Death Note: L, Anonymity and Eluding Entropy (2017) • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by dTal » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 9:44 AM UTC

dragonsngoblins wrote: post #104

squirrelicus wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak to the intent. Upton Sinclair's Jungle was a socialist manifesto that accidentally missed America's heart and hit her gut instead. What I can say is approximately 100% of material that gets popular is simply the retelling of something like 7 archetypal stories that our human minds resonate with. Watch Moana and Wreck it Ralph, they're the same story: the Resurrection of the Spirit of the Father. Watch H…

I always hated this sort of statement because it confuses story with theme. Sure Harry Potter and LOTR and the 5th Element all might have some superficial similarities, but each of them is very different in ways aside from mere set dressing. You can call anything equivalent if you pick and chose what factors matter

Indeed. It's always "just" or "simply" the same basic stories. But it's hardly simple to go from the 3 words "overcoming the impossible" to Lord of the Rings.

Specifically, the power of the basic stories meme is that it implies a lower information content of our stories than we supposedly realize. The meme makes you feel smart by inducting you into the enlightened set. But in fact, the low information content is in the supposed categories, not our stories. They throw out all the details that actually make a story. Even if one of the categories was the ridiculously specific "tiny man makes treacherous journey to destroy dangerous magical object, also there's a wizard", that's still a far cry from reconstituting LotR.

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

#122

Post by keerthiko » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 10:08 AM UTC

rolltiide wrote: post #103

magpi3 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a significant spoiler for those who haven't seen the show. Please delete it.

lol wow and people were agreeing with me for a few hours there too but looks like consensus flipped! oh well too late for me to do anything about this decade plus old spoiler @dang do your thang

everyone agrees with your point, but the fact remains that your comment was not only a spoiler but also added nothing useful to the discussion in this thread or to the thesis of the article.

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

#123

Post by degurechaff » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 11:22 AM UTC

lonelappde wrote: post #92

dmurray wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

the original isekai?

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

#124

Post by faceplanted » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 1:56 PM UTC

Kaiyou wrote: post #118

michaelscott wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As far as I remember the only reason Light lost at the end is because a character managed to make an exact replica of a Death Note overnight. A magic book that can hold infinite names. It was this plothole that ruined the ending for me.

To be fair to him, it's generally portrayed as a generic black notebook with words on the front, and the only way to notice that lack of infinite pages is to write hundreds or even thousands of names.

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

#125

Post by rajlego » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 2:13 PM UTC

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’m not an accountant but I’ve heard that accountants often use number frequencies to look for fraud. IIRC, amounts of money starting with 9 are less likely. Looking at those kinds of distributions in the world can maybe show influence of non normal factors.

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

#126

Post by homonculus1 » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 2:15 PM UTC

egypturnash wrote: post #101

magpi3 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a significant spoiler for those who haven't seen the show. Please delete it.

Do spoilers for a decade-old comic book/tv show really matter?

Yes, why wouldn't they? As long as it's culturally relevant, people benefit from experiencing it without spoilers. You shouldn't take that possibility away from them just because you already got yours.

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

#127

Post by chronolitus » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 2:31 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #82

> Worse, the deaths are non-random in other ways—they tend to occur at particular times! Graphed, daily patterns jump out. I actually ran this kind of analysis on my use of Hacker News a couple of months back. It turns out that the patterns mentioned only really work if you have something that resembles a normal sleep schedule, which I clearly do not: 12 AM ********* 1 AM *********** 2 AM ********* 3 AM ******* 4 AM…

As a test, you could have removed the hours from your comment, shifted the lines by X, and asked HN to guess which hour the first line corresponds to

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

#128

Post by La-ang » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 2:38 PM UTC

Light's mistakes are part of the plot, not an error in it. He eventually loses as the Shinigami predicts that he will be the one writing his name on his Death Note. L also sacrifices himself knowing that he should close down on Kira and Near eventually puts an end to it. Yet my issue was with Light killing using the bag of chips with the TV inside, what kinda TV could fit there and render visible information with low light in a dark surveilled room?

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

#129

Post by b_tterc_p » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 2:43 PM UTC

Ajedi32 wrote: post #32

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…

Sounds like a different anime to me. El Psy Kongroo.

Steins Gate is probably the closest answer to this (in which the time travel mechanism can only send back information) and is my favorite time travel mechanics system. Timelines diverge into their infinite possibilities but in self consistent ways. That is, some timelines can only exist as a result of information received from other timeline’s future; meaning the past is dependent on the future of a different timeline which won’t play out, but has added a sort of immutable constant to the first timeline.

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

#130

Post by rtkwe » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 2:45 PM UTC

La-ang wrote: post #128

Light's mistakes are part of the plot, not an error in it. He eventually loses as the Shinigami predicts that he will be the one writing his name on his Death Note. L also sacrifices himself knowing that he should close down on Kira and Near eventually puts an end to it. Yet my issue was with Light killing using the bag of chips with the TV inside, what kinda TV could fit there and render visible information with low…

Ah but if he hadn't done that we wouldn't have gotten the classic "I'll take a chip.... AND I'LL EAT IT!" line which really couldn't be more critical to Death Note.

On a more serious note I don't think this is trying to say the show is wrong for having these mistakes just that the character could have done better and thinking about how is fun and allows you to examine just how much information leaks from seemingly benign sources.