They’re probably the only things that “create” information in the sense that you can always grab another slice. Thank you delicious pi!

  • RandomVideos@programming.dev
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    1 hour ago

    According to your reasoning, the Fibonacci numbers, or repeatedly applying a math operation to a number are infinite sources of information

    • josephmbasile@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 hour ago

      Nah I replied to someone else with a similar thought. The Notorious Fibs sure I agree with you they are new information, similar to the primes but just adding +1 over an over again or even some repeating pattern doesn’t add new information beyond the initial pattern.

  • xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org
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    3 hours ago

    I think you’re somewhat confused about what “irrational” and “information” means.

  • Justin@lemmy.jlh.name
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    7 hours ago

    Is it actually information? I can give you the number two, but it’s not useful information until I also tell you which digit is significant and what the number means. Communicating information is still limited by the speed of light.

    • uis@lemm.ee
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      2 hours ago

      Is it actually information?

      Yes. For every bit of number pi you get one bit of information.

      I can give you the number two

      You gave me log2(10) bits of information. Thanks.

      but it’s not useful information until I also tell you which digit is significant and what the number means.

      You are misunderstanding what informatiob is.

      • wewbull@feddit.uk
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        15 minutes ago

        I can give you √2 which is 16-bits of information as characters. It’s also an irrational number. How you express something doesn’t change the amount of information is contained in the message.

    • radix@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      From one of my favorite college professors: apparently in the Chevy Chase days of Saturday Night Live he would do the Weekend Update and had a recurring bit that went like this.

      And now it’s time for the basketball scores. 98-82; 102-99; 95-76.


      That’s data. Without context there’s no useful information.

    • Gork@lemm.ee
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      5 hours ago

      Situationally, yes. “I want the next digit of pi” is information in that sense of the word. It’s not a particularly useful piece of information unless you’re building something that requires a circle with a circumferential precision larger than the width of our entire universe.

      • josephmbasile@lemmy.worldOP
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        1 hour ago

        How many digits of Pi would you have to read for you to be able to reconstruct all of the information in the Universe up to this moment?

        • xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org
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          27 minutes ago

          None, because the digits of π have absolutely nothing to do with the universe.

    • Deebster@infosec.pub
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      7 hours ago

      I don’t see why not, it’s just numbers, which is all we store most data as.

      You could use it as a source of pseudorandom numbers to encrypt an infinite data steam, e.g. we’ll encrypt using e, starting at position 40468.

        • uis@lemm.ee
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          2 hours ago

          It is not. If I in July in Europe will say “there is no snow outside”, I give you very little information. If in same conditions I will say “there is snow outside”, I will give a lot of information.

          Amount of information is proportional to (logarithm of) improbability of outcome.

  • discimus
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    8 hours ago

    Any infinite group applies to this too. The group of integers, real numbers, etc. are infinite. Just add 1 👍

    • josephmbasile@lemmy.worldOP
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      2 hours ago

      True although I would like to note that the digits of Pi are the heart of r-n jesus and the number line just does boring stuff like steadily increasing forever.