Toby Ord's new essay asks how much information is really in a photograph
anderssandberg · x · 2026-09-07
Philosopher Toby Ord published an essay, Curating the World, starting from the deceptively simple question of how much information a photograph contains. Beyond the sensor-level answer (e.g., a 20MP, 14-bit RAW file), Ord argues a photo should be seen as an act of communication from photographer to audience, whose information content is also bounded by what lies under the photographer's control. Anders Sandberg responded by wondering whether the manifolds of strongly curated vs. strongly creative artforms could be distinguished in embedding space — and whether one could dualize an artform into its opposite curated/created form.
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