Gutenberg Uncertainty Principle

The Gutenberg Uncertainty Principle is the reason that edit buttons exist. Broadly speaking, the more precisely you attempt to convey your meaning to fellow internet users, the more likely it is that you will make mistakes doing so. By contrast, any effort to ensure you commit no errors in your typing will render your meaning obscure.

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This diagram shows the information multiverse branching, if you look closely

History

Over the years, lots of people have noticed something along these lines. They all treated it as a joke. It took many years for the world's finest mind to realise that it was in fact a phenomenon integral to the quantum universe.

Currently, scientists believe that while typing, internet users are creating a potential difference along the central nervous system. Information flows from high-pressure areas (the brain) to low-pressure areas (the internet). There is a gap in the circuit, between fingertips and keyboard, and information must short-out this gap in order to successfully appear online. The multiplicity of combinations between the average internet user's ten fingers and the >30 keys of the typographical apparatus create an ever-changing series of 'slits' through which the information traverses.

Meanwhile, the typist can either look at the screen (to see what they are typing) or at their keyboard (to see where their fingers are). Looking back and forth between the two creates an interference pattern. However, the interference pattern is not visible until you press 'send', at which point the waveform collapses and the errors appear.

The "Many Words" interpretation

Clearly, in order for the information state of the universe to balance (net neutrality), each typo must be cancelled out by the correct word or letter appearing somewhere else, where it is not needed. This is called entanglement, informally known as "spooky interaction at a distance", and it suggests that information must also flow out of the internet and into the brain. Most believe that this is impossible given how little information is available on the internet.

So it appears that the 'cancellation' may in fact take place in another internet, which means that the universe branches whenever anyone (e.g.) posts a new message on a thread or edits a wiki. This means that there is an infinite number of universes containing all possible coherent messages you might ever have typed by accident. However, equations suggest that there is no possible universe in which Essjay is not a liar.

Implications

It has been postulated that an infinite number of monkeys, equipped with keyboards, would eventually type the complete works of Shakespeare by accident. However, the problem with this is that since monkeys can't read, the achievement would never be noticed, rendering it null and void. The Gutenberg Uncertainty Principle solves this problem, since on the internet it is entirely possible that a never-ending succession of internet users will never achieve anything except a steady output of meaningless noise - and so far, this prediction has been borne out.

See also

• Quantum physics
• Grammar Nazis - in another universe, they win the war
• Literally - a word which exists in positive and negative forms, which cancels out its meaning
• Drugs - Yes, please

Exgernal links

• The Internet