We almost totally agree. However...
At 12:22 AM 12/29/97 -0500, Brian D Harper wrote:
>Based on the above I would argue that the sequence ABCD...
>contains little information since it is an ordered pattern.
>After ABCDEF we would not be too surprised to see a G pop
>out next. But after ABCDEFGHIJK we are really really expecting
>to see an L. When M arrives instead we are surprised and begin
>to doubt the pattern we thought we saw. After MNOPQR the
>pattern re-establishes itself and we start to anticipate the
>next charater. Thus, I would say Burgy's sequence had more
>information than had he simply typed the entire alphabet
>without missing a character.
If information is defined by a lack of compressibility, then Burgy's
abcd...xyz missing the L is more compressible than the entire alphabet by at
least one algorithmic statement. The only way you can say that there is a
pattern to the ABCD... is by means of semantic meaning. Which sequence has
more information in this case?
!@*&^%$#_)~<>}{][=+-|\/
OR
!@*&^%$_)~<>}{][=+-|\/
which lackes the # sign? There is no "pattern" nor it there an expectation
of which character should be next. The only reason you expect a G after an
F in Burgy's examples is that your first grade teacher actually educated
you. But that is a semantic meaning to the sequence
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz. We have culturally agreed that this is the
alphabet.
glenn
Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man
and
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm