this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023
376 points (98.5% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26916 readers
1983 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Glitchington 22 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Is this like the digital equivalent of a million monkeys with a million typewriters?

[–] Glitchington 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Basically, except it's indexed and searchable. Somewhere in those books, exists the phrase, "dharma curious updooted glitchington on lemmy" probably many times. But also "dharma curious hated glitchingtons post on lemmy" will also be there somewhere.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Wait, it's already there? I thought they were generating them currently?

Also, it's searchable? I didn't notice that. Just hit random. Going to go check it again!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (3 children)

And also "every finite number is contained within PI" but with words.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That statement may be false, a simple explanation is that if you make a number out of π by removing all 9s it will keep the properties of π being infinite and non-repeating but never contain 9.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Okay, cool! I had some fun looking for words in the pages. But if I understand it correctly, what we'll end up with individual words surrounded with gibberish on the pages. You're never going to get a page full of real words, right?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Every possible page is generated somewhere. I think there's a checkbox on the search page that fills the rest of the query with spaces.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I haven't looked at it yet but if u understand correctly you just have to search for a page where surrounding gibberish is also words. Probability plummets to zero fast, I'd guess

[–] FishFace 2 points 11 months ago

This is equivalent to the assertion that pi is a normal number, which is not proven.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Yeah sorta. It's apparently an algorithm that can produce every possible page of text, given a number. So it contains a staggering amount of gibberish, plus every page of every book that's ever been written, and many wildly incorrect, many vaguely correct and one exactly accurate description of the circumstances of your death.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

I thought humanity was the "million monkeys with a million typewriters"