Also seems a bit misleading to count something like “one afternoon in Vietnam” or “first day at a new job” as a single data point when it’s hundreds of them bundled together?
From a information-theoretic perspective, people almost never refer to a single data point as strictly as just one bit, so whether you are counting only one float in a database or a whole row in a structured database, or also a whole conversation, we’re sort of negotiating price.
I think the “alien seeing a car” makes the case somewhat clearer. If you already have a deep model of cars (or even a shallow one), seeing another instance of a Ford Focus tells you relatively little, but an alien coming across one will get many bits about it, perhaps more than a human spending an afternoon in Vietnam.
From a information-theoretic perspective, people almost never refer to a single data point as strictly as just one bit, so whether you are counting only one float in a database or a whole row in a structured database, or also a whole conversation, we’re sort of negotiating price.
I think the “alien seeing a car” makes the case somewhat clearer. If you already have a deep model of cars (or even a shallow one), seeing another instance of a Ford Focus tells you relatively little, but an alien coming across one will get many bits about it, perhaps more than a human spending an afternoon in Vietnam.