"{OR Please see that we all have blood pressure in the normal range & see that none of the rest of us have to take blood pressure medication}"
Now, there's a prayer.
(The alternative was: "Please see that we all have bodily perfection in the next realm, see that none of the rest of us have to bear painful memories." Which is more likely, I suspect.)
Such kind of "lossy compression" was used sometimes to transfer secret messages. It's impossible to fully decipher it without knowing the text, but it serves as a reminder for those who know it, so they can reconstruct it in full form if needed. This way the information could be kept in oral form for a long time (even for generations), while being preserved in written form only in such way that strangers couldn't decipher it in full. But since common patterns can be discerned (if you at least know the subject approximately), one can reconstruct some parts of it with pretty good accuracy.
> Such kind of "lossy compression" was used sometimes to transfer secret messages. It's impossible to fully decipher it without knowing the text, but it serves as a reminder for those who know it, so they can reconstruct it in full form if needed.
This was the way that the Qur'an was originally passed down. Originally, the Qur'an was meant to be a recited work. Furthermore, at the time, Arabic writing wasn't so much a complete orthographic system as much as a reminder of the roots of words[0]
This works well in Semitic languages, in which the consonants denote the general meaning of the word, and the vowels change the specifics.
For example, one might write "SLM", which can be expanded to any of the following (capitalization for emphasis)
1) iSLaM = "submission" (literally)
2) moSLeM = "one who has submitted"
3) SaLaaM = a greeting, similar to "peace" (etc.)
The writing is not enough to reconstruct the entire text, but it's good enough for someone whose job it is to recite the work, and simply needs a little reminder.
[0] In fact, not only did traditional written Arabic lack vowels (much like Hebrew), but I am told that even consonants were difficult to distinguish from each other.
Similar idea (using just the initial letters of words) was used in various Hebrew works. Such kind of text was usually called megilas sesorim (i.e. a "scroll of secrets").
Ask Metafilter is a very very good place to get random questions answered - a smart and very diverse userbase, along with some sensible rules on how to ask a question, which gives it an edge over Quora for my tastes.
HN policy is to always have the title the same as the source, for better or sometimes worse. There are many cases of them changing a link title even if the provided one was much more descriptive.
I love when an online community comes together and solves puzzles like this. /r/Whatisthis turns up some gems here and there. An another note, I'm disappointed this particular puzzle turned out to be prayers... boring
Old woman dying of cancer didn't have the common courtesy to at least scribble down something more interesting for you to browse for 5 minutes on the internet later. What a shame.
What the hell. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to remark on. It was presented as a conundrum, and it turns out it's something disappointing to the grandparent. You're the one dramatising things.
The 'boring' remark is the only thing that set me off. The post without that would seem reasonable - as it stands though, it looks like someone complaining about not having something more interesting to read about, not someone expressing disappointment there wasn't something more meaningful to her heirs.
Finally, someone who understands me. Although this is the first time I've been called both a dick and a white knight in the same thread. I'll chalk that up as a win.
In HN we reserve consideration and respect for people who can't afford the rent in San Francisco. An old woman dying of cancer deserves none. She was probably a homophobe too!
Go read the original story, there is a link above. Someone even went as far to parse out one version of the Bible to determine if the first letter combinations matched.
Even know what the basic thread of her thoughts, its the discovery and how to further that discovery that is the fascination. That is was prayers actually made it easier and leads to other methods to work it out.
In support of the other post going on here, let me crib a Catholic source I happen to know of:
> ... attention is of the very essence of prayer. As an expression of sentiment emanating from our intellectual faculties prayer requires their application, i.e. attention. As soon as this attention ceases, prayer ceases. To begin praying and allow the mind to be wholly diverted or distracted to some other occupation or thought necessarily terminates the prayer, which is resumed only when the mind is withdrawn from the object of distraction.
So there's nothing intrinsically wrong with it, and if you're starting to lose some of your faculties and of this is a device that helps you actually accomplish the prayer that's great... but if you're all like "oh, great, this will get me my prayer points faster", you've missed the point of the entire exercise.
Many forms of prayer, especially the repetitive ones, are devices for focusing attention (e.g. the rosary). There are also parallels in Eastern forms of meditation that employ chants or mantras (e.g. Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ).
I don't usually discuss matters of faith in this forum since it's pretty far off topic.
However since you asked. Most christian faiths would say yes. The form is less important than the intended meaning for a prayer. And God would be perfectly capable of understanding the index form since He is considered to be Omniscient. QED: index form is perfectly fine.
Other religions may differ as to whether the form is less or more important than the intended content so I can't say whether principle transfers or not.
With modern computers we should be able to recite religious texts fast and efficiently. Even a Raspberry PI with a solar panel could probably get up to some decent speed compared to a prayer wheel. Not sure it helps you reach nirvana though. :)
Well since "Nirvana" is a somewhat shared concept in several religions. I know of atleast one religion in which the point is to achieve "automatic prayers at super fast speeds" and obviously that isn't by rapping verses. it even transcends reciting the index or "thinking" of it.
Legend has it that a certain prime follower of this religion could finish the entire scripture tens of thousands of times while getting on to a horse.
But if I were among the faithful, the answer that it's the intent and level of attention that counts seems the most reasonable. A computer using TTS to recite prayers at high speed wouldn't count for anything at all; a prayer wheel would, if the person turning it were using it meditatively (vs., say, turning the thing while thinking about what to eat for dinner).
The title of this article does not reflect what the article is actually talking about. Also, while a nice gesture of the family member to write, as I read the article I was building up excitement and really wanted to know if she had written some interesting/secret information for the kids, but then found she was just praying. Nothing wrong or against that, just that my curiosity was sparked but ultimately my interest went unfulfilled.
It's incredible what people can do just because of curiosity. I mean - there's no practical gain from helping another person decipher a code other than just out of curiosity. I'm fascinated by the message and the relentlessness of the person who kept the code and tried to crack it for 20yrs. This is just so cool!
If it was one of my relatives, it would have been that or some geo coordinates to an almost impossible to get to place resulting in nothing (or a sign that said "gotcha").
I wonder if n-grams could solve this automatically?
If we consider the actual words to be a latent variable, then we can use an n-gram model to compute the maximum likelihood estimate (sorry Bayesians) using dynamic programming.
There is also the Bayesian approach where you treat it as a Bayesian network and use belief propagation to compute the marginal posteriors over each letter.
It uses a bigram model and Viterbi decoding. With the right corpora (the repo includes the King James Bible and some Lutheran hymnals, as the woman was reportedly Lutheran) it's easy to decode "OFWAIHHBTN" into "our father who are in heaven hallowed be thy name".
