3 ms·
Borges's library doesn't actually contain every possible book, just every possible book of a certain length (it's finite but very large). Fun fact about Quine
by mherdeg 14y ago
Borges's library doesn't actually contain every possible book, just every possible book of a certain length (it's finite but very large).
Fun fact about Quine -- he didn't actually write the first known self-printing program! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_(computing) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_(computing)
- rsaarelm 14y agoYou can find every possible book longer than the default length split into several volumes.
- jbert 14y agoYes, but that's saying the same thing as "you can write all binary numbers with the digits 0 and 1". These correspond to choosing a 'book length' of 1 bit. Each million-bit book is just a number in a base 2^1,000,000 Numbers larger than that require more than one book, just as numbers larger than 1 require more than one binary digit.