a triangle is 180°" are not universal truths (for example in non-Euclidean geometry).
And information could be regarded just as an imprint (photo/projection) of an event. As such, the recording tells us as much about the author and the recording technique as the imprint itself.
Add to this that every fact (or equation) has at least two sides... What could be "useful information" for one type of observer could be just "noise" for another type of observer, and vice versa. Any two such observers (you call them "interpreters") may exist independently and have no awareness of the existence of any other observers. This may give us an infinite number of possible interpretations of the same information.
There is nothing instructional in a dried ancient river bed, just a remnant that may go unnoticed or not attributed any meaning to, in many thousand of years, and the light that comes to us from the beginning of the Universe (The Big Bang, at around 14 billions light-years afar) may never be interpreted or "acted upon as intended" because there might have not been any intention behind this event.
Thanks,
Dimitre
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