The paradox of the white screen
I was thrown into a white room.
Nothing was there, except a white screen.
The white screen displayed a mysterious series of text. A sentence of an unknown language.
I recorded them in my memory, what text followed what, and came up with a rulebook of the rules the initial sample followed. (even what correlation the x-th text had to a-th text.) (and by rules, I mean all POSSIBLE correlations were recorded)
Suddenly, the screen showed another series of text. I wrote a separate set of rules, and tried to match the rules of the former and the latter. In the process, a huge amount of rules were discarded.
The discarded rules I recorded in another memory bank.
The screen kept changing, each time the series of text changed. I got the grasp of what text might come next. The accurate rules began to emerge. Many rules happened 99% of the time.
I became so confident of the rules that I began to spot mistakes in some samples.
But even if I became so good at predicting the sequences just by looking at my personal rulebook, I never understood what the true meaning of the language.
To this day, I sit in the white room. Reinforcing the rules I have written. I have gotten bored.
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