Dictionary == Balance Sheet?

I wanted to re-look at a few words again given my research into intelligence. The words I am re-looking at are the following:

{Data, Fact, Information, Knowledge, Insights, Judgment, Wisdom}

I checked out Merriam-Websters and listing a few of the meanings given for a few selected words above to share the point I want to bring across in this issue.

Data - factual information used as a basis for reasoning, discussion, or calculation

Fact - A piece of information presented as having objective reality

Information - knowledge obtained from investigation, study, instruction

Knowledge - (a) the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association

- (b) acquaintance with or understanding of a science, art of technique

Insight - The power or act of seeing into a situation

I do not know about you but reading the meanings above created more questions than answer for me rather.

Data

Data can be non-factual. They are mere symbols captured, either in a structured (in tables) or unstructured form (text, images, audio). We have used synthetic data to train our models too…so for sure it is not factual and definitely not information.

Yes, data is used as a basis for calculation but for reasoning and discussion, it probably needs another step of turning it into information.

Information & Insights

From the meaning, it seems that knowledge comes before information. But is that really the case? Based on regular usage during any common conversation, knowledge seems to be “harder” to break as compared to information i.e. it’s easier to change information rather than change knowledge in a human.

Now if you look at the meaning of insight, knowledge and information does confer the observer to see into a situation. So does that mean knowledge and information is part of insights then? Sounds about right in my opinion. But if you look at the meaning provided, it seems that we have been using insight wrongly, because it should be a verb rather than a noun though.

So….

Dictionary seems to be like a balance sheet that captures the meaning of words at a moment in time. Dictionary provider might need to update the meaning of the words, besides adding more words to the dictionary. Language and words evolve given changes in the circumstances and environment. As our environment changes because of technology, policies, population etc, languages also evolves together as humans need to communicate the new changes so as to describe and pass on knowledge to the best of ability.

However, from another perspectives, it will be interesting to put together the different versions of dictionary and see the evolution of words of interest, as it will definitely show the trajectory of growth in humanity…assuming we do have different versions and they get updated.

What are your thoughts on this? :)

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Have a great week ahead! :)