[extropy-chat] Rudy Rucker's "The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul" (the metabyss)

[spike]

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...  Have you read an earlier book of Rudy's called 'Inifnity and the
Mind'?  It's great.  Best book about the mathematics of infinity I've
seen...
 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0691121273/qid=1127371705/ 

...



Cool thanks, I am a big fan of Rudy Rucker.  Thanks to
Damien Broderick for introducing us.  Damien has lots
of very impressive friends.

My college roomate once argued that there is a finite
number of possible passwords, given a maximum of
32 characters.  But we all have an infinite number 
of passwords.  For instance, if your password is "spike"
then "spi <del> ike" is also one of your passwords,
as is "spik <del><del> ik <del> ke" and so on.  Even
if your password is only one character, it still
generates an infinite number of variations on the
keyboard: "a", "a <del> a", etc.

So we each have an infinite number of passwords
that will unlock our secrets, yet wrongdoers usually
cannot find even a single element of that infinite
set, so awash are they in a far vaster sea of higher 
order infinity.  Stare into this abyss within a
metabyss.

Here's the punchline: the total infinity of possible
passwords (assuming any finite number of keystrokes)
and the infinity of *your* passwords are the same order
of infinity.  Yet still your secrets are safe.  Ponder
this paradox until you are delightfully insane.  

Math is so cool.  {8-]

spike