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.
}}

==Explanation==
The comic is an attack on the problems with the philosophy of "Objectivism". [[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}}. 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.

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.

As an aside, "biased" 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.

The title text identifies a group of people whose names match the {{w|regular expression}} <code>[https://www.debuggex.com/r/WsWV5ZSh8NTQL_JZ <nowiki>/(\b[plurandy]+\b ?){2}/i</nowiki>]</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—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. This could suggest that those letters are, to quote White Hat, intrinsically better.
 
{| 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 ''{{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}}''. 
|-
| 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.
|}

As an aside, if the entirety of the title text is matched against the regular expression, it matches "and Duran" instead of "Duran Duran".

===Speculation===
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). 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.  (Although a computer could encode irrationals or generate them randomly if it uses another representation, one of the standard algebraic number representations, for instance.)  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 "rationality" interpretation.

==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]]
[[Category:Puns]]
[[Category:Regex]]