Death Note: L, Anonymity and Eluding Entropy (2011)
(gwern.net)80 points by teej 12 hours ago
80 points by teej 12 hours ago
The analysis forgets the very first problem after someone is killing criminals visibly: Light relies on TV to find them. You could tell it's Japan without doing any math about time zones or anythING, as TV itself brings in the bias. To pretend you are elsewhere, you have to be consuming foreign news to even begin to have a chance to hide yourself
At the end of the article:
> Selecting criminals could be based on internationally accessible periodicals that plausibly every human has access to, such as the New York Times, and deaths could be delayed by months or years to broaden the possibilities as to where the Kira learned of the victim (TV? books? the Internet?) and avoiding issues like killing a criminal only publicized on one obscure Japanese public television channel. And so on.
Less than a quarter of the way through the article:
> Worse, the deaths are non-random in other ways—they tend to occur at particular times! Just the scheduling of deaths cost Light 6 bits of anonymity
Have you seen the show/read the manga? That's precisely the first tactic L uses against Light - he broadcasts that he has precise knowledge that he's somewhere in the Kanto region of Japan based on this timing. It's also mentioned in the article which you claim forgets to cover this.
I would highly recommend the 2006 deaths note films.
I found the manga and anime to have too many side stories. Fans of them love these near miss stories, but I found them like a bunch of dead ends.
The double feature is well made and much more focused on the core story, imho
I also thought the the L spin-off was pretty good.
Couldn’t disagree more. Both the manga and the anime are masterpieces.
This essay nerd sniped me hard into information theory. Absolutely love it.
> How much positive evidence for guilt is necessary before we decide that some man should be put away?
Isn’t this what “beyond a reasonable doubt” is doing? It’s obviously not precise but it’s an intention of the current system.
> How much positive evidence for guilt is necessary before we decide that some man should be put away?
The answer to this question is ZERO. We are human, after all (and the corollary is that no amount of evidence will tip the scale for someone we don't want to put away). How much positive evidence for guilt ought to be necessary for a society to remain moral/egalitarian/equitable is a different question entirely.
Related. Others?
Death Note: L, Anonymity and Eluding Entropy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26826585 - April 2021 (10 comments)
Death Note: L, Anonymity and Eluding Entropy (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20617325 - Aug 2019 (139 comments)
Death Note Anonymity: L, Anonymity and Eluding Entropy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9553494 - May 2015 (23 comments)
Who wrote the 'Death Note' script? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5010846 - Jan 2013 (79 comments)