[ExI] don't do it! was: RE: european history: was two years in the slammer forblammisphy?

[spike]

> ...On Behalf Of moulton at moulton.com
> Subject: Re: [ExI] european history: was two years in the 
> slammer forblammisphy?
> 
> 
> On Thu, 2010-05-13 at 06:56 -0700, spike wrote:
> 
> > Fred, this was part of an offlist reply to an offlist 
> comment that the 
> > recipient inexplicably decided to post on ExI-chat.
> > 
> You posted your comments publicly to the list.  I responded.  
> 
> Don't try to imply that my response somehow involved Tomasz 
> or me or anyone else putting a private message out the list.
> 
> Fred

I didn't say you, Fred.  I'm not even saying Tomasz did anything amiss.
What I meant was a previous comment was intended by me as an offlist, so I
was surprised to see it on the ExI-chat list.  I don't know for sure the
exact mechanism of how it got out there, but no matter.  I know you are
careful with reply protocol.  It is entirely possible I fat fingered it
somehow myself, or that I didn't notice ExI-chat was in the cc and I hit
reply all.  Tomasz, I don't know that you did anything wrong, I haven't
bothered to track the misstep.  It wasn't recipes for refining plutonium or
anything.  {8^D  

In any case, I always assume everything I post anywhere is as open as a
postcard.  Our email lists have people all over the world, many or most of
whom we never meet in the flesh.  Mistakes are sometimes made with replies.
If my entire sent mail folder were hacked and made public, there is nothing
in there that would cause me to lose sleep.  

Well, wait, let me think about that a minute.  OK, on the contrary, there is
a really cool algorithm for generating arbitrarily many digits of e that I
discussed with some math friends years ago.  Since a transcendental number
eventually generates every conceivable combination of bits, then if you let
a computer grind on it long enough, it is analogous to the proverbial
jillions of monkeys pecking at typewriters, and one of them eventually
theoretically produces the works of Shakespeare.  

By analogy, a computer generating e would eventually produce a string of
bits that matches any arbitrary length of Shakespearian works, or more
seriously, some modern copyrighted work, or still more seriously, a
pornographic photo, and would eventually even feloniously generate child
pornography, all by sheer chance over time.  Since there are infinitely many
different combinations of bits (we might suppose) which could be interpreted
as child pornography, then the algorithm that produces e theoretically
contains every possible vile image that can be imagined.  So I erased the
algorithm.  But still that didn't help, for 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