“As a rule not knowing is a step towards new knowledge.” – Laila (Sophie’s World)

Sunday, January 3, 2016

The Library of Babel

According to the video, there's this website called The Library of Babel. (https://libraryofbabel.info/), wherein if you enter any up to 3200-character combination of text (which is composed of the alphabet in lowercase, comma, space and period), the exact permutation will definitely be found.

Technically, this "blurs the line between invention and discovery" because everything is already predetermined. In fact, this very post (excluding other excluded characters) can be found there. How is this possible?

This is not something like "the computer detects what you enter in the search box and then generates something from it". No. The computer uses seed numbers from base-10 and converts them into base-29 and generates every possible combination based on it. Messages For The Future

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