Everything Ever Written

[Steel]

Well Vsauce has once again blown the minds of the youtube community...

In the latest video (

- I'd highly recommend watching) Michael introduces the Library of Babel, a website that contains every possible permutation of letters and commas, full stops (or periods if you're american) and spaces, segmented into 3200 character pages.

The amazing part is that this means this website contains every single thing that ever has been, and ever will be written using characters and basic punctuation. A summary of a grand unified theory of physics, a history of the years 2015-3015, your obituary e.t.c.

Thoughts?

(Just to blow your mind even more, you will find this entire post in the library if you search for it)

Edited September 25, 2015 by Steel

[Shpaget]

Whoa!

At first, my thought was "Not possible. The number of combinations is so large that even if it only contained strings of up to 60 letters long, it would take more than the entire universe to contain it."

But holy crap, 3200. The explanation how it's done... well, of course it would have to be done that way, it's thousands of orders of magnitude larger than the Universe, yet the source code is probably tiny.

Astonishing.

Unfortunately, Michael seems to have broken the page.

[Steel]

Unfortunately, Michael seems to have broken the page.

Yeah I'm not sure their servers were prepared! Luckily my mind is sufficiently blown that I can wait

[vger]

So, this is all procedural, right? All these variations aren't literally sitting on a hard drive all the time? I think that would require more space than even the NSA has.

Also, something scary about this. If some mega-corp did this, could they technically copyright EVERYTHING in existence that hasn't already been written, thereby preventing anyone from writing anything for profit ever again?

Edited September 25, 2015 by vger

[andrewas]

Yes, its procedural. The clever bit is that the algorithm is reversible so you can find any given text in the library - but you won't find anything useful, and if you somehow did, you wouldn't have any way to know if it was actually useful or whether it was only one of the near infinite variations of the text you wanted.

[SuperFastJellyfish]

That's pretty cool. Also: 'turd ferguson' 20 of ~10²⁹ possible exact matches

[Stargate525]

Okay, yea, it contains every possible combination... But there's no practical use. You can't find anything unless you're looking for it, and its 99% gibberish nonsense.

[PB666]

So, this is all procedural, right? All these variations aren't literally sitting on a hard drive all the time? I think that would require more space than even the NSA has.

Also, something scary about this. If some mega-corp did this, could they technically copyright EVERYTHING in existence that hasn't already been written, thereby preventing anyone from writing anything for profit ever again?

http://www.copyright.gov/docs/fees.html

yes and they could pay off our national debt, and the debt of every other country and person in the world except

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Themselves, they would be in a mountain of debt.

[LordFerret]

Well, I did a search for "how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood". It gave me a 'page' full of words with my sentence strung in there among the words. So, I looked down the page (three lines down) and picked the following string of words off the page - "unambiguously woodmouse poons earlaps", and then went back and did a search on it. Not only did it NOT bring me back to the same page, my original search query (the woodchuck) was missing from said page. So maybe I'm missing something here... like what point/function this thing serves.

- - - Updated - - -

As far as things written in English, any good dictionary then contains everything ever written (in English).

[PB666]

- - - Updated - - -

As far as things written in English, any good dictionary then contains everything ever written (in English).

As for your reducto absurbum i raise you one roman alphabet and one greek alphabet, plus two japanese alphabets, sanscrit, han/kange, throw in maya and egyptian heiroglyphics under the stipulation that just about everything that has been written contained elements from these, and I call.

[DundraL]

Haha, a while back I wanted to do something similar with the pixels on a computer screen. With reduced resolution and color count, it is possible to systematically display every single possible combination of pixels on the screen... in a lifetime.

Think about it.... Though the would mostly be random garbage on screen at some point there would be a picture of:

Earth from space.

A cartoon of you eating a tire.

A picture of your mother holding a burning ketchup bottle.

A blueprint for an undiscovered technology.

Consider that text can be part of a picture....

The text of any national anthem, past current or future.

Lyric to an unwritten song.

A correct (and incorrect) text explaining about how the last human dies.

etc.... every picture you can think of... yea you prb get the idea.

Edited September 26, 2015 by DundraL

[RainDreamer]

Whoa, I searched for several passages in Hamlet and other Shakespere's works and it turns out they are there too.

Edit: Holy crap, even my own short story turns up in there.

- - - Updated - - -

Well, I did a search for "how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood". It gave me a 'page' full of words with my sentence strung in there among the words. So, I looked down the page (three lines down) and picked the following string of words off the page - "unambiguously woodmouse poons earlaps", and then went back and did a search on it. Not only did it NOT bring me back to the same page, my original search query (the woodchuck) was missing from said page. So maybe I'm missing something here... like what point/function this thing serves.

- - - Updated - - -

As far as things written in English, any good dictionary then contains everything ever written (in English).

One phrase may appear on many, many, many pages - a random search of mine got 29^2837 pages matching the search phrase, because it will be included as a whole combination with various other phrases/sentences/words/etc. And for every one perfect replication of something, there are endless imperfect replication where there might be just a single typo somewhere in it.

As for what point/function this thing serves...*shrug* seems like it is doing something almost like an art project, and at the same time, trying to prove some language theories or something.

Also, what you just posted is already on it. I just searched the text of your post.

Edited September 26, 2015 by RainDreamer

[Shpaget]

I think that would require more space than even the NSA has.

That's an understatement. Like I said in my previous post, entire Universe would not be enough (by thousands of orders of magnitude), even if just a single atom was used as a storage for every string of 3200 letters.

If you want, you can calculate how much storage it would take to store the raw text file.

There are 29 (26 letters, comma, full stop, space) symbols that are to be ordered in a 3200 long string.

29^3200 = 4,7167 * 10^4679

Multiply by 3200 to get the number of letters.

1,509 * 10^4683

If each letter in ASCII takes one byte then that is the number of bytes required.

Or 1,3721 * 10^4671 terabytes.

So, even if every atom in the observable universe could store a terabyte of data, you'd need 1,372 * 10^4591 Universes.

[Scotius]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Billion_Names_of_God

Arthur Clarke once wrote a short story with similiar premise Now someone turned science fiction into reality - kind of.

[technion]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Billion_Names_of_God

Arthur Clarke once wrote a short story with similiar premise Now someone turned science fiction into reality - kind of.

Very side issue there - every notice that pretty much Wikipedia article on a book or movie, includes a "plot summary" - which details how it ends?

[Scotius]

Very side issue there - every notice that pretty much Wikipedia article on a book or movie, includes a "plot summary" - which details how it ends?

For lazy people, who can't be bothered to read everything? Oh well...their loss.

[Streetwind]

Philosophical question for you all...

How can you be sure that it actually contains every text, if the only sensible way to verify a text's presence is to send the text to the website? For all you know it could take search queries and surround them with gibberish, and the result would be virtually indistinguishable from "the real thing".

I mean, you could conceivably just browse pages manually... but the sheer amount of permutations makes it so that even if every human alive today devotes every minute of his or her remaining lifetime to proofreading pages, you would still not be able to say with any confidence that it was anything else but an on-demand gibberish generator.

Do note that I'm not trying to call out the website as fake - I can imagine it's perfectly possible to solve this problem in code nowadays. I'm just amused by the fact that it feels literally impossible to prove or disprove without inspecting the code itself.

[Darnok]

Ok, so on what page I can read US declaration of independence?

[Scotius]

Philosophical question for you all...

How can you be sure that it actually contains every text, if the only sensible way to verify a text's presence is to send the text to the website? For all you know it could take search queries and surround them with gibberish, and the result would be virtually indistinguishable from "the real thing".

I mean, you could conceivably just browse pages manually... but the sheer amount of permutations makes it so that even if every human alive today devotes every minute of his or her remaining lifetime to proofreading pages, you would still not be able to say with any confidence that it was anything else but an on-demand gibberish generator.

Do note that I'm not trying to call out the website as fake - I can imagine it's perfectly possible to solve this problem in code nowadays. I'm just amused by the fact that it feels literally impossible to prove or disprove without inspecting the code itself.

Behold - quantum uncertainity principle at its finest Mere act of searching for something creates that something. Plus all possible permutations Is this sufficiently advanced to be considered magic?

[andrewas]

Ok, so on what page I can read US declaration of independence?

hex:

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

Wall 4, shelf 4, volume 6, page 81.

[Steel]

Ok, so on what page I can read US declaration of independence?

Here and on about 10²⁹ other pages

[YNM]

What kind of language is used anyway ? Any punctuated characters (like, å or è) ?

[Shpaget]

Lower case English alphabet, comma, full stop and 0-9 digits.

[Steel]

Lower case English alphabet, comma, full stop and 0-9 digits.

No numbers, just a-z comma, full stop and space

[Shpaget]

Yeah, I don't know where I got the numbera from.