SMBC Comics Forum

By today's standards the grain of sand would be a [u]collection[/u], not a library. In fact, the grain would most likely be used as an archive. In order for a collection to be a library it must have a librarian facilitating access to it.

Had to be said.

In case anyone was intrigued by the concept of this but isn't aware of the terminology of information theory; Zach pretty much described a derivation of Range-Encoding[1]/Arithmetic-Coding[2]. This is used in popular codecs such as h.264.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_encoding
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_coding

[quote="thelordofcheese"][quote="stinky613"]Since I'm not a nerd--not even a little bit--I felt absolutely compelled to write some Ruby functions to encode text to centimeters.

https://github.com/stinky613/centimeter-encoding[/quote]

You could have represented 100 characters in a 2-character pair so capitals and punctuation could be represented, then reduced the number with a reversible hash.[/quote]

True. The thing is once you start down that path when do you stop? Just a-z and punctuation? Capitals too? Use more than 2-digit pairs and encode all ASCII? All UTF-8 characters?

I specifically didn't encode punctuation or capitals because I wasn't trying to make any assumptions beyond the A = 01, etc pattern in the comic, and for a ten minute project with relatively few (and simple) cases I felt a switch was plenty sufficient.

[EDIT] Looks like I got carried away when I did this. I just noticed the comic started at A=00. Oh well.

[quote="stinky613"]Since I'm not a nerd--not even a little bit--I felt absolutely compelled to write some Ruby functions to encode text to centimeters.

https://github.com/stinky613/centimeter-encoding[/quote]

You could have represented 100 characters in a 2-character pair so capitals and punctuation could be represented, then reduced the number with a reversible hash.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/smbcforum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3895

Discuss.

... so, the centimeter is an LSD blotter?

[quote="Killminusnine"]I'd say on the contrary it is pretty interesting that all possible universes exist. It has pretty meaningful consequences as a hypothesis for modal logic, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and there's a (somewhat long and technical but very good) book defending this position ("modal realism"). It's called [url=http://www.amazon.com/On-Plurality-Worlds-David-Lewis/dp/0631224262/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352313387]On the Plurality of Worlds[/url] and it's written by David K Lewis. Masturbatory isn't how I'd describe his philosophy.[/quote]

I mean that it is masturbatory in the sense that all metaphysical theories are. I would go as far as to say it (mathematical universe/modal realism) is [i]obviously[/i] true: our universe is "merely" a description of itself, there is no "quintessence of reality" suffused throughout. There is no other way of looking at it that is (to my mind at least) coherent and internally consistent.

The problem is that, like all metaphysical theory it generates no testable predictions. It does make for some great fiction, see my favorite scifi novel: Permutation City by Greg Egan.

[quote="anus mcgee"]I think we're all forgetting the big picture here: this comic isn't funny at all.[/quote]

Well, I appreciate Zach's attempts to provide some intellectualism in his comics. But you're right, sometimes it feels like he wanted to do a strip about something he thought was cool and then forced a joke in post facto.

I think we're all forgetting the big picture here: this comic isn't funny at all.

[quote="NapoleonIV"]Space is not infinitely divisible. A finite measure of space cannot contain an infinite number of points. Zeno's paradox.[/quote]

I think you misunderstood the Zone's paradox, a finite measure can and does contain an infinite number of points but as most of them are infinitesimally small they converge in a finite measure, that's why despite of having an infinite number of "halves" between one point to another the measure is a finite number. In fact the Zeno's paradox is the easiest way to understand how an infinite sum can give a finite number as a result, at least it was for me.

Cool, a portable Babel library. I was affraid that my Kindle would never have had enough memory to store it.

That strip made me remember my RFC idea of the "HTTP over PI" protocol.

Space is not infinitely divisible. A finite measure of space cannot contain an infinite number of points. Zeno's paradox.

Whether Planck length is a limitation is really a matter of how we interpret these constants, even without the large dimension qualification. Is it incoherent to talk of shorter lengths or is it just unmeasurable and epistemically unavailable because of certain limitations?

You fools, 2 + 2 = 5.

[quote]Planck length?[/quote]

From wikipedia's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length#Physical_significance]Planck length[/url] entry:

"If large extra dimensions exist, the measured strength of gravity may be much smaller than its true (small-scale) value. In this case the Planck length would have no fundamental physical significance, and quantum gravitational effects would appear at other scales."

Since according to centimeter theory all theoretical possible universes exist, then large extra dimensions must exist in at least one of them. Therefore, the Planck length cannot be assumed to be a valid limiter.

I like the comic except for one thing... ponies are awesome