https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?action=history&feed=atom&title=1277%3A_Ayn_Random 2026-05-22T15:51:10Z Revision history for this page on the wiki MediaWiki 1.30.0 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1277:_Ayn_Random&diff=387339&oldid=prev 2025-09-22T19:27:08Z

<p>‎<span dir="auto"><span class="autocomment">Explanation</span></span></p> <table class="diff diff-contentalign-left" data-mw="interface"> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <tr style="vertical-align: top;" lang="en"> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: white; color:black; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: white; color:black; text-align: center;">Revision as of 19:27, 22 September 2025</td> </tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l33" >Line 33:</td> <td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 33:</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Ayn Rand}} || Author, best known for her novels ''{{w|The Fountainhead}}'' and ''{{w|Atlas Shrugged}}''. &#160;</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Ayn Rand}} || Author, best known for her novels ''{{w|The Fountainhead}}'' and ''{{w|Atlas Shrugged}}''. &#160;</div></td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>|-</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>|-</div></td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Paul Ryan}} || US politician known to have been influenced by the writings of Ayn Rand.</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Paul Ryan}} |<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| {{w</ins>|US <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Republican Party}} </ins>politician known to have been influenced by the writings of Ayn Rand.</div></td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>|-</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>|-</div></td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Rand Paul}} || US politician, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">also </del>influenced by Ayn Rand's writings.</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Rand Paul}} || US <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Republican Party </ins>politician, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and son of fellow Republican (and self-styled libertarian) {{w|Ron Paul}}. Ron Paul is frequently referenced in early xkcd comics, and is known to be strongly </ins>influenced by Ayn Rand's writings<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">. Rand Paul also counts Ayn Rand as an influence. Though it is sometimes believed that Rand Paul was named after Ayn Rand, this is not the case</ins>.</div></td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>|-</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>|-</div></td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Ann Druyan}} || Author, widow of {{w|Carl Sagan}}</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Ann Druyan}} || Author, widow of {{w|Carl Sagan}}</div></td></tr> </table>

148.252.147.42 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1277:_Ayn_Random&diff=380582&oldid=prev 2025-06-28T14:26:35Z

<p>typo : wrong French verb (Lassez is something else)</p> <table class="diff diff-contentalign-left" data-mw="interface"> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <tr style="vertical-align: top;" lang="en"> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: white; color:black; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: white; color:black; text-align: center;">Revision as of 14:26, 28 June 2025</td> </tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l8" >Line 8:</td> <td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 8:</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>==Explanation==</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>==Explanation==</div></td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>This comic is a satirization of {{w|Objectivism}}, a philosophy developed by {{w|Ayn Rand}}. Objectivism is a moral system which promotes the institution of complete, unregulated <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Lassez</del>-Faire capitalism (capitalism with no regulation or governmental intervention of any kind). A core claim of Objectivism is that it is a perfectly fair way of distributing resources. Depending on how one defines fairness, Objectivism is not fair -- since those who have been externally elevated to an advantageous position (e.g. via nepotism) will be able to acquire more resources with the same level of effort as another person who does not benefit from similar advantages. In the comic, this juxtaposition between the claim that Objectivism is fair, and the unfairness seen in its practical implementation, is satirized in the form of an Ayn Random number generator (a pun on Rand's name) whose creator claims is perfectly fair but demonstrably is not.</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>This comic is a satirization of {{w|Objectivism}}, a philosophy developed by {{w|Ayn Rand}}. Objectivism is a moral system which promotes the institution of complete, unregulated <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Laissez</ins>-Faire capitalism (capitalism with no regulation or governmental intervention of any kind). A core claim of Objectivism is that it is a perfectly fair way of distributing resources. Depending on how one defines fairness, Objectivism is not fair -- since those who have been externally elevated to an advantageous position (e.g. via nepotism) will be able to acquire more resources with the same level of effort as another person who does not benefit from similar advantages. In the comic, this juxtaposition between the claim that Objectivism is fair, and the unfairness seen in its practical implementation, is satirized in the form of an Ayn Random number generator (a pun on Rand's name) whose creator claims is perfectly fair but demonstrably is not.</div></td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>A major ethical quandary Objectivists face is what is to be done about this unfairness; if Objectivism really is the perfect system for resource distribution, then why are resources distributed unequally under Objectivism? How one answers that question depends on a certain assumption -- that being, whether all humans are essentially equal in value (the accepted moral position in the West, c. 2024) or not. Some Objectivists disagree with the assertion of total human equality, concluding that if, under a hyper-aggressive survival-of-the-fittest system, people do not acquire equal levels of resources, then peoples' intrinsic values must be different. In the comic, this particular position is satirized with White Hat's cry of &quot;Well, maybe those numbers are just intrinsically better!&quot;</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>A major ethical quandary Objectivists face is what is to be done about this unfairness; if Objectivism really is the perfect system for resource distribution, then why are resources distributed unequally under Objectivism? How one answers that question depends on a certain assumption -- that being, whether all humans are essentially equal in value (the accepted moral position in the West, c. 2024) or not. Some Objectivists disagree with the assertion of total human equality, concluding that if, under a hyper-aggressive survival-of-the-fittest system, people do not acquire equal levels of resources, then peoples' intrinsic values must be different. In the comic, this particular position is satirized with White Hat's cry of &quot;Well, maybe those numbers are just intrinsically better!&quot;</div></td></tr> </table>

192.214.228.109 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1277:_Ayn_Random&diff=340945&oldid=prev 2024-04-30T15:10:04Z

<p>I meant to just do a minor rewrite of what I felt was a biased sentence in the first section, but ended up rewriting the whole thing. I think this layout has better flow, anyway -- and has a more *objective* (hehe) tone</p> <table class="diff diff-contentalign-left" data-mw="interface"> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <tr style="vertical-align: top;" lang="en"> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: white; color:black; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: white; color:black; text-align: center;">Revision as of 15:10, 30 April 2024</td> </tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l8" >Line 8:</td> <td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 8:</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>==Explanation==</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>==Explanation==</div></td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">The </del>comic is <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">an attack on the problems with the philosophy </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">&quot;Objectivism&quot;. [[White Hat]] explains to [[Cueball]] a program he wrote, the &quot;Ayn Random Number Generator&quot;, which is a pun on </del>{{w|<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Ayn Rand</del>}}, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the name of </del>a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">writer who created a philosophical system known as </del>{{w|<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Objectivism (</del>Ayn Rand<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">)|Objectivism</del>}}. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">The joke </del>is <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">an attack on her philosophy</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">which claims to be </del>a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">completely </del>fair <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">mechanism for </del>distributing resources, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">but inherently favors </del>those who <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">start out with more resources, or already in a </del>position to acquire the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">resources</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">It also has a strong overarching theme </del>that <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">people that believe </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">objectivism are inherently better than other people</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and thus deserve what extra resources can be acquired - as with </del>the Ayn Random <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Number Generator, which </del>claims <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">to be completely </del>fair <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and balanced, </del>but <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">actually favors some numbers - which White Hat explains by saying that they deserve to come up more because they're inherently better</del>.</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">This </ins>comic is <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">a satirization </ins>of {{w|<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Objectivism</ins>}}, a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">philosophy developed by </ins>{{w|Ayn Rand}}. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Objectivism </ins>is <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">a moral system which promotes the institution of complete</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">unregulated Lassez-Faire capitalism (capitalism with no regulation or governmental intervention of any kind). A core claim of Objectivism is that it is </ins>a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">perfectly </ins>fair <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">way of </ins>distributing resources<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">. Depending on how one defines fairness</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Objectivism is not fair -- since </ins>those who <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">have been externally elevated to an advantageous </ins>position <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">(e.g. via nepotism) will be able </ins>to acquire <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">more resources with </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">same level of effort as another person who does not benefit from similar advantages</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">In the comic, this juxtaposition between the claim </ins>that <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Objectivism is fair, and the unfairness seen </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">its practical implementation</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">is satirized in </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">form of an </ins>Ayn Random <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">number generator (a pun on Rand's name) whose creator </ins>claims <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">is perfectly </ins>fair but <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">demonstrably is not</ins>.</div></td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Now</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">objectivists</del>, of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">course</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">would challenge </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">above portrayal</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">but the joke is</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">in </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">end</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">an attack on Ayn Rand</del>'s <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">philosophies. </del>A more nuanced description is that <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">objectivists </del>believe that the primary aim of life is to maximize 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.</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">A major ethical quandary Objectivists face is what is to be done about this unfairness; if Objectivism really is the perfect system for resource distribution</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">then why are resources distributed unequally under Objectivism? How one answers that question depends on a certain assumption -- that being</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">whether all humans are essentially equal in value (the accepted moral position in the West, c. 2024) or not. Some Objectivists disagree with the assertion </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">total human equality, concluding that if</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">under a hyper-aggressive survival-of-</ins>the<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">-fittest system</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">people do not acquire equal levels of resources</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">then peoples' intrinsic values must be different. In </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">comic</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">this particular position is satirized with White Hat</ins>'s <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">cry of &quot;Well, maybe those numbers are just intrinsically better!&quot;</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>&#160;</div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>A more nuanced description is that <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Objectivists </ins>believe that the primary aim of life is to maximize 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.</div></td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>As an aside, &quot;biased&quot; random number generators exist. They're called weighted random number generators, and they have many practical applications when the programmer isn't lying about the number generator's function and output.</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>As an aside, &quot;biased&quot; random number generators exist. They're called weighted random number generators, and they have many practical applications when the programmer isn't lying about the number generator's function and output.</div></td></tr> </table>

Pie Guy https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1277:_Ayn_Random&diff=297704&oldid=prev 2022-10-27T15:37:34Z

<p></p> <table class="diff diff-contentalign-left" data-mw="interface"> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <tr style="vertical-align: top;" lang="en"> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: white; color:black; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: white; color:black; text-align: center;">Revision as of 15:37, 27 October 2022</td> </tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l10" >Line 10:</td> <td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 10:</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>The comic is an attack on the problems with the philosophy of &quot;Objectivism&quot;. [[White Hat]] explains to [[Cueball]] a program he wrote, the &quot;Ayn Random Number Generator&quot;, 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}}. The joke is an attack on her philosophy, which claims to be a completely fair mechanism for distributing resources, but inherently favors those who start out with more resources, or already in a position to acquire the resources. It also has a strong overarching theme that people that believe in objectivism are inherently better than other people, and thus deserve what extra resources can be acquired - as with the Ayn Random Number Generator, which claims to be completely fair and balanced, but actually favors some numbers - which White Hat explains by saying that they deserve to come up more because they're inherently better.</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>The comic is an attack on the problems with the philosophy of &quot;Objectivism&quot;. [[White Hat]] explains to [[Cueball]] a program he wrote, the &quot;Ayn Random Number Generator&quot;, 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}}. The joke is an attack on her philosophy, which claims to be a completely fair mechanism for distributing resources, but inherently favors those who start out with more resources, or already in a position to acquire the resources. It also has a strong overarching theme that people that believe in objectivism are inherently better than other people, and thus deserve what extra resources can be acquired - as with the Ayn Random Number Generator, which claims to be completely fair and balanced, but actually favors some numbers - which White Hat explains by saying that they deserve to come up more because they're inherently better.</div></td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Now, objectivists, of course, would challenge the above portrayal, but the joke is, in the end, an attack on Ayn Rand's philosophies. A more nuanced description is that objectivists believe that the primary aim of life is to <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">maximise </del>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.</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Now, objectivists, of course, would challenge the above portrayal, but the joke is, in the end, an attack on Ayn Rand's philosophies. A more nuanced description is that objectivists believe that the primary aim of life is to <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">maximize </ins>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.</div></td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>As an aside, &quot;biased&quot; random number generators exist. They're called weighted random number generators, and they have many practical applications when the programmer isn't lying about the number generator's function and output.</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>&#160;</td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>As an aside, &quot;biased&quot; random number generators exist. They're called weighted random number generators, and they have many practical applications when the programmer isn't lying about the number generator's function and output.</div></td></tr> </table>

JLZ0kTC5 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1277:_Ayn_Random&diff=272999&oldid=prev 2022-05-21T02:53:11Z

<p>Reverted edits by <a href="/wiki/index.php/Special:Contributions/Explain_xkcd_server_admin" title="Special:Contributions/Explain xkcd server admin">Explain xkcd server admin</a> (<a href="/wiki/index.php?title=User_talk:Explain_xkcd_server_admin&amp;action=edit&amp;redlink=1" class="new" title="User talk:Explain xkcd server admin (page does not exist)">talk</a>) to last revision by <a href="/wiki/index.php/User:Davidy22" title="User:Davidy22">Davidy22</a></p> <a href="//www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1277:_Ayn_Random&amp;diff=272999&amp;oldid=271649">Show changes</a>

Davidy22 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1277:_Ayn_Random&diff=271649&oldid=prev 2022-05-20T22:01:33Z

<p></p> <a href="//www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1277:_Ayn_Random&amp;diff=271649&amp;oldid=269909">Show changes</a>

Explain xkcd server admin https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1277:_Ayn_Random&diff=269909&oldid=prev 2022-05-16T23:29:44Z

<p>Reverted edits by <a href="/wiki/index.php/Special:Contributions/The_author_of_xkcd" title="Special:Contributions/The author of xkcd">The author of xkcd</a> (<a href="/wiki/index.php?title=User_talk:The_author_of_xkcd&amp;action=edit&amp;redlink=1" class="new" title="User talk:The author of xkcd (page does not exist)">talk</a>) to last revision by <a href="/wiki/index.php/User:Theusaf" title="User:Theusaf">Theusaf</a></p> <table class="diff diff-contentalign-left" data-mw="interface"> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <tr style="vertical-align: top;" lang="en"> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: white; color:black; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: white; color:black; text-align: center;">Revision as of 23:29, 16 May 2022</td> </tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l1" >Line 1:</td> <td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 1:</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap 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crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap</del></div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">{{comic</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| number&#160; &#160; = 1277</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| date&#160; &#160; &#160; = October 14, 2013</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| title&#160; &#160; = Ayn Random</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| image&#160; &#160; = ayn random.png</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| 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.</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">}}</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>&#160;</div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">==Explanation==</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">The comic is an attack on the problems with the philosophy of &quot;Objectivism&quot;. [[White Hat]] explains to [[Cueball]] a program he wrote, the &quot;Ayn Random Number Generator&quot;, 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}}. The joke is an attack on her philosophy, which claims to be a completely fair mechanism for distributing resources, but inherently favors those who start out with more resources, or already in a position to acquire the resources. It also has a strong overarching theme that people that believe in objectivism are inherently better than other people, and thus deserve what extra resources can be acquired - as with the Ayn Random Number Generator, which claims to be completely fair and balanced, but actually favors some numbers - which White Hat explains by saying that they deserve to come up more because they're inherently better.</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>&#160;</div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Now, objectivists, of course, would challenge the above portrayal, but the joke is, in the end, an attack on Ayn Rand's philosophies. A more nuanced description is that 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.</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>&#160;</div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">As an aside, &quot;biased&quot; random number generators exist. They're called weighted random number generators, and they have many practical applications when the programmer isn't lying about the number generator's function and output.</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>&#160;</div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">The title text identifies a group of people whose names match the {{w|regular expression}} &lt;code&gt;[https://www.debuggex.com/r/WsWV5ZSh8NTQL_JZ &lt;nowiki&gt;/(\b[plurandy]+\b ?){2}/i&lt;/nowiki&gt;]&lt;/code&gt;. A step-by-step explanation of the expression:</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">*\b is a word boundary, matching anywhere there is a 'word character' next to a non-word character—punctuation, digit, spacing, etc.</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">*[plurandy] is a character class, and will match any single character from the set inside the square brackets; [adlnpruy] means exactly the same</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">*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</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">*&quot; ?&quot; - a space followed by a question mark:&#160; &quot;?&quot; means &quot;0 or 1 of the previous thing&quot;, so a space is optional</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">*the whole section in parentheses (\b[plurandy]+\b ?) translates to &quot;a word containing one or more letters, all of which are in the set [plurandy], followed by an optional space&quot;</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">*the {2} on the end means to repeat the pattern, so it must match exactly twice</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">*The slashes at each end mark out the pattern, and the &quot;i&quot; at the end is an expression qualifier means it is &quot;case insensitive&quot; (uppercase and lowercase match interchangeably)</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>&#160;</div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">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. This could suggest that those letters are, to quote White Hat, intrinsically better.</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> </ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">{| class=&quot;wikitable&quot;</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">|-</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">! Person !! Brief Description</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">|-</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Ayn Rand}} || Author, best known for her novels ''{{w|The Fountainhead}}'' and ''{{w|Atlas Shrugged}}''. </ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">|-</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Paul Ryan}} || US politician known to have been influenced by the writings of Ayn Rand.</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">|-</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Rand Paul}} || US politician, also influenced by Ayn Rand's writings.</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">|-</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Ann Druyan}} || Author, widow of {{w|Carl Sagan}}</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">|-</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Paul Rudd}} || Actor, screenwriter, comedian</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">|-</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Alan Alda}} || Actor, best known for the role of Hawkeye Pierce in the TV series ''{{w|M*A*S*H (TV series)|M*A*S*H}}''. Also played Arnold Vinick, a fiscally-conservative Republican presidential candidate, in ''{{w|The West Wing}}''. </ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">|-</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Duran Duran}} || New Wave/Rock band, named after the mad scientist antagonist in cult film ''{{w|Barbarella (film)|Barbarella}}'', who wishes to bring warfare back to civilization.</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">|}</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>&#160;</div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">As an aside, if the entirety of the title text is matched against the regular expression, it matches &quot;and Duran&quot; instead of &quot;Duran Duran&quot;.</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>&#160;</div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">===Speculation===</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Since the primary virtue in Objectivist ethics is rationality (or, at least, &quot;rationality&quot; 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). On the other hand, given computers cannot store data of unlimited length, it is impossible for '''any''' real world computer random number generator to produce an irrational number in any of the usual integer or floating point representations—so probably not.&#160; (Although a computer could encode irrationals or generate them randomly if it uses another representation, one of the standard algebraic number representations, for instance.)&#160; Alternately, an Objectivist might argue that if the intent of the comic is to attack or mock Objectivism, then the comic inadvertently satirizes itself via the &quot;rationality&quot; interpretation.</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>&#160;</div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">==Transcript==</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">:[Cueball sitting at a laptop, White Hat behind him.]</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">:Cueball: This Ayn Random number generator you wrote '''''claims''''' to be fair, but the output is biased toward certain numbers.</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">:White Hat: '''''WELL, MAYBE THOSE NUMBERS ARE JUST INTRINSICALLY BETTER!'''''</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>&#160;</div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">{{comic discussion}}</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[[Category:Programming]]</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[[Category:Philosophy]]</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[[Category:Math]]</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[[Category:Puns]]</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2">&#160;</td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[[Category:Regex]]</ins></div></td></tr> </table>

Davidy22 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1277:_Ayn_Random&diff=269521&oldid=prev 2022-05-16T22:56:14Z

<p></p> <table class="diff diff-contentalign-left" data-mw="interface"> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <tr style="vertical-align: top;" lang="en"> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: white; color:black; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: white; color:black; text-align: center;">Revision as of 22:56, 16 May 2022</td> </tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l1" >Line 1:</td> <td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 1:</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">{{comic</del></div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap 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crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| number&#160; &#160; = 1277</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| date&#160; &#160; &#160; = October 14, 2013</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| title&#160; &#160; = Ayn Random</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| image&#160; &#160; = ayn random.png</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| 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.</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">}}</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>&#160;</div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">==Explanation==</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">The comic is an attack on the problems with the philosophy of &quot;Objectivism&quot;. [[White Hat]] explains to [[Cueball]] a program he wrote, the &quot;Ayn Random Number Generator&quot;, 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}}. The joke is an attack on her philosophy, which claims to be a completely fair mechanism for distributing resources, but inherently favors those who start out with more resources, or already in a position to acquire the resources. It also has a strong overarching theme that people that believe in objectivism are inherently better than other people, and thus deserve what extra resources can be acquired - as with the Ayn Random Number Generator, which claims to be completely fair and balanced, but actually favors some numbers - which White Hat explains by saying that they deserve to come up more because they're inherently better.</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>&#160;</div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Now, objectivists, of course, would challenge the above portrayal, but the joke is, in the end, an attack on Ayn Rand's philosophies. A more nuanced description is that 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.</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>&#160;</div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">As an aside, &quot;biased&quot; random number generators exist. They're called weighted random number generators, and they have many practical applications when the programmer isn't lying about the number generator's function and output.</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>&#160;</div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">The title text identifies a group of people whose names match the {{w|regular expression}} &lt;code&gt;[https://www.debuggex.com/r/WsWV5ZSh8NTQL_JZ &lt;nowiki&gt;/(\b[plurandy]+\b ?){2}/i&lt;/nowiki&gt;]&lt;/code&gt;. A step-by-step explanation of the expression:</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">*\b is a word boundary, matching anywhere there is a 'word character' next to a non-word character—punctuation, digit, spacing, etc.</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">*[plurandy] is a character class, and will match any single character from the set inside the square brackets; [adlnpruy] means exactly the same</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">*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</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">*&quot; ?&quot; - a space followed by a question mark:&#160; &quot;?&quot; means &quot;0 or 1 of the previous thing&quot;, so a space is optional</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">*the whole section in parentheses (\b[plurandy]+\b ?) translates to &quot;a word containing one or more letters, all of which are in the set [plurandy], followed by an optional space&quot;</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">*the {2} on the end means to repeat the pattern, so it must match exactly twice</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">*The slashes at each end mark out the pattern, and the &quot;i&quot; at the end is an expression qualifier means it is &quot;case insensitive&quot; (uppercase and lowercase match interchangeably)</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>&#160;</div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">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. This could suggest that those letters are, to quote White Hat, intrinsically better.</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> </del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">{| class=&quot;wikitable&quot;</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">|-</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">! Person !! Brief Description</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">|-</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Ayn Rand}} || Author, best known for her novels ''{{w|The Fountainhead}}'' and ''{{w|Atlas Shrugged}}''. </del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">|-</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Paul Ryan}} || US politician known to have been influenced by the writings of Ayn Rand.</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">|-</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Rand Paul}} || US politician, also influenced by Ayn Rand's writings.</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">|-</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Ann Druyan}} || Author, widow of {{w|Carl Sagan}}</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">|-</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Paul Rudd}} || Actor, screenwriter, comedian</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">|-</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Alan Alda}} || Actor, best known for the role of Hawkeye Pierce in the TV series ''{{w|M*A*S*H (TV series)|M*A*S*H}}''. Also played Arnold Vinick, a fiscally-conservative Republican presidential candidate, in ''{{w|The West Wing}}''. </del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">|-</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">| style=white-space:nowrap | {{w|Duran Duran}} || New Wave/Rock band, named after the mad scientist antagonist in cult film ''{{w|Barbarella (film)|Barbarella}}'', who wishes to bring warfare back to civilization.</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">|}</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>&#160;</div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">As an aside, if the entirety of the title text is matched against the regular expression, it matches &quot;and Duran&quot; instead of &quot;Duran Duran&quot;.</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>&#160;</div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">===Speculation===</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Since the primary virtue in Objectivist ethics is rationality (or, at least, &quot;rationality&quot; 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). On the other hand, given computers cannot store data of unlimited length, it is impossible for '''any''' real world computer random number generator to produce an irrational number in any of the usual integer or floating point representations—so probably not.&#160; (Although a computer could encode irrationals or generate them randomly if it uses another representation, one of the standard algebraic number representations, for instance.)&#160; Alternately, an Objectivist might argue that if the intent of the comic is to attack or mock Objectivism, then the comic inadvertently satirizes itself via the &quot;rationality&quot; interpretation.</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>&#160;</div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">==Transcript==</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">:[Cueball sitting at a laptop, White Hat behind him.]</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">:Cueball: This Ayn Random number generator you wrote '''''claims''''' to be fair, but the output is biased toward certain numbers.</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">:White Hat: '''''WELL, MAYBE THOSE NUMBERS ARE JUST INTRINSICALLY BETTER!'''''</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>&#160;</div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">{{comic discussion}}</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[[Category:Programming]]</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[[Category:Philosophy]]</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[[Category:Math]]</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[[Category:Puns]]</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> <tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[[Category:Regex]]</del></div></td><td colspan="2">&#160;</td></tr> </table>

The author of xkcd https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1277:_Ayn_Random&diff=268207&oldid=prev 2022-05-11T18:47:14Z

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