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

gwern.net

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

#71

Post by dmurray »

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…

There's an Asimov short story called The Red Queen's Race which deals with this question: what if the ancient Greeks had received a few hints about modern chemistry? I won't spoil how it relates more directly to your question.

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

#72

Post by rakoo »

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…

I would search for people living a "perfect" life: no mistakes ever made, not a single cent lost to investment, not a single car key forgotten or an umbrella staying at home, absolutely nothing negative in their life. The more there are, the less the chance that pure luck is driving it, it must be a communication from the future.

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

#73

Post by Ancalagon »

rakoo wrote: post #72
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…

I would search for people living a "perfect" life: no mistakes ever made, not a single cent lost to investment, not a single car key forgotten or an umbrella staying at home, absolutely nothing negative in their life. The more there are, the less the chance that pure luck is driving it, it must be a communication from the future.

This seems too easy, if the thought experiment played out with anyone remotely intelligent I would bet they would purposefully make 'mistakes' so as to not gain too much attention from a perfect track record.

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

#74

Post by varenc »

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.

Agree 100%. I'd believe that the DHS has identified Satoshi, but very very skeptical that they could use mass email collection to do it. Stylometry could work though if you limited your search to the set of people active on niche pre-Bitcoin lists/forums where Satoshi was likely to be active under a different name.

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

#75

Post by azernik »

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…

A particularly clever member of the Twitterati: https://twitter.com/Theophite/status/1062816091892674561

@Theophite: the existence of nonzero interest rates implies the nonexistence of time travel.

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

#76

Post by Galaxeblaffer »

c22 wrote: post #49
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…

Future Diary has some pretty cool time battles. While it's not as good as death note, it definitely has it's moments. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2069441/?ref_=m_nv_sr_1

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

#77

Post by rolltiide »

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…

Death Note ended when L died.

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

#78

Post by saketuec »

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…

Maybe, look for "Butterfly effects[1]" happening around you, i.e., small insignificant events that have huge, enormous after-effects.

Essentially, if there were a system that could send information from the future to the past, the future agent would want to be "as discreet as" possible, while still achieving "nearly perfect" outcome. Note that the future agent has the advantage of reiterating over and over his/her choices, because, well, the "future-future" he/she can still send a signal to his/her past about want went wrong the previous time.

This happens to be a common plot for a lot of various time-travel movies and TV shows like Dark, Umbrella Academy, etc.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect

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

#79

Post by cwkoss »

alasano wrote: post #51
c22 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As a fan of time travel movies, I'd watch this.

Or an episodic series where every episode has a new main character inventing time travel and then accidentally destroying the conditions that allowed then to invent time travel.

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

#80

Post by fireattack »

inetsee wrote: post #13
d4mi3n wrote: post #4

This was well cited with a lot of fun media references. The author makes a few interesting points on rationale for randomization, calling known unknowns and confounding factors as something one could plan for and avoid. Anybody know of other writers that do research and writing in this style? I quite enjoyed it.

Gwern Branwen has a large body of work on a broad range of topics. You could go to the top of his web page https://www.gwern.net/ , pick a topic that interests you, and start reading.

I admire his site, but for some reason, I found his content very hard to digest. I can read if someone links to any particular article, but browsing through the index is very overwhelming to me.

I don't know if it's just the sheer amount of content that feels intimidating or anything else (like reading long paragraphs of sans-serif fonts on screen).

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