4 ms·
No, it is a stupid presentation of an even more stupid idea. Numbers are abstract constructions devoid of any meaning. For mathematics to have any practical ap
by crpatino 10y ago
No, it is a stupid presentation of an even more stupid idea.
Numbers are abstract constructions devoid of any meaning. For mathematics to have any practical application, there are of course ways to assign meaning to numbers, but there are arguable infinite amounts of mappings that can match numbers to concepts. There are also infinite number of ways to match every number to every other... so, if you have enough computing power, it can be demonstrated that you could, at least theoretically, match every conceivable concept to every other.
The idiocity of the legal implications is beyond limits. The only legal defense to such enourmous liability is to restrict yourself, for your practical applications to sufficiently small numbers such that there is not enough entropy in them to hold any potentially forbidden information. Good bye IEEE754, hello PI==3!!!
- dllthomas 10y agoYour analysis here is roughly isomorphic to the original presentation. The law doesn't care about the actual bits, except insofar as they represent evidence of what's really at issue. The law cares that you have some pattern of bits that you laid out with the intent that it represent BAD THING X. If it happens to appear in the digits of PI you've been reading out, you're not at risk. If you go to others saying "You can find the BAD THING at offset XYZ in PI", then that's another matter - you've got the data and the interpretation. On the other hand, if you happen to stumble across one of these primes and don't notice, not a problem. The known "illegal primes" were found specifically by looking for primes that represented illegal things. I'm not convinced that criminalizing possession of data is a good idea, but it's not "under some arbitrary interpretation".