🚀 go-pugleaf

On Mon, 12 Jan 1998 22:48:38 -0700, hgibbons@guess.where.com (Hugh
Gibbons) wrote:
>
>! As an analogy, if I code some very complicated message via a coding
>! scheme which *you* cannot decipher, then that information, that
>! message is *destroyed* so far as you are concerned, right now as of
>! this moment. If however, science should advance in the science of
>! cryptology and then *be able* to decode my coded message, then that
>! information which you once thought lost is now "readable" to you. 
>
>That's a false analogy.  The message is not encoded with a hard-to-break
>cipher, it's erased by RANDOM damage, in other words, noise.  Once the
>SNR goes negative, sorry, the message can't be recovered.  A cipher 
>retains all information and does not introduce noise.

Suppose I take a message and erase every 10th letter? I'm introducing
noise, right? Is there still information there which can be recovered?
How about every other letter? All but one letter? Where is the
threshold beyond which the *message* has no meaning?
Also, today's noise is tomorrow's information. Science and technology
march on, while cryonicists wait....
Randy Smith
Cryonics: Gateway to the Future?
http://members.wbs.net/homepages/c/r/y/cryofan1.html
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