My new favorite definition of love
Jul. 18th, 2003 04:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistIt's actually better than this, becasue there's calculus and graphs and other things I couldn't put in here, but this is still pretty good.
Waterhouse had been chewing his way through exotic Nip code systems at the rate of about one a week, but after he sees Mary Smith in the parlor of Mrs. McTeague's boarding house, his production rate drops to near zero.
Despite his and Turing's disagreements about whether the human brain is a Turing machine, he has to admit that Turing wouldn't have too much trouble writing a set of instructions to simulate the brain functions of Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse.
Waterhouse seeks happiness. He achieves it by breaking Nip codes and playing the pipe organ. But since pipe organs are in short supply, his happiness level ends up being totally dependent on breaking codes.
He cannot break codes (hence, cannot be happy) unless is his mind is clear. Clarity of mind is affected by any number of factors, but by far the most importnat is horniness, σ. Horniness begins at zero at time t = t0 (immediately following ejaculation) and increases from there as a linear function of time. The only way to drop it back to zero is to arrange another ejaculation.
There is a critical threshold σc, such that when σ > σc, it becomes totally impossible for Waterhouse to break Nipponese cryptographic systems. This makes it impossible for him to achieve happiness (unless there is a pipe organ handy, which there isn't).
Typically, it takes two to three days for σ to climb about σc after an ejaculation. Critical, then, to the maintenence of Waterhouse's sanity is the ability to ejaculate every two to three days. As long as he can arrange this, σ exhibits a classic sawtooth-wave pattern, optimally with the peaks at or near σc.
So much for the basic theory. Now, when he was at Pearl Harbor, e discovered something that, in retrospect, should have been profoundly disturbing. Namely, that ejaculations obtained in a whorehouse (i.e. provided by the minstrations of an actual human female) seemed to drop σ below the level that Waterhouse could achieve through executing a Manual Override. In other words, the post-ejaculatory horniness level was not always equal to zero, as the naive theory propounded above assumes, but to some other quantity dependent on whether the ejaculation was induced by Self or Other. σ = σself after masturbation but σ = σother upon leaving a whorehouse, where σself > σother.
If he had thought about this, it would have botherd him, becuase σself > σother has troubleing implications--particularly if the values of these quantities w.r.t. the all-important σc are not fixed. If it weren't for this inequality, then Waterhouse could function as a totally self-contained and independent unit. But σself > σother implies that he is, in the long run, dependent on other human beings for his mental clarity and, therefore, his happiness. What a pain in the ass!
Perhaps he has avoided thinking about this precisely becasue it is so troubling. The week after he meets Mary Smith, he realizes that he is going to have to think about it a lot more.
Something about the arrival of Mary Smith on the scene has completely fouled up the whole system of equations. Now, when he has an ejaculation, his clarity of mind does not take the upwards jump that it should. He goes right back to thinking about Mary. So much for winning the war!
He goes out in search of whorehouses, hoping that good old reliable σother will save his bacon. It helps a little, but only on the σ management level. Until recently that was the only level and so it would have been fine. But now (as Waterhouse realizes through long comtemplation during the hours when he should be breaking codes) a new factor has entered the system of equations that governs his behavior: he will have to write to Alan and tell him that some new instructions will have to be added to the Waterhouse-simulation Turing machine. This new factor is FMSp, the Factor of Mary Smith Proximity.
In a simpler universe, FMSp would be orthogonal to σ, which is to say that the two factors would be entirely independent of each other. If it were thus, Waterhouse could continue the usual sawtooth-wave ejaculation management program with no changes. In addition, he could arrange to have frequent conversations with Mary Smith so that FMSp would remain as high as possible.
Alas! The universe is not simple. Far from being orthogonal, FMSp and σ are involved as elaborately as the contrails of dogfighting airplanes. The old σ management scheme doesn't work anymore. And a platonic relationship will actually make FMSp worse, not better. His life, which used to be a straightforward set of basically linear equations, has become a differential equation.
--Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
Waterhouse had been chewing his way through exotic Nip code systems at the rate of about one a week, but after he sees Mary Smith in the parlor of Mrs. McTeague's boarding house, his production rate drops to near zero.
Despite his and Turing's disagreements about whether the human brain is a Turing machine, he has to admit that Turing wouldn't have too much trouble writing a set of instructions to simulate the brain functions of Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse.
Waterhouse seeks happiness. He achieves it by breaking Nip codes and playing the pipe organ. But since pipe organs are in short supply, his happiness level ends up being totally dependent on breaking codes.
He cannot break codes (hence, cannot be happy) unless is his mind is clear. Clarity of mind is affected by any number of factors, but by far the most importnat is horniness, σ. Horniness begins at zero at time t = t0 (immediately following ejaculation) and increases from there as a linear function of time. The only way to drop it back to zero is to arrange another ejaculation.
There is a critical threshold σc, such that when σ > σc, it becomes totally impossible for Waterhouse to break Nipponese cryptographic systems. This makes it impossible for him to achieve happiness (unless there is a pipe organ handy, which there isn't).
Typically, it takes two to three days for σ to climb about σc after an ejaculation. Critical, then, to the maintenence of Waterhouse's sanity is the ability to ejaculate every two to three days. As long as he can arrange this, σ exhibits a classic sawtooth-wave pattern, optimally with the peaks at or near σc.
So much for the basic theory. Now, when he was at Pearl Harbor, e discovered something that, in retrospect, should have been profoundly disturbing. Namely, that ejaculations obtained in a whorehouse (i.e. provided by the minstrations of an actual human female) seemed to drop σ below the level that Waterhouse could achieve through executing a Manual Override. In other words, the post-ejaculatory horniness level was not always equal to zero, as the naive theory propounded above assumes, but to some other quantity dependent on whether the ejaculation was induced by Self or Other. σ = σself after masturbation but σ = σother upon leaving a whorehouse, where σself > σother.
If he had thought about this, it would have botherd him, becuase σself > σother has troubleing implications--particularly if the values of these quantities w.r.t. the all-important σc are not fixed. If it weren't for this inequality, then Waterhouse could function as a totally self-contained and independent unit. But σself > σother implies that he is, in the long run, dependent on other human beings for his mental clarity and, therefore, his happiness. What a pain in the ass!
Perhaps he has avoided thinking about this precisely becasue it is so troubling. The week after he meets Mary Smith, he realizes that he is going to have to think about it a lot more.
Something about the arrival of Mary Smith on the scene has completely fouled up the whole system of equations. Now, when he has an ejaculation, his clarity of mind does not take the upwards jump that it should. He goes right back to thinking about Mary. So much for winning the war!
He goes out in search of whorehouses, hoping that good old reliable σother will save his bacon. It helps a little, but only on the σ management level. Until recently that was the only level and so it would have been fine. But now (as Waterhouse realizes through long comtemplation during the hours when he should be breaking codes) a new factor has entered the system of equations that governs his behavior: he will have to write to Alan and tell him that some new instructions will have to be added to the Waterhouse-simulation Turing machine. This new factor is FMSp, the Factor of Mary Smith Proximity.
In a simpler universe, FMSp would be orthogonal to σ, which is to say that the two factors would be entirely independent of each other. If it were thus, Waterhouse could continue the usual sawtooth-wave ejaculation management program with no changes. In addition, he could arrange to have frequent conversations with Mary Smith so that FMSp would remain as high as possible.
Alas! The universe is not simple. Far from being orthogonal, FMSp and σ are involved as elaborately as the contrails of dogfighting airplanes. The old σ management scheme doesn't work anymore. And a platonic relationship will actually make FMSp worse, not better. His life, which used to be a straightforward set of basically linear equations, has become a differential equation.
--Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
listing; livejournal
Date: 2003-07-18 03:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-18 03:45 pm (UTC)Of course, it doesn't matter if O(self) is greater than 0(other) so long as it is less that 0(0). assuming that is, that he can masturbate hourly, should he desire.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-18 07:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-21 06:14 am (UTC)