beoShaffer comments on Open Thread, June 16-30, 2012 - Less Wrong
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Random thought, if we assume a large universe, does that imply that somewhere/when there is an novel that just happens to perfectly resemble our lives? If it does I am so going to acausally break the fourth wall. Bonus questions, how does this intersect with the rules of the internet?
Don't worry, whether you do this or not, there is a novel where you do and a novel where you don't, without any other distinctions.
Seems to imply it. Conversly, if you go to the "all possible worlds exist" level of a multiverse, then each novel (or other work of fiction) in our world describes events that actually happen in some other world. If you limit yourself to just the "there's an infinite amount of stuff in our world" multiverse, then only novels describing events that would be physically and otherwise possible describe real events.
Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel
That story has always bothered me. People find coherent text in the books too often, way too often for chance. If the Library of Babel really did work as the story claims, people would have given up after seeing ten million books of random gibberish in a row. That just ruined everything for me. This weird crackfic is bigger in scope, but much more believable for me because it has a selection mechanism to justify the plot.
There's some alleged quotation about making your own life a work of art. IIRC it's been attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche, Gabriele d'Annunzio, Oscar Wilde, and/or Pope John Paul II.