14-04-2017, 08:23 PM
Fixed, Rene.
Despite Davidsch' and Anton's remarks, I maintain that it is (unfortunately!) impossible to prove that the text is meaningless. All one can do is demonstrate that a hypothesized method of text generating is feasible.
One can also eliminate possibilities, for example it should be possible to demonstrate that the VM text cannot be a one-to-one cipher in any known language.
However, none of these prove that whatever the text is does not contain any meaning. "Meaning" I would define as the ability of the text to convey information. More information can be transferred more easily if the recipient already knows relevant information. This is another objection I have against purely computer based attacks - they ignore the function of a document as part of communication between a writer and an intended audience.
Just a dumb example, let's say that David Jackson makes a new thread with just the text "Go, 5, 8, 2". If you examine this with computer logic, all you can say is that, if it is in English, it's a form of the verb "to go", followed by three numbers. However it could be that for Anton and me, this message allows us to set in motion a complex sequence of operations based on our knowledge of the communications system.
So showing that the text could have been procedurally generated in a reasonable way is a valuable exercise, but it's hard to prove anything with it.
Despite Davidsch' and Anton's remarks, I maintain that it is (unfortunately!) impossible to prove that the text is meaningless. All one can do is demonstrate that a hypothesized method of text generating is feasible.
One can also eliminate possibilities, for example it should be possible to demonstrate that the VM text cannot be a one-to-one cipher in any known language.
However, none of these prove that whatever the text is does not contain any meaning. "Meaning" I would define as the ability of the text to convey information. More information can be transferred more easily if the recipient already knows relevant information. This is another objection I have against purely computer based attacks - they ignore the function of a document as part of communication between a writer and an intended audience.
Just a dumb example, let's say that David Jackson makes a new thread with just the text "Go, 5, 8, 2". If you examine this with computer logic, all you can say is that, if it is in English, it's a form of the verb "to go", followed by three numbers. However it could be that for Anton and me, this message allows us to set in motion a complex sequence of operations based on our knowledge of the communications system.
So showing that the text could have been procedurally generated in a reasonable way is a valuable exercise, but it's hard to prove anything with it.