At 03:31 PM 9/20/00 -0500, mortongr@flash.net wrote:
[...]
>While I can't provide a mathematical proof of this assertion, every english
>sentence of 21 character length can be produced from a random keyword when
>that
>keyword is used against ANY 21 character encoded message. Randomness does
>create meaning.
Hi Glenn. As usual, you have a very interesting and creative idea. I
believe, though,
that I can prove the opposite of your claim either by Shannon information
theory
or algorithmic information theory. I can fill in a few details if anyone
wants to see it.
Based on this I'll make the prediction that what we have here is really an
example
of ID. You constructed an interesting message and then worked backwards to get
the keyword. Am I right?
I think the following would be an interesting experiment to illustrate how
far off the
mark your example is. Suppose you and I and anyone else who wants to play
constructed 10 keys at random and then used them to decode the intercepted
message. Everyone then posts their decoded messages here and we'll see how
many are intelligible English sentences. The problem is that messages having
the statistical structure of English are in the low probability group for
randomly
generated sequences. The probability of getting *any* English message is
thus close to zero and approaches zero as the message length increases.
Brian Harper
Associate Professor
Mechanical Engineering
The Ohio State University
"One never knows, do one?"
-- Fats Waller
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