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Reminds me of a thought I had a while back that given sufficient computational power you could describe any dataset using only two place values in an irrational
by Causality1 7y ago
Reminds me of a thought I had a while back that given sufficient computational power you could describe any dataset using only two place values in an irrational number and an interpretation rule. For example, the complete data for an h265 copy of Avengers Endgame exists somewhere in the digital expression of the value of Pi. It might be googleplexes of digits deep, but it's there somewhere.
- MontyCarloHall 7y agoOnly if that irrational number is also normal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_number), which pi has not been proven to be.
- kvakil 7y agoIn addition, even if a normal number was used, it's far simpler to describe the data by just using a single number alone. For example, a binary encoding of the data (perhaps using a prefix-free code). Using a normal number and two "positions" is just more complicated.
- mc3 7y agoNonetheless, it's freaky that our deepest secrets are encoded into pi. If pi is normal.
- tanelpoder 7y agoAlso, there will be multiple copies of data, some uncompressed, some compressed in different formats like gzip, lzo, etc.
- contravariant 7y agoAnd each copy will occur infinitely often.
- mc3 7y agoAnd man there is a hell of a lot of fake news in there.
- cygaril 7y agohttps://maskofreason.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/the-library-of-babel-by-jorge-luis-borges.pdf https://maskofreason.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/the-library...
- Nition 7y agoThe problem is that the index itself becomes so large, even you use a dataset-optimised number instead of pi, that it's much worse than just storing the original data.
- Causality1 7y agoOh certainly. I was just thinking of it as a way to get around intellectual property laws.