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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hello, Hello, this is Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind audiologue. This is Robert Lamb and this is

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Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. This is day thirteen of our descent into

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Speaker 1: the famed Library of Babble. We've been exploring this infinite

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Speaker 1: sprawl of interconnected hexagonal rooms and the twenty bookshelves contained

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Speaker 1: within each one. Joe, how many rooms have we explored

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Speaker 1: since last log entry? Oh, let me find it here.

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Speaker 1: Let's see. Well, we're up to a hundred and twelve,

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Speaker 1: and that brings the grand total of rooms we have

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Speaker 1: explored to date up to one thousand, five hundred and

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Speaker 1: sixty one. And of course that is not counting the

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Speaker 1: rooms to the library that we could tell had already

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Speaker 1: been explored. So we just skipped over with books pulled

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Speaker 1: out all over the place, or some just said empty shelves,

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Speaker 1: smoke lines on the ceiling, and these ancient piles of

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Speaker 1: cold black coal in the middle of the floor we

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Speaker 1: can presume from some long ago book burnings. Yeah, that's right.

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Speaker 1: That I mean that the library is at least indefinite,

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Speaker 1: if not infinite, So it falls to inquisitors such as

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Speaker 1: ourselves to steadily work our way out from charted portions

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Speaker 1: of the library and into uncharted regions. And it really

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Speaker 1: is a room by room, book by book procedures. Now, fortunately,

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Speaker 1: most of the books are nonsense, and you can spot

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Speaker 1: that right away, because I mean real nonsense, total typographical gibberish.

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Speaker 1: And that's not even counting the ones that have been

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Speaker 1: totally or partially burned by the purifiers. I hear footsteps

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Speaker 1: sometimes in the rooms directly above us, and I keep

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

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Speaker 1: it could be the bookman, I know that's superstition joke.

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Speaker 1: We I mean, we might as well hope to find

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Speaker 1: that with the Crimson hexagon. Now, come on, Robert, wouldn't

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Speaker 1: you love to find the one hexagonal room in this

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Speaker 1: entire place that contains something truly precious apart from all

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Speaker 1: this gibberish, maybe even real functional books of magic spells well,

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Speaker 1: of course, but that doesn't mean it actually exists, even

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Speaker 1: in the Library of Babel. Now, remember, Robert, these rooms

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Speaker 1: contain not only all books, but all possible books. Those

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Speaker 1: books have got to be out there, but that doesn't

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Speaker 1: mean they're actually magical. Yeah, I guess you're right, But

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Speaker 1: sometimes I like to think that Crimson Hexagon is out there.

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Speaker 1: You know, maybe the purifiers haven't found it yet because

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Speaker 1: it moves. Have you thought about that? Like in the

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Speaker 1: movie Cube rooms move around while we're asleep? Who are

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Speaker 1: like the the the Castle and Krawl. You know. I'm

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Speaker 1: glad you mentioned Krull because I found a copy of

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Speaker 1: Alan Dean Foresters three novelization of the screenplay of Krall.

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Speaker 1: That's a real book. Yeah, but I also found a

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Speaker 1: Krull novel by Stanford Sherman, the guy who wrote the screenplay,

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Speaker 1: and he never actually wrote a novel version, right, Oh no,

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Speaker 1: not in our reality, but of course it could exist,

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Speaker 1: which means the library has it. And that's why I

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Speaker 1: was also able to find a copy of a Christmas Carol.

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Speaker 1: You might want to see this where instead of saying

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Speaker 1: God bless us everyone, tiny Tim gives an invocation of

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Speaker 1: Mala Collored of destruction. What about you check this out

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Speaker 1: Frank Herbert's complete seven book done series. Yeah, not not

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Speaker 1: just the six he actually wrote in our reality, all

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Speaker 1: seven as well as look at this, an alternate Herbert

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Speaker 1: Dune trilogy that's only three books. Long, but a lot

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Speaker 1: more irotic. Yeah, yeah, you've got to read this. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's on my list. But hey, guess what I've got

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Speaker 1: the final two books of the Game of Thrones series,

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Speaker 1: the Song of Ice and Fire spoiler they were on

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Speaker 1: Earth all along, and West Ros is actually in rural

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Speaker 1: North Florida. But also, Robert, I have your complete biography,

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Speaker 1: including the end, and as per our agreement, I didn't

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Speaker 1: read it. Well good, well, cool, here's yours, then just

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Speaker 1: swap thank you. Uh, there we go. We're good. Wait,

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Speaker 1: wait a minute, did you hear that? It's probably just

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Speaker 1: other inquisitors or you know, our pilgrims looking for deposits

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Speaker 1: of alternate Gospels or book worshippers or the Purifiers or

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Speaker 1: the Book miss none of that. Let's let's keep moving

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Speaker 1: this Hexa gone up ahead, looks pretty promised me. 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, and 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 uh it's a short story,

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Speaker 1: but it's also the concept at the core of the

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Speaker 1: short story. And we're really going to be focusing on

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Speaker 1: the concept uh and it's broader implications today. Not just

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Speaker 1: the story itself, but the concept of the Library of

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Speaker 1: Babel comes from a short story of the same name

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Speaker 1: by Jorge Louis Borges, first published in the collection The

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Speaker 1: Garden of Forking Paths in nineteen forty one. So. Borges

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Speaker 1: was a twentieth century Argentine author. He lived from eighteen

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Speaker 1: to nineteen eighty six, and in his lifetime, especially later

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Speaker 1: in his life, he became famous for poetry essays, but

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Speaker 1: especially short stories and short stories. A lot of them

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Speaker 1: are kind of like this story. Yeah, I mean, like

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Speaker 1: like a lot of his tales. Uh. The Library of

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Speaker 1: Babble was not really a narrative experience. It's not very

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Speaker 1: plot heavy, right. It's kind of a sort of scholarly

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Speaker 1: missive about a fantastic idea. So he he choose on

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Speaker 1: this fantastic idea, gets all of these philosophic juices going,

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Speaker 1: and we're just we're fortunate enough to experience it with him.

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Speaker 1: Uh and his his stories. There there are a number

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Speaker 1: of different themes that often pop up, such as knives, mirrors, dreams, oh, dreams.

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Speaker 1: There's some fabulous dream stories, um and and they're all

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Speaker 1: pretty short. Like That's one of the wonderful things about

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Speaker 1: a collection of Borhe's short fiction is you can just

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Speaker 1: pick it up. You can pretty pretty much pick any

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Speaker 1: story and just in a few pages and just mind

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Speaker 1: blowing concept is presented to you. That just expands the

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Speaker 1: limits of your imagination. Yeah. You ever know those like

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Speaker 1: fantasy writers who are better at world building than they

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Speaker 1: are at character and plot. Yeah, I'd say Bores is

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Speaker 1: like that, except he writes what would probably be considered

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Speaker 1: now literary fiction. It's you know, respectable intellectual fiction. Uh

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Speaker 1: that that's treated without any hint of a sneer by

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Speaker 1: the Academy as far as I can tell. But but

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Speaker 1: it's fascinating stuff through and through. Yeah, it reminds me

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Speaker 1: a lot of some of the short fiction that Philip K.

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

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Speaker 1: was was capable of producing novel after novel after novel

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Speaker 1: as well. Uh you know, he was pretty adapted it

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Speaker 1: longer works, But some of his short stories remind me

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Speaker 1: of Boes in their ability to without getting too bogged

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Speaker 1: down in story or character, just presenting in a nugget

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Speaker 1: like a really easy mind warping idea. Yeah, so we

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Speaker 1: should probably start with a quote from the beginning of

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Speaker 1: the Library of Babel the story to give you a

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Speaker 1: sense of what is being talked about here. So this

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: free sides opens onto a narrow sort of vestibule, which

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Speaker 1: 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, or 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 to 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 hexagon, 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, et cetera,

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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 we'll 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 Babble. Yeah, so in the

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Speaker 1: Library of Babble. We're going to talk about the philosophical

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Speaker 1: and scientific implications of this thought experiment and later on

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: that 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: sport Hase writes, each book in this library contains four

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: elements 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, aren't 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 a d 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 Shakespeare. 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 ShakespeRe. 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 aim 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, that maybe have a

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Speaker 1: few different typos in the in it, a few different

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Speaker 1: character changes. Then there are versions of it that are

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

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Speaker 1: a perfect version. There is a version of your favorite

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Speaker 1: book that you yourself would perhaps love even more because

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Speaker 1: it's a little more in tune with your expectations. Right,

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Speaker 1: And all that fan fiction you write that's already in

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Speaker 1: the library, it's there, plus all the changes you could

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Speaker 1: have made to make it you know, less of a travesty.

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Speaker 1: But is it all on the same shelf? No, it's

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Speaker 1: all on the same hexagon. Probably not, because it's arranged

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Speaker 1: in random or to making it even more frustrating to

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

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Speaker 1: because if you try to imagine what navigating the library

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Speaker 1: of Babel would be if it were organized in some

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Speaker 1: alphabetical fashion, you might be trapped in the A A

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Speaker 1: A A A A A section of the library. Your

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Speaker 1: entire life yeah, and you would just be physically unable

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Speaker 1: to traverse that area and get to the sensible books. Right.

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Speaker 1: So I'd actually prefer a randomized library to being stuck

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Speaker 1: in a sea of a's that I could never escape

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Speaker 1: from no matter how long I walked, you know. Um,

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Speaker 1: of course this has been such a highly influential book.

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Speaker 1: It's referenced in a number of different works, umming the

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Speaker 1: Library of the Library Battle, so like a lot of

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Speaker 1: people probably recognize it from umberto Eco's masterful Name of

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Speaker 1: the Rose, where an actual library and an Italian monastery

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Speaker 1: is is modeled on this. There are aspects of it

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Speaker 1: that I believe are utilized in the House of Leaves.

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Speaker 1: But then there's also a Stephen King short story. I

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Speaker 1: don't know if you've read this one titled Er that

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Speaker 1: came out It was only for Kindle, I don't think. So.

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Speaker 1: It's about a man who obtains a pink kindle and

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Speaker 1: it turns out to be a kindle from another no

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Speaker 1: I haven't, and it gives him access not only to

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

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Speaker 1: stores in alternate universe, so he's able to access books

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Speaker 1: by authors he loves. That have not yet been written,

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Speaker 1: 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 Babbel 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 Vassil

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

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Speaker 1: Library of Babbel 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 healf of the library

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Speaker 1: by name which I guess it generates the text that

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Speaker 1: would be under that randomized section of the library, and

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Speaker 1: you can pull out some books and look at what's

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Speaker 1: inside them. Huh. And are there any MPCs here? No,

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Speaker 1: not that I know of. I don't know I have.

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Speaker 1: I haven't played with it long enough. It wouldn't it

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Speaker 1: be great if some purifiers come by and start trying

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Speaker 1: to burn the books you're reading. Now, now that reminds

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Speaker 1: me we should say a little bit more about the story.

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

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Speaker 1: and and this is this is tremendous fun um. So

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Speaker 1: a first and foremost, Uh, there are the librarians and

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Speaker 1: the the narrator. The main character, if you can even

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Speaker 1: call them that in the story, is a librarian. So

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Speaker 1: they're given the impossible task of caring for the library

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Speaker 1: exploring it, and they're generally an overworked and just suicidal lot.

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

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Speaker 1: wanderers that are out there and ned the hexagons, such

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Speaker 1: as Oh well, there are the inquisitors, and these are

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Speaker 1: official searchers, but they don't really seem to make much progress.

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Speaker 1: It's kind of vague in the story exactly what they're doing.

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: libraries and inquisitors are kind of They seems like their

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

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Speaker 1: What else, then we have the Purifiers, who we alluded

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Speaker 1: to already, and these is a sect that traversed the

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: it's alluded to as well that then maybe they're not

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Speaker 1: the ones to judge. How are Maybe a book that

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

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

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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. Yea, And now we alluded to this

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

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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 to exist. Yes, no,

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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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Speaker 1: by the way, is it is an infinite book of

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Speaker 1: the factors into another Borhees story. Uh, you would find

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Speaker 1: just all these books of power and meaning, books that

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Speaker 1: answer our big questions like this is this is like

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Speaker 1: a mythological center for the library, a place of order

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Speaker 1: and answer, and it gives many people in the library

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Speaker 1: hope when they're traversing an otherwise unbroken sea of nonsense

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Speaker 1: and gibberish. And I'll tell you one book that might

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Speaker 1: be in the Crimson hexagon if it exists or might

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Speaker 1: be elsewhere. Is this okay? So since the Library of

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Speaker 1: b Apple contains all possible books, that means it must

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Speaker 1: contain a book or 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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Speaker 1: for the library itself, like a tourist guide. So even

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Speaker 1: though that book has not been found, it is rumored

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

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Speaker 1: the Bookman has actually found that book. That is quote,

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Speaker 1: the cipher and perfect compendium of all possible books, the

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

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Speaker 1: a godlike librarian, worshiped, quested after, and perhaps even prayed to.

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Speaker 1: So this is a god figure, a really kind of

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Speaker 1: a Christ figure that wanders the Library of Babble, and

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Speaker 1: everyone wants to find this gentleman and meet him so

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Speaker 1: that they might too know where they can find their answers.

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Speaker 1: In a way, it in a way, it's like the

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Speaker 1: perfect holy Man, right, like the the the order of

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Speaker 1: the Library of Babbel is beyond us. We cannot relate

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Speaker 1: to it, but we can relate to an individual. So

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

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Speaker 1: let us speak to him right now. It probably won't

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Speaker 1: be lost on all the parallels to religious figures and

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Speaker 1: profits like like you were mentioning that you know this

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Speaker 1: Christ figure. But I would say also that the bookman

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Speaker 1: not need not necessarily be a man. I would suspect

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Speaker 1: that it's more likely a book woman because the men

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Speaker 1: of this library are way too caught up in suicides

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Speaker 1: and murders, and uh, man, it just seems like it

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Speaker 1: is not a nice thing to be. Uh, to be

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Speaker 1: a soul male wandering this library. Yeah, it makes me

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Speaker 1: think of the the back in the days when you

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00:22:03,480 --> 00:22:06,320
Speaker 1: had the big bookstores everywhere, you would have like the

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Speaker 1: the kind of sketchy dudes who would hang out in

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Speaker 1: the photography books section. Um. That is not a sect

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Speaker 1: that is mentioned by Borges, but I can only imagine

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Speaker 1: that they're out there picking up various books and trying

390
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Speaker 1: to sneak off to the bathroom with them. Though. There

391
00:22:19,960 --> 00:22:23,560
Speaker 1: is a sense of pervasive, suicidal melancholy that's the library,

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Speaker 1: because after a while it just seems to grind on

393
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Speaker 1: you that you can't find the answers you're looking for,

394
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Speaker 1: you can't find the books you're looking for, and then

395
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Speaker 1: you have to contend with young people who wander into

396
00:22:33,400 --> 00:22:37,800
Speaker 1: worship and kiss the books, various heretics, pilgrims again, like

397
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Speaker 1: people looking for alternate gospels, brigands, suicides. All of this

398
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Speaker 1: going on and you're just a simple librarian trying to

399
00:22:45,520 --> 00:22:48,240
Speaker 1: do your job is just too much. Now. The fact

400
00:22:48,440 --> 00:22:50,840
Speaker 1: that I found interesting when I was reading about borges

401
00:22:50,960 --> 00:22:54,680
Speaker 1: life was that Bores was himself a librarian at multiple

402
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Speaker 1: different times in his life for almost a decade, beginning

403
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Speaker 1: in around nineteen seven or nineteen thirty eight, Borhes worked

404
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Speaker 1: in a small library in Buenos Aires, and this time

405
00:23:04,440 --> 00:23:07,119
Speaker 1: in the library would include the time of publication for

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Speaker 1: the Library of Babble, which he first published in nineteen

407
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Speaker 1: forty one. I figured out which library it was, by

408
00:23:12,600 --> 00:23:14,159
Speaker 1: the way, and I looked it up, and and the

409
00:23:14,440 --> 00:23:16,560
Speaker 1: scale is not what you would expect. I think I

410
00:23:16,640 --> 00:23:19,200
Speaker 1: might have mentioned that earlier, but given the story, it's

411
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Speaker 1: a very small, quaint, little library with a modest collection

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Speaker 1: of books. But also in nineteen thirty eight Borhes read

413
00:23:27,600 --> 00:23:31,200
Speaker 1: experienced to head wound which led to blood poisoning, which

414
00:23:31,200 --> 00:23:34,879
Speaker 1: in turn made him very feeble, and he feared losing

415
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Speaker 1: his sanity, and so Borees was eventually dismissed from his

416
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Speaker 1: library position. When Juan Perone came to power in Argentina

417
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Speaker 1: and I think nineteen forty five or forty six, and

418
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Speaker 1: he Borrees had supported the Allies during World War Two.

419
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Speaker 1: He opposed Nazi Germany, and he was also at the

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Speaker 1: time opposed to Peron's authoritarian sympathies. So in retaliation, Perrone

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00:23:56,960 --> 00:24:01,119
Speaker 1: demoted Borhees to the job title of pult re Inspector.

422
00:24:01,920 --> 00:24:04,080
Speaker 1: Borre His was not a fan of this move, but

423
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Speaker 1: later he was again given a library position as director

424
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Speaker 1: of the Argentine National Library in nineteen fifty five. But

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Speaker 1: I do wonder to what extent his experiences among the books,

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Speaker 1: even if it was truly a modest collection of books,

427
00:24:19,920 --> 00:24:24,480
Speaker 1: led to his his dreaming of the Library of Babel. Yeah,

428
00:24:24,600 --> 00:24:27,280
Speaker 1: perhaps a lot of it too came from him, not

429
00:24:27,400 --> 00:24:30,240
Speaker 1: only you know, not only encountering books in this bookstore,

430
00:24:30,480 --> 00:24:33,320
Speaker 1: in the libraries and his personal collection, but also reading

431
00:24:33,400 --> 00:24:37,320
Speaker 1: about other books, seeing the names of these other books.

432
00:24:37,359 --> 00:24:40,000
Speaker 1: It's it's it's hard, you know, just looking through a

433
00:24:40,000 --> 00:24:44,000
Speaker 1: card catalog. Um. Yeah, I guess today we get a

434
00:24:44,160 --> 00:24:48,119
Speaker 1: sense of such a vassal library just when we're going

435
00:24:48,160 --> 00:24:51,520
Speaker 1: through an online database of books via a library system

436
00:24:51,640 --> 00:24:55,000
Speaker 1: or Amazon. Uh and uh and I can I can

437
00:24:55,040 --> 00:24:57,719
Speaker 1: see even with it with older catalog systems, where one

438
00:24:57,800 --> 00:25:00,000
Speaker 1: might have that experience, especially if one is a true

439
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:03,679
Speaker 1: of roth books as as Borges you know, definitely was.

440
00:25:04,760 --> 00:25:07,080
Speaker 1: But of course the Library of Babbel is more than

441
00:25:07,119 --> 00:25:10,120
Speaker 1: just an interesting short story, right, It's become this door

442
00:25:10,359 --> 00:25:13,439
Speaker 1: that we can walk through to think about the nature

443
00:25:13,440 --> 00:25:18,359
Speaker 1: of information and scale, numerical scale and the universe infinity,

444
00:25:18,480 --> 00:25:23,000
Speaker 1: the relationship between information and physicality, and a very useful

445
00:25:23,040 --> 00:25:26,480
Speaker 1: model for philosophers, scientists, and thinkers of all kinds. So

446
00:25:26,880 --> 00:25:28,439
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break, and when we

447
00:25:28,520 --> 00:25:30,800
Speaker 1: come back from the break, we are going to learn

448
00:25:30,800 --> 00:25:33,800
Speaker 1: more about the implications of the Library of Babel as

449
00:25:33,800 --> 00:25:43,240
Speaker 1: a thought experiment. So the characters in the Library of Babbel,

450
00:25:43,280 --> 00:25:45,800
Speaker 1: they all seem to be searching for meaning, right They're

451
00:25:45,840 --> 00:25:49,920
Speaker 1: living in this vast library of nonsense, is full of

452
00:25:49,960 --> 00:25:53,280
Speaker 1: gibberish everywhere, and they want to find books that have

453
00:25:53,560 --> 00:25:57,879
Speaker 1: some kind of significance. So I think it's quite clear

454
00:25:57,920 --> 00:26:00,159
Speaker 1: that in many ways this story is an analogy for

455
00:26:00,200 --> 00:26:03,320
Speaker 1: the search of meaning, the search for meanings. Sorry, imagine

456
00:26:03,520 --> 00:26:08,320
Speaker 1: that feeling of knowing that there were already in existence

457
00:26:08,480 --> 00:26:12,560
Speaker 1: books that explained the true origin and purpose of the universe,

458
00:26:13,359 --> 00:26:15,239
Speaker 1: if there is such a thing, of course, and the

459
00:26:15,280 --> 00:26:19,239
Speaker 1: origin and purpose of everything in the universe, including your

460
00:26:19,280 --> 00:26:21,840
Speaker 1: own existence. And I want to read another quote from

461
00:26:21,840 --> 00:26:27,480
Speaker 1: the story, quote that unbridled hopefulness was succeeded naturally enough

462
00:26:27,600 --> 00:26:33,439
Speaker 1: by a similarly disproportionate depression, the certainty that some bookshelf

463
00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:37,520
Speaker 1: in some hexagon contained precious books, yet that those precious

464
00:26:37,560 --> 00:26:41,760
Speaker 1: books were forever out of reach was almost unbearable. One

465
00:26:41,800 --> 00:26:45,520
Speaker 1: blasphemous sect proposed that the searches be discontinued, and that

466
00:26:45,600 --> 00:26:49,720
Speaker 1: all men shuffle letters and symbols until those canonical books,

467
00:26:49,920 --> 00:26:54,919
Speaker 1: through some improbable stroke of chance, had been constructed. The

468
00:26:54,960 --> 00:26:59,040
Speaker 1: authorities were forced to issue strict orders. The sect disappeared.

469
00:26:59,160 --> 00:27:01,800
Speaker 1: But in my child too, I have seen old men who,

470
00:27:01,840 --> 00:27:05,240
Speaker 1: for long periods would hide in the latrines with metal

471
00:27:05,320 --> 00:27:09,879
Speaker 1: discs and a forbidden dice cup, feebly mimicking the divine order.

472
00:27:10,920 --> 00:27:13,440
Speaker 1: I love something about this little section of the story

473
00:27:13,480 --> 00:27:16,800
Speaker 1: because notice here the similarity with something you already brought

474
00:27:16,880 --> 00:27:20,320
Speaker 1: up Robert the infinite monkey theorem, right, the idea that

475
00:27:20,359 --> 00:27:22,320
Speaker 1: you've got a gang of monkeys and you put them

476
00:27:22,320 --> 00:27:24,679
Speaker 1: in front of typewriters, and they just hit keys on

477
00:27:24,720 --> 00:27:28,239
Speaker 1: the typewriters at random. Now, given infinite time, it's all

478
00:27:28,480 --> 00:27:32,600
Speaker 1: often said that these monkeys will produce specified works of literature,

479
00:27:32,680 --> 00:27:35,520
Speaker 1: such as the complete works of Shakespeare, or of course

480
00:27:35,560 --> 00:27:38,480
Speaker 1: they would need vast periods of time. One of the

481
00:27:39,040 --> 00:27:42,080
Speaker 1: key factors here, and that that's not depending on what

482
00:27:42,119 --> 00:27:44,119
Speaker 1: the work is, like Shakespeare or whatever. They could be

483
00:27:44,160 --> 00:27:47,320
Speaker 1: trying to create the complete works of Anne Rice, and

484
00:27:47,480 --> 00:27:50,640
Speaker 1: that the infinite time parameter is crucial because in reality,

485
00:27:50,760 --> 00:27:54,439
Speaker 1: such a scenario would probably not produce a single page

486
00:27:54,440 --> 00:27:58,000
Speaker 1: of grammatically meaningful English within the total age of the universe.

487
00:27:58,560 --> 00:28:03,040
Speaker 1: It's just, you know, random combinatrix are not very forgiving.

488
00:28:03,400 --> 00:28:06,520
Speaker 1: But in the Borhey story, there's this blasphemous sect he

489
00:28:06,560 --> 00:28:09,919
Speaker 1: talks about who wants to try to create precious and

490
00:28:10,000 --> 00:28:14,760
Speaker 1: meaningful books by randomly generating volumes with something kind of

491
00:28:14,800 --> 00:28:18,000
Speaker 1: like a Wegia board and a pair of dice, almost

492
00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:21,080
Speaker 1: like a like a code cracking program, right, But it

493
00:28:21,160 --> 00:28:25,399
Speaker 1: doesn't fundamentally alter our predicament in search for meaning, only

494
00:28:25,480 --> 00:28:29,280
Speaker 1: the observer's level of personal activity within it. So the

495
00:28:29,320 --> 00:28:32,720
Speaker 1: librarians in the library of Babbel are like the observer

496
00:28:33,359 --> 00:28:36,840
Speaker 1: watching the monkeys type, waiting for them to produce Shakespeare.

497
00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:41,000
Speaker 1: They're passively receiving all of this random information, waiting for

498
00:28:41,040 --> 00:28:44,200
Speaker 1: something of significance to come out. The blasphemous sect, the

499
00:28:44,200 --> 00:28:47,160
Speaker 1: people rolling the dice with the Wegi board, they're just

500
00:28:47,280 --> 00:28:51,280
Speaker 1: more like being the monkey sitting at the typewriter randomly

501
00:28:51,360 --> 00:28:54,480
Speaker 1: typing text. It doesn't change the odds that you'll come

502
00:28:54,520 --> 00:28:57,280
Speaker 1: across something of significance. But maybe it does make a

503
00:28:57,280 --> 00:29:01,880
Speaker 1: psychological difference if you yourself are the creator versus passively

504
00:29:02,000 --> 00:29:06,120
Speaker 1: receiving what already exists around you. Yeah, I mean it's

505
00:29:06,160 --> 00:29:08,480
Speaker 1: it's really like the members of the Blastmouths sect are

506
00:29:08,480 --> 00:29:12,240
Speaker 1: playing God. They're doing the work of God. Uh, of

507
00:29:12,400 --> 00:29:17,120
Speaker 1: of of a creator entity in this scenario. But um,

508
00:29:17,480 --> 00:29:22,080
Speaker 1: they're bound by mortal or semi mortal experience. So uh

509
00:29:22,240 --> 00:29:24,280
Speaker 1: it really amounts to the same thing. They're just as

510
00:29:24,320 --> 00:29:26,840
Speaker 1: lost in the in the library, except to say, a

511
00:29:27,000 --> 00:29:31,720
Speaker 1: library of their their own creation. Well, in the cosmological sense,

512
00:29:32,320 --> 00:29:36,520
Speaker 1: how similar is the library of Babel to the universe

513
00:29:36,600 --> 00:29:40,960
Speaker 1: we actually inhabit? And what what what similarities and differences

514
00:29:41,000 --> 00:29:44,320
Speaker 1: could we observe? Well, if we look at the library

515
00:29:44,360 --> 00:29:47,440
Speaker 1: as a metaphor for cosmos, and and it seems one

516
00:29:47,480 --> 00:29:49,560
Speaker 1: of one of borhe is intense. I mean, he says

517
00:29:49,600 --> 00:29:53,720
Speaker 1: in the first line that universes the library. Yeah, so

518
00:29:53,760 --> 00:29:57,560
Speaker 1: you could argue that it is his central intent. Uh, certainly. Uh.

519
00:29:57,600 --> 00:30:00,720
Speaker 1: In this case, it lines up rather nicely with the

520
00:30:00,760 --> 00:30:04,560
Speaker 1: cosmological principle, the idea that matter in the universe is

521
00:30:04,600 --> 00:30:09,000
Speaker 1: homogeneous and isotropic when averaged out over very large scales

522
00:30:09,640 --> 00:30:12,760
Speaker 1: as a major principle that speaks to the composition of

523
00:30:12,800 --> 00:30:15,400
Speaker 1: the universe, and it helps us serve as the basis

524
00:30:15,440 --> 00:30:18,520
Speaker 1: for the Big Bang theory. Here, it's kind of hard

525
00:30:18,520 --> 00:30:21,400
Speaker 1: to imagine living on Earth as we do and not

526
00:30:21,480 --> 00:30:25,200
Speaker 1: seeing really anywhere else in the universe that's as hospitable

527
00:30:25,240 --> 00:30:29,280
Speaker 1: as Earth, that the universe is homogeneous, you know. But

528
00:30:29,280 --> 00:30:32,520
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's talking about scale there. Over scale, you

529
00:30:32,560 --> 00:30:35,120
Speaker 1: could say it is homogeneous even if we're sort of

530
00:30:35,160 --> 00:30:38,800
Speaker 1: living in the book that makes sense, right, like we

531
00:30:39,640 --> 00:30:43,760
Speaker 1: you could almost say that like we are living. It's

532
00:30:43,760 --> 00:30:45,880
Speaker 1: it's difficult, right, because it's like we are we are

533
00:30:45,920 --> 00:30:48,440
Speaker 1: the book that makes sense. We are the book that

534
00:30:48,480 --> 00:30:51,480
Speaker 1: we can understand, and we just according to us, according

535
00:30:51,520 --> 00:30:55,760
Speaker 1: to us, and and by by amazing fortune, we are

536
00:30:55,800 --> 00:30:58,240
Speaker 1: in the hexagon that contains of that book. And then

537
00:30:58,360 --> 00:31:01,120
Speaker 1: so it's easy to think it's a certainly we've from

538
00:31:01,120 --> 00:31:04,040
Speaker 1: a cosmological perspective, we've fallen into this trap many times

539
00:31:04,040 --> 00:31:06,320
Speaker 1: where we think, well, this is the center, this is

540
00:31:06,400 --> 00:31:10,080
Speaker 1: we are living in the Crimson hexagon, and there's a

541
00:31:10,160 --> 00:31:13,560
Speaker 1: you know, there's a whole discipline and cosmologies is about

542
00:31:13,960 --> 00:31:16,800
Speaker 1: just reminding everyone and we do not live in the

543
00:31:16,800 --> 00:31:20,960
Speaker 1: hexagonal in the Crimson hexagon. Not every hexagon that contains

544
00:31:20,960 --> 00:31:25,280
Speaker 1: a basically sensical operation manual for a VCR is the

545
00:31:25,280 --> 00:31:28,760
Speaker 1: Crimson hexagon. Yeah, there's not. There's nothing privileged about the

546
00:31:28,840 --> 00:31:32,960
Speaker 1: human condition, about and about the conditions of Earth, um

547
00:31:33,320 --> 00:31:37,160
Speaker 1: like the universe. To all the characters that in this

548
00:31:37,240 --> 00:31:41,080
Speaker 1: story that are considering the Library of Babble are within

549
00:31:41,160 --> 00:31:43,719
Speaker 1: the Library of Babble. They don't step outside of it.

550
00:31:43,760 --> 00:31:46,080
Speaker 1: They don't. They don't wander back to the surface of

551
00:31:46,160 --> 00:31:49,280
Speaker 1: some you know, Dungeon and Dragons type realm and then

552
00:31:49,400 --> 00:31:51,080
Speaker 1: think about it again and then go back in. It's

553
00:31:51,120 --> 00:31:54,160
Speaker 1: not like in say the novel House of Leaves, where

554
00:31:54,440 --> 00:31:57,680
Speaker 1: they're they're venturing from this house into this realm of

555
00:31:57,760 --> 00:32:01,440
Speaker 1: infinite corridors. There is no house to return to. So

556
00:32:01,720 --> 00:32:04,200
Speaker 1: quest is they might to understand the shape and nature

557
00:32:04,240 --> 00:32:07,360
Speaker 1: of the library. They cannot step beyond the library for

558
00:32:07,440 --> 00:32:10,959
Speaker 1: an outside outside understanding of what they're in. They cannot

559
00:32:11,040 --> 00:32:14,000
Speaker 1: step beyond the borders of cosmos. I mean, we can

560
00:32:14,080 --> 00:32:17,000
Speaker 1: barely step beyond the borders of the human experience. We

561
00:32:17,080 --> 00:32:21,080
Speaker 1: have this huge problem just trying to to comprehend consciousness

562
00:32:21,080 --> 00:32:23,560
Speaker 1: and the and and the functionality of the human mind.

563
00:32:24,000 --> 00:32:27,760
Speaker 1: It's you're trapped within the form you're trying to understand. Yeah,

564
00:32:27,800 --> 00:32:30,400
Speaker 1: but the Library of Babel also seems like it has

565
00:32:30,440 --> 00:32:35,120
Speaker 1: some metaphorical significance in our quest for knowledge. Yeah, I

566
00:32:35,160 --> 00:32:38,640
Speaker 1: mean the idea here the complete knowledge seems impossible. You

567
00:32:38,640 --> 00:32:41,080
Speaker 1: can believe in the Bookman and the Crimson Hexagon all

568
00:32:41,120 --> 00:32:44,600
Speaker 1: you want, but they remain ever outside your grasp. There's

569
00:32:44,680 --> 00:32:49,400
Speaker 1: no center, there's no privileged area or privileged knowledge. The

570
00:32:49,480 --> 00:32:56,080
Speaker 1: story also, according to writer Marcello glycer Uh, seems a

571
00:32:56,120 --> 00:33:00,520
Speaker 1: commentary on reductionism. So we can know all the characters

572
00:33:00,560 --> 00:33:04,240
Speaker 1: that comprise the works and the books, like identifying the

573
00:33:04,280 --> 00:33:07,000
Speaker 1: building blocks of nature. Right, but does that bring us

574
00:33:07,040 --> 00:33:10,560
Speaker 1: any closer to understanding the fundamental nature of the universe

575
00:33:10,880 --> 00:33:17,160
Speaker 1: or the library? No? No, not really. Um. And of course,

576
00:33:17,520 --> 00:33:19,120
Speaker 1: in all of this, I can't help but think of

577
00:33:19,440 --> 00:33:21,960
Speaker 1: a subject we've discussed in the past here on the show,

578
00:33:22,440 --> 00:33:26,680
Speaker 1: Plato's theory of forms, Right, the idea that that there's

579
00:33:26,680 --> 00:33:30,080
Speaker 1: an ideal version of everything that exists beyond our grasp,

580
00:33:30,480 --> 00:33:34,560
Speaker 1: according to Plato, like essentially in another realm. So there

581
00:33:34,600 --> 00:33:37,960
Speaker 1: would be in theory an ideal form of every book

582
00:33:38,000 --> 00:33:40,400
Speaker 1: that's ever been written in the Library of Babble. Right,

583
00:33:40,840 --> 00:33:44,360
Speaker 1: But we can spend an eternity, encounter an eternity of

584
00:33:44,400 --> 00:33:48,280
Speaker 1: alternate versions, and never happen upon the perfect form. It

585
00:33:48,280 --> 00:33:51,960
Speaker 1: doesn't quite exist outside the Library of Babble, however, though,

586
00:33:52,000 --> 00:33:54,880
Speaker 1: I wonder if you could sort of cobble that idea

587
00:33:54,920 --> 00:33:57,720
Speaker 1: together with the Crimson hexicon. Maybe that's what the Crimson

588
00:33:57,760 --> 00:34:00,640
Speaker 1: Hexicon also encompasses, the idea that there's a place where

589
00:34:00,880 --> 00:34:04,200
Speaker 1: all the ideals are represented. Well, this brings up something

590
00:34:04,360 --> 00:34:07,720
Speaker 1: that I wanted to talk about, which is the difference

591
00:34:07,760 --> 00:34:11,759
Speaker 1: between being able to generate a precious or significant book

592
00:34:11,760 --> 00:34:14,319
Speaker 1: and the ability to recognize it when you see. Uh.

593
00:34:14,440 --> 00:34:17,600
Speaker 1: This sort of goes back to our P versus NP discussion,

594
00:34:17,719 --> 00:34:21,160
Speaker 1: you know, the search for algorithms, like there are certain

595
00:34:21,840 --> 00:34:27,000
Speaker 1: problem solving techniques that you can check to see if

596
00:34:27,040 --> 00:34:30,240
Speaker 1: you got the right answer, but you can't as quickly

597
00:34:30,400 --> 00:34:33,840
Speaker 1: generate the right answer. And I, you know, I wonder

598
00:34:33,880 --> 00:34:37,000
Speaker 1: if our books the same way, Like, what is the

599
00:34:37,040 --> 00:34:43,960
Speaker 1: relationship between insight and time? Given infinite time, could any

600
00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:48,200
Speaker 1: person who could recognize a precious book also generate that

601
00:34:48,360 --> 00:34:53,040
Speaker 1: same precious book? I don't know, but it kind of

602
00:34:53,080 --> 00:34:55,160
Speaker 1: makes me wonder. Like the Library of Babble brings up

603
00:34:55,160 --> 00:34:58,680
Speaker 1: these quite So you're searching through all the shelves and

604
00:34:58,920 --> 00:35:01,399
Speaker 1: you you eventually come across a book that you know

605
00:35:01,640 --> 00:35:05,000
Speaker 1: is a meaningful and significant book that's full of true things,

606
00:35:05,120 --> 00:35:08,680
Speaker 1: full of great creativity, full of beauty and insight. It's

607
00:35:08,680 --> 00:35:11,400
Speaker 1: a good thing that you found it. If you know

608
00:35:11,560 --> 00:35:13,879
Speaker 1: that thing when you see it, would you be able

609
00:35:13,960 --> 00:35:16,839
Speaker 1: to create that thing if there were no constraints on

610
00:35:16,880 --> 00:35:19,959
Speaker 1: you whatsoever? It's like it to come back to say

611
00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:22,960
Speaker 1: something like done right, Like how would would I be

612
00:35:23,000 --> 00:35:25,000
Speaker 1: able to tell if I found a copy of doone

613
00:35:25,000 --> 00:35:28,000
Speaker 1: in the library? That is that that exceeds the original?

614
00:35:28,280 --> 00:35:30,480
Speaker 1: All I have is the version that we have in

615
00:35:30,480 --> 00:35:33,719
Speaker 1: our reality. And uh, and I'm a big fan of that.

616
00:35:34,680 --> 00:35:36,839
Speaker 1: But who's to say that that's anywhere close to the

617
00:35:37,000 --> 00:35:39,600
Speaker 1: ideal version of it? You know what? Who who can

618
00:35:39,760 --> 00:35:42,839
Speaker 1: make that judgment? And and then it also gets into

619
00:35:42,880 --> 00:35:45,000
Speaker 1: sort of the privilege, like we we're gonna have a

620
00:35:45,000 --> 00:35:48,239
Speaker 1: bias towards what we already know, what we already have,

621
00:35:48,719 --> 00:35:52,080
Speaker 1: which is which gets involved in in cosmology again, because

622
00:35:52,080 --> 00:35:55,800
Speaker 1: we're basing everything on this one model of of life.

623
00:35:55,880 --> 00:35:58,640
Speaker 1: This one model of that. We have an earth and

624
00:35:58,680 --> 00:36:01,799
Speaker 1: all the life that is ofvolved here. Uh, we have

625
00:36:01,920 --> 00:36:03,920
Speaker 1: nothing else to base it on. We only have this

626
00:36:04,040 --> 00:36:09,359
Speaker 1: copy of doone alas alas that we have but one

627
00:36:09,440 --> 00:36:12,720
Speaker 1: reality of doone to draw from. Shay alude be praise.

628
00:36:14,760 --> 00:36:16,680
Speaker 1: All right, we need to take another really quick break.

629
00:36:16,680 --> 00:36:18,160
Speaker 1: But when we come back, we're going to talk about

630
00:36:18,200 --> 00:36:28,200
Speaker 1: the Library of Babel as applied to biology and genetics. Alright,

631
00:36:28,200 --> 00:36:32,000
Speaker 1: we're back, alright. So, as the Library of Babel is

632
00:36:32,239 --> 00:36:35,640
Speaker 1: essentially all about vast quantities of randomized information and the

633
00:36:35,680 --> 00:36:39,719
Speaker 1: occasional emergence of books from that data. See, it should

634
00:36:39,760 --> 00:36:43,080
Speaker 1: come as no surprise that borhees fantastic library is of

635
00:36:43,239 --> 00:36:47,480
Speaker 1: use in fathoming the complexity of biology and genetics. Yeah. Now,

636
00:36:47,520 --> 00:36:50,400
Speaker 1: I've read about this idea in a couple of different

637
00:36:50,400 --> 00:36:55,080
Speaker 1: books by the the American philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett.

638
00:36:55,160 --> 00:36:58,480
Speaker 1: He wrote about this in Darwin's Dangerous Idea, which came

639
00:36:58,520 --> 00:37:01,200
Speaker 1: out in the nineties, and he also wrote a chapter

640
00:37:01,280 --> 00:37:04,120
Speaker 1: about it in his book Intuition, Pumps and Other Tools

641
00:37:04,160 --> 00:37:08,360
Speaker 1: for Thinking. And I always found this comparison very interesting,

642
00:37:08,400 --> 00:37:13,480
Speaker 1: but maybe maybe you can illuminate us or what application

643
00:37:13,520 --> 00:37:16,480
Speaker 1: does the Library of Babbel have to the genes that

644
00:37:16,560 --> 00:37:19,840
Speaker 1: build our bodies? Well, let me read a quick quote

645
00:37:19,840 --> 00:37:22,320
Speaker 1: here from from Dinnet that I think helps to eliminate

646
00:37:22,400 --> 00:37:26,680
Speaker 1: this quote. The actual genomes that have ever existed are

647
00:37:26,719 --> 00:37:32,880
Speaker 1: a vanished, only small subset of the combinatorially possible genomes,

648
00:37:32,920 --> 00:37:35,920
Speaker 1: just as the actual books in the world's libraries are

649
00:37:35,960 --> 00:37:39,920
Speaker 1: a vanishingly small subset of the books in the imaginary

650
00:37:40,160 --> 00:37:44,080
Speaker 1: Library of Babbel. Yeah, so din It actually puts together

651
00:37:44,239 --> 00:37:47,680
Speaker 1: an alternate version of the library. He just substitutes in

652
00:37:47,800 --> 00:37:51,680
Speaker 1: some alternate numbers and does some number crunching. But I

653
00:37:51,719 --> 00:37:55,120
Speaker 1: think it's actually interesting what he comes up with. Yeah,

654
00:37:55,480 --> 00:37:58,040
Speaker 1: look for starters. He he does some some fun number

655
00:37:58,040 --> 00:38:02,239
Speaker 1: crunching on the Library of Babbel itself. Um here, here's

656
00:38:02,239 --> 00:38:04,080
Speaker 1: just a quick quote from this. Uh, and again we're

657
00:38:04,080 --> 00:38:05,839
Speaker 1: gonna throw some numbers that you here, but I think

658
00:38:05,880 --> 00:38:08,000
Speaker 1: it's worth it. So suppose that each book is five

659
00:38:08,040 --> 00:38:10,879
Speaker 1: hundred pages long, and each page consists of forty lines

660
00:38:10,880 --> 00:38:13,720
Speaker 1: of fifty spaces, so there are two thousand characters spaces

661
00:38:13,719 --> 00:38:16,680
Speaker 1: per page. Each space is either is blank or has

662
00:38:16,680 --> 00:38:19,000
Speaker 1: a character printed on it chosen from a set of

663
00:38:19,040 --> 00:38:21,239
Speaker 1: one hundred somewhere in the Library of Babble as a

664
00:38:21,280 --> 00:38:24,440
Speaker 1: volume consisting entirely of blank pages, and another volume is

665
00:38:24,480 --> 00:38:27,640
Speaker 1: all question marks, but the vast majority consists of type

666
00:38:27,640 --> 00:38:30,960
Speaker 1: of graphical gibberish. No rules of spelling or grammar, to

667
00:38:31,000 --> 00:38:34,120
Speaker 1: say nothing of sense prohibit the inclusion of a volume.

668
00:38:34,680 --> 00:38:37,960
Speaker 1: Five hundred pages times two thousand characters per page gives

669
00:38:38,560 --> 00:38:41,439
Speaker 1: one million character spaces per book. So there are one

670
00:38:41,520 --> 00:38:44,560
Speaker 1: hundred to the one million power books in the Library

671
00:38:44,600 --> 00:38:47,480
Speaker 1: of Babbel. Since it's just estimated that there are only

672
00:38:47,560 --> 00:38:53,400
Speaker 1: one d to give or take a few particles, protons, neutrons,

673
00:38:53,480 --> 00:38:56,000
Speaker 1: and electrons in the region of the universe, we can

674
00:38:56,040 --> 00:38:59,960
Speaker 1: observe the Library of Babbel is not remotely a physically

675
00:39:00,200 --> 00:39:03,799
Speaker 1: possible object. But thanks to the strict rules with which

676
00:39:03,840 --> 00:39:07,560
Speaker 1: Borhe has constructed in his imagination, we can think about

677
00:39:07,560 --> 00:39:11,759
Speaker 1: it clearly. So I I like, I like how he

678
00:39:12,000 --> 00:39:14,160
Speaker 1: sort of reins it, why he doesn't rein it in,

679
00:39:14,480 --> 00:39:16,720
Speaker 1: but how well he crunches the numbers of it and

680
00:39:16,719 --> 00:39:19,000
Speaker 1: and just lays out the fact that this could not

681
00:39:19,080 --> 00:39:21,759
Speaker 1: exist in the physical universe. Yeah, yeah, I mean, there

682
00:39:21,960 --> 00:39:25,799
Speaker 1: is not space in the universe for it, and yet

683
00:39:25,840 --> 00:39:30,120
Speaker 1: it is still arguably a finite object. Oh, not arguably,

684
00:39:30,160 --> 00:39:33,000
Speaker 1: it's definitely finite. But well, but that's the thing. It's

685
00:39:33,120 --> 00:39:37,040
Speaker 1: finite in a way like there and certainly this is

686
00:39:37,120 --> 00:39:40,000
Speaker 1: a subject we've covered in other episodes on the nature

687
00:39:40,000 --> 00:39:43,040
Speaker 1: of infinity. But there of course different types of infinity.

688
00:39:43,320 --> 00:39:46,880
Speaker 1: And so it's physically fine, it's physically finite, but it

689
00:39:47,040 --> 00:39:50,560
Speaker 1: is from a human perspective it might as well be infinite. Well,

690
00:39:50,640 --> 00:39:53,680
Speaker 1: you can make the case that while it is physically finite,

691
00:39:53,719 --> 00:39:56,640
Speaker 1: and that there are a limited number of books, however vast,

692
00:39:56,840 --> 00:39:59,440
Speaker 1: you know, impossibly vast to contain in the real universe.

693
00:39:59,480 --> 00:40:02,719
Speaker 1: There there are a actually limited number of books, but

694
00:40:02,800 --> 00:40:06,800
Speaker 1: there might not be a limited amount of information because

695
00:40:06,840 --> 00:40:09,640
Speaker 1: if you follow this, uh, the same strategy we mentioned

696
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:13,000
Speaker 1: earlier of allowing one book's contents to spill over into

697
00:40:13,040 --> 00:40:16,920
Speaker 1: another volume, and given the fact that all volumes possible

698
00:40:16,960 --> 00:40:21,840
Speaker 1: to represent our present, meaning all unfinished ideas will be

699
00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:27,560
Speaker 1: continued into other ideas, there is potentially limitless information in

700
00:40:27,640 --> 00:40:32,080
Speaker 1: the limited library of babble. Well, yeah, I mean, I

701
00:40:32,120 --> 00:40:34,840
Speaker 1: can't help but think of the infinity hotel analogy like

702
00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:37,120
Speaker 1: I did it, like an infinite number of people show

703
00:40:37,200 --> 00:40:39,080
Speaker 1: up to a hotel and then another infinite number shop

704
00:40:39,080 --> 00:40:41,680
Speaker 1: on another bus. Um what I mean, what what do

705
00:40:41,719 --> 00:40:44,360
Speaker 1: you do about books that themselves are infinite? What do

706
00:40:44,360 --> 00:40:46,759
Speaker 1: you do about Borhees the Book of Sands, which is

707
00:40:46,760 --> 00:40:50,640
Speaker 1: a book that is that that is endless? How many

708
00:40:50,680 --> 00:40:52,960
Speaker 1: books then does that contain? Like trying to shelve the

709
00:40:52,960 --> 00:40:56,400
Speaker 1: Book of sand uh In. The Library of Babble is

710
00:40:56,480 --> 00:41:00,000
Speaker 1: kind of like a busload of infinite hotel guests show

711
00:41:00,000 --> 00:41:01,919
Speaker 1: going up to the infinity hotel. Well, I would say

712
00:41:01,920 --> 00:41:04,560
Speaker 1: that the Library of Babel itself is sort of an

713
00:41:04,719 --> 00:41:07,080
Speaker 1: argument that there could not be such a thing as

714
00:41:07,120 --> 00:41:11,080
Speaker 1: an infinite book. That there there there are books that

715
00:41:11,160 --> 00:41:15,600
Speaker 1: are so vast as to, you know, stifle our comprehension.

716
00:41:16,000 --> 00:41:18,320
Speaker 1: But if you think of the Library of Babel itself

717
00:41:18,400 --> 00:41:22,040
Speaker 1: as one book that you can just move the pages

718
00:41:22,080 --> 00:41:26,000
Speaker 1: around as much as you want, all possible representations of

719
00:41:26,160 --> 00:41:29,800
Speaker 1: all possible characters are there, but the book is finite.

720
00:41:30,080 --> 00:41:32,399
Speaker 1: That's true. That's a good point. But let's let's bring

721
00:41:32,400 --> 00:41:35,400
Speaker 1: it back to Dinnett. So Dinnett proposes a variation on

722
00:41:35,440 --> 00:41:38,680
Speaker 1: the Library of Babel that he calls the Library of

723
00:41:38,800 --> 00:41:42,960
Speaker 1: Mendel named after Men, the Mendel, famous of men Dalian genetics,

724
00:41:43,239 --> 00:41:49,000
Speaker 1: and it's a library that contains all possible genomes. So

725
00:41:49,040 --> 00:41:52,120
Speaker 1: if we assume that the Library of Mendel is composed

726
00:41:52,160 --> 00:41:57,000
Speaker 1: of descriptions of genomes, then write not not the molecules themselves,

727
00:41:57,080 --> 00:42:00,480
Speaker 1: but it the the coding that would represent what is

728
00:42:00,520 --> 00:42:04,279
Speaker 1: contained in your recipes. Um. If that's the case, then

729
00:42:04,320 --> 00:42:06,560
Speaker 1: you could you could argue that well, they're actually already

730
00:42:06,640 --> 00:42:09,640
Speaker 1: part of the Library of Babel, as the standard code

731
00:42:09,640 --> 00:42:12,400
Speaker 1: for DNA descriptions consists of the characters A, C, G

732
00:42:12,640 --> 00:42:19,359
Speaker 1: and T for adanine, setosin squanine, and thymine uh. These

733
00:42:19,360 --> 00:42:22,040
Speaker 1: are the four nucleotides that compose the letters of the

734
00:42:22,120 --> 00:42:24,319
Speaker 1: DNA alphabet, right, so if you're going to spell out

735
00:42:24,320 --> 00:42:27,520
Speaker 1: a representation of your genome, you'd use those four letters.

736
00:42:27,560 --> 00:42:30,239
Speaker 1: So since those are letters that are already part of

737
00:42:30,280 --> 00:42:33,800
Speaker 1: the alphabet, that makes the Library of Babel the Library

738
00:42:33,800 --> 00:42:37,120
Speaker 1: of Mendel is a subset of the Library of Babel. Yeah,

739
00:42:37,239 --> 00:42:40,080
Speaker 1: and according to Dinnet, you needed to vote three thousand

740
00:42:40,239 --> 00:42:42,880
Speaker 1: of the five page volumes in the Library of Babbel

741
00:42:43,080 --> 00:42:46,680
Speaker 1: just to cover the human genome, which really library of Babble.

742
00:42:46,680 --> 00:42:51,960
Speaker 1: That's not really a problem. They're right, as we've discussed UM. However,

743
00:42:52,000 --> 00:42:54,440
Speaker 1: I hope that the purifiers in this case haven't been

744
00:42:54,440 --> 00:42:57,759
Speaker 1: destroying these copies. You just think they would, like they

745
00:42:57,840 --> 00:43:00,120
Speaker 1: come across a book that's just a bunch of A C, E,

746
00:43:00,200 --> 00:43:03,160
Speaker 1: T and G. What what what use is this? It

747
00:43:03,160 --> 00:43:06,280
Speaker 1: looks like more gibberish, but really just burning the Library

748
00:43:06,280 --> 00:43:09,560
Speaker 1: of Mendel volume after volume, and who knows we might

749
00:43:09,600 --> 00:43:11,920
Speaker 1: need those someday. Well, that sort of highlights another thing

750
00:43:11,920 --> 00:43:15,200
Speaker 1: about the Library of Babel, which is, uh, how do

751
00:43:15,280 --> 00:43:18,839
Speaker 1: you necessarily know when you've come across something of significance,

752
00:43:18,840 --> 00:43:21,040
Speaker 1: Like we've been assuming that you would know a book

753
00:43:21,040 --> 00:43:23,960
Speaker 1: of significance or preciousness when you found it, but it

754
00:43:24,080 --> 00:43:27,600
Speaker 1: might be encoding something for the code for which you

755
00:43:27,680 --> 00:43:33,080
Speaker 1: cannot read. So if if we're we're lining up the

756
00:43:33,080 --> 00:43:36,280
Speaker 1: Library of Mendel with the Library of Babbel or within it, UM,

757
00:43:36,320 --> 00:43:39,680
Speaker 1: this means that not only would the Library of Mendel

758
00:43:39,719 --> 00:43:43,280
Speaker 1: have all genomes, and it would also have all possible

759
00:43:43,320 --> 00:43:46,719
Speaker 1: genomes within its frame of reference. UM says, then it

760
00:43:46,760 --> 00:43:49,200
Speaker 1: puts it we're forced to quote start in the middle,

761
00:43:49,520 --> 00:43:52,000
Speaker 1: and we have only the current state of evolved biology

762
00:43:52,000 --> 00:43:54,640
Speaker 1: to consider as well as the terrestrial model. But then

763
00:43:54,640 --> 00:43:57,280
Speaker 1: they're gonna be all these other possibilities as well. Yeah,

764
00:43:57,320 --> 00:44:01,879
Speaker 1: so what what happens on Earth is not that you

765
00:44:02,120 --> 00:44:05,520
Speaker 1: look around and you find all possible variations on all

766
00:44:05,600 --> 00:44:10,040
Speaker 1: possible genes in uh or actually with the library of

767
00:44:10,040 --> 00:44:13,400
Speaker 1: mental would be all possible sequences of nucleotides and even

768
00:44:13,480 --> 00:44:17,520
Speaker 1: more minute than genes. Um, you don't see that in nature.

769
00:44:17,560 --> 00:44:21,000
Speaker 1: In fact, the nature that exists as a very tiny

770
00:44:21,080 --> 00:44:24,520
Speaker 1: subset of the library of mental. That's right. And then

771
00:44:24,560 --> 00:44:27,120
Speaker 1: there there's so much in the Library of Mental that,

772
00:44:27,239 --> 00:44:30,319
Speaker 1: like the Library of babble, would just be nonsense. Um,

773
00:44:30,520 --> 00:44:34,440
Speaker 1: the vast majority of it is gonna be just blueprint

774
00:44:34,600 --> 00:44:38,960
Speaker 1: blueprints for lifelessness. In quoting Richard Dawkins, he says, quote,

775
00:44:39,040 --> 00:44:42,440
Speaker 1: there are many more ways of being dead or not

776
00:44:42,560 --> 00:44:45,360
Speaker 1: alive than ways of being alive. I think that's a

777
00:44:45,400 --> 00:44:48,160
Speaker 1: good quote, and that makes sense. I mean, most recipes

778
00:44:48,200 --> 00:44:52,080
Speaker 1: you could come up with for building a building are

779
00:44:52,120 --> 00:44:55,920
Speaker 1: not actually going to be structurally viable. Most recipes you

780
00:44:55,960 --> 00:44:57,880
Speaker 1: could come up with for you know, if you're just

781
00:44:57,960 --> 00:45:02,200
Speaker 1: combining random chemicals to make food. Most of it would

782
00:45:02,200 --> 00:45:05,080
Speaker 1: not be edible. Oh my goodness. Yet imagine like we

783
00:45:05,080 --> 00:45:07,120
Speaker 1: haven't even talked about this, and I hadn't really thought

784
00:45:07,160 --> 00:45:10,120
Speaker 1: about it to now, But imagine cookbooks in the Library

785
00:45:10,120 --> 00:45:14,160
Speaker 1: of Babel, the baking cookbooks specifically, So many of these recipes,

786
00:45:14,320 --> 00:45:16,880
Speaker 1: the vast majority of the recipes are just gonna be

787
00:45:16,880 --> 00:45:20,320
Speaker 1: garbage creating, like creating not even like the bread doesn't rise,

788
00:45:20,440 --> 00:45:23,120
Speaker 1: the dough just just goops there at the bottom of

789
00:45:23,160 --> 00:45:26,040
Speaker 1: the pan. But what about the ones that are perfectly

790
00:45:26,200 --> 00:45:29,359
Speaker 1: excellent cookbooks except they all tell you to add one

791
00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:33,279
Speaker 1: bucket of cigarette butts to your recipe every time. Yeah,

792
00:45:33,640 --> 00:45:37,520
Speaker 1: or everything is delicious but also poisoned. But like many

793
00:45:37,560 --> 00:45:40,439
Speaker 1: of the books in the Library of Babel, I digress. Yeah, well,

794
00:45:40,520 --> 00:45:45,520
Speaker 1: so the library of Mendel as then it understands it

795
00:45:45,560 --> 00:45:49,120
Speaker 1: is sort of what he would call universal design space,

796
00:45:49,800 --> 00:45:53,640
Speaker 1: which is this multidimensional space that is how would you

797
00:45:53,680 --> 00:45:57,040
Speaker 1: describe it? Um? And this is my understanding, So I

798
00:45:57,320 --> 00:45:59,160
Speaker 1: might have it wrong, but the way I keep thinking

799
00:45:59,200 --> 00:46:03,400
Speaker 1: of it as that black bed on the light bright, okay,

800
00:46:03,520 --> 00:46:06,000
Speaker 1: in which you put the pegs and stuff against the

801
00:46:06,080 --> 00:46:07,880
Speaker 1: light up and and essentially if you took a light

802
00:46:07,960 --> 00:46:11,320
Speaker 1: bright and you made the tree of life on it. Um,

803
00:46:11,360 --> 00:46:14,719
Speaker 1: that's what the universal design space is, well, right, it's

804
00:46:14,760 --> 00:46:18,840
Speaker 1: the possible design space for things made out of DNA

805
00:46:19,040 --> 00:46:22,279
Speaker 1: in the way we understand DNA, and like we said,

806
00:46:22,320 --> 00:46:26,320
Speaker 1: that contains tons and tons of possible combinations that don't

807
00:46:26,400 --> 00:46:29,320
Speaker 1: lead to anything like what we would call life for

808
00:46:29,520 --> 00:46:33,520
Speaker 1: successful life. Right. And also this universal design space would

809
00:46:33,520 --> 00:46:39,040
Speaker 1: contain all actual complex phenomena, both biological designs and cultural designs,

810
00:46:39,080 --> 00:46:43,520
Speaker 1: so it would contain bacteria, apes, humans, books about eights,

811
00:46:43,880 --> 00:46:49,680
Speaker 1: jokes about eights, great eight movies, bad eight movies, etcetera. Yeah,

812
00:46:49,719 --> 00:46:53,839
Speaker 1: I love the way that this connects information at all levels.

813
00:46:53,880 --> 00:46:56,680
Speaker 1: So within the Library of Babel, you have both the

814
00:46:56,760 --> 00:47:00,759
Speaker 1: recipe for making my genome, so you could say, uh,

815
00:47:00,920 --> 00:47:05,120
Speaker 1: physical information in a way, the information contained in the molecules,

816
00:47:05,160 --> 00:47:08,719
Speaker 1: but also every story I've ever written, which you could

817
00:47:08,800 --> 00:47:12,839
Speaker 1: consider part of my genetic phenotype. Right, it's the molecules

818
00:47:12,840 --> 00:47:17,160
Speaker 1: in my DNA have, in combination with external circumstances, ultimately

819
00:47:17,239 --> 00:47:21,160
Speaker 1: led to the creation of every bit of intellectual work

820
00:47:21,200 --> 00:47:23,120
Speaker 1: I've ever done. And this is the same for all

821
00:47:23,160 --> 00:47:28,040
Speaker 1: of us. And both are subsets of the Library of Babel. Yeah,

822
00:47:28,360 --> 00:47:30,640
Speaker 1: I'm going to read another quick quote from Adnit here.

823
00:47:30,960 --> 00:47:35,640
Speaker 1: According to Darwin's dangerous idea, all possible explorations of design

824
00:47:35,680 --> 00:47:38,880
Speaker 1: space are connected not only all your children and your

825
00:47:38,960 --> 00:47:42,320
Speaker 1: children's children, but all your brain children and your brain

826
00:47:42,400 --> 00:47:45,759
Speaker 1: children's brain children must grow from the common stock of

827
00:47:45,840 --> 00:47:49,400
Speaker 1: design elements, genes and memes that have so far been

828
00:47:49,440 --> 00:47:54,000
Speaker 1: accumulated and conserved by the inexorable lifting algorithms, the ramps

829
00:47:54,040 --> 00:47:57,920
Speaker 1: and cranes and cranes the top cranes of natural selection

830
00:47:58,320 --> 00:48:01,560
Speaker 1: and its products. And just to explain really quick there,

831
00:48:01,760 --> 00:48:05,040
Speaker 1: dinn't when he talks about cranes. He has this idea

832
00:48:05,160 --> 00:48:11,120
Speaker 1: of design being the difference between the metaphors of cranes

833
00:48:11,160 --> 00:48:14,439
Speaker 1: and the metaphors of sky hooks. Sky Hooks are these

834
00:48:14,480 --> 00:48:17,920
Speaker 1: ideas that he thinks about design coming from the top down,

835
00:48:18,120 --> 00:48:23,360
Speaker 1: reaching in and and uh making something without any previous precedent,

836
00:48:23,680 --> 00:48:26,759
Speaker 1: whereas cranes are things that build from the ground up,

837
00:48:26,840 --> 00:48:30,360
Speaker 1: and they can become higher and higher based on bases

838
00:48:30,440 --> 00:48:33,040
Speaker 1: that have already been built standing on the backbone on

839
00:48:33,120 --> 00:48:36,480
Speaker 1: the backs of giants. Yeah, exactly so. So natural selection

840
00:48:36,680 --> 00:48:39,319
Speaker 1: is a crane algorithm, as he would describe it as

841
00:48:39,360 --> 00:48:43,040
Speaker 1: something that builds from the ground up. So thinking of

842
00:48:43,080 --> 00:48:46,000
Speaker 1: the Library of Babbel or the Library of Mental as

843
00:48:46,200 --> 00:48:49,480
Speaker 1: spaces of possibility that are different than the spaces of

844
00:48:49,520 --> 00:48:52,640
Speaker 1: what can actually be achieved in terms of living organisms.

845
00:48:53,160 --> 00:48:55,080
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting that dinn It goes on to

846
00:48:55,680 --> 00:48:59,520
Speaker 1: he puts together this diagram that's concentric circles of different

847
00:48:59,560 --> 00:49:03,080
Speaker 1: types of possibility that the Library of Babel and the

848
00:49:03,120 --> 00:49:06,080
Speaker 1: Library of Mental help us think about. And I like

849
00:49:06,200 --> 00:49:09,040
Speaker 1: this because I think possibility is a word that very

850
00:49:09,080 --> 00:49:13,680
Speaker 1: often gets equivocated on in our conversation. So think about

851
00:49:13,680 --> 00:49:16,840
Speaker 1: these concentric circles of possibilities like a Venn diagram, but

852
00:49:16,920 --> 00:49:19,960
Speaker 1: each circles inside the bigger one. So the smallest circle

853
00:49:20,000 --> 00:49:25,240
Speaker 1: in the middle is what's actually true. So the example

854
00:49:25,239 --> 00:49:28,000
Speaker 1: he gives his President Clinton, there has been a real

855
00:49:28,040 --> 00:49:31,359
Speaker 1: President Clinton that actually happened. It's true. We might even

856
00:49:31,360 --> 00:49:35,879
Speaker 1: get another one maybe. So but then there is historical possibility,

857
00:49:36,120 --> 00:49:41,960
Speaker 1: right President Goldwater could have happened, but given historical circumstances,

858
00:49:42,000 --> 00:49:45,080
Speaker 1: it didn't. All of the all of the pieces were

859
00:49:45,080 --> 00:49:47,439
Speaker 1: there that it seemed like it could have happened. It's

860
00:49:47,480 --> 00:49:51,120
Speaker 1: just not how the universe went, Uh, then there is

861
00:49:51,239 --> 00:49:55,200
Speaker 1: biological possibility. That's a bigger circle which the example he

862
00:49:55,239 --> 00:49:58,920
Speaker 1: gives his striped giraffe could have happened, given what's possible

863
00:49:58,960 --> 00:50:01,960
Speaker 1: with life on Earth. It didn't. Now, technically we do

864
00:50:02,040 --> 00:50:07,160
Speaker 1: have copies which which are not striped giraffes, but they

865
00:50:07,160 --> 00:50:09,880
Speaker 1: are kind of that they're related to giraffes and are

866
00:50:09,920 --> 00:50:15,000
Speaker 1: kind of like a forest giraffe with some zebra esque stripes. Well,

867
00:50:15,880 --> 00:50:18,799
Speaker 1: you know that that's a danger we always play with

868
00:50:18,800 --> 00:50:20,880
Speaker 1: when we entered the realm of talking about what's possible,

869
00:50:20,960 --> 00:50:24,239
Speaker 1: we don't even always know what's really happened. But then

870
00:50:24,280 --> 00:50:28,960
Speaker 1: bigger than biological possibility is physical possibility. With the example

871
00:50:29,000 --> 00:50:31,960
Speaker 1: he gives is a flying horse so doesn't violate the

872
00:50:32,040 --> 00:50:35,359
Speaker 1: laws of physics, is just you know, it's not something

873
00:50:35,640 --> 00:50:37,520
Speaker 1: that you're going to see in the biological world. It's

874
00:50:37,560 --> 00:50:40,120
Speaker 1: kind of like getting into our flying fish episode where

875
00:50:40,120 --> 00:50:43,040
Speaker 1: we talked about, you know, the problem with first of

876
00:50:43,080 --> 00:50:46,360
Speaker 1: all recognizing the fact that there could be a fish

877
00:50:46,440 --> 00:50:50,720
Speaker 1: biologically with wings that could fly and not just glide

878
00:50:50,719 --> 00:50:54,080
Speaker 1: across the water, and yet it does not exist. And

879
00:50:54,120 --> 00:50:58,719
Speaker 1: then finally, the biggest circle of possibility is logical possibility,

880
00:50:59,080 --> 00:51:03,280
Speaker 1: which is Superman. So Superman is also not physically possible.

881
00:51:03,360 --> 00:51:06,000
Speaker 1: It violates the laws of physics, but it's not logically

882
00:51:06,040 --> 00:51:10,240
Speaker 1: impossible because it doesn't entail a logical contradiction. It doesn't

883
00:51:10,360 --> 00:51:14,000
Speaker 1: entail both A and not A. So you could say

884
00:51:14,040 --> 00:51:18,239
Speaker 1: it's possible. And I think that it's interesting because everything

885
00:51:18,320 --> 00:51:21,719
Speaker 1: that is logically possible is in the Library of Babel, right,

886
00:51:22,360 --> 00:51:25,400
Speaker 1: All descriptions that are logically possible are in the Library

887
00:51:25,400 --> 00:51:31,720
Speaker 1: of Babel. And and as a subset, every description that's

888
00:51:31,800 --> 00:51:36,520
Speaker 1: physically possible in terms of the the nucleotides listed is

889
00:51:36,760 --> 00:51:39,920
Speaker 1: in the Library of Mendel. But then the subset of that,

890
00:51:40,000 --> 00:51:44,960
Speaker 1: everything that's biologically possible, is the biology that we actually

891
00:51:45,000 --> 00:51:47,480
Speaker 1: see or that could actually evolve from the tree of

892
00:51:47,520 --> 00:51:50,839
Speaker 1: life as it exists today. But I want to move

893
00:51:50,880 --> 00:51:54,279
Speaker 1: on to another application of the Library of Babel, and

894
00:51:54,440 --> 00:51:56,520
Speaker 1: because I think we were about about to get lost

895
00:51:56,600 --> 00:52:01,360
Speaker 1: with the mean uh and that's uh the work of

896
00:52:01,400 --> 00:52:05,560
Speaker 1: the American philosopher and logician W. V. O. Quine. So

897
00:52:05,760 --> 00:52:08,440
Speaker 1: Quine wrote a very short piece on the Library of

898
00:52:08,440 --> 00:52:12,279
Speaker 1: Babel called the Universal Library Essay, and I recommend you

899
00:52:12,280 --> 00:52:16,040
Speaker 1: can check this out yourself because it's incredibly short, very concise,

900
00:52:16,120 --> 00:52:17,640
Speaker 1: so I want to read a quote from it. Where

901
00:52:17,719 --> 00:52:21,440
Speaker 1: Quine also he sort of reformulates the library in the

902
00:52:21,440 --> 00:52:23,920
Speaker 1: same way Dennett did, just playing around with some numbers

903
00:52:23,960 --> 00:52:27,680
Speaker 1: to get different numbers, but the same principle. Quin says,

904
00:52:27,719 --> 00:52:30,399
Speaker 1: at two thousand characters to the page, we get five

905
00:52:30,480 --> 00:52:33,360
Speaker 1: hundred thousand to the two hundred and fifty page volume.

906
00:52:33,760 --> 00:52:37,400
Speaker 1: So with say eight capitals and smalls and other marks

907
00:52:37,440 --> 00:52:39,719
Speaker 1: to choose from, I wonder what those other marks are,

908
00:52:39,840 --> 00:52:43,200
Speaker 1: maybe a lot of hashtags. We arrive at the five

909
00:52:43,280 --> 00:52:46,640
Speaker 1: hundred thousand power of eighty as the total number of

910
00:52:46,680 --> 00:52:49,440
Speaker 1: books in the library. I gather that there is not

911
00:52:49,800 --> 00:52:52,400
Speaker 1: room in the present phase of our expanding universe on

912
00:52:52,520 --> 00:52:56,240
Speaker 1: present estimates for more than a negligible fraction of the collection.

913
00:52:56,760 --> 00:52:59,520
Speaker 1: Numbers are cheap, so he's arrived at the same conclusion

914
00:52:59,560 --> 00:53:02,279
Speaker 1: as other before. This wouldn't fit in the universe, and

915
00:53:02,320 --> 00:53:04,960
Speaker 1: I like the expression numbers are cheap, especially when you

916
00:53:05,000 --> 00:53:08,719
Speaker 1: have notation like exponential notation. You can write out a

917
00:53:08,840 --> 00:53:12,080
Speaker 1: number like twenty five to the one million, three hundred

918
00:53:12,120 --> 00:53:16,040
Speaker 1: and twelve power, but just writing that on the page,

919
00:53:16,040 --> 00:53:19,520
Speaker 1: it's a kind of small marking notation. But it denotes

920
00:53:19,600 --> 00:53:23,360
Speaker 1: something that could not possibly be contained in the universe.

921
00:53:23,880 --> 00:53:26,360
Speaker 1: But Quine draws this back to something we've mentioned before.

922
00:53:26,440 --> 00:53:29,480
Speaker 1: The number of books in the library, while bigger than

923
00:53:29,520 --> 00:53:34,480
Speaker 1: could be contained, is not infinite. It's definitely finite. At

924
00:53:34,480 --> 00:53:38,560
Speaker 1: a certain point, you could catalog every possible book in

925
00:53:38,600 --> 00:53:42,120
Speaker 1: the Library of Babel, just not in this universe, and

926
00:53:42,239 --> 00:53:46,279
Speaker 1: yet quote the entire and ultimate truth about everything is

927
00:53:46,280 --> 00:53:50,279
Speaker 1: printed in full in that library. After all, insofar as

928
00:53:50,320 --> 00:53:53,600
Speaker 1: it can be put into words at all, every true

929
00:53:53,640 --> 00:53:58,359
Speaker 1: statement and every false statement you could possibly make are

930
00:53:58,440 --> 00:54:03,000
Speaker 1: in the library. And yet the library is finite. So,

931
00:54:03,120 --> 00:54:07,280
Speaker 1: for instance, there there is that mythical or not mythical,

932
00:54:07,280 --> 00:54:10,560
Speaker 1: but at least an elusive book or series of books

933
00:54:10,600 --> 00:54:13,080
Speaker 1: that that outline the location of all the books in

934
00:54:13,120 --> 00:54:17,160
Speaker 1: the Library of Battle. But then there are all possible

935
00:54:17,560 --> 00:54:23,439
Speaker 1: inferior copies and misleading copies of that same series, long, long, long,

936
00:54:23,480 --> 00:54:27,160
Speaker 1: long series of books. Uh that that that offered to

937
00:54:27,200 --> 00:54:29,720
Speaker 1: show you where everything is, and don't there's the catalog

938
00:54:29,760 --> 00:54:32,760
Speaker 1: that tells you to dive over the spiral staircase railing

939
00:54:32,800 --> 00:54:35,600
Speaker 1: and and just fall until you come to the Crimson hexagon.

940
00:54:35,719 --> 00:54:37,759
Speaker 1: And it's lying to you because the problem is you'll

941
00:54:37,760 --> 00:54:40,799
Speaker 1: pretty much keep falling forever. Oh wow, and we haven't

942
00:54:40,800 --> 00:54:43,200
Speaker 1: even gotten to how the toilets work here, Like, that's

943
00:54:43,239 --> 00:54:46,520
Speaker 1: not covered in Borg's book at all. How what's the

944
00:54:46,520 --> 00:54:49,040
Speaker 1: plumbing life? But it is covered in some book in

945
00:54:49,040 --> 00:54:52,000
Speaker 1: the library. Yeah, there is a book in the library

946
00:54:52,000 --> 00:54:55,680
Speaker 1: that just deals exhaustively explains where the plumbing goes, does it?

947
00:54:55,840 --> 00:54:58,920
Speaker 1: I wonder where it goes. If there's an end to

948
00:54:59,080 --> 00:55:01,920
Speaker 1: the Library of Apple, then there is an end to

949
00:55:02,040 --> 00:55:06,120
Speaker 1: those interconnected pipes that carry all the the fecal matter

950
00:55:06,239 --> 00:55:08,720
Speaker 1: and urine A way right, and of course the watered

951
00:55:08,800 --> 00:55:13,000
Speaker 1: up pieces of of nonsense books that are being used

952
00:55:13,000 --> 00:55:16,160
Speaker 1: for to all of the sewage plumbing goes directly to

953
00:55:16,200 --> 00:55:21,720
Speaker 1: the hexagon housing unauthorized biographies of celebrities who recently passed away.

954
00:55:22,760 --> 00:55:26,120
Speaker 1: While you say that, Joe, but remember in the Library

955
00:55:26,120 --> 00:55:30,919
Speaker 1: of Babel there is an unauthorized autobiography of say Heath

956
00:55:31,040 --> 00:55:34,040
Speaker 1: Ledger that is not that is not only good, but

957
00:55:34,120 --> 00:55:41,000
Speaker 1: it is great. An unauthorized autobiography would be the biography.

958
00:55:41,040 --> 00:55:44,279
Speaker 1: But but that's the thing. Any mistake I make in

959
00:55:44,360 --> 00:55:47,320
Speaker 1: speaking the Library of Babbel has me covered. It exists,

960
00:55:48,120 --> 00:55:50,640
Speaker 1: is it factful. Is it is there truth in it?

961
00:55:50,960 --> 00:55:55,680
Speaker 1: I don't know, but it could still be entertaining. Maybe

962
00:55:55,680 --> 00:56:00,279
Speaker 1: it's unauthorized by the heath Ledger of our universe, that

963
00:56:00,400 --> 00:56:02,880
Speaker 1: it was, but it is authorized by the heath Ledger

964
00:56:02,920 --> 00:56:05,520
Speaker 1: of an alternate universe. Yeah, well that would be there,

965
00:56:05,520 --> 00:56:07,839
Speaker 1: wouldn't it. Okay, So I got to bring it back

966
00:56:07,880 --> 00:56:10,120
Speaker 1: to Quine. So back to Quine. We we've mentioned a

967
00:56:10,120 --> 00:56:14,200
Speaker 1: couple of times now that there's this principle that, well,

968
00:56:14,239 --> 00:56:17,360
Speaker 1: what if a book takes more than pages to express,

969
00:56:17,480 --> 00:56:19,640
Speaker 1: you know, that can't be in the library. But it

970
00:56:19,680 --> 00:56:23,279
Speaker 1: can be because it gets picked up right where it

971
00:56:23,400 --> 00:56:26,200
Speaker 1: left off in a second volume, and a third if necessary,

972
00:56:26,200 --> 00:56:29,160
Speaker 1: and so on, and all those volumes are in the library.

973
00:56:29,320 --> 00:56:32,600
Speaker 1: You have like Showgun volume one, Shogun volume two. Yeah,

974
00:56:32,960 --> 00:56:37,040
Speaker 1: it never ends. But given this principle that messages can

975
00:56:37,080 --> 00:56:40,839
Speaker 1: be spread across multiple volumes, Quine realizes that you can

976
00:56:40,960 --> 00:56:45,120
Speaker 1: use a form of Morse code to massively downsize the

977
00:56:45,160 --> 00:56:50,359
Speaker 1: library to exactly two books with one page each. One

978
00:56:50,400 --> 00:56:53,040
Speaker 1: book is a single page with a dash, and the

979
00:56:53,120 --> 00:56:55,680
Speaker 1: other is a single page with a dot. And by

980
00:56:55,719 --> 00:56:58,600
Speaker 1: reading these books back and forth in various orders, you

981
00:56:58,640 --> 00:57:02,640
Speaker 1: can code any alphabetic sequence in a simplified form of

982
00:57:02,640 --> 00:57:06,279
Speaker 1: Morse code. Now the library has massively shrunken size, but

983
00:57:06,360 --> 00:57:10,600
Speaker 1: it has the exact same encoding power if you were to,

984
00:57:11,040 --> 00:57:14,480
Speaker 1: you know, if you're to actually map out the combinations

985
00:57:14,520 --> 00:57:19,200
Speaker 1: and do all of the same possible combinations. Huh. But

986
00:57:19,320 --> 00:57:22,040
Speaker 1: let's think about it in another way. You can replace

987
00:57:22,120 --> 00:57:24,680
Speaker 1: the dot and the dash with a zero and a one,

988
00:57:25,480 --> 00:57:28,360
Speaker 1: or of course, and on an off switch. In other words,

989
00:57:28,520 --> 00:57:32,560
Speaker 1: binary code and your universal library has become the same

990
00:57:32,600 --> 00:57:36,600
Speaker 1: type of information storage system that exists inside your computer.

991
00:57:37,360 --> 00:57:40,080
Speaker 1: And this illuminates a principle that Alan Turing and others

992
00:57:40,080 --> 00:57:45,200
Speaker 1: observed about the binary computer. It's universal, like any information

993
00:57:45,280 --> 00:57:48,760
Speaker 1: or operation that can be represented in code, which potentially

994
00:57:48,880 --> 00:57:52,360
Speaker 1: is all information or operations depending on you know, your

995
00:57:52,360 --> 00:57:57,840
Speaker 1: philosophical orientation to that question, it can be represented by

996
00:57:58,040 --> 00:58:02,440
Speaker 1: universal binary machine. So, on one hand, this seems to

997
00:58:02,440 --> 00:58:04,880
Speaker 1: sort of violate the allure of the library. Right in

998
00:58:04,920 --> 00:58:08,080
Speaker 1: the library of Babel, there are already in existence, the

999
00:58:08,120 --> 00:58:11,760
Speaker 1: precious books. They're already out there, the books of ultimate potential,

1000
00:58:11,800 --> 00:58:16,600
Speaker 1: beauty and truth physically exist. We just have to find them.

1001
00:58:16,640 --> 00:58:20,000
Speaker 1: But in the binary universal library, we'd have to encode

1002
00:58:20,080 --> 00:58:24,400
Speaker 1: those books ourselves. But maybe this disconnects sort of highlights

1003
00:58:24,400 --> 00:58:27,680
Speaker 1: and inherent irony in the mathematics of the Library of Babel.

1004
00:58:28,440 --> 00:58:31,440
Speaker 1: Those books exist in the Library of Babel, but for

1005
00:58:31,520 --> 00:58:35,600
Speaker 1: any individual librarian, they will never ever be found. We

1006
00:58:35,640 --> 00:58:38,960
Speaker 1: would be, as we said, extremely lucky to discover a

1007
00:58:38,960 --> 00:58:42,200
Speaker 1: book with one tin word long sentence that makes sense.

1008
00:58:43,680 --> 00:58:45,200
Speaker 1: And so we're sort of back to the monkeys with

1009
00:58:45,240 --> 00:58:49,080
Speaker 1: typewriters in the library of Babel. You're watching the monkeys

1010
00:58:49,120 --> 00:58:51,960
Speaker 1: type at random and hoping they give you the complete

1011
00:58:51,960 --> 00:58:54,800
Speaker 1: works of Shakespeare, but they're never gonna do it. In

1012
00:58:55,000 --> 00:58:58,640
Speaker 1: quines to volume library, you yourself are the monkey typing

1013
00:58:58,680 --> 00:59:01,680
Speaker 1: at random. It makes no difference in terms of the

1014
00:59:01,720 --> 00:59:05,320
Speaker 1: knowledge discovered, just how it feels to be a part

1015
00:59:05,400 --> 00:59:08,840
Speaker 1: of the discovery system. So what you need is an

1016
00:59:08,880 --> 00:59:12,080
Speaker 1: interface on top of client system, such such as say

1017
00:59:12,120 --> 00:59:17,000
Speaker 1: a pink Kindle, instantly search out the books you want

1018
00:59:17,520 --> 00:59:21,080
Speaker 1: um from all the possible books out there in the

1019
00:59:21,160 --> 00:59:24,160
Speaker 1: library right now. This is of course, a very different

1020
00:59:24,160 --> 00:59:26,760
Speaker 1: way than the way we actually generate books in reality,

1021
00:59:26,800 --> 00:59:31,000
Speaker 1: which is, in reality we use heuristic shortcuts of intelligence,

1022
00:59:31,080 --> 00:59:34,720
Speaker 1: human brain power, creativity to try to limit the size

1023
00:59:34,720 --> 00:59:37,440
Speaker 1: of the total number of possible books and only generate

1024
00:59:37,520 --> 00:59:40,400
Speaker 1: books that more or less makes sense, at least hopefully

1025
00:59:40,440 --> 00:59:43,840
Speaker 1: in the author's mind. Yeah, generally you're you're the author's

1026
00:59:43,960 --> 00:59:48,520
Speaker 1: only writing, you know, six to eight versions of that book, right,

1027
00:59:48,760 --> 00:59:52,080
Speaker 1: But when when limiting the noise like that, we are

1028
00:59:52,120 --> 00:59:56,200
Speaker 1: also limiting the signal, So there's a given take. So

1029
00:59:56,760 --> 00:59:59,040
Speaker 1: by by cutting out all of the nonsense books, we

1030
00:59:59,120 --> 01:00:03,360
Speaker 1: massively reduce start searching for significance project, but we also

1031
01:00:03,480 --> 01:00:07,520
Speaker 1: eliminate possibly the most precious books out there because we

1032
01:00:07,600 --> 01:00:11,280
Speaker 1: just didn't think to create them. Yeah, we thought to

1033
01:00:11,320 --> 01:00:15,920
Speaker 1: create them, and then that's time right, right. Isn't that

1034
01:00:15,960 --> 01:00:18,880
Speaker 1: funny that the Library of Babbel makes me feel even

1035
01:00:19,000 --> 01:00:22,120
Speaker 1: worse about about all of the books I want to

1036
01:00:22,160 --> 01:00:24,360
Speaker 1: read and don't get around to reading because we don't

1037
01:00:24,360 --> 01:00:27,480
Speaker 1: live in the Library of Babel. We live in Uh well,

1038
01:00:27,520 --> 01:00:29,040
Speaker 1: you could say we live in a version of the

1039
01:00:29,080 --> 01:00:31,760
Speaker 1: Library of Babel that is the universe. But in terms

1040
01:00:31,760 --> 01:00:35,000
Speaker 1: of the readable library of books available to us, it's

1041
01:00:35,040 --> 01:00:37,200
Speaker 1: not the Library of Babel. It's mostly books that just

1042
01:00:37,280 --> 01:00:39,560
Speaker 1: makes sense, and I still don't get to all the

1043
01:00:39,560 --> 01:00:42,160
Speaker 1: books that I should be reading. Not only does it

1044
01:00:42,160 --> 01:00:45,280
Speaker 1: contain all the books you should be reading, all the

1045
01:00:45,280 --> 01:00:48,120
Speaker 1: books you want to read. It contains all the books

1046
01:00:48,120 --> 01:00:50,880
Speaker 1: you could have written, all the books you could write

1047
01:00:50,920 --> 01:00:53,439
Speaker 1: in your life, which is it's kind of a very

1048
01:00:53,440 --> 01:00:56,680
Speaker 1: heartbreaking thing to think of as a writer, Like when

1049
01:00:56,680 --> 01:00:59,840
Speaker 1: you didn't have time to write last week, Well, that

1050
01:01:00,040 --> 01:01:03,000
Speaker 1: story that you would have written, it's in that collection, somewhere,

1051
01:01:03,040 --> 01:01:07,760
Speaker 1: somewhere loft in the the the the seemingly infinite but

1052
01:01:07,880 --> 01:01:12,960
Speaker 1: ultimately finite honeycomb of books set ablaze by a purifier.

1053
01:01:14,320 --> 01:01:17,560
Speaker 1: Another idea that this made me think about is if

1054
01:01:17,560 --> 01:01:22,800
Speaker 1: a world contains all possible combinations of code of information

1055
01:01:22,880 --> 01:01:26,520
Speaker 1: signaling code, so all possible information, is it in fact

1056
01:01:26,720 --> 01:01:33,439
Speaker 1: no different than something that contains no information whatsoever? Yeah? Yeah,

1057
01:01:33,480 --> 01:01:37,360
Speaker 1: it really does, doesn't it. It's um it's like saying that, however,

1058
01:01:37,360 --> 01:01:40,919
Speaker 1: I put all possible colors into this paint, can look

1059
01:01:40,920 --> 01:01:43,040
Speaker 1: at this wonderful color I have, No, you just have

1060
01:01:43,200 --> 01:01:46,880
Speaker 1: black at this point, you just have or some weird brown. Um.

1061
01:01:46,920 --> 01:01:49,600
Speaker 1: It's not the same as saying that it actually encompasses

1062
01:01:49,680 --> 01:01:52,920
Speaker 1: all of these uh, these these pure elements. On a

1063
01:01:53,000 --> 01:01:55,880
Speaker 1: much smaller scale. This makes me think back on you know,

1064
01:01:55,920 --> 01:01:58,960
Speaker 1: not too long ago. I was watching Oh it is

1065
01:01:59,040 --> 01:02:01,640
Speaker 1: something on YouTube. Is a c SPAN event from the

1066
01:02:01,720 --> 01:02:03,960
Speaker 1: early two thousands or late nineties, I think, And it

1067
01:02:04,040 --> 01:02:08,200
Speaker 1: was some journalists talking. I wish I could remember who, uh,

1068
01:02:08,520 --> 01:02:11,040
Speaker 1: but some journalists talking about the impact of the Internet

1069
01:02:11,400 --> 01:02:13,960
Speaker 1: on the spread of information. And I remember hearing the

1070
01:02:14,000 --> 01:02:16,160
Speaker 1: sentiment that, you know, they were saying, well, the Internet

1071
01:02:16,240 --> 01:02:19,040
Speaker 1: is great because it opens up all these uh you know,

1072
01:02:19,120 --> 01:02:21,760
Speaker 1: new channel. Anybody can start a blog and share their

1073
01:02:21,800 --> 01:02:25,120
Speaker 1: perspective and stuff like that. And I think about the

1074
01:02:25,200 --> 01:02:30,240
Speaker 1: cacaphony of of information or should we call it information,

1075
01:02:30,280 --> 01:02:33,600
Speaker 1: the cacophony of voices that we live in now. You know,

1076
01:02:33,640 --> 01:02:36,040
Speaker 1: I can't say that I would prefer to live in

1077
01:02:36,080 --> 01:02:40,680
Speaker 1: a world where where there were fewer people talking about things.

1078
01:02:40,720 --> 01:02:43,920
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I can't say that I

1079
01:02:43,920 --> 01:02:50,080
Speaker 1: feel really enriched by the quantity of perspective and opinion

1080
01:02:50,200 --> 01:02:55,280
Speaker 1: being shared on the internet. You know, yeah, yeah, I agree.

1081
01:02:56,080 --> 01:02:59,640
Speaker 1: Now here's a question for you, Uh, As long as

1082
01:02:59,680 --> 01:03:03,640
Speaker 1: we're playing with the ideas that spiral out endlessly from

1083
01:03:03,680 --> 01:03:07,480
Speaker 1: the library of babble, here, imagine a future in which

1084
01:03:08,160 --> 01:03:10,240
Speaker 1: you know, we have we all have virtual worlds that

1085
01:03:10,280 --> 01:03:14,800
Speaker 1: we've built, and someone creates not only not something far

1086
01:03:14,880 --> 01:03:17,640
Speaker 1: beyond our current online version of the Library of Babble.

1087
01:03:17,880 --> 01:03:22,560
Speaker 1: Imagine a functional virtual library of babbel world. You put

1088
01:03:22,560 --> 01:03:25,160
Speaker 1: on your headset, you climb into your tank, turn on

1089
01:03:25,200 --> 01:03:27,640
Speaker 1: your you know, your drip, and then you're in there,

1090
01:03:28,120 --> 01:03:32,920
Speaker 1: and the computer is actually creating each room as you go.

1091
01:03:33,520 --> 01:03:36,480
Speaker 1: The nonsense books. It would have to be procedurally generated

1092
01:03:36,480 --> 01:03:40,080
Speaker 1: because a computer storage system could not store the entire library.

1093
01:03:40,320 --> 01:03:42,560
Speaker 1: Have to create as as you go, and and so.

1094
01:03:42,600 --> 01:03:46,920
Speaker 1: But as you go, it is actually writing non existent books,

1095
01:03:47,200 --> 01:03:51,640
Speaker 1: is writing um different versions of books that already exist.

1096
01:03:53,320 --> 01:03:56,560
Speaker 1: It seems feasible, and certainly when we start to start

1097
01:03:56,600 --> 01:03:59,960
Speaker 1: considering the end of the possibility of of of AI

1098
01:04:00,320 --> 01:04:04,680
Speaker 1: writers AI artists, could we reach a point where the

1099
01:04:04,720 --> 01:04:07,600
Speaker 1: Library of Babble exists in in in in in actually

1100
01:04:07,640 --> 01:04:11,520
Speaker 1: trying to come up with new ideas for non existent books.

1101
01:04:12,000 --> 01:04:15,120
Speaker 1: Instead of dreaming them up ourselves, we are actually questioning

1102
01:04:15,160 --> 01:04:19,880
Speaker 1: through the library and forcing this randomized artificial intelligence to

1103
01:04:20,000 --> 01:04:23,080
Speaker 1: create them. No, I think that would never work. Yeah, well,

1104
01:04:23,120 --> 01:04:25,400
Speaker 1: because the library is too vast. Like we've said, you

1105
01:04:25,400 --> 01:04:28,240
Speaker 1: would come across just pure nonsense. You could wander through

1106
01:04:28,240 --> 01:04:31,560
Speaker 1: this virtual library, your whole life and find almost nothing

1107
01:04:31,600 --> 01:04:35,480
Speaker 1: but complete nonsense. Maybe one day you'd find three words

1108
01:04:35,480 --> 01:04:38,160
Speaker 1: in a row that made some kind of grammatical sense.

1109
01:04:38,960 --> 01:04:42,200
Speaker 1: Would that be worth it? I feel like it might

1110
01:04:42,200 --> 01:04:45,560
Speaker 1: be worth it to wander this library if the library

1111
01:04:45,640 --> 01:04:49,560
Speaker 1: was made real in a virtual setting. Can you imagine,

1112
01:04:49,600 --> 01:04:51,720
Speaker 1: like the the excitement you would feel when you actually

1113
01:04:51,760 --> 01:04:57,440
Speaker 1: found something readable? Uh? I can imagine actual plans of

1114
01:04:57,560 --> 01:05:00,520
Speaker 1: purifiers and other sex that would be wandering ring. I

1115
01:05:00,520 --> 01:05:03,320
Speaker 1: don't know. I Well, so here's one thing. Maybe we

1116
01:05:03,360 --> 01:05:06,439
Speaker 1: could uh massively narrow the size of the library still

1117
01:05:06,440 --> 01:05:10,400
Speaker 1: be astronomical and impossible, but impossible to find something all

1118
01:05:10,520 --> 01:05:13,160
Speaker 1: that valuable. But what if you limited it to words

1119
01:05:13,160 --> 01:05:16,720
Speaker 1: in a dictionary, So a procedurally generated library of babble that,

1120
01:05:16,800 --> 01:05:20,280
Speaker 1: instead of all possible combinations of characters, was all possible

1121
01:05:20,320 --> 01:05:25,720
Speaker 1: combinations of words that exist in a dictionary in your language. Yeah,

1122
01:05:25,880 --> 01:05:28,720
Speaker 1: I guess that would narrow it somewhat, but it's still

1123
01:05:28,760 --> 01:05:32,760
Speaker 1: mostly be gibberish, wouldn't it Huh? I guess I can't

1124
01:05:32,760 --> 01:05:35,080
Speaker 1: help but think of it, because I um I recently

1125
01:05:35,120 --> 01:05:38,040
Speaker 1: read Ready Player one. Are familiar with this book? I've

1126
01:05:38,040 --> 01:05:40,080
Speaker 1: heard of it, but I haven't read it. It's pretty fun,

1127
01:05:40,160 --> 01:05:43,040
Speaker 1: fun book about virtual worlds and recreations of things that

1128
01:05:43,120 --> 01:05:46,240
Speaker 1: exist in pop culture. Library of Babble does not come up,

1129
01:05:47,320 --> 01:05:50,320
Speaker 1: But I can't help but think about that, especially since

1130
01:05:50,360 --> 01:05:52,479
Speaker 1: that book deals with the virtual world that contains easter

1131
01:05:52,560 --> 01:05:54,960
Speaker 1: eggs that people are searching for, you know, these little

1132
01:05:55,040 --> 01:05:58,120
Speaker 1: nuggets of meaning, and essentially they're trying to find a U,

1133
01:05:59,400 --> 01:06:03,160
Speaker 1: a Crimson exagon of a sort in that book. So

1134
01:06:03,840 --> 01:06:07,000
Speaker 1: you know, I can't help but think about the Library

1135
01:06:07,000 --> 01:06:11,520
Speaker 1: of Babel as an analogy to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

1136
01:06:12,160 --> 01:06:15,800
Speaker 1: You know the vast scale of the universe and are

1137
01:06:16,480 --> 01:06:19,360
Speaker 1: the only difference is that the Library of Babel you

1138
01:06:19,400 --> 01:06:22,760
Speaker 1: can know how much there is and you can sort

1139
01:06:22,800 --> 01:06:24,720
Speaker 1: of say, well, here are the types of things we'd

1140
01:06:24,720 --> 01:06:28,520
Speaker 1: be looking for for books that makes sense. But we're

1141
01:06:28,520 --> 01:06:31,280
Speaker 1: still looking for books that makes sense from our perspective, right,

1142
01:06:31,560 --> 01:06:34,600
Speaker 1: based on our model of sensical books. And maybe in

1143
01:06:34,680 --> 01:06:39,160
Speaker 1: reality we're no better than the purifiers running around setting

1144
01:06:39,200 --> 01:06:42,480
Speaker 1: things a light because they don't just dismissing things because

1145
01:06:42,480 --> 01:06:46,920
Speaker 1: they don't line up with our expectations of order and sense. Robert,

1146
01:06:46,960 --> 01:06:50,000
Speaker 1: it is your kind of lawlessness and anarchy that has

1147
01:06:50,080 --> 01:06:52,000
Speaker 1: led to the library being the kind of place it

1148
01:06:52,080 --> 01:06:54,840
Speaker 1: is today. We need someone with a strong hand to

1149
01:06:54,920 --> 01:07:01,080
Speaker 1: set the library right, a new head librarian. Yes, all right,

1150
01:07:01,200 --> 01:07:03,720
Speaker 1: well we could obviously we could go on and on

1151
01:07:03,920 --> 01:07:08,160
Speaker 1: here doing a various thought experiments about the Library of Babel.

1152
01:07:08,600 --> 01:07:11,600
Speaker 1: And I'm sure you guys and gals can as well.

1153
01:07:11,720 --> 01:07:13,760
Speaker 1: Maybe there's some spin on it that's come to your mind.

1154
01:07:13,760 --> 01:07:16,040
Speaker 1: Maybe there's a cool spin on it that you've encountered

1155
01:07:16,040 --> 01:07:19,200
Speaker 1: in other works. Uh. If so, we would love to

1156
01:07:19,240 --> 01:07:21,720
Speaker 1: hear about it. We would love to have any number

1157
01:07:21,760 --> 01:07:25,360
Speaker 1: of discussions, um dare I say almost infinite number of

1158
01:07:25,400 --> 01:07:28,640
Speaker 1: discussions about the Library of Babble. You can get in

1159
01:07:28,680 --> 01:07:32,640
Speaker 1: touch with this the usual places sucal media where stuff

1160
01:07:32,640 --> 01:07:34,320
Speaker 1: to blow your mind or blow the mind at a

1161
01:07:34,400 --> 01:07:36,440
Speaker 1: number of those stuff to blow your mind dot Com

1162
01:07:36,560 --> 01:07:39,120
Speaker 1: is the mothership. And then of course there is always

1163
01:07:39,200 --> 01:07:43,320
Speaker 1: email where you can email your favorite selection from the

1164
01:07:43,400 --> 01:07:45,840
Speaker 1: Library of Babel to us at Blow the Mind? Is

1165
01:07:45,920 --> 01:07:57,480
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com? Well more on this and

1166
01:07:57,600 --> 01:08:06,560
Speaker 1: basons of other pathics. Is it how stuff works? Upcombe

1167
01:08:08,080 --> 01:08:16,560
Speaker 1: starts f