Stanisław Lem's vision of artificial life

Re:Stanisław Lem's vision of artificial life by pbhjpbhj on Thursday November 30, 2023 @04:06PM (#38479076)

This seems like a reference-object error (a denotation error, or sense-reference error in philosophical terms), except the functional definition and the partial numerical expansion are both references to PI rather than being PI itself.

Ce-ci n'est-pas une remarque, and all that.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Stanisław Lem's vision of artificial life by ajuc on Thursday November 30, 2023 @04:25PM (#38479371)

We're talking encodings not platonic ideals.

Forget PI. Let's take 1337. Or is it MCCCXXXVII?

Is it 2 or 1.(9)? Or 10 (binary)? Different encodings, same number. Some encodings are just less optimal than others.

Same with text. Is the poem in utf-8 and utf-16 a different poem? What if you zip the file? These are just encodings, and there's no point ignoring the good ones (which for non-random strings are usually programs).

[ Parent | on HN ]