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first-level surplus information

📖 Definitions

"Suppose regarding the chess player Mikhail Tal, both agents have the information that (a) he was from Riga. Alice, however, also knows that (b) Riga is a part of Latvia. Alice may then conclude, inferring by deduction, that (c) Mikhail Tal was also Latvian. [...] In our case, Alice has more information than Burhan about the topic ‘S.’ This is surplus information. From the initial information that she had over Burhan, Alice has now managed to increase this surplus. Let us call the information both Alice and Burhan originally had first-level information. The increase in information due to information inferred from the information that the agents already had, we may now call second-level information or inferred information.9 Consequently, the surplus information that Alice had over Burhan may now be called first-level surplus information, and the information Alice derived from the information she already possesses, such that Burhan does not hold the same, may be called second-level surplus information." (Bagwala 2024, 6)

💡 Examples

  • If one person has access to a dataset full of the commute habits of all 10,000 people in a neighbourhood, and another person doesn't, the first person has first-level surplus information.

🔗 Relations

📚 References

  • Bagwala, Abbas. 2024. “On Informational Injustice and Epistemic Exclusions.” Synthese 203 (6): 194. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-024-04636-6.