It depends on what you are looking for. The signal (and data) are what you are normally looking for. But if you start to analyze the noise, then you will be looking at a different kind of data, and you will start to have a different view of what you consider noise.
There’s something subjective about what we take to be signal vs. what we take to be noise. And @pnelson disagrees with how we make that distinction. That’s what the thread is really about.