Søren
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Pursuing Authenticity
Posts: 78
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Post by Søren on Dec 10, 2012 19:18:41 GMT
I was almost brained by carry-on luggage falling from a Cessna whilst standing in my backyard. That's about the most statistically improbable thing that's ever happened to me. (But it was in '04)
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Post by GK Sierra on Dec 10, 2012 20:12:15 GMT
I was almost brained by carry-on luggage falling from a Cessna whilst standing in my backyard. That's about the most statistically improbable thing that's ever happened to me. (But it was in '04) What was inside?
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Post by Stately Buff-Cookie on Dec 10, 2012 22:59:25 GMT
D'aaaaaww.
Also, DAMN.
I was hoping I'd be wrong about not really learning anything additional about the way the world works this chapter. Not even a cliffhanger tidbit.
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Post by Nnelg on Dec 10, 2012 23:27:24 GMT
Wow, nice work! I was trying to relax and take it easy about the whole when-do-chapters-end thing, but dangit now you got me thinking. You assume that the chapter lengths are random. They aren't; Tom deliberately tries to keep them an even number of pages long (including filler pages) and approximately the same length. Let's assume that instead of each successive end day being random, there is a 60% chance of each successive chapter ending the same day as the last. (This corresponds to the actual measured rate.) So, let's assume we'd be making a hubbub if any end day occurred with a frequency of two-thirds or more. What are the odds of that happening? ...I'm sad to say I have no idea how to statistically analyze this one. I might try writing a computer program to do a brute-force check of all possible outcomes, though.
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Post by Ophel on Dec 10, 2012 23:59:32 GMT
Aww, that's a really sweet end to this chapter (assuming Annie is right). ... It makes the thought that Annie might be wrong that more tragic, though. Especially if Jones wonders about it. Then again I don't think she believes Annie, but it's something for her to consider at least. if Jones thought like this, for me, I suppose that's alright. It's Jones, after all. Annie might be right, though. Maybe Jones isn't so emotionless. And that is a wonderful thought, no doubt. But then, if Jones is emotionless, there could be a chance that maybe Tom plans on Jones to develop emotions somehow. Some other works I can mention do that. I image it'd be a bit too cheesy for a work like Gunnerkrigg. But how would that impact Jones' role if she did develop them? Would the Court then have, in their eyes, a problem? Will conflict arise from that? I imagine there'd be some problems. I wonder if those problems are interesting enough to become plot points. Hello!
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Post by Nnelg on Dec 11, 2012 0:34:56 GMT
I might try writing a computer program to do a brute-force check of all possible outcomes, though. Yeah, sadly that's not going to happen. The program's easy enough to write, (in fact, it's already done) but I don't have the time to wait around while it crunches the numbers for a few (thousand) years...
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Søren
Junior Member
Pursuing Authenticity
Posts: 78
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Post by Søren on Dec 11, 2012 1:00:58 GMT
I was almost brained by carry-on luggage falling from a Cessna whilst standing in my backyard. That's about the most statistically improbable thing that's ever happened to me. (But it was in '04) What was inside? Nothing interesting. Clothing and toiletries.
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Post by drzhivago138 on Dec 11, 2012 1:57:03 GMT
My goodness, I certainly started something here. I didn't know that Tom deliberately keeps each chapter even/a multiple of 3, but I had my suspicions that each chapter is roughly the same.
Also, if you scroll through each chapter really fast (like on Windows Explorer slide show or something), it kind of looks like the characters are moving.
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Post by Cyclothymia on Dec 11, 2012 2:17:54 GMT
Annie might be right, though. Maybe Jones isn't so emotionless. And that is a wonderful thought, no doubt. That question is a wonderful philosophical can of worms, much like the existence of Coyote! <3 According to the " Chinese room thought experiment, if there was a computer that could run a program which carries an intelligent conversation in Chinese, the computer could effectively "speak Chinese" without understanding what it was doing, much like an English speaker using the same program. The author of the thought experiment (John Searle) furthers this scenario and makes this argument: this and similar programs cannot give a computer "a 'mind', understanding', and 'consciousness', regardless of how intelligently it may make it behave". If we cast Jones' emotions into this framework, that is, if Jones' is that computer and the program is her emotions, can we say that she effectively has emotions? (This is of course, all assuming Jones' is correct about herself). Mr. Searle answers in the negative. As the Wikipedia link later also suggests, many, many researchers think the conclusion of this thought experiment is wrong. And in the Gunnerverse, given Coyote's theory - and even more so, the presence of the ether - we also have much reason to disagree. (Note that we are applying "consciousness" in the argument specifically to Jones' emotions, not Jone's "consciousness". She clearly has self-awareness and cognitive abilities.) Put in another way, with Jones' emotions, Tom is posing to us readers the same question Coyote posed to Annie regarding his existence: If the human mind produces the ether, and I am born from the ether, what does that imply about my existence? Can we say that I effectively do not exist? So how does Annie and Jones' interpret this Chinese room thought experiment? (This is regardless of who is right or wrong; we are just examining their respective perspectives and trying to consistently interpret each of them.) Jones agrees with Mr. Searle that she is indeed the perfect AI ever to have existed, but lack understanding regarding human emotions. Annie thinks Jones' effectively does have emotions - Jones' has passed her emotion Turing test, so to speak. I would agree with Annie at this point; functionally speaking, to everyone else, someone like Jones is no different than a normal human being in a social context. In response to Jones' perspective on her emotions, in her own words, A keen observation; however, irrelevant.Interestingly enough, if we apply Coyote's theory to Jones, it is the fact that Jones' is acting in accordance to human emotions that retroactively created her emotions - or, even more so, if Coyote is correct, her own existence! If this was true, we can say that Jones' emotions parallels Coyote's power, and she is the only person to be able to literally say "Cogito Ergo Sum". Since Jones' herself does not know how she herself came to be, I suppose we still have room to hypothesize? Speaking of which, someone (alexh?) mentioned elsewhere on this site that this is like saying Jones is a being stuck in a temporal loop (which that someone called a "jinni"?) Well, here you go, alexh(?). Not sure this applies since we are no longer directly talking about the ether, but this must be in some way to how the mind (which Jones' does have, albeit barely a human one) affects reality. Now, let's reverse Tom's question and see if can gain any insight into how Annie and Jones would answer Coyote's theory (again, regardless of who is right or wrong). Jones believes she is indeed a computer with no 'consciousness'. And yet, the evidence that the ether exists is unmistakable. It appears that Jones believes in some duality is in place, or at the very least, due to the coloring of the mind that created Coyote, that Coyote believes himself to have created the stars. Origin as described in ether space may not have to correspond to origin in normal space. Annie fittingly takes a "moderate" position somewhere between Coyote and Jones. She doesn't think Jones' has zero emotions, but (according to [1124]) neither does she think that Coyote is right either. She believes that "cultures thrive on their own myths and legends", and those beliefs, in which their motivations are encoded, subsequently motivate the said cultures forward. Coyote (and other god-like creatures born of the ether) are the literal byproducts of these self-fulfilling ambitions. This is in line with Keynesian economic theory (which aptly titles these ambitions as "animal spirits") and, in the field of psychology, the theory of self-fulfilling prophecies. Fascinating!
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Post by skythorn on Dec 11, 2012 2:31:29 GMT
Jones's face seems to evoke an undefinable sadness in the last few pages - the time of the Swordfight with Eglamore had her face being indefinably neutral-interested.
I think she is sad.
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Post by aaroncampbell on Dec 11, 2012 2:38:49 GMT
I might try writing a computer program to do a brute-force check of all possible outcomes, though. Yeah, sadly that's not going to happen. The program's easy enough to write, (in fact, it's already done) but I don't have the time to wait around while it crunches the numbers for a few (thousand) years... Jones has the time to wait around for it!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 11, 2012 3:21:34 GMT
Put in another way, with Jones' emotions, Tom is posing to us readers the same question Coyote posed to Annie regarding his existence: If the human mind produces the ether, and I am born from the ether, what does that imply about my existence? Can we say that I effectively do not exist?(Emphasis mine) I just plain don't understand this. Okay, so let's assume that Coyote is right, and the human mind can create beings as it releases its belief-gunk into the ether when the body dies. How do we jump from there to "ether beings do not exist." I think it's been made pretty dang clear that etheric beings are real. I mean, what would that say about Antimony and Surma if they aren't? Does only a part of them not exist? Does a human suddenly lose its "realness" when it interacts with an etheric being? I am confused.
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Post by Nnelg on Dec 11, 2012 4:14:23 GMT
Put in another way, with Jones' emotions, Tom is posing to us readers the same question Coyote posed to Annie regarding his existence: If the human mind produces the ether, and I am born from the ether, what does that imply about my existence? Can we say that I effectively do not exist? A better question would be if anything could truly be said to exist, if perceptions/imagination/belief can alter it... (The answer I've got is "no", which is part of the reason why I don't subscribe to Coyote's theory.)
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Post by rafk on Dec 11, 2012 5:19:52 GMT
Well, let's see here: not counting bonus pages, the chapters have ended on: Chapter 40: Mon 10 Dec Chapter 39: Mon 17 Sept Chapter 38: Mon 25 June Chapter 37: Mon 16 Apr Chapter 36: Mon 20 Feb Chapter 35: Fri 16 Dec 2011 Chapter 34: Mon 17 Oct Chapter 33: Mon 27 June Chapter 32: Wed 13 Apr Chapter 31: Mon 31 Jan Chapter 30: Wed 20 Oct 2010 Chapter 29: Mon 16 Aug Chapter 28: Mon 5 July Chapter 27: Wed 5 May Chapter 26: Mon 1 Mar Chapter 25: Mon 28 Dec 2009 Chapter 24: Mon 19 Oct Chapter 23: Mon 27 July Chapter 22: Mon 11 May Chapter 21: Mon 16 Mar Chapter 20: Wed 31 Dec 2008 Chapter 19: Wed 22 Oct Chapter 18: Mon 4 Aug Chapter 17: Wed 23 Apr Chapter 16: Mon 4 Feb Chapter 15: Mon 26 Nov 2007 Chapter 14: Mon 10 Sept Chapter 13: Mon 18 Jun Chapter 12: Mon 9 Apr Chapter 11: Wed 31 Jan Chapter 10: Tues 19 Dec 2006 (This was when Tom updated Tuesday-Thursday.) Chapter 9: Tues 24 Oct Chapter 8: Tues 29 Aug Chapter 7: Tues 23 May Chapter 6: Tues 28 Feb Chapter 5: Tues 17 Jan Chapter 4: Tues 22 Nov 2005 Chapter 3: Tues 18 Oct Chapter 2: Thurs 14 July Chapter 1: Thurs 19 May So I don't know. For saying he doesn't consciously end the chapters on Monday, Tom does it an awful lot.Wow, nice work! I was trying to relax and take it easy about the whole when-do-chapters-end thing, but dangit now you got me thinking. Okay, so here is the definitive (mathematical) answer, for those so inclined: Since Tom switched to M-W-F updates back in 2006, he has ended 30 chapters. Of those, 22 have ended on the same day. Presumedly we would be having this discussion regardless of which day that is, so it doesn't really matter that it happened to be a Monday; just that it is the same day. The odds of that happening are represented by the following equation: (30 choose 22) * (1/3) 22 * (2/3) 8which reduces to give us the odds of 5549440 in 7625597484987, or 0.000072773838521185210433484532095735% probability. If you don't mind being a little imprecise, it's close enough to say the odds are about 1 in 1 and 3/ 8 million -- fairly close to the same odds one has of being struck by lightning at some point over those same six years (which comes out to a little shorter than than 1 in 125,000.) Given the number of viewers GKC has, I imagine someone ought to be able to come forward claiming to have been personally struck by lightning strike since 2006... While people have kept saying "it's a function of chapter length", that doesn't explain why the new chapters keep going back to Monday ends after one of the Wednesday or Friday exceptions. Since chapter 12, only 7 of the 29 chapter ends have been on Wednesday or Friday. If the chapter lengths were usually the same, this would mean that you'd expect that after an irregular-length chapter shifts us to a Wednesday or Friday end, we would shift to Wednesdays (or Fridays) for a length of time. Instead, only once (back in 2008) have we had even two chapters in a row end on non-Monday. We've never gone Wednesday-Friday or Friday-Wednesday either. With that one exception, we've always reverted from Wednesday or Friday to a Monday. Statistically this is too unlikely to be anything but Tom intentionally aiming to conclude chapters on Mondays (without being absolutely wedded to it, if the pacing just won't allow for a strip more or less).
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Post by Nnelg on Dec 11, 2012 5:44:25 GMT
While people have kept saying "it's a function of chapter length", that doesn't explain why the new chapters keep going back to Monday ends after one of the Wednesday or Friday exceptions. That much can be explained by coincidence, since if you'll notice the majority of Monday endings forms two or three long stretches. These stretches probably correspond to times where Tom consistently made chapters of a length that is a multiple of three. The times in-between, when chapter end dates are more random, probably correspond to times when the average chapter length was not a multiple of three. Assuming that the comic end date that results at the conclusion of each "chaotic period" is random, the odds of three successive "consistent periods" all being for the same day are no less than 1/9, or ~11%. That is certainly high enough odds to be a coincidence. ...Which isn't to say that you're not right, just that it isn't certain that you're not wrong.
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Dec 11, 2012 7:45:23 GMT
Okay, so let's assume that Coyote is right, and the human mind can create beings as it releases its belief-gunk into the ether when the body dies. How do we jump from there to "ether beings do not exist." Probably that he doesn't have a material body so he doesn't exist in that sense. Renard and Ysengrin do. It has been formspring'd that Renard and Ysengrin were born and were young once, though essentially immortal, while Coyote does not have an age, doesn't need to sleep, and only feels pain or casts a shadow if he wants to. Of course, what Coyote apparently wants Ys to take from that is he and the other powerful etheric beings are some sort of appendages of humans, and Coyote is superior to Ys, then Ys is inferior to humans. A better question would be if anything could truly be said to exist, if perceptions/imagination/belief can alter it... (The answer I've got is "no", which is part of the reason why I don't subscribe to Coyote's theory.) A little ancient philosophy might help with that.
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Post by 0o0f on Dec 11, 2012 14:55:29 GMT
But then, if Jones is emotionless, there could be a chance that maybe Tom plans on Jones to develop emotions somehow. Some other works I can mention do that. I image it'd be a bit too cheesy for a work like Gunnerkrigg. It's a bit cheesy, but a story like that can be enjoyable. Either way though, it makes sense for Annie to interpret Jones as an emotional being, because Annie herself feels some attachment to her (at least I figure she does). If I were in Annie's place, I would likely want to think that way too.
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Post by TBeholder on Dec 11, 2012 20:00:28 GMT
Either way, thank you, Tom.
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Post by King Mir on Dec 12, 2012 1:11:29 GMT
Well, let's see here: not counting bonus pages, the chapters have ended on: Chapter 40: Mon 10 Dec Chapter 39: Mon 17 Sept Chapter 38: Mon 25 June Chapter 37: Mon 16 Apr Chapter 36: Mon 20 Feb Chapter 35: Fri 16 Dec 2011 Chapter 34: Mon 17 Oct Chapter 33: Mon 27 June Chapter 32: Wed 13 Apr Chapter 31: Mon 31 Jan Chapter 30: Wed 20 Oct 2010 Chapter 29: Mon 16 Aug Chapter 28: Mon 5 July Chapter 27: Wed 5 May Chapter 26: Mon 1 Mar Chapter 25: Mon 28 Dec 2009 Chapter 24: Mon 19 Oct Chapter 23: Mon 27 July Chapter 22: Mon 11 May Chapter 21: Mon 16 Mar Chapter 20: Wed 31 Dec 2008 Chapter 19: Wed 22 Oct Chapter 18: Mon 4 Aug Chapter 17: Wed 23 Apr Chapter 16: Mon 4 Feb Chapter 15: Mon 26 Nov 2007 Chapter 14: Mon 10 Sept Chapter 13: Mon 18 Jun Chapter 12: Mon 9 Apr Chapter 11: Wed 31 Jan Chapter 10: Tues 19 Dec 2006 (This was when Tom updated Tuesday-Thursday.) Chapter 9: Tues 24 Oct Chapter 8: Tues 29 Aug Chapter 7: Tues 23 May Chapter 6: Tues 28 Feb Chapter 5: Tues 17 Jan Chapter 4: Tues 22 Nov 2005 Chapter 3: Tues 18 Oct Chapter 2: Thurs 14 July Chapter 1: Thurs 19 May So I don't know. For saying he doesn't consciously end the chapters on Monday, Tom does it an awful lot.Wow, nice work! I was trying to relax and take it easy about the whole when-do-chapters-end thing, but dangit now you got me thinking. Okay, so here is the definitive (mathematical) answer, for those so inclined: Since Tom switched to M-W-F updates back in 2006, he has ended 30 chapters. Of those, 22 have ended on the same day. Presumedly we would be having this discussion regardless of which day that is, so it doesn't really matter that it happened to be a Monday; just that it is the same day. The odds of that happening are represented by the following equation: (30 choose 22) * (1/3) 22 * (2/3) 8which reduces to give us the odds of 5549440 in 7625597484987, or 0.000072773838521185210433484532095735% probability. If you don't mind being a little imprecise, it's close enough to say the odds are about 1 in 1 and 3/ 8 million -- fairly close to the same odds one has of being struck by lightning at some point over those same six years (which comes out to a little shorter than than 1 in 125,000.) Given the number of viewers GKC has, I imagine someone ought to be able to come forward claiming to have been personally struck by lightning strike since 2006... This is not what you'd want to calculate. What you want is to find the probability that the data does not follow the expected distribution, not the probability of getting exactly 22 our of 30 mondays. The correct method, if I recall my statistics correctly, is to do a statistical z-test.
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Post by Nnelg on Dec 12, 2012 3:59:36 GMT
This is not what you'd want to calculate. What you want is to find the probability that the data does not follow the expected distribution, not the probability of getting exactly 22 our of 30 mondays. The correct method, if I recall my statistics correctly, is to do a statistical z-test. I suppose that'd be better, but still not really a valid test if we're assuming the odds of repeating are higher than the odds of not repeating. But again, that would still be better...
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Post by King Mir on Dec 12, 2012 6:54:12 GMT
You mean the odds of chapters being the same length?
There is some chance that they are, but the distribution is quite wide, so assuming that the chapter length modulo 3 is uniform is not a bad assumption, IMO.
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Post by quicksabre on Dec 14, 2012 14:48:24 GMT
This is not what you'd want to calculate. What you want is to find the probability that the data does not follow the expected distribution, not the probability of getting exactly 22 our of 30 mondays. The correct method, if I recall my statistics correctly, is to do a statistical z-test. I don't think a z-test will work, since our data are categorical rather than continuous (although I could be wrong it has been several years since I took stats). I ran it as a binomial distribution and got only a slightly higher probability (8.7*10^-6), which makes sense, since the probability of getting MORE than 22 Mondays is quite small. Playing around with the numbers it seems that p becomes <0.05 at around 15 Mondays. Note that all of this assumes random story lengths, which many are arguing is not the case. Also note that I did not do any review for this so I could be using completely inappropriate methods, but I think it works given my assumptions
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Post by legion on Dec 14, 2012 18:55:18 GMT
I think there's an obvious thing people are missing here: if Tom arranges for chapters to always end on monday, then obviously he does this by adjusting chapter length, and then logically, since mondays are regularly spaced, chapters will always be within the same subset of possible chapter length.
Thus, chapters having fixed length doesn't prove in any way that chapters ending of mondays is an artifact of the former: the reverse might as well be true.
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Post by Ophel on Dec 14, 2012 19:32:35 GMT
I'll be honest with you. I haven't the slightest understanding or clue as to what you're saying. Because, you know, I don't know much.
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Post by Nnelg on Dec 14, 2012 19:35:54 GMT
I think there's an obvious thing people are missing here: if Tom arranges for chapters to always end on monday, then obviously he does this by adjusting chapter length, and then logically, since mondays are regularly spaced, chapters will always be within the same subset of possible chapter length. Thus, chapters having fixed length doesn't prove in any way that chapters ending of mondays is an artifact of the former: the reverse might as well be true. Of course it doesn't. But we're assuming Tom's being completely honest, here. (The null hypothesis is that Tom is not aiming for specific days, so we assume it's true until disproven.)
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Post by legion on Dec 14, 2012 19:52:53 GMT
Hm, I thought the hypothesis was that Tom is aiming for mondays.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Dec 14, 2012 20:39:49 GMT
When doing statistical tests, the general practice is to take the "null hypothesis", which usually boils down to "There's no correlation between these factors," and see how well it matches the data. If the match is arbitrarily low, then the null hypothesis is rejected, and you conclude that there is a correlation.
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Post by legion on Dec 14, 2012 21:47:51 GMT
Well clearly then there is a correlation.
The problem is to know if the causation is "Tom aims at the chapter to always end on mondays, which causes them to always have a certain length" OR "Tom aims at the chapter to always have a certain length, which causes them to always end mondays".
I find the former much more likely.
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Post by Nnelg on Dec 15, 2012 2:18:16 GMT
Hm, I thought the hypothesis was that Tom is aiming for mondays. Exactly. You're supposed to assume the hypotheses that is opposite to your beliefs is true, then disprove it.
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Post by Corvo on Dec 15, 2012 2:34:15 GMT
Hm, I thought the hypothesis was that Tom is aiming for mondays. Exactly. You're supposed to assume the hypotheses that is opposite to your beliefs is true, then disprove it. Or he could just prove that his hypotheses is true. Admit it guys, the only way to prove anything here is tying Tom to a polygraph. Even if you manage it, the result will still be a completely irrelevant piece of information. So, yeah, useless discussion here.
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