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Nanashi comments on Self-verification - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: Nanashi 19 April 2015 11:36PM

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Comment author: Nanashi 20 April 2015 03:15:26PM 3 points [-]

Am I going to receive my own message no matter what and the attacker is only going to try to confuse me with another message or messages?

For the sake of this, you can assume you will receive your own message no matter what. An alternate way of phrasing it would be, "Your memories have been wiped. You wake up and you find a message that purports to be from yourself. What would the message need to contain in order for you to be highly confident the message actually did come from yourself."

Comment author: DonaldMcIntyre 22 April 2015 08:10:39PM *  1 point [-]

Thank you for the clarification!

I think there is no objective solution since it is impossible to transmit a message where a 3rd party may interfere with it and any possibility of encryption (shared key or key exchange) is eliminated by the wipe out of the memory of the receiver.

It seems it doesn't matter if it's yourself at both ends since the hacker may even use your dna or any other "biological key" you may use in the first place.

The only solution is subjective and that leaves a space for faulty communication.

But if you find or have a solution please post it here, it would be very interesting to know!