rachel on 1/7/2022 at 08:17
It's way cool for GoT fans because that means Winds of Winter will probably be published in this library before GRR Martin finishes it :laff:
Azaran on 1/7/2022 at 14:18
Quote Posted by rachel
It's way cool for GoT fans because that means
Winds of Winter will probably be published in this library before GRR Martin finishes it :laff:
They'll have to sift through 20511149 books with that title
rachel on 1/7/2022 at 14:19
Still faster.
lowenz on 1/7/2022 at 16:42
LOL
hopper on 1/7/2022 at 18:10
So this means that everything that can and will ever be written already has been written? I guess that means copyright is dead, and we're all just copycats now. :weird:
demagogue on 1/7/2022 at 23:07
If you convert your numbering system to 128-decimal (every ASCII character, or some subset like this is doing) and set an upper limit, e.g., 500 pages of 50 lines of 50 characters, then every "book" represents a number up to a finite value (you can append them to get longer books), and every book that can and will ever be written (in ASCII characters) will just be counting up with that numbering system.
All this algorithm really does is let you search for consecutive digits in that numbering system. It would take longer than the history of the universe to actually do the counting. So in that respect, every possible value has not actually already been written yet, but then again you don't have to literally count up to 14,598 to know 14,597 is there as soon as you hear it.
In the big scheme of things, if you believe infinite inflation is the answer to some cosmological problems (horizon, flatness, magnetic monopole, etc.), then entire universes are continually being seeded with random values forever. In that version of reality, every book in every conceivable writing system is actually written somewhere [edit: okay, not really, only every physically possible book; I'm mixing quantum fluctuation, where everything really is fluctuated in and out, with multiverse theory], including this very universe being replayed exactly the same (an infinite number of times already), and a vastly greater number of universes (what's vastly bigger than infinity?) almost like this one except for one quantum difference, an even vastly greater number with just two differences, etc... We've had this discussion before, and we'll have it again. See y'all the next loop around.
faetal on 2/7/2022 at 22:57
Has this been verified as real?
I.e. it doesn't just take the search text, bookend it with gibberish and then log it as having a distinct reference so there aren't duplicate references?
Azaran on 3/7/2022 at 21:10
So I'm still trying to wrap my head around how this works. Apparently storing all possible variations of text of that magnitude would require more drive space than we currently have on earth, so how the algorithm can 'store without storing 'is perplexing. This person on the forum seems to think it just takes the text you input and randomly saves it at a specific location indefinitely. There's no way to prove or disprove it though. You'd have to browse to a page with coherent text first (without actually searching for it), which would probably take you 10 million years, then input that text in the search function and see if that location was listed, in which case it would be legit.
Inline Image:
https://i.postimg.cc/JzkdmTsB/IMG-20220703-170730.jpgdemagogue on 3/7/2022 at 22:44
It seems to me the easiest way to handle the issue y'all are talking about is just treating the output as a 3200 digit number in base-40 (or however many characters it is), with a few extra digits (60 it turns out) for the page number and book title and other meta-info. Then you just assume the shelves are organized in alphabetical/numerical order, and putting it in a unique place on a unique shelf is just a simple division and modulo operation.
Edit: At the top you'll see the text search box is called "Hex Name", hex being the location in the library. That tells me that the text content and its reference location in the library are one and the same thing.
Qooper on 5/7/2022 at 13:50
Quote Posted by hopper
So this means that everything that can and will ever be written already has been written? I guess that means copyright is dead, and we're all just copycats now. :weird:
The act of
writing a text and that text
existing as a concept are two different things. Numbers existed before anyone wrote the first one, same as the concept of rocket propulsion. Although the term 'exist' means two different things when we're talking about something physical vs a concept.
Now that I think about it, what would it even mean for a concept to not exist? Is existence even a property assignable to concepts at all? Maybe in the mathematical sense yes. A rational number that is bigger than 10 and smaller than 9 does not exist. But I can still name this non-existing number and talk about it as a concept.
