From: tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)
Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 13:34:19 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Schelling points and enthropy of human mind
Message-ID: <ae1ec530060210046ea6@[205.199.118.202]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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At 12:05 AM 7/27/96, Igor Chudov @ home wrote:
>Hi,
>
>Tim May presented an interesting concept of two persons who
>want to meet in Washington DC but forgot to decide where to meet.
>He says that they will likely to be in only several places and
>that such places will be "points of low enthropy".
>
>The question is, how do you define "enthropy" in this case?

Well, I used "entropy" in the usual sense of the constellation of definitions:

- low entropy means increased predictability (in this case, Alice and Bob
are more able to "predict" what the other will decide than if the points
were more "random")

- low entropy is associated with "less randomness" (randomness is a
notoriously controversial subject, discussed here often, so please don't
clutter the list with quibbles about randomness)

- "random" is related to "unpredictable" is related to "not compressible"
is related to "disorderly"

- "nonrandom" is related to "predictable"  is related to "compressible" is
related to "orderly"


Schelling points are of course related to the notion of "emergent order,"
in that order emerges without prior communication between Alice and Bob.

--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
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