Interpretation of descriptions

A little earlier, we talked about how expressions in the natural language we possess are interpreted, and a bit about what happens when we encounter an expression that is not quite familiar.

But what happens in general? When we encounter pieces of information that we do not know how much *we can interpret at all?

Let's roughly say that an interpreter is a little machine that transforms certain symbols into others. This is usually done in order to bring these symbols closer to a convenient form for the reader. We translate our words into machine language to perform some operations there; we translate language expressions between natural languages to understand each other; we give each other keys to decrypt messages and map legends; we write modeling agreements to make it easier to understand how to read a certain diagram.

When there are instructions for interpretation, the signal becomes understandable and distinguishable in the noise. A signal can be considered understandable if you can determine its epistemic status.