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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)

#131

Post by ad-hominem »

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…

This is basically the plot of the new Blake Crouch novel Recursion - except the "device" requires you to die while reliving a past memory (after which you travel back in time to the moment the memory occurred).

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

#132

Post by andruby »

rolltiide wrote: post #77
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.

I also didn't enjoy Death Note after this event.

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

#133

Post by saagarjha »

chronolitus wrote: post #127
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

Yeah, I could have done that. If anyone else wants to play this, here's a script to print the timestamps of a particular user as Unix time: https://gist.github.com/saagarjha/6f6474fd212bd9904e6d7cc81f...; the histogram above was generated by loading the output of that into a spreadsheet, skewing it by 7 hours to account for my timezone, and generating a ASCII histogram from that.

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

#134

Post by saagarjha »

lonelappde wrote: post #90
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 in the OP, it's pretty obvious when you are sleeping.

Sure, but would you believe that I'm now sleeping ~10 PM-7 AM? I'm not convinced there's enough information there to narrow down my location to anything smaller than a hemisphere.

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

#135

Post by saagarjha »

rococode wrote: post #114
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…

I dunno, I think this still reveals some patterns: Typically asleep around 5-8AM despite irregular sleep schedule, generally including 4 and 9 AM as well. Frequently staying up to around 2 or 3 AM. Lunch typically around 12, lull in work after lunch = more time to browse and make comments. Dinner typically at 7. Spike in browsing HN after dinner while full, then focus on work or relax for a couple hours, before start…

> Typically asleep around 5-8AM despite irregular sleep schedule, generally including 4 and 9 AM as well.

At the time this data was taken, yes, I would generally be asleep at around 7-8 AM; usually that either meant I'd get up at 9 AM (if I had things to do) or past 12 PM (if I didn't).

> Frequently staying up to around 2 or 3 AM.

Yes, this is usually when I went to bed. Occasionally this would push towards 6 AM.

> Lunch typically around 12, lull in work after lunch = more time to browse and make comments.

I ate lunch around 1 or 2 PM, since I'd often wake up at about 12 PM.

> Dinner typically at 7. Spike in browsing HN after dinner while full, then focus on work or relax for a couple hours, before starting to drift off and get back to browsing HN around midnight.

Sounds about right.

> But I suspect despite the patterns not being as clearcut, this is still enough to pinpoint your time zone within a couple hours.

Could you do it if I didn't add the hour labels?

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

#136

Post by lorenzq »

needle0 wrote: post #113

Characters in fiction regularly behave sub-optimally even if they're set up as geniuses, for the most mundane meta reason: It's a work of entertainment, and the plot wouldn't get interesting otherwise! We should always be very aware that any fiction, even ones that attempt speculative simulations, is always shackled by the need to keep being entertaining and interesting -- there are craptons of concepts and possibili…

I really enjoyed Harry Potter and the Methods of rationality. I understand not everyone would like such an intelligent main character though.

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

#137

Post by squirrelicus »

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

Hang on. I think you're missing the point. It's not about how "if you've read one, you've read them all". The fact that MacBeth is another way to tell the Futile Struggle Against Fate story doesn't in any way diminish the creativity or power or uniqueness of the work. The point is that if it's not an archetypical story it won't resonate with the human mind, and the writer will fail.

We tell the same stories again and again because there's a finite set of stories that engage our mind, whether we like it or not.

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

#138

Post by coryfklein »

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…

That is very nearly the plot of Primer

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

#139

Post by azernik »

taneq wrote: post #115
azernik wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I see what they did there but I don't know if I agree. The market can stay irrational for longer than it takes to invent time travel...

The whole point of time travel is that it doesn't care about time; once time travel exists in the future, people in the future will be able to do all kinds of fun arbitrage with it.

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

#140

Post by dragonsngoblins »

squirrelicus wrote: post #137
dragonsngoblins wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hang on. I think you're missing the point. It's not about how "if you've read one, you've read them all". The fact that MacBeth is another way to tell the Futile Struggle Against Fate story doesn't in any way diminish the creativity or power or uniqueness of the work. The point is that if it's not an archetypical story it won't resonate with the human mind, and the writer will fail. We tell the same stories again and…

But my point is the archetypes are so broad they may as well be meaningless. "Futile Struggle Against Fate" encompasses so much.

May as well say all stories are "Man vs Man" or "Man vs Nature" or "Man vs God". Sure you can categorize basically every story into one of those three things but it is almost never useful to do so

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