I like Borges, but this is one of his weakest stories. The mathematical point made is on the trivial side (and most readers who praise it interpret it as merely making a mathematical point). It is a bit stronger if read as an implicit critique of logocentrism or religious textualism, but still falls short of the best few of his other fictional works.
Borges: The Library of Babel [pdf]
71–80 of 103 posts
Re: Borges: The Library of Babel [pdf]
#72Earlier 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.
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.
What I was trying to say was, since there are an infinite number of real numbers between each pair of integers, there would be a similarly infinite number of garbage text between each pair of legible texts.
Even though there are an infinite number of integers, there are an even more infinite number of reals, rendering the proportion of (integers)/(reals) to be near 0.
Re: Borges: The Library of Babel [pdf]
#73Can someone please help me? I'm trying to recall a post on HN within the past year that ended up introducing me to The Library of Babel. It was like a textual/visual blog post/article either in the same vein as The Library or direct text from it...or maybe the images were originally meant to illustrate it. It was weird. That's all I can remember.
Re: Borges: The Library of Babel [pdf]
#74I like Borges, but this is one of his weakest stories. The mathematical point made is on the trivial side (and most readers who praise it interpret it as merely making a mathematical point). It is a bit stronger if read as an implicit critique of logocentrism or religious textualism, but still falls short of the best few of his other fictional works.
What are some of his best works?
Re: Borges: The Library of Babel [pdf]
#75I like Borges, but this is one of his weakest stories. The mathematical point made is on the trivial side (and most readers who praise it interpret it as merely making a mathematical point). It is a bit stronger if read as an implicit critique of logocentrism or religious textualism, but still falls short of the best few of his other fictional works.
This story isn't really about mathematics. It's about the human response. It's about how we humans are pattern seeking creatures in a world of chaos that create patterns through our own process of seeking.
Re: Borges: The Library of Babel [pdf]
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
How would you tell the difference between a book that has your life story in it and a similar book with inaccuracies in all the details you don't remember?
This naturally evolved on my mind to, "Whose (or what) life are you thinking of when you think of your own?"
Re: Borges: The Library of Babel [pdf]
#77Can someone please help me? I'm trying to recall a post on HN within the past year that ended up introducing me to The Library of Babel. It was like a textual/visual blog post/article either in the same vein as The Library or direct text from it...or maybe the images were originally meant to illustrate it. It was weird. That's all I can remember.
Have you tried a search?
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Does that show up what you're looking for?
Re: Borges: The Library of Babel [pdf]
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's this syntax from? Is there a browser that implements it as a content-relative anchor? It looks convenient. #:~:text=
It's call "Text Fragments", and it was introduced to Chrome more than one year ago. https://github.com/WICG/scroll-to-text-fragment I think it works in Chrome and Edge, but not in Firefox.
Thanks!
Indeed, it seems to be just those for now:
Re: Borges: The Library of Babel [pdf]
#79Can someone please help me? I'm trying to recall a post on HN within the past year that ended up introducing me to The Library of Babel. It was like a textual/visual blog post/article either in the same vein as The Library or direct text from it...or maybe the images were originally meant to illustrate it. It was weird. That's all I can remember.
Have you tried a search? https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... Does that show up what you're looking for?
Thank you, but no luck. I don't think the post had any explicit references. Could've sworn someone must've mentioned it in the comments because how else would I end up on the Library of Babel wikipedia page?
Re: Borges: The Library of Babel [pdf]
#80As a HN reader from Argentina, I thank ColinWright to share this with the community. Here in Argentina we are very proud of Borges and his works - and it is always nice to see people from around the world discovering or revisiting him.
Are there any other Argentinian writers you know that perhaps deserve more recognition in the anglosphere? I’ve read Borges and Cortazar—both floored me and left a lasting impression, they make me curious to learn about some of the other great authors from your country