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The Library of Babel


StarMountainKid

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The Library of Babel
 

 

Here is my commentary on an anonymous billionaire who is constructing a Library of Babel somewhere in the western desert.  This anonymous billionaire has gotten the idea from a section of this web page:
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“The Library of Babel,” wrote Jorge Luis Borges, “is comprised of an indefinite and
perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries,” containing an untold number of copies
of every possible book—or rather, every possible book of four hundred and ten pages,
forty lines to a page, and eighty letters to a line.

Most of the books consist entirely of gibberish. But somewhere in the Library, a patient enough searcher could find “everything: the minutely detailed history of the future, the archangels’ autobiographies, the faithful catalogues of the Library, thousands and thousands of false catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of those catalogues, the Gnostic gospel of Basilides, the commentary on that gospel, the commentary on the commentary on that gospel…”

Borges was especially struck by the rarity of truth in the Library, as compared to
meaninglessness and falsehood. Even if you stumbled on the secret of the universe in
some forgotten tome, how could you ever distinguish it from the thousands of treacherous
variations?

But surely, some of the books would contain gems that a knowledgeable
seeker would quickly recognize as such: proofs of Goldbach’s conjecture, the Riemann
hypothesis, and other statements that have eluded mathematicians for centuries; the design for a controlled fusion reactor; a computer program that predicted the stock
market better than any analyst; plays that Shakespeare could have written but didn’t.”
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Unbelievable as it may sound, this eccentric billionaire has actually begun construction of the building, and has financed his own company to begin composing the necessary books. The rationalization for this is, as the anonymous billionaire has said, is that when the Library is completed, it will contain all knowledge. All knowledge. This will be a good thing and worth the money, he says.

This is all well and good, but an important problem is, as the above article asks, how could one distinguish the false from the true? One book could contain 99% of the correct theory of quantum gravity, for example, but the other 1% would be incorrect. There may be thousands of books portending to be the correct theory, but how to find the book containing the complete correct theory?

This eccentric billionaire has come up with a solution to this problem. His solution is, all the books must be correct. At first glance, this statement doesn’t make much sense. How could all the books be truthful, especially if the vast majority of the books will be just gibberish?

He explains his reasoning this way: Every element of the universe serves a purpose, or has a potential purpose to serve. There is no single aspect of the universe that can be omitted without damaging the whole. Every law of physics, every fundamental field, every quantum particle is essential. The universe basically is a house of cards. Take one card away, the house collapses.

Therefore, every book in the Library is essential to the construction and preservation of the universe. This is because, as every possible variation of the elements that make up the universe have the probability to combine in every possible variation to create that variation, the probability that the sequence of all the letters in all the books must already exist in that particular order.

In other words, the Library has always existed. It has always existed virtually as potential, if not in actual form.  By creating an actual copy of the eternal virtual Library, all the books will, in effect, write themselves as exact copies of the virtual books, so all the books will be correct and truthful, as the virtual Library is an essential expression of the universe. All possibilities must manifest. Everything that is not prohibited by the laws of probability is mandatory.

As we cannot access the virtual Library, by creating an actual Library, therefore, all knowledge will be at our fingertips. Even the books that contain only gibberish are essential, because they represent probabilities of the expression of the universe manifested. This is still information, information of how the universe is revealed.

All of the gibberish books are knowledge and that knowledge may one day be deciphered as a meaningful description of the universe’s potential.

Perhaps the essential aspect of the billionaire’s plan is creating a computer program to analyze the books and select the probable accurate volumes, chosen by an algorithm, that most closely match the probability of being coherent.

Even with this computer, as yet to be built, this will be only one small step in the completion of this monumental task.

Whether this is a good thing, as the billionaire believes, is open to conjecture. There have been objections to this project for many reasons. Not the least is the dangerous consequences of humanity possessing all knowledge. Threats have been made to discover the Library’s location so as to destroy it before it is completed, to assassinate the billionaire and to suppress all information about the Library’s purpose.

These threats have come equally from the Right and from the Left, as well as from the religious community and equally from the scientific community.  It seems the only demographic that is in favor of the building of the Library is from the anarchists, who consider the possession of all knowledge the ultimate means of the self-destruction of  human civilization.  

I think the anarchists have a valid point in this matter. Of course, there is some doubt that such a Library of Babel could actually be built, even by an eccentric billionaire.  Such a vast construction project may be beyond the capabilities of any individual, or even any society. It may well be beyond the capacity of human civilization as a whole.

But, this individual is determined to carry on despite all obstacles. He believes once the project is begun, enthusiasm will build, pride in the majesty of the concept will grow, and its construction will continue, generation after generation into the distant future, until it is at last completed. Even if its completion demands all the resources of the planet, and consumes all the lives of its inhabitants, the ultimate reward will be worth the effort.

This is a project of a true visionary, one must admit. As I say, if those who object to this controversial project fail in their attempts to censor the dissemination of information about the Library, and even of the concept itself, In my next commentary, I will go into some detail of the architecture of the building itself, as well as a discussion of the fate of humanity once it is in possession of all knowledge  

Edited by StarMountainKid
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