Xref: utzoo sci.philosophy.tech:580 rec.arts.sf-lovers:12077 rec.mag:45 Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!rochester!ur-tut!srg2 From: srg2@ur-tut (Stacey Greenstein) Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,rec.arts.sf-lovers,rec.mag Subject: Re: Ed Fredkin Message-ID: <1448@ur-tut.UUCP> Date: 20 Mar 88 20:27:16 GMT References: <3829@chinet.UUCP> <1441@ur-tut.UUCP> <974@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> Reply-To: srg2@tut.cc.rochester.edu.UUCP (Stacey Greenstein) Organization: Univ. of Rochester Computing Center Lines: 23 In article <974@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn) writes: >Let's say I take all the information in all the encyclopedieas and >reference books and catalogs of biochemical compounds and make and ASCII >text file out of them, and then come up with an umpteen-zillion long >decimal number that represents this long text file, and then construct a >ruler one inch long calibrated to the umpteen-zillionth of an inch. I >can now specify a single point in an inch representing all the knowledge >in the world. . . I never said anything about simplicity. What you have is an EASY method of encoding. The more you encode, the more information you need to decode, the more time it will take to decode the code. Therefore if forty-two is indeed the hyper-encoded answer, the end result may take several billions of years to work itself out. Or I could be wrong and forty-two is the answer, and someone forgot to turn off the ... <<<<>>>> -- US Mail: Stacey Robert Greenstein BITNET: srg2@uordb1 P. O. Box 30202 ARPA: srg2@tut.cc.rochester.edu Rochester, NY 14627 Phone: (716)244-9890 UUCP: {allegra, seismo, rutgers}!rochester!ur-tut!srg2