The Library of Babel

https://libraryofbabel.info/

The Library of Babel is an online database archiving every possible combination of 3200 characters, excluding numbers and some punctuation, that have been, can, and ever will be said. Within it you'll find everything from Linguica's second Doomworld post:



to this post:



to snippets of the book I'm writing:



Enjoy!

EDIT:

Oh yeah, how you were born, how you will die, along with your your address and social security number (in the form of typed out numbers) are also contained herein.

Some scary shit, those labyrinths.

Let me guess: it just takes what you typed and inserts it into a wall of random symbols?

Da Werecat said:

Let me guess: it just takes what you typed and inserts it into a wall of random symbols?

No. This should explain it sufficiently about 17:00 in:

Could be a great Nicholas Cage movie.

Yeah, I've been toying around with this site the last few days. It's very interesting, but it's also hard to find a page that is atleast barely comprehensible. Kind of takes the fun out of it, since most of the time you'll be looking at a wall of gibberish with your searched text in the middle.

That's some pretty deep stuff. I like the story of the library.

Here's something I found: https://libraryofbabel.info/bookmark.cgi?thereissomethingstrangeinthenextpage

And at least one of the books ends with this that I wrote: https://libraryofbabel.info/bookmark.cgi?bombcookbook

I'm going to go ahead and guess no one has ever found anything novel that they didn't deliberately search for.

They did even an image gallery here: https://babelia.libraryofbabel.info/ .

Sure you can search an image uploading a file, but how we can trust them? I mean, they could put your image in this "random database"...

Jimi said:

And at least one of the books ends with this that I wrote: https://libraryofbabel.info/bookmark.cgi?bombcookbook

Decaptator sounds like either a horror film or a Heavy Metal band. Maybe both.

Also, I think that "there was no cyberdemon, but he was the spoon" is all we need to know about the Library of Babel.

Cool concept. Perhaps it would be good if something similar could be done for doom wads.

Oh god please no.

https://libraryofbabel.info/bookmark.cgi?olu.lkrgdqar161

I wonder how legit this thing is. The brutish way to test it would be to manually search through until you find a long sequence of sensical words.

Perhaps it's possible to develop an algorithm that lists only comprehensible passages of, say, 25 words or more.

I tried looking for the real Necronomicon there.. so far no luck finding it, unless one of them was the Elder God translation... but I was looking for the english translation.

You could probably make something that generates a random Doom/DoomII iwad. So it wouldn't be just a random level pack, it would a be all new graphics and sounds. All the data lumps still need to be in correct format, restricted to certain sizes.. they must stay functional. All levels need to also include all level starts and 4 deathmatch starts and an exit line. The levels probably aren't functional if every possible vertex/line/sector/thing .. place/type/light/etc combination are used.

Jimi said:

You could probably make something that generates a random Doom/DoomII iwad. So it wouldn't be just a random level pack, it would a be all new graphics and sounds. All the data lumps still need to be in correct format, restricted to certain sizes.. they must stay functional. All levels need to also include all level starts and 4 deathmatch starts and an exit line. The levels probably aren't functional if every possible vertex/line/sector/thing .. place/type/light/etc combination are used.

So given an infinite amount of time, a monkey sat at a computer could create Alien Vendetta.

Given enough time, a monkey could create the universe. Who is to say that this isn't a random creation of a monkey sitting in front of a universal constructor mashing buttons at random.

This isn't a Goatlord thread Jimi :D

This seems like a good way to collect people's personal information by way of their searches.

Don't know much about the site but the original story that inspired it is pretty good. I wanted to make a Doom level of it but couldn't figure out how.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel

The idea, the mental image of a library extending so far, even if it may technically be finite, that it might as well be infinite, is striking, Awe-inspiring, and awful. The idea of being trapped within never-ending hallways and rooms has always unsettled me, probably why I found the Guertena Gallery in Ib to be so engaging, so morbidly fascinating.

But the idea of a perversion of the very purpose of a library, a place of information, through such an excess of its contents so as to be useless is a hellish thought. And here it is. We created it. The Library of Babel exists not as a place, but as a thought, an idea. And yet is exists indeed.

Spooky.

To me the library in the story sounds like a description of the universe. The people in it are all the things with awareness. The books are all the possible experiences that we might do or actually do. And as we read the books we get so immersed in the story that we forget that we were reading a book.

It also reminds me of this movie, the part with the monks telling the story of everything: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imaginarium_of_Doctor_Parnassus