I spent the winter writing songs about getting better
BRTD
Atlas Prophet
Posts: 113,430
Political Matrix E: -6.50, S: -6.67
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« on: June 03, 2014, 10:35:45 PM » |
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« edited: June 03, 2014, 10:40:46 PM by the blue man group won't cure depression »
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We had a debate about this at one of our Ingress meetups. Not sure if that's the official name of it or even if it's a debated thing in philosophy rather than just something my teammate thought up, but anyway:
Someone made a joke about how a million monkeys with coders for whatever language Ingress is coded in would eventually code Ingress. Our teammate then pointed out that this joke actually has a place somewhere in reality: in pi. His argument is that as an irrational number without termination, pi includes all sorts of combinations and just about every numerical combination possible in there. For example my birthdate, 12-18-1983, written as 12181983, seems like a fairly meaningless numerical sequence, but it's most likely in pi somewhere. His argument is that it IS in pi somewhere as a near mathematical certainty and any number you can name exists in it somewhere, such as write out the numbers you'd press on an old phone to text your name. That's in pi somewhere. He then took it further and pointed out that if you converted all of pi's digits to binary, you would then eventually find the code for Ingress, the works of Shakespeare converted to binary, the US Constitution, influential early computer programs, devastating computer viruses, etc. Tweed's "The Group" post and then entire posting history of opebo exists on Dave's server somewhere as a string of ones and zeroes...and they also exist in pi as well converted. Somewhere out in a binary converted version of pi hypothetically is something that's identical to the contents of your computer, or the NSA's entire databases.
FWIW I disagree but primarily because I believe pi does have a terminating digit, even if it's beyond what we can calculate. But it does make you think. Also reminded me of Contact.
I suppose it's also worth noting that the million monkeys theorem was intended more as a joke to point out just how unfeasible something can be in reality yet but still be "almost surely" to happen in a mathematical context and thus that the phrase in mathematics has a completely different meaning than in common language, not an actual prediction or anything.
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