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Death Note: L, Anonymity and Eluding Entropy (2017)

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Re: Death Note: L, Anonymity and Eluding Entropy (2017)

#41

Post by arugulum »

danShumway wrote: post #36
arugulum wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person is capable of writing down X, it's a handful of digits. Moreover it is not unreasonable for an amateur mathematician to do so. The fact that they entirely lucky that the series of digits indeed satisfies the mathematical condition we want is incidental but I believe abides by Death Note rules.

I think "capable" also takes into account knowledge they have. It's been a while since I watched Death Note, but isn't this brought up as a reason why Kira can't do, "writes down L's real name, then dies of a heart attack."? It would be theoretically possible for someone to be lucky enough to guess L's real name, but apparently the note has a bullcrap detector or something where it eventually just says, "no, they wou…

Well we know the reason why Light says he can't do that is that "the person wouldn't know the name". But you're right in actuality that would allow for "person guesses the name, and is correct". And I think that is a loophole.

Let me put this another way. I think the following would be considered a valid Death Note command.

"Person flips a coin 100 times in a row, and gets heads every time".

Now how is that different from

"Person runs an RNG digit generator 100 times in a row, and gets 9s every time".

Then

"Person runs an RNG digit generator 100 times in a row, the 100 digit number is exactly divisible by 123456".

Then

"Person runs an RNG digit generator 100 times in a row, 2^x-1 of that number is prime".

And if this is all iffy, let me propose an alternative. Let's assume (I'm not 100% sure of this) that we can verify large prime within 23 days. Heck, build a data center to do this if we have to.

"Person runs RNG to generate x such that 2^x-1 is prime. Uses machine and verifies that it is indeed prime. Dies of joy."

You can similarly use this to crack hashes, etc.

Re: Death Note: L, Anonymity and Eluding Entropy (2017)

#42

Post by Symmetry »

jquery wrote: post #29
lawn wrote: post #6

If it's true that privacy is dead, how come Satoshi is still unknown?

Is he? He leaked a lot of writing samples. Unless he took great care to anonymize his writing style (and I'm not even convinced that it's possible to completely anonymize a writing style without scrambling the ideas themselves), it's possible (perhaps likely) he leaked enough bits for a state actor to track him (or her) down.

I'd expect they'll be AIs in 2040 that'll be able to figure out who he is by writing samples, at least. And the rest of us here on Hacker News, too.

Re: Death Note: L, Anonymity and Eluding Entropy (2017)

#43

Post by s_y_n_t_a_x »

wyxuan wrote: post #37
s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He/they may be known to some. https://medium.com/cryptomuse/how-the-nsa-caught-satoshi-nak...

Stylometry only works too an extent with helping to identify what's what. I could just stylometry to show that this document was written by a professional screenwriter, but it writing style isn't unique enough to identify one person out of billions. Gwern has an excellent post about this.

It depends on how much data you have. When you have everyone's emails you can rank everyone by closest match and narrowing parameters.

Re: Death Note: L, Anonymity and Eluding Entropy (2017)

#44

Post by chmod775 »

Malic wrote: post #23

This is somewhat related to a thought experiment of mine. Suppose you had a means of transmitting information back in time - a one-node network that effectively could email to itself with a timestamp (in the past) being the message's "recipient." Suppose such a thing existed in the world today. Assume the individuals in possession of such a thing were very intelligent, very careful and very guarded about its use. Cou…

Spoiler territory for Evan Currie's Hayden War Cycle Series ahead - which would deserve some spotlight and an editor for catching all the spelling mistakes both...

Anyways.

This is touched upon by a favorite sci-fi story of mine, where humans come in possession of such technology and make huge leaps in capabilities in short timeframes. Those leaps are unexplainable to most alien species they are in contact with.

Especially later on in the books a huge part of the story is told from alien POVs. The author has some interesting ideas about how other species may find us impressive, and in what respects they may consider us primitive.

The books are mostly about on-planet fighting and some ship-to-ship battles though. In fact there's little politics and communication at all until the cold-war arc. So don't expect the books to dive deeply into it at all.

But I really recommend the books just for how many interesting ideas Evan Currie managed to compress into a fast-paced action story. They left me with a lot of stuff to mull over long after putting the books down.

Re: Death Note: L, Anonymity and Eluding Entropy (2017)

#45

Post by michaelscott »

arugulum wrote: post #39

I would frame things a little differently. Light makes a lot of mistakes because the Death note is incredibly powerful and there would be almost no reasonable way for L to catch Light without Light making obvious mistakes (and would also make for a boring story). Undoubtedly, the biggest mistake Light makes is revealing the existence of the Death Note, and all the rules therein, which not only gives L (almost) all th…

I agree with this completely; Light makes up for what I would say is an inferior deductive ability by using a supernatural item with rules that defy ordinary logic and reason (L catches on early that such a tool must exist with his TV announcement stunt, but he can't possibly know the ruleset of such an item).

The only way Near and Mello end up overcoming this advantage is by: (1) Mello obtaining a Death Note of his own, allowing him to ascertain the real ruleset, and (2) Near not being directly involved in Light's life the way L was, and there not leaking any extra information about himself until the finale. That last bit is especially critical considering L was taken out precisely because he was physically present and therefore had his real name observed by Shinigami eyes.

I think the most under-utilized ability of the Death Note in the series is the ability to specify manner of death. Light uses this on occasion, but he could've have made many criminal deaths seem accidental or suicidal in addition to staggering their occurrences in time in order to throw L off from the very beginning.

Re: Death Note: L, Anonymity and Eluding Entropy (2017)

#46

Post by hobofan »

arugulum wrote: post #41
danShumway wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "capable" also takes into account knowledge they have. It's been a while since I watched Death Note, but isn't this brought up as a reason why Kira can't do, "writes down L's real name, then dies of a heart attack."? It would be theoretically possible for someone to be lucky enough to guess L's real name, but apparently the note has a bullcrap detector or something where it eventually just says, "no, they wou…

Well we know the reason why Light says he can't do that is that "the person wouldn't know the name". But you're right in actuality that would allow for "person guesses the name, and is correct". And I think that is a loophole. Let me put this another way. I think the following would be considered a valid Death Note command. "Person flips a coin 100 times in a row, and gets heads every time". Now how is that different…

The Death Note doesn't give the target any magic abilities, that the previously didn't have.

> "Person flips a coin 100 times in a row, and gets heads every time".

I'm pretty sure this would be interpreted as "The person has to flip coins until they have a 100 streak of only heads". This will obviously take a really long time, and the person might be driven insane before that. Similar things go for your other examples.

In a comment further up you wrote:

> in particular we know that the Death Note is able to "manipulate" luck

I don't recall that specifically. Even then, I would guess that this has it's bounds. I also have the feeling (not backed up by lore, but I think it would fit in the world), that bigger manipulations would take more energy from the respective shinigami, so while a shinigami might be able to manipulate luck enough to make someone win the lottery, finding prime numbers would be too draining.

Re: Death Note: L, Anonymity and Eluding Entropy (2017)

#48

Post by jordigh »

arugulum wrote: post #41
danShumway wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "capable" also takes into account knowledge they have. It's been a while since I watched Death Note, but isn't this brought up as a reason why Kira can't do, "writes down L's real name, then dies of a heart attack."? It would be theoretically possible for someone to be lucky enough to guess L's real name, but apparently the note has a bullcrap detector or something where it eventually just says, "no, they wou…

Well we know the reason why Light says he can't do that is that "the person wouldn't know the name". But you're right in actuality that would allow for "person guesses the name, and is correct". And I think that is a loophole. Let me put this another way. I think the following would be considered a valid Death Note command. "Person flips a coin 100 times in a row, and gets heads every time". Now how is that different…

This is the nerd version of asking the genie to grant you infinite wishes.

Re: Death Note: L, Anonymity and Eluding Entropy (2017)

#49

Post by c22 »

Malic wrote: post #23

This is somewhat related to a thought experiment of mine. Suppose you had a means of transmitting information back in time - a one-node network that effectively could email to itself with a timestamp (in the past) being the message's "recipient." Suppose such a thing existed in the world today. Assume the individuals in possession of such a thing were very intelligent, very careful and very guarded about its use. Cou…

If you possessed such a device then errors in your "predictions" would be indicative of another party using a similar device. As such, I assume multiple parties would soon discover each other, engage in an incomprehensibly complex time-battle, and there would suddenly (instantaneously in all patched timelines) be only one such party.

Furthermore, I imagine it would be very easy for such a party to accidently blunder into a situation where they lose control of the time-messaging device, erasing all evidence of its own existence and leaving the timeline perturbation-free until such "time" as reverse time travel is rediscovered.

Re: Death Note: L, Anonymity and Eluding Entropy (2017)

#50

Post by jacobush »

Someone on HN linked to a list of the best anime - and I can't find it now, because I foolishly thought I would remember the name of the website.

Anyone know what I am talking about? The "winning entry" was, I think some kind of pretty abstract anime story. If Death Note was on the list at all (the list may have been compiled before Death Note was aired), it was not on the top of the list. The list was written by a single author and it had extensive long-form style commentary.

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