[ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 80, Issue 6

[Ben Zaiboc]

Spike scarily wrote:

> there is
> a really cool algorithm for generating arbitrarily many
> digits of e 
...

> it is analogous to the
> proverbial
> jillions of monkeys pecking at typewriters, and one of them
> eventually
> theoretically produces the works of Shakespeare.  
...
> one can
> easily imagine taking
> the algorithm and running it thru a digital compression
> scheme.  Then take
> the compressed file and compress again.  Repeat
> repeatedly, until one is
> left with a single bit, either a 1 or a 0.  Reversing
> that process, the
> single bit could theoretically be decompressed, repeating
> repeatedly, to
> regenerate the e algorithm, which could then theoretically
> be run until it
> randomly generates every vile evil thing ever imagined or
> imaginable.
> 
> So don't do it!  Don't let your computer sit and
> generate e.  Pi and phi are
> just as bad, for all the same reasons.  By the same
> reasoning, either 1 or 0
> is evil, or rather contains the potential for all
> evil.  We don't know which
> one it is, the 1 or the 0, but one of them must be
> unspeakably evil.  I have
> always had a vague suspicion about that 0, and I just can't
> say I really
> trust the sneaky 1 either.  Watch them closely, those
> rascally 0s or 1s, and
> don't try to decompress either of them a bunch of
> times.  you never know
> what might pop out. 

Spike, you've made me LOL and and also scared the becheezuz out of me!

I don't know whether to bust a gut laughing or quake in terror.
(It's really difficult to do both).

Ben Zaiboc