Editing 1277: Ayn Random

{{comic
| number    = 1277
| date      = October 14, 2013
| title     = Ayn Random
| image     = ayn random.png
| titletext = In a cavern deep below the Earth, Ayn Rand, Paul Ryan, Rand Paul, Ann Druyan, Paul Rudd, Alan Alda, and Duran Duran meet together in the Secret Council of /(\b[plurandy]+\b ?){2}/i.
}}

{{incomplete|All the attempts to be fair and polite to Ayn Rand completely obscure the joke when the joke is attacking Ayn Rand's philosophy. The explanation therefore fails to actually explain the joke.}}
==Explanation==
[[White Hat]] explains to [[Cueball]] a program he wrote, the "Ayn Random Number Generator", which is a pun on {{w|Ayn Rand}}, the name of a writer who created a philosophical system known as {{w|Objectivism (Ayn Rand)|Objectivism}}. Objectivists believe that the primary aim of life is to maximise personal happiness. In their view, if some humans are born more capable of satisfying their desires than other people, they deserve to reap greater rewards from life than others, no matter the cost to those others. In the comic, White Hat uses a similar line of reason to justify some numbers appearing more often than others in a {{w|Random number generation|"random" number generator}}. Since the primary virtue in Objectivist ethics is rationality (or, at least, "rationality" as defined by Rand: her critics argue that the conclusions she reached do not actually derive inevitably from her premises and that additional, unstated assumptions are necessary to make the system work), the implication may be that the random number generator favors rational numbers (numbers that can be written as a fraction, i.e. a quotient p/q where p and q have no common factor).

The title text identifies a group of people whose names match the {{w|regular expression}} <code>/(\b[plurandy]+\b ?){2}/i</code>. A step-by-step explanation of the expression:
*\b is a word boundary, matching anywhere there is a 'word character' next to a non-word character&mdash;punctuation, digit, spacing, etc.
*[plurandy] is a character class, and will match any single character from the set inside the square brackets; [adlnpruy] means exactly the same
*the plus sign means ''one or more'' of the previous thing, so [plurandy]+ matches one or many of the characters in that class, one after the other
*" ?" - a space followed by a question mark:  "?" means "0 or 1 of the previous thing", so a space is optional
*the whole section in parentheses (\b[plurandy]+\b ?) translates to "a word containing one or more letters, all of which are in the set [plurandy], followed by an optional space"
*the {2} on the end means to repeat the pattern, so it must match exactly twice
*The slashes at each end mark out the pattern, and the "i" at the end is an expression qualifier means it is "case insensitive" (uppercase and lowercase match interchangeably)

Overall, it matches two words separated by a space, composed entirely of the letters in [plurandy], which is what all the names listed have in common.
 
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Person !! Brief Description
|-
| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Ayn Rand}} || Author, best known for her novels {{w|The Fountainhead}} and {{w|Atlas Shrugged}}. 
|-
| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Paul Ryan}} || US Politician known to have been influenced by the writings of Ayn Rand.
|-
| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Rand Paul}} || US Politician, also influenced by Ayn Rand's writings.
|-
| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Ann Druyan}} || Author, widow of {{w|Carl Sagan}}
|-
| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Paul Rudd}} || Actor, screenwriter, comedian
|-
| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Alan Alda}} || Actor, best known for the role of Hawkeye Pierce in the TV series M*A*S*H. Played Arnold Vinick, a fiscally-conservative Republican presidential candidate, in {{w|The West Wing}}. 
|-
| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Duran Duran}} || New Wave/Rock band
|}

==Transcript==
:[Cueball sitting at a laptop, White Hat behind him.]
:Cueball: This Ayn Random number generator you wrote '''''claims''''' to be fair, but the output is biased toward certain numbers.
:White Hat: '''''WELL, MAYBE THOSE NUMBERS ARE JUST INTRINSICALLY BETTER!'''''

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Programming]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Philosophy]]
[[Category:Math]]