j4: (southpark)
j4 ([personal profile] j4) wrote2005-09-09 02:57 pm
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Information theory

I have this theory that some of the documents we're sent for publication on the web are actually intended to contain information.
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[identity profile] fluffymormegil.livejournal.com 2005-09-09 02:02 pm (UTC)(link)
Inconceivable!

[identity profile] j4.livejournal.com 2005-09-09 02:07 pm (UTC)(link)
It certainly looks like a controversial theory, based on the evidence.

[identity profile] hoiho.livejournal.com 2005-09-09 02:15 pm (UTC)(link)
It's all in a s00per seekrit code to communicate with the Lizard Overlords! And you don't have the decoder ring.

[identity profile] rgl.livejournal.com 2005-09-09 02:16 pm (UTC)(link)
Maybe, in a desire to maximize information, each of these publications is a sample of random noise?

[identity profile] j4.livejournal.com 2005-09-09 02:25 pm (UTC)(link)
Half of this hypothesis is almost certainly true, though to be fair I haven't analysed it to see if it's genuinely random.

The other half suggests that there's some kind of deliberate will being exercised rather than just general flailing about.

[identity profile] fluffymormegil.livejournal.com 2005-09-09 02:27 pm (UTC)(link)
You are excluding the possibility that the experimenter is external to the department, and is directing the flailing according to her whimsy.

The Mousetrix

[identity profile] j4.livejournal.com 2005-09-09 02:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Hell, I'm still hanging on to the hope that the whole thing is just a big simulation being run by two white mice. Now, who moved my cheese?

Re: The Mousetrix

[identity profile] lusercop.livejournal.com 2005-09-09 02:43 pm (UTC)(link)
You mean those things that we do experiments on? It must be Friday, I never could get the hang of Fridays...

[identity profile] d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com 2005-09-09 02:20 pm (UTC)(link)
Nope, that's an outdated hypothesis. It's been disproved many times.

[identity profile] rysmiel.livejournal.com 2005-09-09 02:41 pm (UTC)(link)
The words "dust hypothesis" spring uneasily to mind.

[identity profile] j4.livejournal.com 2005-09-09 02:50 pm (UTC)(link)
Is this a Philip Pullman reference? The people I work with don't have souls or anything, you know.

[identity profile] rysmiel.livejournal.com 2005-09-09 03:04 pm (UTC)(link)
No, it was Permutation City; the idea that any information you like, up to and including the entire universe, is implicitly present in the same amount of randomly scrambled, or otherwise organised, bits of information.

[identity profile] fluffymormegil.livejournal.com 2005-09-09 03:17 pm (UTC)(link)
Given that any set of information requires meta-information in order for it to be intelligible, this is trivially true. All you have to do is use a different decoding algorithm.

[identity profile] k425.livejournal.com 2005-09-09 03:00 pm (UTC)(link)
You're working at the university? If yes, then no.

If no, then, well, who knows.

[identity profile] arnhem.livejournal.com 2005-09-09 03:04 pm (UTC)(link)
If yes, then no

I think that just about sums it up, yes. Or no.
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