4 ms·

You already have hundreds of gigabytes of child porn on your computer. What you lack is a program to decode them consistently (I hope). You can read digital i

You already have hundreds of gigabytes of child porn on your computer. What you lack is a program to decode them consistently (I hope). You can read digital information in any way you please. An image is fundamentally two numbers that give you the height and width and a bunch of number triplets that give you the color values for the pixels inside. You can always find a transformation from any number to any image given you allow the transformation function to be odd enough. To put it simply, you sound like this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VB3uQHa14g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VB3uQHa14g When trying to outlaw some numbers in some situations.

Tomte 9y ago
You're so clever! If only anyone had ever thought of it. He could then have written "What Colour are your bits?".
- zeth___ 9y ago
  You are extremely hostile and unhelpful in this discussion. If you want to drag discourse down there are a lot of other forums where one line replies signaling you know something profound without actually saying anything are acceptable. HN is not one of these.
  - Tomte 9y ago
    You should simply read the essay and educate yourself. Obviously you won't, but don't act so high and mighty. Especially since "illegal numbers" has been the standard argument of people with lots of opinion and little knowledge. BTW, massively editing and expanding your comment after a reply without any notice is shady.
    - zeth___ 9y ago
      You are continuing to be hostile. I have read the paper, years ago. His point about 'colour of bits' is conflating a number of different ideas. A chain of trust and intent for starters. A chain of trust is a trivially easy thing to solve: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_of_trust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_of_trust Asking that bits meet some simple predefined function isn't hard. In his example simply demanding that along with the substance you are provided a signed copy of the ph value would mean that bits without color give us all the information we need, given the physical limitations of the universe as we understand it. Intent isn't. But intent has nothing to do with the bits either. Which has been my point from the start: no digital information should be a priori illegal. On the edit: I finished it before your post. I'm not sure how long a line took to write, but I suspect it was way less than the time needed to refresh the thread.
      - Tomte 9y ago
        You're hostile and not discussing in good faith. Please leave HN.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
jerf 9y ago
Using logic similar to chapter six of https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf , though, you can still draw a meaningful distinction between a normal JPG decoder, and your proposed JPG decoder that interprets the Declaration of Independence as illegal child porn. Your decoder must inevitably have a much higher information content in it, and is a "reduction doing all the work" in that case. So while you've got a mathematical point (no sarcasm, I understand what you are getting at), even on purely mathematical grounds I can argue a meaningful distinction; legally it'll be even easier. Interestingly, it's a distinction that happens to more-or-less match our own intuitions about the situation, which is something interesting to ruminate about a bit.

Tomte 9y ago

You're so clever! If only anyone had ever thought of it. He could then have written "What Colour are your bits?".

zeth___ 9y ago
You are extremely hostile and unhelpful in this discussion. If you want to drag discourse down there are a lot of other forums where one line replies signaling you know something profound without actually saying anything are acceptable. HN is not one of these.
- Tomte 9y ago
  You should simply read the essay and educate yourself. Obviously you won't, but don't act so high and mighty. Especially since "illegal numbers" has been the standard argument of people with lots of opinion and little knowledge. BTW, massively editing and expanding your comment after a reply without any notice is shady.
  - zeth___ 9y ago
    You are continuing to be hostile. I have read the paper, years ago. His point about 'colour of bits' is conflating a number of different ideas. A chain of trust and intent for starters. A chain of trust is a trivially easy thing to solve: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_of_trust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_of_trust Asking that bits meet some simple predefined function isn't hard. In his example simply demanding that along with the substance you are provided a signed copy of the ph value would mean that bits without color give us all the information we need, given the physical limitations of the universe as we understand it. Intent isn't. But intent has nothing to do with the bits either. Which has been my point from the start: no digital information should be a priori illegal. On the edit: I finished it before your post. I'm not sure how long a line took to write, but I suspect it was way less than the time needed to refresh the thread.
    - Tomte 9y ago
      You're hostile and not discussing in good faith. Please leave HN.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]

jerf 9y ago

Using logic similar to chapter six of https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf , though, you can still draw a meaningful distinction between a normal JPG decoder, and your proposed JPG decoder that interprets the Declaration of Independence as illegal child porn. Your decoder must inevitably have a much higher information content in it, and is a "reduction doing all the work" in that case. So while you've got a mathematical point (no sarcasm, I understand what you are getting at), even on purely mathematical grounds I can argue a meaningful distinction; legally it'll be even easier. Interestingly, it's a distinction that happens to more-or-less match our own intuitions about the situation, which is something interesting to ruminate about a bit.