The Library of Babel

The Library of Babel is repository of every book ever written... if you can find it.

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Credits:
The Library of Babel
Episode 463; September 5, 2024
Produced, Written & Narrated by: Isaac Arthur
Editor: Lukas Konecny
Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images
Stellardrone, "Red Giant", "Ultra Deep Field", "Cosmic Sunrise"
Sergey Cheremisinov, "Labyrinth"
Lombus, "Hydrogen Sonata", "Cosmic Soup"

[erskyscot]

The log at the beginning made me think this was an SCP wiki entry

[unvergebeneid]

This concept comes from a time when we thought access to information was everything. Now we know that information is worthless if you can't tell it from noise.

[fgbpeiazijhn]

Reminds me of that joke where they leaked everyone's 4 digit pin code. By producing a list of all possible 10^4 combinations of numbers.

[WGPower_Nonchalant_Cafe]

He talked mostly about gibberish books but you would also have an infinite number of cohesive books that were full of false conclusions.

[mrkurius]

Last time I was this early, the Library of Alexandria wasn't yet burnt

[albizu]

"It was the best of times. It was the blurst of times..."

For the content of this comment, please see page 98 of volume DS9 88xA51^42.

Another excellent Thursday morning with Isaac Arthur!

Excellent video!

[danielfincher]

Wait, you managed to put it in perspective for me. This library actually contains a well-written season 8 of the show!

[MetricZero]

The Library of Babel is one of my favorites.

[jamesasimmons]

For the chance of a word appearing in random understandable text is not linear. See Zipf's Law. This is true of every language. We could greatly increase the chance of a great work if we apply Zipf's law to the babel library.

[GadZookz]

“Adam had’em” is perhaps the shortest poem in the English language. If the Library of Babel is a decent library then it should be in there but any library without Mr. Atos gets my vote. 🙂

[littlebubby]

Tetration is actually solved from right-to left (not left to right), so that 3^^3 is 3^(3^3) = 3^27, which is about 7.6 trillion. This means 4^^4 is far bigger than that and is around 10^(8*10^153). Note that 2^^2 would be 4 instead of 16 even if it was applied left to right, as in weak left to right tetration a^^b is equal to a^(a^(b-1)). This means tetration grows faster than even many-worlds and quantum physics can handle.

[PazLeBon]

Library would be shut down due to council cuts in spending

[SofaMuncher]

Brandon Sanderson mentioned. I am now obligated to recommend reading the Stormlight Archive

[rexy_mirror]

I wonder if there's a Restaurant of Babel 🤔

[ChaptermasterPedroKantor-kvyw]

I first encountered infinite amounts of monkeys on typewriters eventually producing Shakespeare in the 80's on the British satirical puppet show Spitting Image, as in the show the then famous British novelist Jeffrey Archer explained it as how he wrote his books.

[jamesasimmons]

The internet disproves infinite monkeys typing will produce a great work!!!!

[Extra-Celestial]

This is the the stuff that drove Cantor crazy

[Italianjedi]

As someone who has a Masters in Library Sciences; I was quite mesmerized.

I however don’t buy that the human brain only has terabytes of storage. I think that is a low end estimate. Brains don’t really work like computers.

[NovoCognition]

29:10 ; That last part reminds me of the Domain & Neuro-Physics used by the Forerunners & Precursors in Halo.

[ClintSprayberry]

Dude thank you for continuing to do this show episode after episode. I've been a big fan for several years now (my how time flies 😮) and with each episode I feel those sensations of wonder that, to be honest, aren't kindled by the surrounding world as much as when I was a child. So thank you man! You literally renew my love for life with this video series/channel/the new form of entertainment 😀