If the atoms are also an alphabet, who is able to read the phrases written with this alphabet? The answer is subtle: the way in which the atoms arrange themselves is correlated with the way other atoms arrange themselves. Therefore, a set of atoms can have information, in the technical, precise sense described above, about another set of atoms. This, in the physical world, happens continuously and throughout, in every moment and in every place: the light which arrives at our eyes carries information about the objects which it has played across; the colour of the sea has information on the
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