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Borges: The Library of Babel [pdf]

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Re: Borges: The Library of Babel [pdf]

#41

Post by jl6 »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #34
libraryofbabel wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the story you will see that most books present the appearance of random strings of characters.

If the sets of integers and reals is anything to go by, an infinitesimal portion of the books would include something that's actually legible, but perhaps the books could be sorted so those containing the most sensible arrangements of letters were kept nearby: don't bother looking at those noisy tomes of high entropy.

But perhaps the noise is just a language you haven’t recognized? Perhaps the noise contains True information when decoded using a scheme described in one of the other books?

Re: Borges: The Library of Babel [pdf]

#42

Post by vokep »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #10
viebel wrote: post #2

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

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 l…

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')

Re: Borges: The Library of Babel [pdf]

#43

Post by staplung »

It's fun to think about all the things that are in the library. E.g. your exact genome, or the genome of a T. Rex. A hi-def version of every movie ever made, encoded in a suitable format that respects the limitations of the allowed "alphabet" (most of those would look like noise to a reader). A hi-def version of every movie that could be made. All music. This post. The entire internet. A description of every event that has ever occurred. The meaning of life, the universe and everything.

If gets even more fun when you try to think about transcriptions of infinitely long things, like the digits of pi. They wouldn't find in one volume of course but so what? The number of possible volumes in the library is finite but the digits of pi are not.

Re: Borges: The Library of Babel [pdf]

#45

Post by jazzyjackson »

jl6 wrote: post #41
jazzyjackson wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the sets of integers and reals is anything to go by, an infinitesimal portion of the books would include something that's actually legible, but perhaps the books could be sorted so those containing the most sensible arrangements of letters were kept nearby: don't bother looking at those noisy tomes of high entropy.

But perhaps the noise is just a language you haven’t recognized? Perhaps the noise contains True information when decoded using a scheme described in one of the other books?

O very true... you might start trying out one book as an XOR key to another. Of course, the result of decryption will already be sitting on the next shelf over :-)

Re: Borges: The Library of Babel [pdf]

#46

Post by [deleted] »

jl6 wrote: post #38
jimothyhalpert7 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could also just find a book that tells you another way of getting out, no?

How would you tell the difference between that book and a similar book with a plausible but flawed escape plan? To paraphrase The Incredibles: when every book is there, no book is there.

[deleted]

Re: Borges: The Library of Babel [pdf]

#48

Post by jazzyjackson »

vokep wrote: post #42
jazzyjackson wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

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 s…

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"

Re: Borges: The Library of Babel [pdf]

#49

Post by scarmig »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #34
libraryofbabel wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the story you will see that most books present the appearance of random strings of characters.

If the sets of integers and reals is anything to go by, an infinitesimal portion of the books would include something that's actually legible, but perhaps the books could be sorted so those containing the most sensible arrangements of letters were kept nearby: don't bother looking at those noisy tomes of high entropy.

Infinitesimal is a bit off, here. It's a very, very small but definitely finite proportion of books that'd be legible by humans in a human language.

You don't even need the full set of integers to catalogue the library, let alone the reals.

Re: Borges: The Library of Babel [pdf]

#50

Post by Loughla »

vokep wrote: post #42
jazzyjackson wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

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 s…

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.

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