What does it mean that context determines meaning?

Information has no inherent meaning. Meaning is constructed at the intersection of information and context. Change the context, and the same data, sentence, or signal means something entirely different.

Example: A doctor tells two patients: 'Your test results are positive.' Patient A is testing for pregnancy after years of trying. Patient B is testing for a terminal illness. The words are identical. The medical procedure is identical. The lab report is identical. But the meaning — the felt, lived, actionable meaning — is opposite. Patient A celebrates. Patient B grieves. The information did not change. The context did. Now extend this beyond medicine: 'We need to talk' from your partner versus your manager. 'Revenue is flat' in a startup versus a mature enterprise. 'The model is 95% accurate' in a spam filter versus a cancer diagnostic. In every case, you cannot extract meaning from the information alone. You must know the context the information lives inside.

Try this: Choose one piece of information you encountered today — a number, a statement, a data point, a message. Write it down stripped of all context. Then interpret it in three different contexts: (1) the original context where you first encountered it, (2) a professional context where it would mean something different, and (3) a personal or social context where the meaning shifts again. For each interpretation, write: what does this information mean here? What action does it imply? What emotional response does it trigger? Notice how completely the meaning transforms while the information stays fixed. The gap between interpretations is a direct measure of how much work context is doing — and how much you risk getting wrong when you interpret without asking 'what context am I in?'