The Library of Babel Re-Explained - Life Unedited #152

it's officially April 8 2016 and it is snowing outside and no I don't live in Alaska it's just the weather is being really really stupid so a number of months ago I made a video about a website called the library of Babel completely out of the blue it managed to accumulate like 18,000 views as of the recording of this video I don't know the exact number but it's like way too many my average vlogs get like 25 views on a good week well with that unexpected number of views has come an unexpected number of comments and as they've accumulated I've noticed that those comments pretty much fall into three categories first of all is just the Wow holy cow this is mind-blowing thanks for telling us all about it and I don't really have anything to say to those comments but second we have the holy cow you were an idiot for believing that this website could ever possibly store all this information it's a hoax it's just taking the information you're putting and putting in a bunch of random characters bla bla bla bla you're dumb you're wasting your time with your life go home and die in a hole because this is pretty much how I imagined you're really obnoxious youtubers talk all the time or the third kind of comment that says I don't understand please show me exactly how to use this website so that I can like find my entire future typed out on a page hate to break it to you but that is not how this works first of all I want to address all those people who say that this website is impossible I am well aware of the data storage limitations of a website like this and that it could not possibly be storing all of the information that would be like Yoda bytes upon Yoda bytes of data but if you would actually listen to how I explain the website you would have heard that I very clearly said it used an algorithm to generate the pages when you searched for them so the reason I think this website is so fascinating is not because I think that it has actually stored every piece of information we could ever write in the English language because that's impossible but what it does do is serve as an example of the fact that our language is inherently limited the website will always generate the same information at the same book address in the library and so you can in a sense find everything that will ever be written and it's the fact that that limit even exists that makes this website so cool because we as humans tend to think that we can keep discovering and creating and exploring and finding new things forever but by the mere fact of our language that is not possible sure the limit is huge but it does exist now for those of you who want me to explain how to you the library I'm honestly not sure what you're not understanding you've got two basic things you can do you can either browse the library or search the library and they're both right there on the main menu on library of Babel net or whatever it was I don't honestly remember it's written right here if you choose the Browse option it's just like you were looking through an actual library you go through the rooms of the library you pick a shelf on the library you pick a book on the shelf and then you look through the pages of the book it's all really straightforward of course a lot of you are complaining all I can find is gibberish that's because most of what's on there is complete gibberish if you take all the letters in the English language and combined them together in every possible combination there are quadrillions of quadrillions of pages of random letters the odds of you browsing and finding something meaningful are pretty much almost impossible but not quite I think I found like one word one time that wasn't completely gibberish and that was after maybe like an hour of browsing I have too much time on my hands you're much much better option is to use the search function when you do that you type in the words that you want to search for you hit enter and then it brings up a list of results pages it's kind of like this new thing you might have heard of called Google it's pretty awesome you should check it out the only other information you need to know is that the site gives three kinds of results your search query on a blank page with nothing else your search query on a page with a bunch of random letters or your search query on a page with random other English words it's kind of nifty that it does that doesn't really serve much of a purpose unless by some miracle you used the extra English words one to find the completion of some sentence or something let me know if you ever get that to work and was that I think I've explained everything you could possibly want to know about the library of Babel I guess if you have any other questions let me know down in the comment a section below but other than that just subscribe so you don't miss next week's episode trying to get to 100 subscribers when I do I'll release a video that no one has ever seen before that I filmed my freshman year of college it's super embarrassing and you're gonna love it so share this with your friends get them involved in until next week deuces you

Channel: smallbar2012

Views: 39,448

Keywords: life unedited, vlog, thoughts, library of babel, english language, limit, infinite, science fiction, explanation, clarification

Id: eiZfuzdBXys

Length: 4min 16sec (256 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 08 2016