dsandler.org/wp

[10:32] <dsandler> opper: Will the ARM build be broken today?

[10:32] * dsandler shakes opper

[10:32] <opper> dsandler: You may rely on it.

[10:32] <dsandler> Ding!

[10:32] * dsandler is confident that opper will never be wrong

[10:32] <dsandler> As long as we don’t use up all the veritons.

[10:32] <ctate> warning: bogons detected

[10:33] <dsandler> This was the theory I was expounding to Marco last
week: a Magic Eight Ball is like /dev/random. It collects truth
particles (veritons) from the surrounding space, and then when you ask
it a question, it consumes those veritons in service of an answer.

[10:34] <dsandler> But it’s possible to use them up. So an 8-Ball is
more like /dev/urandom in that fashion — if you exhaust the truth
supply, it’ll start generating pseudotruth.

[10:34] <ctate> so if you shake the opper incessantly, you use up all
the veritons?

[10:34] <todd> Veritons are not conserved?

[10:34] <dsandler> I finished by admonishing him not to shake opper all
the time.

[10:34] <ctate> where do they go?

[10:34] <dsandler> Into your brain.

[10:34] * ctate shakes dsandler’s head

[10:34] <dsandler> ctate: Try again later.

[10:35] <dsandler> See, the 8-Ball output domain accounts for lack of
available veritons, but if you shake it enough, you’ll get erroneous (or
pseudotruthful) output.

[10:35] <dsandler> todd: I think veritons are conserved, actually.
8-Balls trap free veritons, which are created in a sort of entangled
state with bogons on the other side of the universe.

[10:36] <dsandler> Once the free veritons are bound up in an actual
prediction, they can’t be reused and the 8-Ball has to wait for more
spontaneously-appearing veritons.

[10:36] * todd tries not to burst out laughing while he’s on his
conference call.