General / Off-Topic The library of babel

[YoBuck]

Is this of any practicle use?
i mean somewhere in the library is the cure for cancer, the theory of everything. Final proof of a god, or no god.

https://libraryofbabel.info

The Library of Babel is a place for scholars to do research, for artists and writers to seek inspiration, for anyone with curiosity or a sense of humor to reflect on the weirdness of existence - in short, it’s just like any other library. If completed, it would contain every possible combination of 1,312,000 characters, including lower case letters, space, comma, and period. Thus, it would contain every book that ever has been written, and every book that ever could be - including every play, every song, every scientific paper, every legal decision, every constitution, every piece of scripture, and so on. At present it contains all possible pages of 3200 characters, about 104677 books.Since I imagine the question will present itself in some visitors’ minds (a certain amount of distrust of the virtual is inevitable) I’ll head off any doubts: any text you find in any location of the library will be in the same place in perpetuity. We do not simply generate and store books as they are requested - in fact, the storage demands would make that impossible. Every possible permutation of letters is accessible at this very moment in one of the library's books, only awaiting its discovery. We encourage those who find strange concatenations among the variations of letters to write about their discoveries in the forum, so future generations may benefit from their research.

 

[Stigbob]

It's of immense practical use, it's the perfect demonstration that in the art world the most important thing by far is a gimmick.

Fun to play with though.

 

[Surfinjo]

Once again, I am left in dispair for the future of mankind.

How can anyone question the value of a repository of human knowledge?

The value of this venture is beyond measure.

The biggest problem will be inclusion of books that still have copyright.

I am bound to point out though that such a project is already, very much in existence and has been for a number of years. I use it myself frequently.

If you fancy an entertaining read, check out Moby

https://www.gutenberg.org/

 

[metatheurgist]

As I understand it, it's not really a repository. It's a clever project that uses procedural generation to create the text that you search. So theoretically it contains every work already written or every work that might be written, as long as you know what to enter in the search box. It's really an outstanding demonstration of the capabilities of procedural generation.

 

[YoBuck]

It's every combination of letters, spaces, commas and full stops. It's not generated on the fly, it doesn't have to be. It already has everything ever said or yet to be said.

 

[Stigbob]

As I understand it, it's not really a repository. It's a clever project that uses procedural generation to create the text that you search. So theoretically it contains every work already written or every work that might be written, as long as you know what to enter in the search box. It's really an outstanding demonstration of the capabilities of procedural generation.

I think you are right, I put it to the test by searching for "silly gimmick" 3 times. On each occasion it returned different page numbers for the phrase.

In the forum the creator discusses the algorithm used to generate the text, my moneys on procedural generation of random gobbledygook on each search.

Like I said fun to mess with and I'd now like to read the short story* the idea was based on, but its not the ineffable knowledge of the ancients.

*PDF version of the story here
https://libraryofbabel.info/Borges/libraryofbabel.pdf

 

[Surfinjo]

As I understand it, it's not really a repository. It's a clever project that uses procedural generation to create the text that you search. So theoretically it contains every work already written or every work that might be written, as long as you know what to enter in the search box. It's really an outstanding demonstration of the capabilities of procedural generation.

So, for example, it will contain a book that claims the Earth is flat and Superman exists?

Not exactly a library. I had something on my old 8 bit that could do that, it was a random generator.

 

[Stigbob]

I just read the short story it's based on, reasonably good speculative fiction/philosophical meandering exploring the nature of infinity and the odd things mankind will cling to or reject as articles of faith. That's my take on it, but it's philosophical so pretty much anything goes.

I won't be dashing out to source other books by the same author, but it did make me think.

 

[metatheurgist]

It's a bit more clever than a random number generator. Each page is procedurally generated so it can be recreated at will, and I believe it creates proper English, not just gibberish. But I've only heard about it, I've not tested it extensively.

 

[Stigbob]

It's a bit more clever than a random number generator. Each page is procedurally generated so it can be recreated at will, and I believe it creates proper English, not just gibberish. But I've only heard about it, I've not tested it extensively.

I'll happily admit that my "test" was non-scientific, extremely superficial and slipshod. But this is the internet so accuracy be damned.

It does create words but very few recognisable phrases, I searched for a long extract from GW Bush's axis of evil speech and it pulled up the extract in the middle of pages of random words complete with original punctuation. The unconvincing part was that the extract stood out from the background gobbledegook, as the background lacked any punctuation it was just random words. That made it look (to me) like random words had been generated and the extract I searched for was simply dropped in complete.

 

[metatheurgist]

Fair enough. I imagine it'd be hard to filter out all the nonsense possibilities that could be created through procedural generation.

 

[YoBuck]

Resurrecting this one as I've had a thought....

logically if the library is legit. Well every combination or letter soace and punctuation would be, would this be proof of the death of humans?

i mean it's a finite library right. That would mean even inventing new words using the 26 letters means it finite as it would be complete. So it means as a being/animal we done live on for eternity.
Theres holes in this I know. My point is I was thinking what use is the library, there's no reference guide. I can't ask it a question and look up an answer.

So so it struck me, from the other way around it does tell us one thing.

As I said, it's only a thought