Spooky compression of a message

A couple of months ago in Zurich, I was conversing with my colleague. We had just had a nice dinner and were basically enjoying ourselves by debating on science-fiction. Particularly, the topic of faster-than-light communication. While we contemplated fully fictional examples like the subspace communications in Star Trek (massless particle-based communication method in a warp field at Warp 9.98), and how far off those still were, we stumbled across the concept of "Quantum Entanglement communication through Spooky Action at a Distance".

That's a lot of complex physics that boil down to a simplified experiment in which Alice and Bob both have one side (...) of a flipped coin. Until Alice actually looks at her coin, she doesn't know whether it landed heads-up or tails-up for her. But once she looks, once she knows, then it is a certainty that Bob's coin will be the opposite. So by exclusion, you have determined the options remaining for Bob's side of the coin. In essence, you have a "bit" that can be "flipped" at arbitrary distance without delay. But you can flip it only once, and we can't entangle at a distance yet.

In our thought experiment, we considered Man colonizing Mars. Not too far away yet. About a year's travel by rocket, and depending on the position relative to one another, classical radio communications happen with a 3 - 21 minute delay.

This makes it a rather unpractical place to "resupply", and possibly worthwhile to have at least some communications able to happen instantly. A supply of entangled particles would be sent to the Colony, but since they'd be difficult to produce, and limited in availability, each bit would have to be made to count. Simply transferring an old html webpage over Entanglement Communications would be excessively expensive.

A possible solution for this would be to predefine the messages. Particular "particles" present predefined propositions. But, of course, this predefined context limits the message itself. It will allow you to convey the sense of urgency ("Red Alert!"), but not the cause or reason of it, whose cardinality would be too numerous to predefine.

The trick would be to provide an intelligent set of messages attached to each of these "bits". E.g. you attach defined context to a particular bit. In a set of identical bits, the particular bit that "flips" can imply a wildly different meaning.

In a strange way, this could be considered the ultimate data compression.

The message is "1".
The meaning could be a copy of the Encyclopedia Galactica.

It's not even lossy compression. You just can't compress any other message except the ones you defined beforehand. So it would be useless to report, say, the day's weather, as you need to be able to have undefined variables in the message.

So for a Mars colony, the application might be limited; since there is no one who could come and intervene at a timeframe that would be relevant for a communication you want to bridge the gap of space instantaneously ("Help! We have a massive loss of Oxygen" and the resupply ship arrives a year later).

However, applying this concept to, for example, a satellite at a Lagrange point looking for Solar Storms, could give Earth and Mars a significant increase in early warning...

You are in a Dark Room...

"You are in a Dark Room. You sense there is only one exit."

Thus we wrote on the front of the card announcing the birth of our baby daughter, Megan Aisha Elisabeth Carels.

The way this text is written, as much as the text itself, is a reference to some old-skool computer games; Text Adventures like Zork, maze games like NetHack and Paganitzu. Often these fledgling adventures would "set the scene" in their introduction with a phrase like this.

Like the player in one such adventure, Megan has no notion of what lies ahead, no idea of what will be required of her, and whether there will be a cool prize when she reaches the finish (or if there will be a finish at all...). She will be embarking on her grand adventure, learning as she goes along, finding new depths and new intricate, interwoven, storylines at every turn. Hopefully ever-curious to explore and discover each of them.

But right now, she has just emerged from the dark room, and, proverbially, still blinking in the bright sunlight, is busy just getting to grips with reality around her.

Megan's parents grew up and "matured" (more or less) alongside the technology that enabled those old adventure games. Simple, text-based, things at first, but evolving into ever more complex and intricate epics.

For them too this is a reference to a new adventure that is to begin. Or at the least the latest and grandest twist in their ongoing adventure so far. One quite unlike any they've encountered before. One, that will make all the adventures before it seem like mere scratchings on the surface. Or so we are assured by legion of other players, who seem to be collectively unable to be any more specific on this claim.

So both Megan and her parents at this point have no idea of the story ahead of them, or even the new  "interface" it came with. Though I feel this is not something we should be scared of. Indeed, to stick with the computer game analogies, a long, long, time ago, when my father got some new game on the old C64, it was my "job" to figure out how it worked and in turn explain it to him. To figure out the unknown, to find what "makes the world tick".

Like I hope Megan will face the world with an eagerness and outgoing curiousity, so I hope we will be eager and curious about getting to know her.

In many ways, how I feel about this moment, is perhaps best captured by a quote from Dr. Seuss's "Oh the places you'll go"[1].

They're the last lines, from his last book. And you can kind of imagine them fitting as you, the adventure player, exit the proverbial Dark Room.

They say...

"You're off to Great Places!

Today is your day!

Your mountain is waiting.

So... get on your way!"

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh,_the_Places_You%27ll_Go!

Chaos, or Anarchy?

As some may have noticed, I've been visiting Egypt a few times recently. And one thing about Egypt that most Westerners will immediately notice is the traffic. Especially around Cairo. It's quite simple, you do not mingle in Egypt traffic, as a foreigner, unless you have a death wish.

Roads around Cairo (or more specifically the use of them), at first glance, seems a total chaos. Lanes are largely disregarded, everybody merges wherever they like, there seem to be no rules on right-of-way and traffic lights, if present, are just a colourful way of lighting the tarmac.

Accidents are rife, and often terrifyingly tragic. And the ones that aren't still have consequences that are difficult to oversee as there cannot be any insurance on these roads. Conflict as result of damaging one's property needs to be resolved with the parties involved and right on the spot.

Yet, it's not true chaos. Of course not, there are humans behind the wheel. Humans can be irrational, emotional and illogical, but they also tend to be predictable. So, if not Chaos, then within the confines of my blog's context, it follows that I'm implying that Anarchy rules the Cairo Highways.

Anarchy, in one popular meaning, is a state of lawlessness and disorder. With the latter more or less by consequence of the absence of the former. For many a orderly society, the prospect of falling into anarchy is a near worst-case scenario.

But in another meaning of Anarchy, it implies a functional method of governance in a society... Namely one without the need of a hierarchically enforced, coercive, and authoritive set of rules. The anarchist's idealism proposes that people "voluntarily" living together in a society will tend towards a form of respectful working equilibrium.


In all fairness the roads around Cairo are "not entirely" without authoritive oversight. But the police is rather understated, understaffed and ineffective in the role as enforcer. About the best they can manage is to clean up the worst of accidents, some minor traffic-management during the worst rush hours and stage the odd checkpoint now and then, causing the general motorist to quickly put on their seatbelts to prevent a dressing down and providing extra income to the State.

And the "voluntarily" part of the anarchist's definition is pretty much substituted with "necessarily". The majority[2] of people here have a car, and a cellphone, but no hope or means of truly getting out of here.


Back on the roads around Cairo, as the driver brings me from A to B, I still cannot determine a set of rules, but I can sense they are there. There is a certain rule, a certain pattern, a certain signal in the noise, that these people on the roads are tuned in to, but that my antenna is failing to pick up.

Perhaps there's something a little more than "mere" anarchy. The ancient Egyptians had a philosophy of Ma'at [1]. Ma'at was the embodiment, the spirit, of truth, balance, order, law, morality and justice. It was a philosophy of living rightly and properly, embodied in 42 confessions (hieroglyphs on papyrus had a slightly higher data density compared to stone tablets, hence the Egyptians had space for more than 10, I guess). Old habits, old morals, die hard.

Whether the Cairo highway is a huge field-experiment in benevolent anarchy with 15 million participants, or a side-effect of a deeper ancient social-cultural disposition, I can't really tell. And it's pretty easy to see where the system has deep, and often fatal, flaws. But, there is one. And one that springs forth from the mere tiniest sliver of rule-of-law and nothing further than the common goals and necessities of man living together in close proximity.

A weave and evasive maneuver of the car breaks my reverie,
and I see we're close to our destination.

Time to go to work.

[1] Wikipedia page on Ma'at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%27at
[2] Edit: This I need to correct after reading an article on fuel subsidies. The huge traffic load of cars on the roads is caused by a very small minority of the people. Less than 5% of Egyptians own a car.