Does 'no useful info' unequivocally mean 'some info is present? [closed]
Regarding an event between the interaction of two distant elements, an expert in this field states:
As far as anyone knows, there is no transmission of any useful information
We accept this statement as being truthful, with no attempt to deceive, or mislead...... it is an educational statement, made by an expert who is not setting out to deceive.
This acceptance is a pre-requisite. As has been pointed out "language can be fuzzy", or could be structured to be intentionally misleading - which then opens up the possibility for any answers
Therefore, from a genuine statement, we look to glean the maximum correct information.
Question
Can we definitively state that information is being transmitted (that is useless information)?
All you know from the second part of the sentence is that nothing useful is transmitted. The statement says nothing on the subject of whether complete nonsense is transmitted.
"As far as anyone knows" is a classic get-out clause, but here it may actually have meaning. For example if something is transmitted, there may be no one who can make sense of it, or even know whether sense can be made of it. Thus "no useful information". But if someone turns up who speaks the language /knows the code there would be useful information.
Your meaning would better be conveyed by "only useless nonsense/gibberish/data was transmitted".
You appear to be using 'interpretation' eqivocally: do you mean intention of the speaker (in which case of course only one person could answer) or state of affairs in which this statement is true? If the latter, then of course there are other possibilities. Perhaps 'we' have received nothing at all, but cannot be sure that there was not a transmission on another frequency: perhaps we cannot tell whether what we have received is random noise or a garbled message: perhaps there is a misunderstanding between sender and receiver.