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Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to venture into the vault. But appears that this

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Speaker 1: time the vault is pretty much infinite. That's right, we

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Speaker 1: may get lost in there. This is our episode on

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Speaker 1: the Library of Babel. This originally aired Tuesday, August second,

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Speaker 1: and this is one of my favorite episodes we ever did. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we get to talk about infinity, we get to talk

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Speaker 1: about Bogyes, we get to talk a little bit. Uh.

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Speaker 1: I think I end up referencing, uh, the Name of

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Speaker 1: the Rose by m Berto Eco, which is timely because

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Speaker 1: I just found out that they are producing another adaptation

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Speaker 1: of the Name of the Rose. It's going to be

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Speaker 1: like an eight part TV movie with John to Truro

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Speaker 1: starring as William of Baskerville. Yeah. I thought you were

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Speaker 1: going to say that a grown up Christian Slater would

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Speaker 1: now be That would make perfect sense in a way,

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Speaker 1: but not in any acting sense. I think here's my recast. Okay,

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Speaker 1: Burt Reynolds, that's Baskerville. What do you think he's too old?

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Speaker 1: You'd have to play brother Jr. Hey, Okay, well, anyway,

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Speaker 1: this is the Library of Babel episode. Let's go straight

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Speaker 1: into Oh Time Ny Pyramids. Welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: Your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, Hello,

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Speaker 1: this is Stuff to Blow Your Mind audiologue. This is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. This is day

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Speaker 1: of our descent into the famed Library of Babel. We've

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Speaker 1: been exploring this infinite sprawl of interconnected hexagonal rooms and

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Speaker 1: the twenty bookshelves contained with eat each one, Joe, how

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Speaker 1: many rooms have we explored since last log entry? Oh,

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Speaker 1: let me find it here. Let's see. Well, we're up

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Speaker 1: to a hundred and twelve in that brings the grand

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Speaker 1: total of rooms we have explored to date up to

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Speaker 1: one thousand, five hundred and sixty one. And of course

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Speaker 1: that is not counting the rooms to the library that

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Speaker 1: we could tell had already been explored. So we just

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Speaker 1: skipped over with books pulled out all over the place,

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Speaker 1: or some just had empty shelves, smoke lines on the ceiling,

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Speaker 1: and these ancient piles of cold black coal in the

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Speaker 1: middle of the floor we can presume from some long

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Speaker 1: ago book burnings. Yeah, that's right. The I mean that

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Speaker 1: the library is at least indefinite, if not infinite. So

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Speaker 1: it falls to inquisitors such as ourselves to steadily work

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Speaker 1: our way out from charted portions of the library and

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Speaker 1: into uncharted regions. And it really is a room by room,

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Speaker 1: book by book procedures. Now, fortunately, most of the books

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Speaker 1: are nonsense, and you can spot that right away, because

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Speaker 1: I mean real nonsense, total typographical gibberish. And that's not

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Speaker 1: even counting the ones that have been totally or partially

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Speaker 1: burned by the purifiers. I hear footsteps sometimes in the

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Speaker 1: room was directly above us, and I keep wondering if

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Speaker 1: it's them. It could be, but you know, it could

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Speaker 1: be the bookman. I know that's superstition, Joe we I mean,

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Speaker 1: we might as well hope to find that the Crimson hexagon. Now,

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Speaker 1: come on, Robert, wouldn't you love to find the one

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Speaker 1: hexagonal room in this entire place that contains something truly

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Speaker 1: precious apart from all this gibberish, maybe even real functional

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Speaker 1: books of magic spells. Well, of course I would, but

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Speaker 1: that doesn't mean it actually exists even in the Library

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Speaker 1: of Babel. Now, remember, Robert, these rooms contain not only

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Speaker 1: all books, but all possible books. Those books have got

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Speaker 1: to be out there, but that doesn't mean they're actually magical. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I guess you're right, But sometimes I like to think

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Speaker 1: the Crimson Hexagon is out there. You know, maybe the

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Speaker 1: purifiers haven't found it yet because it moves. Have you

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Speaker 1: thought about that? Like in the movie Cube rooms move

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Speaker 1: around while we're asleep. Who are like the the the

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Speaker 1: Castle and Krawl? You know. I'm glad you mentioned Krull

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Speaker 1: because I found a copy of Alan Dean Foresters three

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Speaker 1: novelization of the screenplay of Krall. That's a real book. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but I also found a Krull novel by Stanford Sherman,

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Speaker 1: the guy who wrote the screenplay, and he never actually

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Speaker 1: wrote a novel version, right, Oh no, not in our reality,

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Speaker 1: but of course it could exist, which means the library

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Speaker 1: has it. And that's why I was also able to

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Speaker 1: find a copy of a Christmas Carol. You might want

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Speaker 1: to see this where instead of saying God bless us everyone,

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Speaker 1: tiny Tim gives an invocation of Mala Collord of destruction.

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Speaker 1: What about you check this out? Frank Herbert's complete seven

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Speaker 1: book Dune series. Yeah, not not just the six he

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Speaker 1: actually wrote in our reality all seven as well as

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Speaker 1: look at this, an alternate Herbert Dune trilogy that's only

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Speaker 1: three books long, but a lot more erotic. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you've got to read this. Yeah, it's on my list.

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Speaker 1: But hey, guess what, I've got the final two books

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Speaker 1: of the Game of Thrones series, the Song of Ice

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Speaker 1: and Fire spoiler they were on Earth all along, and

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Speaker 1: west Ros is actually in rural North Florida. But also, Robert,

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Speaker 1: I have your complete biography, including the end, and as

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Speaker 1: per our agreement, I didn't read it. Well good, well cool,

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Speaker 1: here's yours. Then you just swap thank you. Yeah, there

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Speaker 1: we go. We're good. Wait, wait a minute, did you

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Speaker 1: hear that? It's probably just other inquisitors or you know,

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Speaker 1: our pilgrims looking for deposits of alternate Gospels or book

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Speaker 1: worshippers or the Purifiers or the Book miss none of that.

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Speaker 1: Let's let's keep moving. This hexagon up ahead looks pretty promised. Hey,

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Speaker 1: welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is

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Speaker 1: Robert Land, and I'm Joe McCormick. In today we're going

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Speaker 1: to be talking about the Library of Babel. So the

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Speaker 1: Library of Babel is both it's a short story, but

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Speaker 1: it's also the concept at the core of this short story,

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Speaker 1: and we're really going to be focusing on the concept

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Speaker 1: and it's broader implications today, not just the story itself,

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Speaker 1: but the concept of the Library of Babel comes from

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Speaker 1: a short story of the same name by Jorge Luis Borges,

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Speaker 1: first published in the collection The Garden of Forking Paths

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Speaker 1: in nineteen forty one. So. Borges was a twentieth century

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Speaker 1: Argentine author. He lived from eighteen to nineteen eighty six,

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Speaker 1: and in his lifetime, especially later in his life, he

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Speaker 1: became famous for poetry essays, but especially short stories and

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Speaker 1: short stories. A lot of them are kind of like

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Speaker 1: this story. Yeah, I mean, like like a lot of

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Speaker 1: his tales. Uh. The Library of Babel was not really

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Speaker 1: a narrative experience. It's not very plot heavy, right, It's

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Speaker 1: kind of a sort of scholarly missive about a fantastic idea.

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Speaker 1: So he he choose on this fantastic idea, gets all

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Speaker 1: of these philosophic juices going, and we're just we're fortunate

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Speaker 1: enough to experience it with him. Uh. In his his stories,

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Speaker 1: there there are a number of different themes that offer

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Speaker 1: pop up, such as knives mirrors, dreams, Oh, dreams. There's

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Speaker 1: some fabulous dream stories. Um, and and they're all pretty short.

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Speaker 1: Like That's one of the wonderful things about a collection

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Speaker 1: of Bores short fiction is you can just pick it up.

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Speaker 1: You can pretty much pick any story and just in

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Speaker 1: a few pages and just mind blowing concept is presented

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Speaker 1: to you. That just expands the limits of your imagination. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: You ever know those like fantasy writers who are better

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Speaker 1: at world building than they are at character and plot. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'd say Bores is like that, except he writes what

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Speaker 1: would probably be considered now literary fiction. It's you know,

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Speaker 1: respectable intellectual fiction. Uh that that's treated without any hint

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Speaker 1: of a sneer by the Academy as far as I

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Speaker 1: can tell. But but it's fascinating stuff through and through. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it reminds me a lot of some of the short

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Speaker 1: fiction that Philip K. Dick would later do. And now,

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Speaker 1: certainly Philip K. Dick was was capable of producing novel

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Speaker 1: after novel after novel as well. Uh, you know, he

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Speaker 1: was pretty adapted. It longer works, But some of his

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Speaker 1: short stories remind me of Borges in their ability to

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Speaker 1: without getting too bogged down in story or character just

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Speaker 1: presenting in a nugget like a really crazy mind warping idea. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so we should probably start with a quote from the

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Speaker 1: beginning of the Library of Babel the story to give

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Speaker 1: you a sense of what is being talked about here.

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Speaker 1: So this is a quote from the beginning of the story,

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Speaker 1: with some editorial illusions for brevity. Quote. The universe, which

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Speaker 1: others call the library, is composed of an indefinite, perhaps

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Speaker 1: infinite number of hexagonal galleries. The arrangement of the galleries

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Speaker 1: is always the same, twenty bookshelves, five to each side,

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Speaker 1: line four of the hexagon's six sides. One of the

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Speaker 1: hexagon's free sides opens onto a narrow sort of vestibule,

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Speaker 1: which in turn opens onto another gallery identical to the first,

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Speaker 1: identical in fact to all. To the right and left

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Speaker 1: of the vestibule are two tiny compartments. One is for

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Speaker 1: sleeping upright, the other for satisfying one's physical necessities. Through

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Speaker 1: this space, too, there passes a spiral staircase which winds

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Speaker 1: upward and downward into the remote distance. In the vestibule,

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Speaker 1: there is a mirror which faithfully duplicates appearances. Uh, and

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Speaker 1: he goes on to explain how the implications of having

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Speaker 1: a mirror in a library that may or may not

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Speaker 1: be infinite as far as the characters disclosed that they

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Speaker 1: know at first at least. Yeah, so this is the

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Speaker 1: basic setup. This is the basic HexaCon, and then that

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Speaker 1: hexagon is cloned out. Yeah, it's a six sided room.

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Speaker 1: There are shelves of books in each room, and the

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Speaker 1: rooms seem to go on forever, and in a honeycomb

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Speaker 1: where no one has ever discovered the forest boundary. That

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Speaker 1: there are places, as we mentioned, for wanderers, librarians, etcetera,

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Speaker 1: to use the bathroom and to sleep upright, it does

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Speaker 1: make me wonder if like Barnes and Noble, there is

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Speaker 1: a policy against bringing books into the bathroom, or if

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Speaker 1: I mean maybe that you have to maybe you just

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Speaker 1: have to pick a gibberish book. You know. The question

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Speaker 1: is who enforces the policy. Well, that's that's one of

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Speaker 1: the things that as Well discussed. There seems to be

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Speaker 1: a lack of a lack of laws and policy in

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Speaker 1: place in the Library of Babbel. Yeah, so in the

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Speaker 1: Library of Babel, we're going to talk about the philosophical

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Speaker 1: and scientific implications of this thought experiment. Later on in

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Speaker 1: the episode, but first we just want to kind of

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Speaker 1: explore what this this concept entails. And there are definitely

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Speaker 1: a lot of ironies and absurdities in Borge's story. So

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Speaker 1: I don't think he was trying to create something that

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Speaker 1: was I mean, I feel kind of absurd saying this,

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Speaker 1: but I don't think he was trying to create something realistic. No,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, and really you run into a

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Speaker 1: lot of problems trying to even fathom it as a

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Speaker 1: real place because it is so vast. Because, as we

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Speaker 1: we discussed in our you know, hopefully entertaining intro here,

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Speaker 1: it contains not only all books, but all possible books. Right,

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Speaker 1: so let's get into the actual numbers of what this

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Speaker 1: library would entail as described in the story. So, as

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Speaker 1: Borges writes, each book in this library contains four hundred

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Speaker 1: and ten pages. Each page has forty lines, and each

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Speaker 1: line has approximately eighty black letters, just printed letters. And

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Speaker 1: you can actually work out the math from this. So

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Speaker 1: all the books consists of the same twenty five elements

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Speaker 1: for characters. They've got a space, a period, a comma,

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Speaker 1: and twenty two letters of the alphabet. The only variation

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Speaker 1: is in the arrangement of these twenty five characters. Now

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Speaker 1: you might be saying, wait a minute, that there you

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Speaker 1: know less than the total number of letters in our alphabet. Well,

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Speaker 1: you know some letters are kind of redundant, are they?

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Speaker 1: Why do we need to see? Why? Not just a

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Speaker 1: K in an S. But no, two books in the

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Speaker 1: library are exactly the same. So if the books don't

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Speaker 1: duplicate one another, and we know the starting conditions, we

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Speaker 1: can actually calculate the number of books that would be

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Speaker 1: in the library. So if there's eighty characters per line,

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Speaker 1: forty lines per page, times four hundred and ten pages

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Speaker 1: per book, that's one million, three hundred and twelve thousand

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Speaker 1: characters per book. And with twenty five possible characters and

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Speaker 1: and one million, three hundred and twelve thousand characters per book,

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Speaker 1: we know that there have to be twenty five to

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Speaker 1: the one million, three hundred and twelve power books. That

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Speaker 1: is a number that is so big that if you

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Speaker 1: can count to it, you automatically become the god of

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Speaker 1: your local galaxy cluster. So so the basic idea here,

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Speaker 1: and I'm sure there's another metaphor a little nonsensical story

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Speaker 1: that often comes to mind, and that is the idea

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Speaker 1: of the monkeys banging on type. Right. I'm going to

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Speaker 1: get into that in a bit, creating gibberish and eventually

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Speaker 1: recreating the works of Expeaire. Right now, it's sort of analogous.

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Speaker 1: If the monkeys could only pound out one book length

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Speaker 1: work of gibberish at a time and avoid complete repetition, right,

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Speaker 1: and never do the same thing twice, eventually they'd get

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Speaker 1: to Shakespeare. But so, the library contains all books there

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Speaker 1: could possibly be, so, in addition to just trying to

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Speaker 1: imagine what this is like, in addition to the indefinite

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Speaker 1: numbers of books full of random gibberish, which would be

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Speaker 1: almost all the books, there are also perfect copies of

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Speaker 1: all books that already exist in reality. So there's a

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Speaker 1: perfect copy of all the books in the Twilight series. Now,

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Speaker 1: if you're worrying, wait a minute, I know of some

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Speaker 1: books that are more than four ten pages too long

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Speaker 1: to be reproduced. Not so, actually, because there's a book

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Speaker 1: that contains its exact first four ten pages, and then

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Speaker 1: another book that contains whatever happens after that, stretching into

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Speaker 1: as many volumes as you need. Plus all books that

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Speaker 1: exist in reality would be there with every possible combination

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Speaker 1: of typographical errors that there could be. So there's a

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Speaker 1: book that's a perfect copy of Jane Eyre, except every

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Speaker 1: instance of Mr Rochester's name is replaced with the words

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Speaker 1: a crocodile of immense girth. There is also a copy

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Speaker 1: of Hamlet that reads normally except for the one line

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Speaker 1: one change. There are more things in heaven and Earth

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Speaker 1: ratio than are dreamt of in your vaping newsletter. It

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Speaker 1: also contains a perfectly accurate autobiography of your life, as

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Speaker 1: we mentioned, including all the events that haven't happened yet.

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Speaker 1: It contains lots of almost perfect autobiographies of your life,

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Speaker 1: but containing a few lies. It contains all books explaining

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Speaker 1: the perfect solutions to all the world's most vexing problems.

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Speaker 1: If we can only find those books and know them

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Speaker 1: when we see them, then we'd have the solutions to

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Speaker 1: all those problems in the story. All these books exist

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Speaker 1: in the library, but they represent such a tiny fraction

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Speaker 1: of the total possible combinations of symbols that you could

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Speaker 1: wander your whole life through the library and probably not

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Speaker 1: expect to find any lengthy combination of words that made

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Speaker 1: any grammatical sense. Yeah, I mean it. I mean it's

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Speaker 1: easy for all of us to to just really go

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Speaker 1: wild imagining this. I mean, just think of think of

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Speaker 1: your favorite book in the world, and just imagine then

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Speaker 1: that there are so many different versions of it that

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Speaker 1: are a little bit less good and maybe have a

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Speaker 1: few different typos in in it, a few different character changes.

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Speaker 1: Then there are versions of it that are even better.

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Speaker 1: There's even like an ideal version of it, a perfect version.

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Speaker 1: There is a version of your favorite book that you

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Speaker 1: yourself would perhaps love even more because it's a little

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Speaker 1: more in tune with your expectations. Right, And all that

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Speaker 1: fan fiction you write that's already in the library, it's there,

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Speaker 1: plus all the changes you could have made to make it,

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Speaker 1: you know, less of a travesty. But it all on

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Speaker 1: the same shelf. No, it's all on the same hexagon.

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Speaker 1: Probably not, because it's arranged in random rtary, making it

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Speaker 1: even more frustrating to try to find anything, though not

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Speaker 1: necessarily even more frustrating, because if you try to imagine

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Speaker 1: what navigating the library of Babble would be like if

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Speaker 1: it were organized in some alphabetical fashion, you might be

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Speaker 1: trapped in the A A A A A A A

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Speaker 1: section of the library your entire life, and you would

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Speaker 1: just be physically unable to traverse that area and get

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Speaker 1: to the sensible books. Right. So I'd actually prefer a

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Speaker 1: randomized library to being stuck in a sea of a's

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Speaker 1: that I could never escape from no matter how long

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Speaker 1: I walked, you know. Um, of course this has been

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Speaker 1: such a highly influential book. It's referenced in a number

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Speaker 1: of different works. Um, I mean the Library of the

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Speaker 1: Library babble, so like a lot of people probably recognize

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Speaker 1: it from umberto Eco's masterful Name of the Rose, where

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Speaker 1: an actual library and an Italian monastery is is modeled

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Speaker 1: on this. Um. There are aspects of it that I

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Speaker 1: believe are utilized in a House of Leaves. But then

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Speaker 1: there's also a Stephen King short story. I don't know

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Speaker 1: if you've read this one titled Er that came out

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Speaker 1: It was only for kindle, I don't think so. It's

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Speaker 1: about a man who obtains a pink kindle and it

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Speaker 1: turns out to be a kindle from another No, I

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Speaker 1: haven't read this, and it gives him access not only

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Speaker 1: to the kindle store in our universe, but also to

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Speaker 1: kindle stores in alternate universes, so he's able to access

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Speaker 1: books by authors he loves that have not yet been

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Speaker 1: written or that that just were not written in our world.

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Speaker 1: So in a sense, it's a it's an interesting play

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Speaker 1: on the Library of Babble. You know, if you want

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Speaker 1: to get a sense of what it would be like

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Speaker 1: to actually inhabit this universe the Library of Babel and

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Speaker 1: just start pulling books off the shelf. There is a

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Speaker 1: tool you can use. A Brooklyn author named Jonathan Basil

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Speaker 1: has created a virtual version. You can go to it

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Speaker 1: Library of Babble dot info. You can go explore this

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Speaker 1: at any time and it's great fun for a few

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Speaker 1: minutes until you get just buried under the noise of

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Speaker 1: nonsense hiding all potential information. So you're you're able to

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Speaker 1: pull up titles of books hypothetical, Yeah, you can. You

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Speaker 1: can go pull up a shelf of the library by name,

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Speaker 1: which I guess it generates the text that would be

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Speaker 1: under that randomized section of the library, and you can

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Speaker 1: pull out some books and look at what's inside them. Huh.

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Speaker 1: And are there any MPCs here? No, not that I

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Speaker 1: know of. I don't know. I haven't I haven't played

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Speaker 1: with it long enough, it wouldn't it be great if

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Speaker 1: some purifiers come by and start trying to burn the

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Speaker 1: books you're reading. Now, now that reminds me we should

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Speaker 1: say a little bit more about the story. Who were

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Speaker 1: the characters who occupied this library? Oh? Yeah, and and

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Speaker 1: this is this is tremendous fun um. So a first

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Speaker 1: and foremost, Uh, there are the librarians and the the narrator.

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Speaker 1: The main character, if you can even call them that

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Speaker 1: in the story, is a librarian. Right, So they're given

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Speaker 1: the impossible task of caring for the library exploring it,

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Speaker 1: and they're generally an overworked and just suicidal lot. Plus

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Speaker 1: they have to contend with all the other weird wanderers

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Speaker 1: that are out there amid the hexagons, such as Oh well,

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Speaker 1: there are the inquisitors, and these are official searchers, but

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Speaker 1: they don't really seem to make much progress. It's kind

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Speaker 1: of vague in the story exactly what they're doing. I

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Speaker 1: assume they are somehow searching for books that make sense

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Speaker 1: or books of some kind of value which are just

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Speaker 1: impossible to come by. And I believe there's a sense

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Speaker 1: to that they're they're separate from the librarians. It's almost

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Speaker 1: like an academic versus a governmental body. So the libraries

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Speaker 1: and inquisitors are kind of it seems like their jobs

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Speaker 1: should be similar, but they have different philosophical aims. What else,

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Speaker 1: then we have the Purifiers, who we alluded to already,

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Speaker 1: and these this is a sect that traversed the library

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Speaker 1: and they destroy any book that they deem nonsensical. So

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Speaker 1: that would be pretty much all books, yes, but it

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Speaker 1: could also mean I mean, I wondered if it's it's

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Speaker 1: alluded to as well that that maybe they're not the

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Speaker 1: ones to judge, how are Maybe a book that seems

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Speaker 1: like nonsense is not nonsense. Maybe they're burning a bunch

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Speaker 1: of sous any comings and they don't even realize it.

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Speaker 1: But mainly they are in search of something known as

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Speaker 1: the Crimson Hexagon. Ye, and now we alluded to this

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Speaker 1: at the beginning. But Robert, what is the Crimson hexagon

357
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Speaker 1: because it sounds alluring. Oh, yes, it is a Crimson room,

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Speaker 1: the Crimson Hexagon within the library, rumored to exist. Yes, no,

359
00:20:34,840 --> 00:20:37,919
Speaker 1: nobody has actually seen it that we know of, uh.

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Speaker 1: And it contains quote books smaller than natural books, books omnipotent, illustrated,

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Speaker 1: and magical. So in other words, this is where you'd

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Speaker 1: find the real functional copies of various grimoires, including the

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Speaker 1: real Necronomicon. Uh, the real Book of Sand, which is

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00:20:57,000 --> 00:20:59,720
Speaker 1: by the way, is it is an infinite book of

365
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Speaker 1: that of put factors into another Borhes story. Uh. You

366
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Speaker 1: would find just all these books of power and meaning,

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Speaker 1: books that answer are big questions like this. Is this

368
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Speaker 1: is like a mythological center for the library, a place

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00:21:15,080 --> 00:21:18,359
Speaker 1: of order and answer. Yeah. And it gives many people

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Speaker 1: in the library hope when they're traversing an otherwise unbroken

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Speaker 1: sea of nonsense and gibberish. And I'll tell you one

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Speaker 1: book that might be in the Crimson Hexagon if it

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Speaker 1: exists or might be elsewhere. Is this okay? So since

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Speaker 1: the Library Babble contains all possible books, that means it

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Speaker 1: must contain a book books about the library itself. It

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Speaker 1: must contain a book that tells the reader how to

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Speaker 1: find what you want. It lays it autologue or guide

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00:21:46,200 --> 00:21:49,520
Speaker 1: for the library itself. Yeah, like yeah, a tourist guide.

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Speaker 1: So even though that book has not been found, it

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Speaker 1: is rumored that there must exist someone known as the Bookman,

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Speaker 1: that the Bookman has actually uh found that book. That

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00:22:01,720 --> 00:22:06,600
Speaker 1: is quote the Cipher and perfect compendium of all possible books.

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Speaker 1: The Bookman has read this book and wanders the library

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Speaker 1: as a godlike librarian, worshiped, quested after, and perhaps even

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Speaker 1: prayed to. So this is a god figure, a really

386
00:22:18,920 --> 00:22:22,639
Speaker 1: kind of a Christ figure that wanders the Library of Babel,

387
00:22:23,080 --> 00:22:26,080
Speaker 1: and everyone wants to find this gentleman and meet him

388
00:22:26,359 --> 00:22:29,800
Speaker 1: so that they might too know where they can find

389
00:22:29,800 --> 00:22:33,040
Speaker 1: their answers. In a way, it in a way, it's

390
00:22:33,080 --> 00:22:35,320
Speaker 1: like the perfect Holy Man, right like the the the

391
00:22:35,440 --> 00:22:39,000
Speaker 1: order of the Library of Babel is beyond us. We

392
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Speaker 1: cannot relate to it, but we can relate to an individual.

393
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Speaker 1: So if there's an individual who can grasp this vastness,

394
00:22:45,040 --> 00:22:48,520
Speaker 1: then let us speak to him right now. It probably

395
00:22:48,520 --> 00:22:51,440
Speaker 1: won't be lost on all the parallels to religious figures

396
00:22:51,440 --> 00:22:54,320
Speaker 1: and profits like like you were mentioning, you know, this

397
00:22:54,440 --> 00:22:56,920
Speaker 1: Christ figure. But I would say also that the bookman

398
00:22:57,080 --> 00:22:59,840
Speaker 1: not need not necessarily be a man. I would suspect

399
00:23:00,000 --> 00:23:02,280
Speaker 1: that it's more likely a book woman because the men

400
00:23:02,400 --> 00:23:05,680
Speaker 1: of this library are way too caught up in suicides

401
00:23:05,720 --> 00:23:08,879
Speaker 1: and murders, and uh, man, it just seems like it

402
00:23:09,000 --> 00:23:11,280
Speaker 1: is not a nice thing to be uh to be

403
00:23:12,280 --> 00:23:16,119
Speaker 1: a soul male wandering this library. Yeah, it makes me

404
00:23:16,160 --> 00:23:18,679
Speaker 1: think of the the back in the days when you

405
00:23:18,720 --> 00:23:21,560
Speaker 1: had the big bookstores everywhere, you would have like the

406
00:23:21,560 --> 00:23:24,040
Speaker 1: the kind of sketchy dudes who would hang out in

407
00:23:24,080 --> 00:23:27,480
Speaker 1: the photography books section. Um, that is not a sect

408
00:23:27,560 --> 00:23:30,040
Speaker 1: that is mentioned by Borges, but I can only imagine

409
00:23:30,080 --> 00:23:33,080
Speaker 1: that they're out there picking up various books and trying

410
00:23:33,119 --> 00:23:35,120
Speaker 1: to sneak off to the bathroom with them. Though. There

411
00:23:35,200 --> 00:23:38,800
Speaker 1: is a sense of pervasive suicidal melancholy throughout the library,

412
00:23:38,920 --> 00:23:41,439
Speaker 1: because after a while it just seems to grind on

413
00:23:41,520 --> 00:23:43,560
Speaker 1: you that you can't find the answers you're looking for,

414
00:23:43,600 --> 00:23:45,359
Speaker 1: you can't find the books that you're looking for, and

415
00:23:45,400 --> 00:23:48,280
Speaker 1: then you have to contend with young people who wander

416
00:23:48,320 --> 00:23:52,879
Speaker 1: into worship and kiss the books, various heretics, pilgrims again,

417
00:23:52,960 --> 00:23:57,239
Speaker 1: like people looking for alternate gospels, brigands, suicides, all of

418
00:23:57,240 --> 00:24:00,240
Speaker 1: this going on and you're just a simple librarian trying

419
00:24:00,320 --> 00:24:03,119
Speaker 1: to do your job is just too much. Now. A

420
00:24:03,200 --> 00:24:05,720
Speaker 1: fact that I found interesting when I was reading about

421
00:24:05,720 --> 00:24:09,400
Speaker 1: bores life was that Borges was himself a librarian at

422
00:24:09,520 --> 00:24:12,360
Speaker 1: multiple different times in his life for almost a decade

423
00:24:12,400 --> 00:24:15,120
Speaker 1: beginning In around nineteen thirty seven or nineteen thirty eight,

424
00:24:15,440 --> 00:24:19,119
Speaker 1: Borhes worked in a small library in Buenos Aires, and

425
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Speaker 1: this time in the library would include the time of

426
00:24:21,600 --> 00:24:24,520
Speaker 1: publication for the Library of Babble, which he first published

427
00:24:24,560 --> 00:24:27,639
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty one. I figured out which library it was,

428
00:24:27,680 --> 00:24:29,280
Speaker 1: by the way, and I looked it up, and and

429
00:24:29,359 --> 00:24:31,680
Speaker 1: the scale is not what you would expect. I think

430
00:24:31,720 --> 00:24:34,119
Speaker 1: I might have mentioned that earlier, but given the story,

431
00:24:34,280 --> 00:24:37,560
Speaker 1: it's a very small, quaint, little library with a modest

432
00:24:37,600 --> 00:24:42,200
Speaker 1: collection of books. But also in nineteen thirty eight Borges

433
00:24:42,560 --> 00:24:46,199
Speaker 1: read experienced to head wound which led to blood poisoning,

434
00:24:46,240 --> 00:24:49,520
Speaker 1: which in turn made him very feeble, and he feared

435
00:24:49,760 --> 00:24:53,720
Speaker 1: losing his sanity, and so Borees was eventually dismissed from

436
00:24:53,760 --> 00:24:56,840
Speaker 1: his library position. When Juan Perone came to power in

437
00:24:56,960 --> 00:24:59,840
Speaker 1: Argentina and I think nineteen forty five or forty six,

438
00:25:00,440 --> 00:25:04,000
Speaker 1: and he Bores had supported the Allies during World War Two.

439
00:25:04,040 --> 00:25:07,040
Speaker 1: He opposed Nazi Germany, and he was also at the

440
00:25:07,040 --> 00:25:11,959
Speaker 1: time opposed to Peron's authoritarian sympathies. So in retaliation, Perron

441
00:25:12,200 --> 00:25:17,520
Speaker 1: demoted Borhes to the job title of poultry inspector. Bores

442
00:25:17,760 --> 00:25:20,080
Speaker 1: was not a fan of this move, but later he

443
00:25:20,160 --> 00:25:23,040
Speaker 1: was again given a library position as director of the

444
00:25:23,119 --> 00:25:27,960
Speaker 1: Argentine National Library in nineteen fifty five. But I do

445
00:25:28,040 --> 00:25:32,080
Speaker 1: wonder to what extent his experiences among the books, even

446
00:25:32,119 --> 00:25:35,480
Speaker 1: if it was truly a modest collection of books, led

447
00:25:35,560 --> 00:25:39,720
Speaker 1: to his his dreaming of the Library of Babel. Yeah,

448
00:25:39,840 --> 00:25:42,520
Speaker 1: perhaps a lot of it too came from him not

449
00:25:42,640 --> 00:25:45,440
Speaker 1: only you know, not only encountering books in this bookstore,

450
00:25:45,720 --> 00:25:48,560
Speaker 1: in the libraries and his personal collection, but also reading

451
00:25:48,640 --> 00:25:52,560
Speaker 1: about other books, seeing the names of these other books.

452
00:25:52,600 --> 00:25:55,199
Speaker 1: It's it's it's hard, you know, just looking through a

453
00:25:55,240 --> 00:25:59,240
Speaker 1: card catalog. Um. Yeah, I guess today we get a

454
00:25:59,359 --> 00:26:03,359
Speaker 1: sense of such a vassal library just when we're going

455
00:26:03,400 --> 00:26:06,400
Speaker 1: through an online database of books, be it a library

456
00:26:06,440 --> 00:26:10,280
Speaker 1: system or Amazon. And uh, and I can I can

457
00:26:10,280 --> 00:26:12,959
Speaker 1: see even with it with older catalog systems, where one

458
00:26:13,040 --> 00:26:15,120
Speaker 1: might have that experience, especially if one of the true

459
00:26:15,160 --> 00:26:18,919
Speaker 1: lover of books, as as Bores you know, definitely was.

460
00:26:20,000 --> 00:26:22,320
Speaker 1: But of course, the Library of Babel is more than

461
00:26:22,359 --> 00:26:25,359
Speaker 1: just an interesting short story, right, It's become this door

462
00:26:25,600 --> 00:26:28,679
Speaker 1: that we can walk through to think about the nature

463
00:26:28,680 --> 00:26:33,600
Speaker 1: of information and scale, numerical scale, and the universe infinity,

464
00:26:33,720 --> 00:26:38,240
Speaker 1: the relationship between information and physicality, and a very useful

465
00:26:38,280 --> 00:26:41,760
Speaker 1: model for philosophers, scientists, and thinkers of all kinds. So

466
00:26:42,119 --> 00:26:43,679
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break, and when we

467
00:26:43,760 --> 00:26:46,159
Speaker 1: come back from the break, we're going to learn more

468
00:26:46,200 --> 00:26:49,119
Speaker 1: about the implications of the Library of Babel as a

469
00:26:49,119 --> 00:26:58,920
Speaker 1: thought experiment. So the characters in the Library of Babel,

470
00:26:58,960 --> 00:27:01,480
Speaker 1: they all seem to be searched for meaning, right, They're

471
00:27:01,520 --> 00:27:05,639
Speaker 1: living in this vast library of nonsense, is full of

472
00:27:05,680 --> 00:27:09,000
Speaker 1: gibberish everywhere, and they want to find books that have

473
00:27:09,240 --> 00:27:13,560
Speaker 1: some kind of significance. So I think it's quite clear

474
00:27:13,600 --> 00:27:15,840
Speaker 1: that in many ways this story is an analogy for

475
00:27:15,880 --> 00:27:19,040
Speaker 1: the search of meaning, the search for meanings. Sorry, imagine

476
00:27:19,240 --> 00:27:24,040
Speaker 1: that feeling of knowing that there were already in existence

477
00:27:24,200 --> 00:27:28,280
Speaker 1: books that explained the true origin and purpose of the universe,

478
00:27:29,080 --> 00:27:30,919
Speaker 1: if there is such a thing, of course, and the

479
00:27:30,960 --> 00:27:34,960
Speaker 1: origin and purpose of everything in the universe, including your

480
00:27:34,960 --> 00:27:37,520
Speaker 1: own existence. And I want to read another quote from

481
00:27:37,560 --> 00:27:43,160
Speaker 1: the story, quote that unbridled hopefulness was succeeded naturally enough

482
00:27:43,280 --> 00:27:49,159
Speaker 1: by a similarly disproportionate depression, the certainty that some bookshelf

483
00:27:49,200 --> 00:27:53,240
Speaker 1: in some hexagon contained precious books yet that those precious

484
00:27:53,280 --> 00:27:57,440
Speaker 1: books were forever out of reach was almost unbearable. One

485
00:27:57,480 --> 00:28:01,199
Speaker 1: blasphemous sect proposed that the searches be discontinued and that

486
00:28:01,320 --> 00:28:05,439
Speaker 1: all men shuffle letters and symbols until those canonical books,

487
00:28:05,640 --> 00:28:10,639
Speaker 1: through some improbable stroke of chance, had been constructed. The

488
00:28:10,680 --> 00:28:14,760
Speaker 1: authorities were forced to issue strict orders. The sect disappeared.

489
00:28:14,840 --> 00:28:17,520
Speaker 1: But in my childhood I have seen old men who,

490
00:28:17,560 --> 00:28:20,960
Speaker 1: for long periods would hide in the latrines with metal

491
00:28:21,040 --> 00:28:25,560
Speaker 1: discs and a forbidden dice cup, feebly mimicking the divine order.

492
00:28:26,640 --> 00:28:29,160
Speaker 1: I love something about this little section of the story

493
00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:32,480
Speaker 1: because notice here the similarity with something you already brought

494
00:28:32,560 --> 00:28:36,040
Speaker 1: up Robert the infinite monkey theorem, right, the idea that

495
00:28:36,080 --> 00:28:38,000
Speaker 1: you've got a gang of monkeys, and you put him

496
00:28:38,040 --> 00:28:40,400
Speaker 1: in front of typewriters, and they just hit keys on

497
00:28:40,440 --> 00:28:43,959
Speaker 1: the typewriters at random. Now, given infinite time, it's all

498
00:28:44,200 --> 00:28:48,320
Speaker 1: often said that these monkeys will produce specified works of literature,

499
00:28:48,400 --> 00:28:51,240
Speaker 1: such as the complete works of Shakespeare, or of course

500
00:28:51,240 --> 00:28:55,920
Speaker 1: they would need vast periods of time. The key factors here,

501
00:28:56,040 --> 00:28:58,360
Speaker 1: and that that's not depending on what the work is,

502
00:28:58,400 --> 00:29:00,760
Speaker 1: like Shakespeare or whatever. They could be trying to create

503
00:29:00,800 --> 00:29:04,000
Speaker 1: the complete works of Anne Rice, and that the infinite

504
00:29:04,080 --> 00:29:07,200
Speaker 1: time parameter is crucial because in reality, such a scenario

505
00:29:07,240 --> 00:29:11,480
Speaker 1: would probably not produce a single page of grammatically meaningful

506
00:29:11,560 --> 00:29:14,719
Speaker 1: English within the total age of the universe. It's just,

507
00:29:15,320 --> 00:29:19,360
Speaker 1: you know, random combinatrix are not very forgiving. But in

508
00:29:19,400 --> 00:29:22,800
Speaker 1: the Borhe story, there's this blasphemous sect he talks about

509
00:29:22,840 --> 00:29:26,640
Speaker 1: who wants to try to create precious and meaningful books

510
00:29:27,040 --> 00:29:30,720
Speaker 1: by randomly generating volumes with something kind of like a

511
00:29:30,800 --> 00:29:33,960
Speaker 1: Wegia board and a pair of dice, almost like a

512
00:29:34,120 --> 00:29:38,000
Speaker 1: like a code cracking program. Right, But it doesn't fundamentally

513
00:29:38,000 --> 00:29:41,240
Speaker 1: alter our predicament in the search for meaning, only the

514
00:29:41,320 --> 00:29:45,720
Speaker 1: observer's level of personal activity within it. So the librarians

515
00:29:45,760 --> 00:29:49,520
Speaker 1: in the library of Babel are like the observer watching

516
00:29:49,560 --> 00:29:52,880
Speaker 1: the monkeys type, waiting for them to produce Shakespeare. They're

517
00:29:52,920 --> 00:29:57,080
Speaker 1: passively receiving all of this random information, waiting for something

518
00:29:57,080 --> 00:30:00,240
Speaker 1: of significance to come out. The blasphemous sect, the people

519
00:30:00,320 --> 00:30:03,560
Speaker 1: rolling the dice with Luigia board, they're just more like

520
00:30:03,960 --> 00:30:07,840
Speaker 1: being the monkey sitting at the typewriter randomly typing text.

521
00:30:08,320 --> 00:30:10,920
Speaker 1: It doesn't change the odds that you'll come across something

522
00:30:10,960 --> 00:30:14,320
Speaker 1: of significance. But maybe it does make a psychological difference

523
00:30:14,360 --> 00:30:18,560
Speaker 1: if you yourself are the creator versus passively receiving what

524
00:30:18,720 --> 00:30:22,280
Speaker 1: already exists around you. Yeah, I mean, it's it's really

525
00:30:22,320 --> 00:30:24,800
Speaker 1: like the members of the Blastmouths sect are playing God.

526
00:30:25,000 --> 00:30:28,280
Speaker 1: They're doing the work of God. Uh, of of of

527
00:30:28,520 --> 00:30:34,000
Speaker 1: a creator entity in this scenario. But um, they're bound

528
00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:38,320
Speaker 1: by mortal or semi mortal experience. So uh, it really

529
00:30:38,320 --> 00:30:40,440
Speaker 1: amounts to the same thing. They're just as lost in

530
00:30:40,480 --> 00:30:43,320
Speaker 1: the in the library, except to say, a library of

531
00:30:43,400 --> 00:30:48,320
Speaker 1: their their own creation. Well, in the cosmological sense, how

532
00:30:48,720 --> 00:30:52,400
Speaker 1: similar is the library of Babel to the universe we

533
00:30:52,480 --> 00:30:56,960
Speaker 1: actually inhabit? And what what what similarities and differences could

534
00:30:56,960 --> 00:31:00,240
Speaker 1: we observe? Well, if we look at the library as

535
00:31:00,240 --> 00:31:03,280
Speaker 1: a metaphor for cosmos, and and it seems one of

536
00:31:03,520 --> 00:31:05,480
Speaker 1: one of Borhe's intense I mean, he says in the

537
00:31:05,520 --> 00:31:09,320
Speaker 1: first line that the universe, universe is the library. Yeah,

538
00:31:09,360 --> 00:31:13,280
Speaker 1: so you could argue that it is his central intent. Uh, certainly. Uh.

539
00:31:13,320 --> 00:31:16,440
Speaker 1: In this case, it lines up rather nicely with the

540
00:31:16,480 --> 00:31:20,280
Speaker 1: cosmological principle the idea that matter in the universe is

541
00:31:20,320 --> 00:31:24,640
Speaker 1: homogeneous and isotropic when averaged out over very large scales

542
00:31:25,360 --> 00:31:28,480
Speaker 1: as a major principle that speaks to the composition of

543
00:31:28,480 --> 00:31:31,120
Speaker 1: the universe, and it helps us serve as the basis

544
00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:34,200
Speaker 1: for the Big Bang theory. Here, it's kind of hard

545
00:31:34,240 --> 00:31:37,120
Speaker 1: to imagine living on Earth as we do and not

546
00:31:37,200 --> 00:31:40,880
Speaker 1: seeing really anywhere else in the universe that's as hospitable

547
00:31:40,920 --> 00:31:45,000
Speaker 1: as Earth, that the universe is homogeneous, you know. But

548
00:31:45,000 --> 00:31:48,239
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's talking about scale there. Over scale, you

549
00:31:48,280 --> 00:31:50,800
Speaker 1: could say it is homogeneous even if we're sort of

550
00:31:50,880 --> 00:31:54,440
Speaker 1: living in the book that makes sense, right, like we

551
00:31:55,320 --> 00:31:59,440
Speaker 1: you could almost say that, like we are living. It's

552
00:31:59,440 --> 00:32:01,560
Speaker 1: it's difficult, right, because it's like we are we are

553
00:32:01,600 --> 00:32:04,160
Speaker 1: the book that makes sense. We are the book that

554
00:32:04,200 --> 00:32:07,200
Speaker 1: we can understand, and we just according to us, according

555
00:32:07,200 --> 00:32:11,480
Speaker 1: to us, and and by by amazing fortune, we are

556
00:32:11,520 --> 00:32:13,920
Speaker 1: in the hexagon that contains of that book. And then

557
00:32:14,080 --> 00:32:16,800
Speaker 1: so it's easy to think it's and certainly we've from

558
00:32:16,840 --> 00:32:19,720
Speaker 1: a cosmological perspective, we've fallen into this trap many times

559
00:32:19,760 --> 00:32:22,000
Speaker 1: where we think, well, this is the center, this is

560
00:32:22,080 --> 00:32:25,760
Speaker 1: we are living in the Crimson hexagon, and there's a

561
00:32:25,880 --> 00:32:29,280
Speaker 1: you know, there's a whole discipline and cosmologies is about

562
00:32:29,680 --> 00:32:33,040
Speaker 1: just reminding everyone and we do not live in the hexagonal,

563
00:32:33,520 --> 00:32:36,640
Speaker 1: in the Crimson hexagon. Yeah, not every hexagon that contains

564
00:32:36,680 --> 00:32:40,960
Speaker 1: a basically sensical operation manual for a VCR is the

565
00:32:41,000 --> 00:32:44,440
Speaker 1: Crimson hexagon. Yeah, there's not. There's nothing privileged about the

566
00:32:44,560 --> 00:32:48,640
Speaker 1: human condition, about and about the conditions of Earth um

567
00:32:49,000 --> 00:32:52,880
Speaker 1: like the universe. To all the characters that in this

568
00:32:52,960 --> 00:32:56,760
Speaker 1: story that are considering the Library of Babbel are within

569
00:32:56,880 --> 00:32:59,400
Speaker 1: the Library of Babbel. They don't step outside of it.

570
00:32:59,440 --> 00:33:01,760
Speaker 1: They don't. They don't wander back to the surface of

571
00:33:01,840 --> 00:33:04,960
Speaker 1: some you know, dungeons and Dragons type realm and then

572
00:33:05,120 --> 00:33:06,800
Speaker 1: think about it again and then go back in. It's

573
00:33:06,800 --> 00:33:09,880
Speaker 1: not like in say the novel House of Leaves, where

574
00:33:10,160 --> 00:33:13,400
Speaker 1: they're they're venturing from this house into this realm of

575
00:33:13,440 --> 00:33:17,160
Speaker 1: infinite corridors. There is no house to return to. So

576
00:33:17,400 --> 00:33:20,000
Speaker 1: quests they might to understand the shape and nature of

577
00:33:20,040 --> 00:33:23,320
Speaker 1: the library. They cannot step beyond the library for an

578
00:33:23,320 --> 00:33:27,040
Speaker 1: outside outside understanding of what they're in. They cannot step

579
00:33:27,080 --> 00:33:30,160
Speaker 1: beyond the borders of cosmos. I mean, we can barely

580
00:33:30,280 --> 00:33:32,840
Speaker 1: step beyond the borders of the human experience. We have

581
00:33:32,960 --> 00:33:36,840
Speaker 1: this huge problem just trying to to comprehend consciousness in

582
00:33:36,880 --> 00:33:39,960
Speaker 1: the and and the functionality of the human mind. It's

583
00:33:40,840 --> 00:33:43,480
Speaker 1: you're trapped within the form you're trying to understand. Yeah,

584
00:33:43,520 --> 00:33:46,120
Speaker 1: but the Library of Babel also seems like it has

585
00:33:46,120 --> 00:33:50,840
Speaker 1: some metaphorical significance in our quest for knowledge. Yeah, I

586
00:33:50,840 --> 00:33:54,360
Speaker 1: mean the idea here the complete knowledge seems impossible. You

587
00:33:54,360 --> 00:33:56,760
Speaker 1: can believe in the Bookman and the Crimson Hexagon all

588
00:33:56,800 --> 00:34:00,320
Speaker 1: you want, but they remain ever outside your grasp. There's

589
00:34:00,400 --> 00:34:05,120
Speaker 1: no center, there's no privileged area or privileged knowledge. The

590
00:34:05,200 --> 00:34:11,759
Speaker 1: story also, according to writer Marcello Glycer, uh, seems a

591
00:34:11,840 --> 00:34:16,200
Speaker 1: commentary on reductionism. So we can know all the characters

592
00:34:16,239 --> 00:34:19,960
Speaker 1: that comprise the works and the books, like identifying the

593
00:34:20,000 --> 00:34:22,719
Speaker 1: building blocks of nature, right, but does that bring us

594
00:34:22,719 --> 00:34:26,280
Speaker 1: any closer to understanding the fundamental nature of the universe

595
00:34:26,600 --> 00:34:32,400
Speaker 1: or the library? No? No, not really yeah. Um. And

596
00:34:32,440 --> 00:34:34,400
Speaker 1: of course in all of this, I can't help but

597
00:34:34,480 --> 00:34:36,919
Speaker 1: think of a subject we've discussed in the past here

598
00:34:37,080 --> 00:34:40,760
Speaker 1: on the show, Plato's theory of forms, Right, the idea

599
00:34:40,840 --> 00:34:44,520
Speaker 1: that that there's an ideal version of everything that exists

600
00:34:44,880 --> 00:34:49,319
Speaker 1: beyond our grasp according to Plato, like essentially in another realm.

601
00:34:49,440 --> 00:34:53,000
Speaker 1: So there would be, in theory, an ideal form of

602
00:34:53,040 --> 00:34:56,120
Speaker 1: every book that's ever been written in the Library of Babble. Right,

603
00:34:56,560 --> 00:35:00,080
Speaker 1: But we can spend an eternity encounter and eternity of

604
00:35:00,120 --> 00:35:03,960
Speaker 1: alternate versions and never happen upon the perfect form. It

605
00:35:04,000 --> 00:35:07,680
Speaker 1: doesn't quite exist outside the Library of Babble. However, though,

606
00:35:07,680 --> 00:35:10,600
Speaker 1: I wonder if you could sort of cobble that idea

607
00:35:10,640 --> 00:35:13,360
Speaker 1: together with the Crimson hexicon. Maybe that's what the Crimson

608
00:35:13,480 --> 00:35:16,320
Speaker 1: hexicon also encompasses, the idea that there's a place where

609
00:35:16,600 --> 00:35:19,920
Speaker 1: all the ideals are represented. Well, this brings up something

610
00:35:20,080 --> 00:35:23,400
Speaker 1: that I wanted to talk about, which is the difference

611
00:35:23,480 --> 00:35:27,439
Speaker 1: between being able to generate a precious or significant book

612
00:35:27,480 --> 00:35:30,080
Speaker 1: in the ability to recognize it when you see. Uh.

613
00:35:30,120 --> 00:35:33,320
Speaker 1: This sort of goes back to our P versus NP discussion,

614
00:35:33,400 --> 00:35:36,880
Speaker 1: you know, the search for algorithms, like there are certain

615
00:35:37,560 --> 00:35:42,719
Speaker 1: problem solving techniques that you can check to see if

616
00:35:42,760 --> 00:35:45,920
Speaker 1: you got the right answer, but you can't as quickly

617
00:35:46,080 --> 00:35:49,560
Speaker 1: generate the right answer. And I, you know, I wonder

618
00:35:49,600 --> 00:35:52,680
Speaker 1: if our books the same way, Like, what is the

619
00:35:52,719 --> 00:35:59,600
Speaker 1: relationship between insight and time? Given infinite time, could any

620
00:35:59,680 --> 00:36:03,560
Speaker 1: person and who could recognize a precious book also generate

621
00:36:03,800 --> 00:36:08,440
Speaker 1: that same precious book. I don't know, but uh, it

622
00:36:08,520 --> 00:36:10,480
Speaker 1: kind of makes me wonder. Like the Library of Babble

623
00:36:10,480 --> 00:36:12,480
Speaker 1: brings up these questions. So you're searching through all the

624
00:36:12,520 --> 00:36:16,719
Speaker 1: shelves and you you eventually come across a book that

625
00:36:16,760 --> 00:36:19,759
Speaker 1: you know is a meaningful and significant book that's full

626
00:36:19,800 --> 00:36:23,000
Speaker 1: of true things, full of great creativity, full of beauty

627
00:36:23,040 --> 00:36:25,960
Speaker 1: and insight. It's a good thing that you found it.

628
00:36:26,520 --> 00:36:29,000
Speaker 1: If you know that thing when you see it, would

629
00:36:29,000 --> 00:36:31,399
Speaker 1: you be able to create that thing? If there were

630
00:36:31,440 --> 00:36:35,040
Speaker 1: no constraints on you whatsoever. It's like it to come

631
00:36:35,080 --> 00:36:38,040
Speaker 1: back to say something like Dune, right, like, how would

632
00:36:38,160 --> 00:36:39,920
Speaker 1: would I be able to tell if I found a

633
00:36:39,960 --> 00:36:42,440
Speaker 1: copy of Doone in the library? That is that that

634
00:36:42,560 --> 00:36:45,560
Speaker 1: exceeds the original? All I have is the version that

635
00:36:45,600 --> 00:36:48,680
Speaker 1: we have in our reality. And uh, and I'm a

636
00:36:48,680 --> 00:36:51,440
Speaker 1: big fan of that. But who's to say that that's

637
00:36:51,480 --> 00:36:54,239
Speaker 1: anywhere close to the ideal version of it? You know what?

638
00:36:54,640 --> 00:36:57,880
Speaker 1: Who who can make that judgment? And and then it

639
00:36:57,920 --> 00:37:00,319
Speaker 1: also gets into sort of the privilege, like were gonna

640
00:37:00,440 --> 00:37:03,279
Speaker 1: have a bias towards what we already know, what we

641
00:37:03,360 --> 00:37:07,399
Speaker 1: already have, which is which gets involved in the cosmology again,

642
00:37:07,520 --> 00:37:11,520
Speaker 1: because we're basing everything on this one model of of life,

643
00:37:11,600 --> 00:37:14,359
Speaker 1: this one model of that we have an Earth and

644
00:37:14,400 --> 00:37:17,520
Speaker 1: all the life that has evolved here. Uh, we have

645
00:37:17,600 --> 00:37:19,640
Speaker 1: nothing else to base it on. We only have this

646
00:37:19,760 --> 00:37:25,080
Speaker 1: copy of doone alas alas that we have but one

647
00:37:25,120 --> 00:37:28,400
Speaker 1: reality of doone to draw from. Shy elude be praise.

648
00:37:30,440 --> 00:37:32,359
Speaker 1: All right, we need to take another really quick break.

649
00:37:32,400 --> 00:37:33,879
Speaker 1: But when we come back, we're going to talk about

650
00:37:33,880 --> 00:37:43,920
Speaker 1: the Library of Babel as applied to biology and genetics. Alright,

651
00:37:43,960 --> 00:37:46,680
Speaker 1: we're back, all right. So, as the Library of Babel

652
00:37:46,760 --> 00:37:50,360
Speaker 1: is essentially all about vast quantities of randomized information and

653
00:37:50,360 --> 00:37:54,279
Speaker 1: the occasional emergence of books from that data. See, it

654
00:37:54,280 --> 00:37:57,719
Speaker 1: should come as no surprise that Borges fantastic library is

655
00:37:57,800 --> 00:38:02,279
Speaker 1: of use in fathoming the complexity of biology and genetics. Yeah. Now,

656
00:38:02,320 --> 00:38:05,200
Speaker 1: I've read about this idea in a couple of different

657
00:38:05,239 --> 00:38:09,960
Speaker 1: books by the the American philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dinnett.

658
00:38:09,960 --> 00:38:13,319
Speaker 1: He wrote about this in Darwin's Dangerous Idea, which came

659
00:38:13,320 --> 00:38:16,000
Speaker 1: out in the nineties, and he also wrote a chapter

660
00:38:16,120 --> 00:38:18,960
Speaker 1: about it in his book Intuition, Pumps and other tools

661
00:38:18,960 --> 00:38:23,160
Speaker 1: for thinking. And I always found this comparison very interesting.

662
00:38:23,200 --> 00:38:28,279
Speaker 1: But maybe maybe you can illuminate us. But what application

663
00:38:28,360 --> 00:38:31,279
Speaker 1: does the Library of Babel have to the genes that

664
00:38:31,400 --> 00:38:34,680
Speaker 1: build our bodies? Well, let me read a quick quote

665
00:38:34,680 --> 00:38:37,200
Speaker 1: here from from Dinnett that I think helps to eliminate

666
00:38:37,239 --> 00:38:41,520
Speaker 1: this quote. The actual genomes that have ever existed are

667
00:38:41,560 --> 00:38:47,880
Speaker 1: a vanishingly small subset of the combinatorially possible genomes, just

668
00:38:48,000 --> 00:38:50,840
Speaker 1: as the actual books in the world's libraries are a

669
00:38:50,960 --> 00:38:55,520
Speaker 1: vanishingly small subset of the books in the imaginary Library

670
00:38:55,560 --> 00:38:59,160
Speaker 1: of Babel. Yeah, so din It actually puts together an

671
00:38:59,200 --> 00:39:02,520
Speaker 1: alternate verse shin of the library. He just substitutes in

672
00:39:02,640 --> 00:39:06,520
Speaker 1: some alternate numbers and does some number crunching. But I

673
00:39:06,520 --> 00:39:09,960
Speaker 1: think it's actually interesting what he comes up with. Yeah,

674
00:39:10,280 --> 00:39:12,839
Speaker 1: look for starters. He he does some some fun number

675
00:39:12,880 --> 00:39:17,040
Speaker 1: crunching on the Library of Babbel itself. Um, here, here's

676
00:39:17,080 --> 00:39:18,920
Speaker 1: just a quick quote from this h And again we're

677
00:39:18,920 --> 00:39:20,719
Speaker 1: gonna throw some numbers at you here, but I think

678
00:39:20,719 --> 00:39:22,799
Speaker 1: it's worth it. So suppose that each book is five

679
00:39:22,880 --> 00:39:25,680
Speaker 1: hundred pages long, and each page consists of forty lines

680
00:39:25,719 --> 00:39:28,520
Speaker 1: of fifty spaces, So there are two thousand characters spaces

681
00:39:28,560 --> 00:39:31,520
Speaker 1: per page. Each space is either is blank or has

682
00:39:31,520 --> 00:39:33,840
Speaker 1: a character printed on it, chosen from a set of

683
00:39:33,880 --> 00:39:36,040
Speaker 1: one hundred Somewhere in the Library of Babble as a

684
00:39:36,120 --> 00:39:39,279
Speaker 1: volume consisting entirely of blank pages, and another volume is

685
00:39:39,320 --> 00:39:42,439
Speaker 1: all question marks, but the vast majority consists of type

686
00:39:42,440 --> 00:39:45,799
Speaker 1: of graphical gibberish. No rules of spelling or grammar, to

687
00:39:45,840 --> 00:39:48,960
Speaker 1: say nothing of sense prohibit the inclusion of a volume.

688
00:39:49,520 --> 00:39:52,760
Speaker 1: Five hundred pages times two thousand characters per page gives

689
00:39:53,400 --> 00:39:56,239
Speaker 1: one million character spaces per book. So there are one

690
00:39:56,360 --> 00:39:59,400
Speaker 1: hundred to the one million power books in the Library

691
00:39:59,440 --> 00:40:02,560
Speaker 1: of Babble. Since it's it estimated that there are only one,

692
00:40:04,360 --> 00:40:09,080
Speaker 1: give or take a few particles, protons, neutrons, and electrons

693
00:40:09,160 --> 00:40:11,839
Speaker 1: in the region of the universe, we can observe the

694
00:40:11,880 --> 00:40:16,120
Speaker 1: Library of Babel is not remotely a physically possible object.

695
00:40:16,360 --> 00:40:19,160
Speaker 1: But thanks to the strict rules with which Borhe is

696
00:40:19,200 --> 00:40:23,000
Speaker 1: constructed it in his imagination, we can think about it clearly.

697
00:40:23,960 --> 00:40:27,239
Speaker 1: So I I like, I like how he sort of

698
00:40:27,440 --> 00:40:30,040
Speaker 1: reins it when he doesn't rein it in. But well,

699
00:40:30,120 --> 00:40:32,320
Speaker 1: he crunches the numbers of it and and just lays

700
00:40:32,360 --> 00:40:34,400
Speaker 1: out the fact that this could not exist in the

701
00:40:34,400 --> 00:40:38,080
Speaker 1: physical universe. Yeah, yeah, I mean there is not space

702
00:40:38,640 --> 00:40:41,200
Speaker 1: in the universe for it. And yet it is still

703
00:40:41,920 --> 00:40:46,240
Speaker 1: arguably a finite object. Oh, not arguably, it's definitely finite.

704
00:40:46,320 --> 00:40:49,520
Speaker 1: But well, but that's the thing. It's finite in a

705
00:40:49,600 --> 00:40:52,879
Speaker 1: way like there and certainly this is a subject we've

706
00:40:53,120 --> 00:40:55,760
Speaker 1: covered in other episodes on on the nature of infinity.

707
00:40:55,800 --> 00:40:59,000
Speaker 1: But there, of course different types of infinity. And so

708
00:40:59,040 --> 00:41:02,399
Speaker 1: it's physically fine, it's physically finite, but it is from

709
00:41:02,440 --> 00:41:05,399
Speaker 1: a human perspective it might as well be infinite. Well,

710
00:41:05,440 --> 00:41:08,000
Speaker 1: you can make the case that while it is physically

711
00:41:08,040 --> 00:41:10,720
Speaker 1: finite in that there are a limited number of books

712
00:41:10,719 --> 00:41:13,520
Speaker 1: however vast, you know, impossibly vast to contain in the

713
00:41:13,560 --> 00:41:17,440
Speaker 1: real universe. There there are a actually limited number of books,

714
00:41:17,440 --> 00:41:20,560
Speaker 1: but there might not be a limited amount of information

715
00:41:21,160 --> 00:41:24,040
Speaker 1: because if you follow this, uh, the same strategy we

716
00:41:24,120 --> 00:41:27,520
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier of allowing one book's contents to spill over

717
00:41:27,560 --> 00:41:31,040
Speaker 1: into another volume, and given the fact that all volumes

718
00:41:31,239 --> 00:41:36,479
Speaker 1: possible to represent our present, meaning all unfinished ideas will

719
00:41:36,600 --> 00:41:42,239
Speaker 1: be continued into other ideas, there is potentially limitless information

720
00:41:42,280 --> 00:41:46,440
Speaker 1: in the limited library of Babel. Well, yeah, I mean,

721
00:41:46,840 --> 00:41:49,520
Speaker 1: I can't help but think of the infinity hotel analogy

722
00:41:49,600 --> 00:41:51,759
Speaker 1: like I did it, Like an infinite number of people

723
00:41:51,800 --> 00:41:53,640
Speaker 1: show up to a hotel and then another infinite number

724
00:41:53,640 --> 00:41:56,360
Speaker 1: shop on another bus. Um what I mean, what what

725
00:41:56,400 --> 00:41:59,120
Speaker 1: do you do about books that themselves are infinite? What

726
00:41:59,120 --> 00:42:01,240
Speaker 1: do you do about Bore Hayes the Book of Sands,

727
00:42:01,280 --> 00:42:04,600
Speaker 1: which is a book that is that that is endless?

728
00:42:05,040 --> 00:42:07,360
Speaker 1: How many books then does that contain? Like trying to

729
00:42:07,400 --> 00:42:10,680
Speaker 1: shelve the Book of sand uh in the Library of

730
00:42:10,719 --> 00:42:14,320
Speaker 1: Babbel is kind of like a busload of infinite hotel

731
00:42:14,360 --> 00:42:16,560
Speaker 1: guests showing up at the infinity Hotel. Well, I would

732
00:42:16,560 --> 00:42:19,160
Speaker 1: say that the Library of Babel itself is sort of

733
00:42:19,200 --> 00:42:21,799
Speaker 1: an argument that there could not be such a thing

734
00:42:21,840 --> 00:42:25,720
Speaker 1: as an infinite book. That there there there are books

735
00:42:25,760 --> 00:42:30,440
Speaker 1: that are so vast as to, you know, stifle our comprehension.

736
00:42:30,840 --> 00:42:33,160
Speaker 1: But if you think of the Library of Babel itself

737
00:42:33,239 --> 00:42:36,880
Speaker 1: as one book that you can just move the pages

738
00:42:36,920 --> 00:42:40,839
Speaker 1: around as much as you want, all possible representations of

739
00:42:41,000 --> 00:42:44,680
Speaker 1: all possible characters are there, but the book is finite.

740
00:42:44,880 --> 00:42:47,200
Speaker 1: That's true. That's a good point. But let's let's bring

741
00:42:47,239 --> 00:42:50,200
Speaker 1: it back to Dinnett So Dinnett proposes a variation on

742
00:42:50,280 --> 00:42:54,080
Speaker 1: the Library of Babel that he calls the Library of Mendel,

743
00:42:54,239 --> 00:42:58,040
Speaker 1: named after Men, the Mendel, famous of men Dalian genetics,

744
00:42:58,080 --> 00:43:03,799
Speaker 1: and it's a library that contains all possible genomes. So

745
00:43:03,840 --> 00:43:06,960
Speaker 1: if we assume that the Library of Mendel is composed

746
00:43:07,000 --> 00:43:11,839
Speaker 1: of descriptions of genomes, then not not the molecules themselves,

747
00:43:11,920 --> 00:43:15,880
Speaker 1: but the the coding that would represent what is contained

748
00:43:15,920 --> 00:43:19,200
Speaker 1: in your gene recipes. Um that's the case, then you

749
00:43:19,239 --> 00:43:21,719
Speaker 1: could you could argue that, well, they're actually already part

750
00:43:21,719 --> 00:43:24,520
Speaker 1: of the Library of Babel, as the standard code for

751
00:43:24,640 --> 00:43:27,560
Speaker 1: DNA descriptions consists of the characters A, C, G and

752
00:43:27,640 --> 00:43:34,319
Speaker 1: T for addanine, setosine, guanine, and thymine. Uh. These are

753
00:43:34,360 --> 00:43:38,080
Speaker 1: the four nucleotides that compose the letters of the DNA alphabet, right,

754
00:43:38,080 --> 00:43:40,200
Speaker 1: so if you're going to spell out a representation of

755
00:43:40,239 --> 00:43:43,640
Speaker 1: your genome, you'd use those four letters. So since those

756
00:43:43,640 --> 00:43:45,920
Speaker 1: are letters that are already part of the alphabet, that

757
00:43:46,000 --> 00:43:49,320
Speaker 1: makes the Library of Babel, the Library of Mendel is

758
00:43:49,360 --> 00:43:52,680
Speaker 1: a subset of the Library of Babel. Yeah, and according

759
00:43:52,760 --> 00:43:55,279
Speaker 1: to Dennet, you need to vote three thousand of the

760
00:43:55,320 --> 00:43:58,440
Speaker 1: five page volumes in the Library of Babbel just to

761
00:43:58,520 --> 00:44:02,080
Speaker 1: cover the human genome. Truly, Library Babble. That's not really

762
00:44:02,080 --> 00:44:07,279
Speaker 1: a problem, as we've discussed UM. However, I hope that

763
00:44:07,280 --> 00:44:11,400
Speaker 1: the purifiers in this case haven't been destroying these copies

764
00:44:11,480 --> 00:44:13,520
Speaker 1: you think they would, like they come across a book

765
00:44:13,520 --> 00:44:15,480
Speaker 1: that's just a bunch of A C, T and G

766
00:44:15,800 --> 00:44:19,040
Speaker 1: what what what use is this? It looks like more gibberish,

767
00:44:19,080 --> 00:44:22,120
Speaker 1: But they're really just burning the Library of Mendel volume

768
00:44:22,160 --> 00:44:25,399
Speaker 1: after volume, and who knows we might need those someday. Well,

769
00:44:25,480 --> 00:44:28,000
Speaker 1: that sort of highlights another thing about the Library of Babel,

770
00:44:28,040 --> 00:44:31,839
Speaker 1: which is, uh, how do you necessarily know when you've

771
00:44:31,840 --> 00:44:34,920
Speaker 1: come across something of significance, Like we've been assuming that

772
00:44:34,960 --> 00:44:37,640
Speaker 1: you would know a book of significance or preciousness when

773
00:44:37,680 --> 00:44:41,399
Speaker 1: you found it, but it might be encoding something for

774
00:44:41,520 --> 00:44:46,839
Speaker 1: the code for which you cannot read. So if if

775
00:44:46,840 --> 00:44:48,719
Speaker 1: we're we're lining up the Library of Mendel with the

776
00:44:48,760 --> 00:44:51,960
Speaker 1: Library of Babble or within it, UM, this means that

777
00:44:52,160 --> 00:44:56,080
Speaker 1: not only would the Library of Mendel have all genomes,

778
00:44:56,480 --> 00:44:59,239
Speaker 1: and it would also have all possible genomes within its

779
00:44:59,239 --> 00:45:02,239
Speaker 1: frame of reference. UM says, then it puts it we're

780
00:45:02,239 --> 00:45:04,960
Speaker 1: forced to quote start in the middle, and we have

781
00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:07,799
Speaker 1: only the current state of evolved biology to consider as

782
00:45:07,800 --> 00:45:09,960
Speaker 1: well as the terrestrial model. But then they're gonna be

783
00:45:09,960 --> 00:45:13,440
Speaker 1: all these other possibilities as well. Yeah, So what what

784
00:45:13,600 --> 00:45:17,719
Speaker 1: happens on Earth is not that you look around and

785
00:45:17,760 --> 00:45:22,360
Speaker 1: you find all possible variations on all possible genes in

786
00:45:22,640 --> 00:45:25,440
Speaker 1: uh or actually with the library of mental would be

787
00:45:25,440 --> 00:45:30,919
Speaker 1: all possible sequences of nucleotides and even more minute than genes. Um,

788
00:45:31,040 --> 00:45:33,880
Speaker 1: you don't see that in nature. In fact, the nature

789
00:45:33,960 --> 00:45:37,280
Speaker 1: that exists as a very tiny subset of the library

790
00:45:37,280 --> 00:45:40,640
Speaker 1: of mental. That's right. And then there there's so much

791
00:45:40,680 --> 00:45:43,120
Speaker 1: in the Library of mental that, like the Library of babble,

792
00:45:43,239 --> 00:45:47,360
Speaker 1: would just be nonsense. Um, the vast majority of it

793
00:45:47,520 --> 00:45:52,000
Speaker 1: is gonna be just blueprint blueprints for lifelessness. In quoting

794
00:45:52,120 --> 00:45:55,320
Speaker 1: Richard Dawkins, he says, quote, there are many more ways

795
00:45:55,800 --> 00:45:59,320
Speaker 1: of being dead or not alive than ways of being alive.

796
00:45:59,480 --> 00:46:01,680
Speaker 1: I think it's a good quote, and that makes sense.

797
00:46:01,680 --> 00:46:04,720
Speaker 1: I mean, most recipes you could come up with for

798
00:46:04,880 --> 00:46:09,240
Speaker 1: building a building are not actually going to be structurally viable.

799
00:46:09,719 --> 00:46:12,200
Speaker 1: Most recipes you could come up with for you know,

800
00:46:12,280 --> 00:46:16,520
Speaker 1: if you're just combining random chemicals to make food, most

801
00:46:16,560 --> 00:46:19,600
Speaker 1: of it would not be edible. Oh my goodness. Yet imagine,

802
00:46:19,680 --> 00:46:21,640
Speaker 1: like we haven't even talked about this, and I hadn't

803
00:46:21,640 --> 00:46:24,360
Speaker 1: really thought about it till now, but imagine cookbooks in

804
00:46:24,400 --> 00:46:28,040
Speaker 1: the Library of Babel, the baking cookbooks specifically, So many

805
00:46:28,080 --> 00:46:31,200
Speaker 1: of these recipes, the vast majority of the recipes are

806
00:46:31,239 --> 00:46:33,880
Speaker 1: just gonna be garbage creating, like creating not even like

807
00:46:34,080 --> 00:46:37,319
Speaker 1: the bread doesn't rise, the gough just just goops there

808
00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:39,440
Speaker 1: at the bottom of the pan. But what about the

809
00:46:39,440 --> 00:46:43,279
Speaker 1: ones that are perfectly excellent cookbooks except they all tell

810
00:46:43,320 --> 00:46:45,960
Speaker 1: you to add one bucket of cigarette butts to your

811
00:46:46,000 --> 00:46:50,680
Speaker 1: recipe every time. Yeah, or everything is delicious but also poisoned.

812
00:46:51,680 --> 00:46:53,760
Speaker 1: But like many of the books in the Library of Babbel,

813
00:46:53,800 --> 00:46:57,919
Speaker 1: I digress. Yeah, well, so the library of Mendel, as

814
00:46:58,600 --> 00:47:01,520
Speaker 1: didn't understand, is it is sort of what he would

815
00:47:01,560 --> 00:47:07,200
Speaker 1: call universal design space, which is this multidimensional space that

816
00:47:07,400 --> 00:47:10,480
Speaker 1: is how would you describe it, Robert Um? And this

817
00:47:10,560 --> 00:47:12,880
Speaker 1: is my understanding. So I might have it wrong, but

818
00:47:12,960 --> 00:47:15,160
Speaker 1: the way I keep thinking of it as it's that

819
00:47:15,280 --> 00:47:18,840
Speaker 1: black bed on the light bright Okay, in which you

820
00:47:18,920 --> 00:47:21,480
Speaker 1: put the pegs and stuff against the light up and

821
00:47:21,480 --> 00:47:23,480
Speaker 1: and essentially if you took a light bright and you

822
00:47:23,600 --> 00:47:26,759
Speaker 1: made the tree of life on it. Um, that's what

823
00:47:27,040 --> 00:47:30,520
Speaker 1: the universal design space is. Well, right, it's the possible

824
00:47:30,600 --> 00:47:33,680
Speaker 1: design space for things made out of d N a

825
00:47:33,880 --> 00:47:37,080
Speaker 1: in the way we understand DNA, and like we said,

826
00:47:37,160 --> 00:47:41,120
Speaker 1: that contains tons and tons of possible combinations that don't

827
00:47:41,239 --> 00:47:44,160
Speaker 1: lead to anything like what we would call life for

828
00:47:44,320 --> 00:47:48,360
Speaker 1: successful life. Right. And also this universal design space would

829
00:47:48,360 --> 00:47:53,879
Speaker 1: contain all actual complex phenomena, both biological designs and cultural designs,

830
00:47:53,920 --> 00:47:58,360
Speaker 1: so it would contain bacteria, apes, humans, books about apes,

831
00:47:58,680 --> 00:48:04,520
Speaker 1: jokes about apes, Great eight movies, Bad eight movies, etcetera. Yeah,

832
00:48:04,560 --> 00:48:08,640
Speaker 1: I love the way that this connects information at all levels.

833
00:48:08,719 --> 00:48:11,520
Speaker 1: So within the Library of Babel, you have both the

834
00:48:11,600 --> 00:48:15,520
Speaker 1: recipe for making my genome, so you could say, uh uh,

835
00:48:15,760 --> 00:48:19,960
Speaker 1: physical information in a way, the information contained in the molecules,

836
00:48:20,000 --> 00:48:23,600
Speaker 1: but also every story I've ever written, which you could

837
00:48:23,640 --> 00:48:27,680
Speaker 1: consider part of my genetic phenotype. Right, it's the molecules

838
00:48:27,680 --> 00:48:31,960
Speaker 1: in my DNA have, in combination with external circumstances, ultimately

839
00:48:32,080 --> 00:48:36,000
Speaker 1: led to the creation of every bit of intellectual work

840
00:48:36,040 --> 00:48:37,960
Speaker 1: I've ever done, and this is the same for all

841
00:48:38,000 --> 00:48:42,880
Speaker 1: of us, and both are subsets of the library of Babel. Yeah,

842
00:48:43,160 --> 00:48:45,480
Speaker 1: I'm going to read another quick quote from the identity here.

843
00:48:45,800 --> 00:48:50,480
Speaker 1: According to Darwin's dangerous idea, all possible explorations of design

844
00:48:50,520 --> 00:48:53,719
Speaker 1: space are connected not only all your children and your

845
00:48:53,760 --> 00:48:57,160
Speaker 1: children's children, but all your brain children and your brain

846
00:48:57,239 --> 00:49:00,600
Speaker 1: children's brain children must grow from the common stock of

847
00:49:00,680 --> 00:49:04,239
Speaker 1: design elements, genes and memes that have so far been

848
00:49:04,280 --> 00:49:08,840
Speaker 1: accumulated and conserved by the inexorable lifting algorithms, the ramps

849
00:49:08,840 --> 00:49:12,759
Speaker 1: and cranes, and cranes the top cranes of natural selection

850
00:49:13,120 --> 00:49:16,399
Speaker 1: and its products. And just to explain really quick, there

851
00:49:16,560 --> 00:49:19,880
Speaker 1: didn't when he talks about cranes. He has this idea

852
00:49:20,000 --> 00:49:25,960
Speaker 1: of design being the difference between the metaphors of cranes

853
00:49:26,000 --> 00:49:29,279
Speaker 1: and the metaphors of sky hooks. Sky Hooks are these

854
00:49:29,320 --> 00:49:32,760
Speaker 1: ideas that he thinks about design coming from the top down,

855
00:49:32,920 --> 00:49:38,920
Speaker 1: reaching in and making something without any previous precedent, whereas

856
00:49:39,000 --> 00:49:41,759
Speaker 1: cranes are things that build from the ground up, and

857
00:49:41,840 --> 00:49:45,360
Speaker 1: they can become higher and higher based on bases that

858
00:49:45,400 --> 00:49:47,680
Speaker 1: have already been built. The whole standing on the backbone,

859
00:49:47,800 --> 00:49:50,800
Speaker 1: on the backs of giants. Yeah, exactly. So, so natural

860
00:49:50,840 --> 00:49:54,000
Speaker 1: selection is a crane algorithm, as he would describe it,

861
00:49:54,040 --> 00:49:57,760
Speaker 1: as something that builds from the ground up. So thinking

862
00:49:57,800 --> 00:50:00,480
Speaker 1: of the Library of Babbel or the Library of Mental

863
00:50:00,640 --> 00:50:04,160
Speaker 1: as spaces of possibility that are different than the spaces

864
00:50:04,200 --> 00:50:07,480
Speaker 1: of what can actually be achieved in terms of living organisms.

865
00:50:08,000 --> 00:50:09,920
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting that then it goes on to

866
00:50:10,520 --> 00:50:14,360
Speaker 1: he puts together this diagram that's concentric circles of different

867
00:50:14,400 --> 00:50:17,880
Speaker 1: types of possibility that the Library of Babel and the

868
00:50:17,960 --> 00:50:20,920
Speaker 1: Library of Mental help us think about. And I like

869
00:50:21,000 --> 00:50:23,879
Speaker 1: this because I think possibility is a word that very

870
00:50:23,920 --> 00:50:28,479
Speaker 1: often gets equivocated on in our conversation. So think about

871
00:50:28,520 --> 00:50:31,640
Speaker 1: these concentric circles of possibility. It's like a Venn diagram,

872
00:50:31,640 --> 00:50:34,400
Speaker 1: but each circles inside the bigger one. So the smallest

873
00:50:34,440 --> 00:50:39,600
Speaker 1: circle in the middle is what's actually true. So the

874
00:50:39,680 --> 00:50:42,560
Speaker 1: example he gives his President Clinton, there has been a

875
00:50:42,600 --> 00:50:45,960
Speaker 1: real President Clinton that actually happened. It's true. We might

876
00:50:46,000 --> 00:50:48,920
Speaker 1: even get another one maybe, so, but then there is

877
00:50:49,160 --> 00:50:54,840
Speaker 1: historical possibility, right, President gold Water could have happened, but

878
00:50:55,120 --> 00:50:59,080
Speaker 1: given historical circumstances, it didn't. All of the all of

879
00:50:59,120 --> 00:51:01,160
Speaker 1: the pieces where the air that it seemed like it

880
00:51:01,200 --> 00:51:05,319
Speaker 1: could have happened. It's just not how the universe went. Uh.

881
00:51:05,360 --> 00:51:09,319
Speaker 1: Then there is biological possibility that's a bigger circle, which

882
00:51:09,440 --> 00:51:12,760
Speaker 1: the example he gives his striped giraffe could have happened

883
00:51:12,760 --> 00:51:15,920
Speaker 1: given what's possible with life on Earth, but it didn't. Now,

884
00:51:16,040 --> 00:51:21,239
Speaker 1: technically we do have copies which which are not striped giraffes,

885
00:51:21,680 --> 00:51:24,560
Speaker 1: but they are kind of the related to giraffes and

886
00:51:24,600 --> 00:51:28,320
Speaker 1: are kind of like a forest giraffe with some zebra

887
00:51:28,520 --> 00:51:32,960
Speaker 1: esque stripes. Well, you know that that's a danger we

888
00:51:32,960 --> 00:51:34,839
Speaker 1: always play with when we entered the realm of talking

889
00:51:34,840 --> 00:51:37,960
Speaker 1: about what's possible, we don't even always know what's really happened.

890
00:51:38,760 --> 00:51:43,040
Speaker 1: But then bigger than biological possibility is physical possibility. With

891
00:51:43,239 --> 00:51:46,240
Speaker 1: the example he gives is a flying horse, so doesn't

892
00:51:46,320 --> 00:51:49,719
Speaker 1: violate the laws of physics, is just you know, it's

893
00:51:49,760 --> 00:51:52,200
Speaker 1: not something that you're going to see in the biological world.

894
00:51:52,200 --> 00:51:54,719
Speaker 1: It's kind of like getting into our flying fish episode

895
00:51:54,719 --> 00:51:57,799
Speaker 1: where we talked about, you know, the problem with first

896
00:51:57,800 --> 00:52:00,880
Speaker 1: of all, recognizing the fact that there could be a

897
00:52:00,920 --> 00:52:04,960
Speaker 1: fish biologically with wings that could fly and not just

898
00:52:05,200 --> 00:52:08,359
Speaker 1: glide across the water, and yet it does not exist. Right.

899
00:52:08,800 --> 00:52:13,880
Speaker 1: And then finally, the biggest circle of possibility is logical possibility,

900
00:52:13,880 --> 00:52:18,160
Speaker 1: which is Superman. So Superman is also not physically possible.

901
00:52:18,160 --> 00:52:20,839
Speaker 1: It violates the laws of physics, but it's not logically

902
00:52:20,880 --> 00:52:25,080
Speaker 1: impossible because it doesn't entail a logical contradiction. It doesn't

903
00:52:25,200 --> 00:52:28,839
Speaker 1: entail both A and not A. So you could say

904
00:52:28,840 --> 00:52:33,080
Speaker 1: it's possible. And I think that it's interesting because everything

905
00:52:33,160 --> 00:52:36,520
Speaker 1: that is logically possible is in the Library of Babel, right,

906
00:52:37,200 --> 00:52:40,240
Speaker 1: All descriptions that are logically possible are in the Library

907
00:52:40,239 --> 00:52:46,560
Speaker 1: of Babel. And and as a subset, every description that's

908
00:52:46,600 --> 00:52:51,359
Speaker 1: physically possible in terms of the the nucleotides listed is

909
00:52:51,600 --> 00:52:54,759
Speaker 1: in the Library of Mendel. But then the subset of that,

910
00:52:54,840 --> 00:52:59,760
Speaker 1: everything that's biologically possible, is the biology that we actually

911
00:52:59,760 --> 00:53:02,319
Speaker 1: see or that could actually evolve from the tree of

912
00:53:02,360 --> 00:53:05,680
Speaker 1: life as it exists today. But I want to move

913
00:53:05,719 --> 00:53:09,120
Speaker 1: on to another application of the Library of Babel, and

914
00:53:09,280 --> 00:53:11,279
Speaker 1: because I think we were about about to get lost

915
00:53:11,440 --> 00:53:16,720
Speaker 1: with UH, and that's UH the work of the American

916
00:53:16,760 --> 00:53:21,200
Speaker 1: philosopher and logician W. V. O. Quine. So Quine wrote

917
00:53:21,239 --> 00:53:24,040
Speaker 1: a very short piece on the Library of Babel called

918
00:53:24,080 --> 00:53:27,480
Speaker 1: the Universal Library essay, and I recommend you can check

919
00:53:27,480 --> 00:53:31,040
Speaker 1: this out yourself because it's incredibly short, very concise. So

920
00:53:31,080 --> 00:53:32,960
Speaker 1: I want to read a quote from it where Quine

921
00:53:33,120 --> 00:53:36,440
Speaker 1: also he sort of reformulates the library in the same

922
00:53:36,480 --> 00:53:38,840
Speaker 1: way Dinnett did, just playing around with some numbers to

923
00:53:38,880 --> 00:53:42,680
Speaker 1: get different numbers, but the same principle. Qin says, at

924
00:53:42,719 --> 00:53:45,680
Speaker 1: two thousand characters to the page, we get five hundred

925
00:53:45,719 --> 00:53:48,719
Speaker 1: thousand to the two hundred and fifty page volume. So

926
00:53:48,840 --> 00:53:52,240
Speaker 1: with say a D capitals and smalls and other marks

927
00:53:52,280 --> 00:53:54,560
Speaker 1: to choose from, I wonder what those other marks are,

928
00:53:54,680 --> 00:53:58,000
Speaker 1: maybe a lot of hashtags. We arrive at the five

929
00:53:58,120 --> 00:54:01,360
Speaker 1: hundred thousand power of a D as the total number

930
00:54:01,400 --> 00:54:04,160
Speaker 1: of books in the library. I gather that there is

931
00:54:04,200 --> 00:54:07,080
Speaker 1: not room in the present phase of our expanding universe

932
00:54:07,160 --> 00:54:10,440
Speaker 1: on present estimates for more than a negligible fraction of

933
00:54:10,440 --> 00:54:13,520
Speaker 1: the collection. Numbers are cheap, so he's arrived at the

934
00:54:13,560 --> 00:54:16,680
Speaker 1: same conclusion as others before. This wouldn't fit in the universe,

935
00:54:17,000 --> 00:54:19,719
Speaker 1: And I like the expression numbers are cheap, especially when

936
00:54:19,719 --> 00:54:23,439
Speaker 1: you have notation like exponential notation. You can write out

937
00:54:23,480 --> 00:54:26,840
Speaker 1: a number like five to the one million, three D

938
00:54:26,960 --> 00:54:30,840
Speaker 1: and twelve power, but just writing that on the page.

939
00:54:30,880 --> 00:54:34,360
Speaker 1: It's a kind of small marking notation, but it denotes

940
00:54:34,440 --> 00:54:38,200
Speaker 1: something that could not possibly be contained in the universe.

941
00:54:38,719 --> 00:54:41,160
Speaker 1: But Quine draws this back to something we've mentioned before.

942
00:54:41,280 --> 00:54:44,319
Speaker 1: The number of books in the library, while bigger than

943
00:54:44,360 --> 00:54:49,319
Speaker 1: could be contained, is not infinite. It's definitely finite. At

944
00:54:49,320 --> 00:54:53,359
Speaker 1: a certain point, you could catalog every possible book in

945
00:54:53,400 --> 00:54:56,960
Speaker 1: the Library of Babel, just not in this universe, and

946
00:54:57,080 --> 00:55:01,080
Speaker 1: yet quote the entire and ultimate truth about everything is

947
00:55:01,120 --> 00:55:05,120
Speaker 1: printed in full in that library. After all, insofar as

948
00:55:05,160 --> 00:55:08,440
Speaker 1: it can be put into words at all, every true

949
00:55:08,480 --> 00:55:13,200
Speaker 1: statement and every false statement you could possibly make are

950
00:55:13,280 --> 00:55:17,839
Speaker 1: in the library. And yet the library is finite. So,

951
00:55:17,960 --> 00:55:22,200
Speaker 1: for instance, there there is that mythical not mythical, but

952
00:55:22,239 --> 00:55:25,680
Speaker 1: at least an elusive book or series of books that

953
00:55:25,960 --> 00:55:28,000
Speaker 1: that outline the location of all the books in the

954
00:55:28,040 --> 00:55:32,960
Speaker 1: Library of Babel. But then there are all possible inferior

955
00:55:33,120 --> 00:55:38,239
Speaker 1: copies and misleading copies of that same series, long, long, long,

956
00:55:38,320 --> 00:55:42,000
Speaker 1: long series of books. Uh that that that offered to

957
00:55:42,040 --> 00:55:44,560
Speaker 1: show you where everything is, and don't there's the catalog

958
00:55:44,600 --> 00:55:47,560
Speaker 1: that tells you to dive over the spiral staircase railing

959
00:55:47,640 --> 00:55:50,440
Speaker 1: and and just fall until you come to the Crimson hexagon,

960
00:55:50,520 --> 00:55:52,600
Speaker 1: and it's lying to you because the problem is you'll

961
00:55:52,600 --> 00:55:55,640
Speaker 1: pretty much keep falling forever. Oh wow, and we haven't

962
00:55:55,640 --> 00:55:58,040
Speaker 1: even gotten to how the toilets work here, Like, that's

963
00:55:58,080 --> 00:56:01,840
Speaker 1: not covered in Borhess book all how what's the plumbing like?

964
00:56:02,239 --> 00:56:05,120
Speaker 1: But it is covered in some book in the library. Yeah,

965
00:56:05,160 --> 00:56:07,600
Speaker 1: there is a book in the library that just deals

966
00:56:07,640 --> 00:56:11,040
Speaker 1: exhaustively explains where the plumbing goes, does it? I wonder

967
00:56:11,080 --> 00:56:14,600
Speaker 1: where it goes. If there's an end to the Library

968
00:56:14,600 --> 00:56:17,920
Speaker 1: of Babel, then there is an end to those interconnected

969
00:56:17,960 --> 00:56:21,600
Speaker 1: pipes that carrate all the the fecal matter and urine

970
00:56:21,600 --> 00:56:24,160
Speaker 1: a way right, and of course the watered up pieces

971
00:56:24,200 --> 00:56:28,680
Speaker 1: of of nonsense books that are being used for toilet paper.

972
00:56:28,880 --> 00:56:31,680
Speaker 1: All of the sewage plumbing goes directly to the hexagon

973
00:56:31,800 --> 00:56:37,799
Speaker 1: housing unauthorized biographies of celebrities who recently passed away. Well

974
00:56:37,840 --> 00:56:41,040
Speaker 1: you say that, Joe, But remember in the Library of

975
00:56:41,040 --> 00:56:46,240
Speaker 1: Babel there is an unauthorized autobiography of say, Heath Ledger

976
00:56:46,480 --> 00:56:49,040
Speaker 1: that is not that is not only good, but it

977
00:56:49,160 --> 00:56:54,520
Speaker 1: is great. An unauthorized autobiography would be there in the

978
00:56:54,840 --> 00:56:57,200
Speaker 1: mean to say biography, but But that's the thing. Any

979
00:56:57,400 --> 00:57:00,920
Speaker 1: mistake I make in speaking the Library of Babbel has

980
00:57:00,960 --> 00:57:04,600
Speaker 1: me covered. It exists. Is it factual? Is it is

981
00:57:04,640 --> 00:57:06,759
Speaker 1: their truth in it? I don't know, but it could

982
00:57:06,760 --> 00:57:13,520
Speaker 1: still be entertaining. Maybe it's unauthorized by the heath Ledger

983
00:57:13,880 --> 00:57:16,600
Speaker 1: of our universe that it was, but it is authorized

984
00:57:16,640 --> 00:57:19,600
Speaker 1: by the heath Ledger of an alternate universe. Yeah, well

985
00:57:19,640 --> 00:57:22,280
Speaker 1: that would be there, wouldn't it. Okay, So I gotta

986
00:57:22,280 --> 00:57:24,440
Speaker 1: bring it back to Quine. So back to Quine. We

987
00:57:24,440 --> 00:57:27,000
Speaker 1: we mentioned a couple of times now that there's this

988
00:57:27,080 --> 00:57:30,360
Speaker 1: principle that, well, what if a book takes more than

989
00:57:31,160 --> 00:57:34,200
Speaker 1: pages to express, you know, that can't be in the library.

990
00:57:34,200 --> 00:57:37,840
Speaker 1: But it can be because it gets picked up right

991
00:57:37,840 --> 00:57:39,960
Speaker 1: where it left off in a second volume, and a

992
00:57:40,000 --> 00:57:42,880
Speaker 1: third if necessary, and so on, and all those volumes

993
00:57:42,920 --> 00:57:45,840
Speaker 1: are in the library. So you have like Showgun volume one,

994
00:57:45,880 --> 00:57:50,560
Speaker 1: Showgun volume two. Yeah, it never ends. But given this

995
00:57:50,600 --> 00:57:53,920
Speaker 1: principle that messages can be spread across multiple volumes, Quine

996
00:57:54,000 --> 00:57:57,560
Speaker 1: realizes that you can use a form of Morse code

997
00:57:57,760 --> 00:58:02,640
Speaker 1: to massively downsize the library to exactly two books with

998
00:58:02,760 --> 00:58:06,480
Speaker 1: one page each. One book is a single page with

999
00:58:06,520 --> 00:58:09,200
Speaker 1: a dash and the other is a single page with

1000
00:58:09,240 --> 00:58:12,160
Speaker 1: a dot. And by reading these books back and forth

1001
00:58:12,200 --> 00:58:16,240
Speaker 1: in various orders, you can code any alphabetic sequence in

1002
00:58:16,280 --> 00:58:19,560
Speaker 1: a simplified form of Morse code. Now the library has

1003
00:58:19,640 --> 00:58:23,400
Speaker 1: massively shrunken size, but it has the exact same encoding

1004
00:58:23,560 --> 00:58:26,560
Speaker 1: power if you were to, you know, if you're to

1005
00:58:26,640 --> 00:58:30,320
Speaker 1: actually map out the combinations and do all of the

1006
00:58:30,360 --> 00:58:35,560
Speaker 1: same possible combinations. But let's think about it in another way.

1007
00:58:36,040 --> 00:58:38,520
Speaker 1: You can replace the dot and the dash with a

1008
00:58:38,640 --> 00:58:41,520
Speaker 1: zero and a one, or of course, and on an

1009
00:58:41,560 --> 00:58:45,720
Speaker 1: off switch. In other words, binary code and your universal

1010
00:58:45,760 --> 00:58:49,200
Speaker 1: library has become the same type of information storage system

1011
00:58:49,280 --> 00:58:53,600
Speaker 1: that exists inside your computer. And this illuminates a principle

1012
00:58:53,680 --> 00:58:56,560
Speaker 1: that Alan Turing and others observed about the binary computer.

1013
00:58:57,320 --> 00:59:01,120
Speaker 1: It's universal. Like any information in our operation that can

1014
00:59:01,160 --> 00:59:05,760
Speaker 1: be represented in code, which potentially is all information or operations,

1015
00:59:05,800 --> 00:59:09,320
Speaker 1: depending on you know, your philosophical orientation to that question,

1016
00:59:10,320 --> 00:59:15,800
Speaker 1: it can be represented by a universal binary machine. So,

1017
00:59:15,920 --> 00:59:18,240
Speaker 1: on one hand, this seems to sort of violate the

1018
00:59:18,280 --> 00:59:20,760
Speaker 1: allure of the library. Right in the library of Babel,

1019
00:59:20,840 --> 00:59:24,520
Speaker 1: there are already in existence the precious books. They're already

1020
00:59:24,560 --> 00:59:27,520
Speaker 1: out there, the books of ultimate potential, beauty and truth

1021
00:59:27,960 --> 00:59:31,720
Speaker 1: physically exist, we just have to find them. But in

1022
00:59:31,760 --> 00:59:36,240
Speaker 1: the binary universal library, we'd have to encode those books ourselves.

1023
00:59:37,280 --> 00:59:40,280
Speaker 1: But maybe this disconnects sort of highlights and inherent irony

1024
00:59:40,320 --> 00:59:43,960
Speaker 1: in the mathematics of the Library of Babel. Those books

1025
00:59:44,080 --> 00:59:47,840
Speaker 1: exist in the Library of Babel, but for any individual librarian,

1026
00:59:47,920 --> 00:59:51,680
Speaker 1: they will never ever be found. Would be, as we said,

1027
00:59:51,720 --> 00:59:55,360
Speaker 1: extremely lucky to discover a book with one tin word

1028
00:59:55,440 --> 00:59:59,200
Speaker 1: long sentence that makes sense. And so we're sort of

1029
00:59:59,200 --> 01:00:02,160
Speaker 1: back to the monkeys with typewriters in the Library of Babel.

1030
01:00:02,640 --> 01:00:05,600
Speaker 1: You're watching the monkeys type at random and hoping they

1031
01:00:05,640 --> 01:00:08,320
Speaker 1: give you the complete works of Shakespeare. But they're never

1032
01:00:08,360 --> 01:00:11,880
Speaker 1: going to do it. In coins to volume library, you

1033
01:00:11,880 --> 01:00:15,320
Speaker 1: yourself are the monkey typing at random. It makes no

1034
01:00:15,440 --> 01:00:18,840
Speaker 1: difference in terms of the knowledge discovered, just how it

1035
01:00:18,960 --> 01:00:22,720
Speaker 1: feels to be a part of the discovery system. So

1036
01:00:22,800 --> 01:00:25,680
Speaker 1: what you need is an interface on top of quients system,

1037
01:00:26,000 --> 01:00:30,960
Speaker 1: such such as say a pink Kindle, instantly search out

1038
01:00:31,000 --> 01:00:34,480
Speaker 1: the books you want, um from all the possible um

1039
01:00:34,720 --> 01:00:37,480
Speaker 1: you know books out there in the library right now.

1040
01:00:37,640 --> 01:00:39,520
Speaker 1: This is, of course a very different way than the

1041
01:00:39,560 --> 01:00:42,240
Speaker 1: way we actually generate books in reality, which is, in

1042
01:00:42,360 --> 01:00:46,840
Speaker 1: reality we use heuristic shortcuts of intelligence, human brain power,

1043
01:00:47,000 --> 01:00:50,120
Speaker 1: creativity to try to limit the size of the total

1044
01:00:50,200 --> 01:00:53,000
Speaker 1: number of possible books and only generate books that more

1045
01:00:53,120 --> 01:00:56,960
Speaker 1: or less makes sense, at least hopefully in the author's mind. Yeah,

1046
01:00:57,000 --> 01:01:01,120
Speaker 1: generally you're you're the author's only writing, you know, six

1047
01:01:01,160 --> 01:01:04,680
Speaker 1: to eight versions of that book, right, But when when

1048
01:01:04,720 --> 01:01:08,480
Speaker 1: limiting the noise like that, we are also limiting the signal,

1049
01:01:09,160 --> 01:01:12,520
Speaker 1: So there's a given take. So by by cutting out

1050
01:01:12,560 --> 01:01:15,520
Speaker 1: all of the nonsense books, we massively reduce our searching

1051
01:01:15,600 --> 01:01:20,640
Speaker 1: for significance project, But we also eliminate possibly the most

1052
01:01:20,680 --> 01:01:23,360
Speaker 1: precious books out there because we just didn't think to

1053
01:01:23,480 --> 01:01:27,800
Speaker 1: create them. Yeah, we thought to create them, and that's

1054
01:01:27,840 --> 01:01:32,320
Speaker 1: time right, right. Isn't that funny that the Library of

1055
01:01:32,320 --> 01:01:36,080
Speaker 1: Babbel makes me feel even worse about about all of

1056
01:01:36,120 --> 01:01:38,120
Speaker 1: the books I want to read and don't get around

1057
01:01:38,120 --> 01:01:40,520
Speaker 1: to reading because we don't live in the Library of Babel.

1058
01:01:40,600 --> 01:01:43,160
Speaker 1: We live in Uh, well, you could say we live

1059
01:01:43,160 --> 01:01:44,960
Speaker 1: in a version of the Library of Babel that is

1060
01:01:45,000 --> 01:01:47,920
Speaker 1: the universe, But in terms of the readable library of

1061
01:01:47,920 --> 01:01:50,960
Speaker 1: books available to us, it's not the Library of Babel.

1062
01:01:51,000 --> 01:01:53,200
Speaker 1: It's mostly books that just makes sense, and I still

1063
01:01:53,360 --> 01:01:56,120
Speaker 1: don't get to all the books that I should be reading. Yeah,

1064
01:01:56,240 --> 01:01:59,040
Speaker 1: not only does it contain all the books you should

1065
01:01:59,040 --> 01:02:01,480
Speaker 1: be reading, all the books you want to read, it

1066
01:02:01,520 --> 01:02:04,680
Speaker 1: contains all the books you could have written, all the

1067
01:02:04,680 --> 01:02:07,400
Speaker 1: books you could write in your life, which is it's

1068
01:02:07,480 --> 01:02:09,880
Speaker 1: kind of a very heartbreaking thing to think of as

1069
01:02:09,880 --> 01:02:12,520
Speaker 1: a writer, Like when you didn't have time to write

1070
01:02:12,560 --> 01:02:15,800
Speaker 1: last week, Well, that story that you would have written,

1071
01:02:15,800 --> 01:02:19,600
Speaker 1: it's in that collection, somewhere somewhere lost in the the

1072
01:02:19,600 --> 01:02:26,120
Speaker 1: the the seemingly infinite but ultimately finite honeycomb of books

1073
01:02:26,160 --> 01:02:30,560
Speaker 1: set ablaze by a purifier. Another idea that this made

1074
01:02:30,560 --> 01:02:34,440
Speaker 1: me think about is if a world contains all possible

1075
01:02:34,520 --> 01:02:39,960
Speaker 1: combinations of code of information signaling code, so all possible information,

1076
01:02:40,520 --> 01:02:43,840
Speaker 1: is it in fact no different than something that contains

1077
01:02:44,080 --> 01:02:49,520
Speaker 1: no information whatsoever? Yeah? Yeah, it really does, doesn't it.

1078
01:02:49,520 --> 01:02:53,040
Speaker 1: It's um, it's like saying that, ohever, I put all

1079
01:02:53,120 --> 01:02:56,520
Speaker 1: possible colors into this paint. Can look at this wonderful

1080
01:02:56,560 --> 01:02:58,960
Speaker 1: color I have. No, you just have black at this point,

1081
01:02:59,000 --> 01:03:02,120
Speaker 1: you just have or I'm weird brown. Um. It's not

1082
01:03:02,160 --> 01:03:04,840
Speaker 1: the same as saying that it actually encompasses all of

1083
01:03:04,880 --> 01:03:08,720
Speaker 1: these uh, these these pure elements on a much smaller scale.

1084
01:03:08,760 --> 01:03:11,120
Speaker 1: This makes me think back on you know, not too

1085
01:03:11,120 --> 01:03:14,600
Speaker 1: long ago, I was watching, Oh it was something on YouTube.

1086
01:03:14,640 --> 01:03:16,880
Speaker 1: It was like a c SPAN event from the early

1087
01:03:16,880 --> 01:03:18,920
Speaker 1: two thousands or late nineties, I think, And it was

1088
01:03:18,960 --> 01:03:23,440
Speaker 1: some journalists talking. I wish I could remember who, but

1089
01:03:23,520 --> 01:03:26,320
Speaker 1: some journalists talking about the impact of the Internet on

1090
01:03:26,400 --> 01:03:29,480
Speaker 1: the spread of information. And I remember hearing the sentiment that,

1091
01:03:29,560 --> 01:03:31,320
Speaker 1: you know, they were saying, well, the Internet is great

1092
01:03:31,360 --> 01:03:34,560
Speaker 1: because it opens up all these uh you know, new channel.

1093
01:03:34,600 --> 01:03:37,480
Speaker 1: Anybody can start a blog and share their perspective and

1094
01:03:37,520 --> 01:03:41,760
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And I think about the cacophony of

1095
01:03:41,760 --> 01:03:45,840
Speaker 1: of information or should we call it information, the cacophony

1096
01:03:45,920 --> 01:03:48,600
Speaker 1: of voices that we live in now. You know, I

1097
01:03:48,640 --> 01:03:51,000
Speaker 1: can't say that I would prefer to live in a

1098
01:03:51,040 --> 01:03:55,520
Speaker 1: world where where there were fewer people talking about things.

1099
01:03:55,560 --> 01:03:58,720
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I can't say that I

1100
01:03:58,760 --> 01:04:04,400
Speaker 1: feel really in pitched by the quantity of perspective and

1101
01:04:04,440 --> 01:04:09,480
Speaker 1: opinion being shared on the Internet. You know, yeah, yeah,

1102
01:04:09,480 --> 01:04:14,160
Speaker 1: I agree. Now here's a question for you. Uh, as

1103
01:04:14,160 --> 01:04:17,439
Speaker 1: long as we're playing with the ideas that spiral out

1104
01:04:17,720 --> 01:04:21,280
Speaker 1: endlessly from the Library of Babbel. Here, imagine a future

1105
01:04:21,840 --> 01:04:24,520
Speaker 1: in which you know we have we all have virtual

1106
01:04:24,560 --> 01:04:28,800
Speaker 1: worlds that we've built, and someone creates not only not

1107
01:04:29,080 --> 01:04:32,040
Speaker 1: something far beyond our current online version of the Library

1108
01:04:32,080 --> 01:04:37,000
Speaker 1: of Babbel. Imagine a functional virtual library of Babbel world.

1109
01:04:37,120 --> 01:04:39,440
Speaker 1: You put on your headset, you climb into your tank,

1110
01:04:39,640 --> 01:04:42,040
Speaker 1: turn on your you know, your drip, and then you're

1111
01:04:42,080 --> 01:04:47,240
Speaker 1: in there, and the computer is actually creating each room

1112
01:04:47,280 --> 01:04:49,800
Speaker 1: as you go, the nonsense books. So it would have

1113
01:04:49,840 --> 01:04:53,280
Speaker 1: to be procedurally generated because the computer storage system could

1114
01:04:53,320 --> 01:04:55,920
Speaker 1: not store the entire library, would have to create as

1115
01:04:56,040 --> 01:04:58,040
Speaker 1: as you go, and and so. But as you go,

1116
01:04:58,200 --> 01:05:03,800
Speaker 1: it is actually right, non existent books is writing um

1117
01:05:04,040 --> 01:05:09,480
Speaker 1: different versions of books that already exist. It seems feasible.

1118
01:05:09,920 --> 01:05:12,040
Speaker 1: And certainly when we start to start considering the end

1119
01:05:12,040 --> 01:05:16,760
Speaker 1: of the possibility of of of AI writers AI artists,

1120
01:05:17,240 --> 01:05:20,360
Speaker 1: could we reach a point where the Library of Babble

1121
01:05:20,440 --> 01:05:23,200
Speaker 1: exists in in in in actually trying to come up

1122
01:05:23,240 --> 01:05:27,680
Speaker 1: with new ideas for non existent books. Instead of dreaming

1123
01:05:27,680 --> 01:05:31,200
Speaker 1: them up ourselves, we are actually questioning through the library

1124
01:05:31,240 --> 01:05:35,560
Speaker 1: and forcing this randomized artificial intelligence to create them. No,

1125
01:05:35,720 --> 01:05:38,840
Speaker 1: I think that would never work well because the library

1126
01:05:38,880 --> 01:05:41,080
Speaker 1: is too vast. Like we've said, you would come across

1127
01:05:41,120 --> 01:05:44,120
Speaker 1: just pure nonsense. You could wander through this virtual library

1128
01:05:44,120 --> 01:05:47,640
Speaker 1: your whole life and find almost nothing but complete nonsense.

1129
01:05:48,240 --> 01:05:50,760
Speaker 1: Maybe one day you'd find three words in a row

1130
01:05:50,880 --> 01:05:54,520
Speaker 1: that made some kind of grammatical sense. Would that be

1131
01:05:54,600 --> 01:05:57,600
Speaker 1: worth it? I feel like it might be worth it

1132
01:05:57,760 --> 01:06:01,080
Speaker 1: to wander this library. If a library was made real

1133
01:06:01,640 --> 01:06:04,960
Speaker 1: in a virtual setting. Can you imagine, like the the

1134
01:06:05,000 --> 01:06:09,880
Speaker 1: excitement you would feel when you actually found something readable? Uh?

1135
01:06:09,960 --> 01:06:14,040
Speaker 1: I can imagine actual plans of purifiers and other sex

1136
01:06:14,080 --> 01:06:17,080
Speaker 1: that would be wandering. I don't know. I Well, so

1137
01:06:17,160 --> 01:06:20,200
Speaker 1: here's one thing. Maybe we could uh massively narrow the

1138
01:06:20,240 --> 01:06:23,240
Speaker 1: size of the library, still be astronomical and impossible, but

1139
01:06:23,680 --> 01:06:26,720
Speaker 1: impossible to find something all that valuable. But what if

1140
01:06:26,720 --> 01:06:29,200
Speaker 1: you limited it to words in a dictionary, So a

1141
01:06:29,240 --> 01:06:32,640
Speaker 1: procedurally generated library of babbel that, instead of all possible

1142
01:06:32,680 --> 01:06:36,400
Speaker 1: combinations of characters, was all possible combinations of words that

1143
01:06:36,480 --> 01:06:41,000
Speaker 1: exist in a dictionary in your language. Yeah, I guess

1144
01:06:41,000 --> 01:06:44,560
Speaker 1: that would narrow it somewhat, but it's still mostly be gibberish,

1145
01:06:44,600 --> 01:06:48,000
Speaker 1: wouldn't it. Huh? I guess I can't help but think

1146
01:06:48,000 --> 01:06:51,280
Speaker 1: of it, because I um, I recently read Ready Player

1147
01:06:51,320 --> 01:06:53,080
Speaker 1: one or if you made with this book. I've heard

1148
01:06:53,080 --> 01:06:54,919
Speaker 1: of it, but I haven't read it. It's pretty fun,

1149
01:06:55,000 --> 01:06:57,880
Speaker 1: fun book about virtual worlds and recreations of things that

1150
01:06:57,960 --> 01:07:01,080
Speaker 1: exist in pop culture. Library of Apple does not come up,

1151
01:07:02,160 --> 01:07:05,160
Speaker 1: but I can't help but think about that, especially since

1152
01:07:05,200 --> 01:07:07,320
Speaker 1: that book deals with the virtual world that contains easter

1153
01:07:07,400 --> 01:07:09,800
Speaker 1: eggs that people are searching for, you know, these little

1154
01:07:09,840 --> 01:07:12,200
Speaker 1: nuggets of meaning, and essentially they're trying to find a

1155
01:07:12,920 --> 01:07:17,160
Speaker 1: uh a Crimson hexagon of a sort in that book.

1156
01:07:17,760 --> 01:07:21,360
Speaker 1: So you know, I can't help but think about the

1157
01:07:21,400 --> 01:07:24,720
Speaker 1: Library of Babel as an analogy to the search for

1158
01:07:24,800 --> 01:07:29,680
Speaker 1: extraterrestrial intelligence. You know the vast scale of the universe

1159
01:07:29,760 --> 01:07:33,200
Speaker 1: and are the only difference is that the Library of

1160
01:07:33,200 --> 01:07:36,880
Speaker 1: Babel you can know how much there is and you

1161
01:07:36,920 --> 01:07:38,960
Speaker 1: can sort of say, well, here are the types of

1162
01:07:39,000 --> 01:07:41,960
Speaker 1: things we'd be looking for for books that makes sense.

1163
01:07:43,000 --> 01:07:44,960
Speaker 1: But we're still looking for books that makes sense from

1164
01:07:44,960 --> 01:07:48,400
Speaker 1: our perspective, right, based on our model of sensical books.

1165
01:07:48,720 --> 01:07:51,760
Speaker 1: And maybe in reality we're no better than the purifiers

1166
01:07:52,120 --> 01:07:56,640
Speaker 1: running around setting things alight because they don't just dismissing

1167
01:07:56,720 --> 01:07:59,720
Speaker 1: things because they don't line up with our expectations of

1168
01:07:59,840 --> 01:08:03,000
Speaker 1: or her. And since Robert, it is your kind of

1169
01:08:03,080 --> 01:08:06,000
Speaker 1: lawlessness and anarchy that has led to the library being

1170
01:08:06,040 --> 01:08:08,400
Speaker 1: the kind of place it is today. We need someone

1171
01:08:08,440 --> 01:08:11,920
Speaker 1: with a strong hand to set the library right, a

1172
01:08:11,960 --> 01:08:16,880
Speaker 1: new head librarian. Yes, m all right, well we could

1173
01:08:17,080 --> 01:08:19,800
Speaker 1: obviously we could go on and on here doing a

1174
01:08:20,200 --> 01:08:23,760
Speaker 1: various thought experiments about the Library of Babel. And I'm

1175
01:08:23,760 --> 01:08:27,040
Speaker 1: sure you guys and gals can as well. Maybe there's

1176
01:08:27,080 --> 01:08:28,800
Speaker 1: some spin on it that's come to your mind. Maybe

1177
01:08:28,800 --> 01:08:30,960
Speaker 1: there's a cool spin on it that you've encountered in

1178
01:08:31,040 --> 01:08:34,280
Speaker 1: other works. Uh. If so, we would love to hear

1179
01:08:34,280 --> 01:08:37,360
Speaker 1: about it. We would love to have any number of discussions,

1180
01:08:37,800 --> 01:08:41,599
Speaker 1: um dare I say almost infinite number of discussions about

1181
01:08:41,640 --> 01:08:43,840
Speaker 1: the Library of Babble. You can get in touch with

1182
01:08:43,840 --> 01:08:47,720
Speaker 1: this the usual places sofal media where stuff to blow

1183
01:08:47,760 --> 01:08:49,599
Speaker 1: your mind or blow the mind on a number of

1184
01:08:49,600 --> 01:08:52,160
Speaker 1: those stuff to blow your mind. Dot com is the mothership.

1185
01:08:52,520 --> 01:08:55,200
Speaker 1: And then of course there is always email where you

1186
01:08:55,240 --> 01:08:59,040
Speaker 1: can email your favorite selection from the Library of Babel

1187
01:08:59,080 --> 01:09:01,559
Speaker 1: to us at Blow the Mind is how Stuff Works

1188
01:09:01,600 --> 01:09:13,160
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other

1189
01:09:13,200 --> 01:09:37,880
Speaker 1: topics is that how stuff works. Dot com