On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 08:46:16PM +1300, LizR wrote: > In case anyone isn't acquainte with the library of Babel, it contains all > possible books of a particular length (I think it's around 400 pages) which > use a certain number of characters, say 30. If we assume there are, say, > 2000 characters per page, we get (I think) 30 to the power of 800,000 > books, a large but finite number of the sort I think Daniel Dennett called > "Vast" (meaning ridiculously larger than any numbers that could be used to > count anything in the observable universe. The LOB would dwarf the > observable universe). It's similar to Russell's TON in that it contains > essentially no information - or certainly no *useful* information. As > Borges mentioned it contains the accurate catalogue of the Library > (presumably occupying many lightyears of shelves, if assembled in one > place) together with a "Vast" number of innaccurate catalogues. It also
Accurate? No it can't. Any complete catalogue of the library will be vastly larger than any of the books it contains. Each book's entry must be as large as the book itself. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
