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I really like this story. The idea that everything is written inside one of the books of this library is mind blowing!

by viebel 5y ago

macando 5y ago
In Borges' story, the Aleph is a point in space that contains all other points. Anyone who gazes into it can see everything in the universe from every angle simultaneously, without distortion, overlapping, or confusion. The story traces the theme of infinity found in several of Borges' other works, such as "The Book of Sand". Maze is another favorite theme of his. Borges fractalizes the labyrinth, infinitely multiplies the interconnections between spaces — but makes all these spaces identical, cloned pieces of an infinite non-linear repetition, extending vertiginously into eternity, out in space and deep into the future, forever onwards.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
More perplexing to me is the notion that such a library contains no information, owing to this description: > each book is unique and irreplaceable, but (since the Library is total) there are always several hundred thousand imperfect facsimiles - books that differ by no more than a single letter, or comma If one were to try and distinguish one book of Shakespeare from another, they would need the full text they are looking for in order to be sure they have an accurate copy. essentially your key length is equal to the content length, and if you have the key already, the library contains nothing further. I consider this as presaging the info-spam of an infinite, bot-infested internet: as more near misses of actual content is produced, the internet can contain measurably less information.
- ballenf 5y ago
  Riemann's hypothesis, if true, is proven in an infinite number of ways in the library. But the library also contains an infinite number of flawed attempted proofs.
  - fmlp 5y ago
    And JLB would add: and an infinite number of refutations of each of that proofs.
    - ColinWright 5y ago
      And infinitely many incorrect refutations of each of the correct proofs.
- jl6 5y ago
  To paraphrase The Incredibles: when every book is there, no book is there.
- vokep 5y ago
  This got me to some interesting thinking. If the library contains no information because you need the information you look for, what about the ability of it to at least match to information you look for? Or put another way, the library does begin to have information if you have the information you're looking for. The fact of finding the particular information is different than the library not containing it. I can't seem to figure out how to type this out in a way that maks sense but basically I'm thinking when an AI like GPT-3 is working its sort of sorting through the library of babel and finding words. Or when speaking its as though the library of babel is at immediate call in the brain, which sorts through near instantly finding the book that satisfies the next word. The website that allows browsing the library helps show what I mean, you can look on it and click random and search for information in it. The thing itself contains "no information" but it also does as in this case you may find something (first page I saw had the word 'beef')
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    It does take a talented writer to talk about infinity! I think maybe there are paths through the library that would prove useful for browsing, as is the case when I visit a normal library: I don't always know what I'm looking for ahead of time, I let the arrangement of books inspire me, see what books are next to the one's I already know. I think it's kind of like a compression algorithm, you have the compressed data, and then you have the decoder. Any complexity the original data had is either in the data, or in the decoder. The library of babel is a pathological case: the compressed data is 0 bytes: whatever choices you make in finding the data is actually information outside of the system, as in: you might as well be making it up on the spot. However, if the books in the library are ordered somehow, that is complexity being added back into the compressed data, and it no longer contains "no information"
  - Loughla 5y ago
    The problem is that it does contain everything, and therefore contains nothing (worth knowing that you don't already know). In other words, you could never find an answer that you could say, with 100% certainty is accurate, unless you already knew the answer. You can't ask an unending database a question that you don't already know the answer to, because every answer is there. Ask it, what is the primary atomic structure of beef? You'll get answers for anything. They're made of carbon. They're made of rainstorms. They're not real. You're beef. So by saying it doesn't contain information, what they're really meaning is that it doesn't contain useful information. You can't do anything with it that doesn't amount to a wild guess.

I really like this story. The idea that everything is written inside one of the books of this library is mind blowing!

by viebel 5y ago

I really like this story. The idea that everything is written inside one of the books of this library is mind blowing!

In Borges' story, the Aleph is a point in space that contains all other points. Anyone who gazes into it can see everything in the universe from every angle simultaneously, without distortion, overlapping, or confusion. The story traces the theme of infinity found in several of Borges' other works, such as "The Book of Sand". Maze is another favorite theme of his. Borges fractalizes the labyrinth, infinitely multiplies the interconnections between spaces — but makes all these spaces identical, cloned pieces of an infinite non-linear repetition, extending vertiginously into eternity, out in space and deep into the future, forever onwards.

jazzyjackson 5y ago

More perplexing to me is the notion that such a library contains no information, owing to this description: > each book is unique and irreplaceable, but (since the Library is total) there are always several hundred thousand imperfect facsimiles - books that differ by no more than a single letter, or comma If one were to try and distinguish one book of Shakespeare from another, they would need the full text they are looking for in order to be sure they have an accurate copy. essentially your key length is equal to the content length, and if you have the key already, the library contains nothing further. I consider this as presaging the info-spam of an infinite, bot-infested internet: as more near misses of actual content is produced, the internet can contain measurably less information.

ballenf 5y ago
Riemann's hypothesis, if true, is proven in an infinite number of ways in the library. But the library also contains an infinite number of flawed attempted proofs.
- fmlp 5y ago
  And JLB would add: and an infinite number of refutations of each of that proofs.
  - ColinWright 5y ago
    And infinitely many incorrect refutations of each of the correct proofs.
jl6 5y ago
To paraphrase The Incredibles: when every book is there, no book is there.
vokep 5y ago
This got me to some interesting thinking. If the library contains no information because you need the information you look for, what about the ability of it to at least match to information you look for? Or put another way, the library does begin to have information if you have the information you're looking for. The fact of finding the particular information is different than the library not containing it. I can't seem to figure out how to type this out in a way that maks sense but basically I'm thinking when an AI like GPT-3 is working its sort of sorting through the library of babel and finding words. Or when speaking its as though the library of babel is at immediate call in the brain, which sorts through near instantly finding the book that satisfies the next word. The website that allows browsing the library helps show what I mean, you can look on it and click random and search for information in it. The thing itself contains "no information" but it also does as in this case you may find something (first page I saw had the word 'beef')
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  It does take a talented writer to talk about infinity! I think maybe there are paths through the library that would prove useful for browsing, as is the case when I visit a normal library: I don't always know what I'm looking for ahead of time, I let the arrangement of books inspire me, see what books are next to the one's I already know. I think it's kind of like a compression algorithm, you have the compressed data, and then you have the decoder. Any complexity the original data had is either in the data, or in the decoder. The library of babel is a pathological case: the compressed data is 0 bytes: whatever choices you make in finding the data is actually information outside of the system, as in: you might as well be making it up on the spot. However, if the books in the library are ordered somehow, that is complexity being added back into the compressed data, and it no longer contains "no information"
- Loughla 5y ago
  The problem is that it does contain everything, and therefore contains nothing (worth knowing that you don't already know). In other words, you could never find an answer that you could say, with 100% certainty is accurate, unless you already knew the answer. You can't ask an unending database a question that you don't already know the answer to, because every answer is there. Ask it, what is the primary atomic structure of beef? You'll get answers for anything. They're made of carbon. They're made of rainstorms. They're not real. You're beef. So by saying it doesn't contain information, what they're really meaning is that it doesn't contain useful information. You can't do anything with it that doesn't amount to a wild guess.