Borges Library Of Babel

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast with Aleph Insights where we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm Fraser McGruer and I'm here with Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights and rather excitingly this week we have a guest with us which is Andres Tacir, a friend of mine and a former colleague of mine. This week we're discussing the Library of Babel, the short story by the Argentinian essayist Jorge Luis Borges. So before we dig in we've had a request which is Andres can you tell us am I pronouncing this

Speaker B: 00:00:45

correctly? How does one pronounce Borges? Yeah I think that you did it almost right, I think it's Borges the right pronunciation. Do you think you can do it? Borges. So there's more of a rolling

Speaker A: 00:00:55

of the R okay yeah okay I think I've got it great. Right but even so before we dig into the Library of Babel let's establish your credentials as a Borges expert. Now I know that in your family home in Buenos Aires your father has a book signed by Borges which he signed when they met and they even shook hands I believe and one of the things you said to me previously that whether this story was actually true or not is that in your words this starts this story starts to be consistent with all the Borhean logic right? So let's start with that what do you mean by that? Yeah I think that there

Speaker B: 00:01:33

are two or three different kind of Borges words you know I think there's one Borges that is really about Buenos Aires, a Borges porteño, porteño is the word used to refer to people from Buenos Aires there's a Borges let's say a Greek mythology Borges and there's this kind of abstract Borges mathematical Borges extremely analytical Borges and I think this area of the Borges that is extremely interesting and super powerful and I think the La Biblioteca de Babel that is the name in Spanish is the is perfectly associated to that type of Borges the logic. So this more

Speaker A: 00:02:11

mathematical side right okay fine right so that being the case let's go on to the book itself also rather sorry that I believe it's more of a short story essay so tell me just without too much going into meaning because we'll come on to that but just talk to me when give me an overview

Speaker B: 00:02:28

what is the story about? Well essentially Borges describes I can imagine an hypothetical library that is almost infinitive library it's impossible to actually measure how big it is that essentially contains all the possible books that could be written essentially Borges plays with with the numbers and he makes a really beautiful a beautiful game he describes how there are different shelves and each shelves contains exactly the same type of books that each book contains the same amount of pages as the next book and the same amount of lines and the same amount of characters and he describes how huge how vast could be the combination so all the letters that exist he thinks about 26 letters can be combined in all these books just to form all the potential books that can be written that

Speaker A: 00:03:21

have been written or will never be written. Okay so at this point I want to bring in Nick so what does it all mean what so that that's the overview that's the basics that's the framework

Speaker C: 00:03:35

what what what do we take from this? Well one thing we haven't really touched on is why we're talking about Borges and I think he's we're all quite interested in him to the extent that our company is actually named after one of his stories the Aleph but when you read Borges you have this sense of having seen something very profound without quite knowing where that profundity comes from so they're really interesting stories to think about and as Andres said you know it's particularly the sort of the mathematical the abstract stories they tend to touch on lots and lots of different issues in cognition and in analysis and in the case of the Library of Babel that there are I think people have interpreted it in lots of different ways and you know it gives us lots and lots of things to think about. Andres touched on that that phrase almost infinite and I think I may be wrong here but I think Borges actually uses that phrase almost infinite well they're right right there I mean you can you can say well this the library isn't isn't infinite because the books are all of a finite size so the books there can only be a limited number of books before you have every single book out there now the question is how how many books are there and it would be I mean it would be the number of the size of the library is a staggering it would be you know be we'd be talking about absolutely trillions of billions of you know if every if every book was an atom in the universe we would need you know a google universes to put all of the books uh in and um and just to give a sense of sort of how how many combinations are there how many combinations of letters are there uh

Speaker A: 00:05:23

sorry yeah sorry and I'm just getting my head around this so it's it's almost infinite and not infinite and well there's the concept you've got a limited number of letters and you've got a limited number of pages in a given book and they're all the same length so that's what limits

Speaker C: 00:05:37

it right yeah yes there's no such thing as almost infinite I mean it is finite it's just very very

Speaker A: 00:05:43

big right so it's a question it's not a question of almost infinite or not it's just it's finite

Speaker B: 00:05:47

yeah but I think there's another dimension to that I mean there's another another twist there that of course it's a limited number huge vast that may be even really hard to calculate but a vast number however in some moment I think at the end of the story Borges start playing with another dimension is the order of the books then it could be all the books that are written that we know it's a limited number but reorder in a different ways that adds again another dimension

Speaker A: 00:06:16

that again is another finite number but it's even bigger so give me so what are the implications of that I want to bring in Peter in a moment but Andres so the order of the books so what are

Speaker B: 00:06:26

the implications well I think the the implications are are said in in some of the parts of the story that in all those books in all those pages that of course some of them are repeated exactly repeated because could be two books that are exactly the same except that one letter is different in all those books should be one book that is the real one that is the book that contains let's say if we can say that word the truth I don't know personally what the truth is but Borges thinks that in that library that's a huge library there's a book containing the truth and the goal of all these librarians that are in the in the library is that you search for that book and then the process that you pick which is the right book and which is not the right book has been a method almost a religion that has changed during centuries yeah I've met I've got to

Speaker A: 00:07:19

know quite a few Argentinians lately and I can see why this book was written by an Argentinian and and why it's sort of so popular because there's endless things to talk about here it's just endless ideas and from what I've seen of Argentinians lately that they they love talking about ideas and and and delving into this sort of stuff take that as a compliment and so Peter I want to bring you in I don't know it's a shame we've only got about 15 minutes or so to talk about this we could talk about this for days almost infinitely maybe Peter come in yeah tell me so I think what I'm interested in is how can this how can we change our behavior what does this mean for for the way out we live our lives

Speaker D: 00:08:01

well I think an interesting picking up something that Andres said the the the searching of truth there's a sort of assumed job of these librarians that they think that because there is apparent meaning in some of these books that is there therefore must be their job to to seek out meaning now that's a that's quite a big assumption on their part and and often it's proved it's proven in in by the protagonist that it's pretty futile that it's very difficult to find texts that contain meaning and they also there's another parallel where different parts of the library there are different there are different peoples there's a history and the sort of culture and beliefs of their their language vary between between parts of the library in time and space and so if if a librarian finds something that he believes is meaningful it may not be meaningful universally to everybody so this sort of library is is an analogy I think for us is a substrate for the universe for seeking truth in in in the physical world through sort of maths and physics trying to find find truths uh the the concept of truth is itself an abstract

Speaker B: 00:09:15

thing and it's an invention of of us okay Andres yeah and I think as uh the other side of that coin uh there's something really beautiful that Porges explains that there are some books that maybe contains uh words like m j k l n o that doesn't mean anything or you think that doesn't mean anything but it could mean something in some language that has existed or will exist or that we don't know then there's also could be some knowledge that we don't see it what that we

Speaker A: 00:09:45

cannot understand that that's is knowledge so that's got an implication so this okay I think

Speaker C: 00:09:53

the slightly scrambling my brains but I really like that yeah yeah I think and and I think there are it has an analogy to um uh some the the concepts of sort of probability and randomness um and the way that we uh pick out certain types of events as being meaningful um which is uh now if you so if you think about um the lottery uh the national lottery actually Borges wrote a book about a lottery which we might talk about another another time but the the um the the what what is more likely right is it more likely that you know it'll be the numbers will be 11 19 25 28 35 and 42 or that there'll be 1 2 3 4 5 6 now most people have an immediate reaction that the the sort of jumbled up looking numbers are somehow more likely each is as likely as the other am i right no no the point is that just like the books in um in the library of babel uh every combination is equally likely to be there yeah but we are interested in only a very very small subset of those things and and you know if you this actually ties into a um a sort of metaphysical puzzle about why it is that it seems harder to create things than it is to destroy things um why is it that you know you there's only one way to make a window but you can but you can have uh it seems very easy to to break a window and and the what's driving that is it's a sort of illusion that creation is harder than destruction because the fact is that most of the ways you can jumble up the parts of a window they won't be a window there'll just be a pile of broken shards um there's only one arrangement which is a window or at least there are very few arrangements at which are windows in the same way that in the library of babel there are very few books which actually are in any way readable and i think it's quite interesting to think about what these how successful these librarians are being um you know we know that they live their lives uh all the time in in the library um and uh i i think i worked out back of an envelope that um if if a librarian is going around and reading uh opening one book every six seconds um and he's looking he's looking for um he's looking for hamlet he wants to find the complete text of hamlet he would it would take him 10 years uh on average to find a book which for which the first six letters were hamlet so so he you know that gives you a sense of how improbable it will be to find one of these books which contains something meaningful let alone something true um so it's you know it's just it's a really sort of staggering

Speaker A: 00:12:36

thought experiment and also there are limitations given that it's not infinite as well so it might

Speaker D: 00:12:43

not exist i think for coming from the engineer point of view it's tractably it is it's about tractability it's sort of for all intents and purposes it's infinite because you can't deal

Speaker A: 00:12:52

with it all okay um i want to run on slightly longer than we usually do um because you mentioned something about your engineering background i think there's interesting prisms through which we can all look at this given our backgrounds but i want to go on to that in a moment but given we've got um our special guest andres um i know we've talked we've talked a little bit about some anything else you want the the grabs you about this this this essay um andres is there anything else you want to add that you really find interesting about this well there are a lot

Speaker B: 00:13:22

of things the first thing i wanted to say is that maybe maybe we can think that it's an essay but it's not an essay it's a short story it's a fiction and as a majority of of the work of borges are are fiction he wrote a lot of poetry but this type of fiction in the in the logical realm let's say is one of the most fascinating part of his work uh i have just a maybe a cinema cinematographic quote maybe that is relevant that you see how relevant or how how important was this i don't know if you guys remember uh the name of the rose yeah the movie a umberto based on umberto seco novel uh i don't know if you remember the librarian was called jorge was he that and he was a blind guy that was a homage to borges even umberto echo uh said that it was it was borges that person that it was the guy keeping taking care of all the books that are there because at that moment i think that library in that abbey was the biggest uh library one of

Speaker A: 00:14:22

the biggest abbey's uh libraries in europe yeah yeah yeah and also maybe slightly um off off topic here but i understand that borges was influenced or incorporated uh influenced by juda judaism and and and jewish thinking am i right yeah i think that's a he he had some uh

Speaker B: 00:14:42

books where he mentions uh the cabala uh and and the power of the symbols uh having uh yeah

Speaker A: 00:14:49

understanding okay well um like i said i just want to go a little bit longer um because i think it's interesting sitting here looking at us all i know we've all got different let's just if we just talk academic backgrounds and maybe i don't know who've got masters and maybe as a phd is here as well i don't know so just very briefly nick what's your background what's your academic background what was your undergrad degree um it was in philosophy and economics and did you go on to do anything

Speaker C: 00:15:13

else after yeah yeah i did some other things after that uh oh study things no i didn't go on to study anything i did a master's in economics okay so economics and philosophy going on to economics

Speaker B: 00:15:24

right andres uh my undergraduate is in economics and then i studied international public policy

Speaker D: 00:15:29

okay and and peter um electronic and computer engineering uh so very sort of uh mass focused and um managing complexity trying to have a result but factoring in cost at every turn okay and my own background is theology i'm going on to international relations as well

Speaker A: 00:15:48

so yeah just when i was thinking when i was listening to you talking about um truths and eternal truths that's um you know i just look at that from a theologian point of view but i i

Speaker C: 00:15:58

wonder if um there is something makes me feel that borges is a sort of um scientists writer i mean so you wouldn't necessarily expect scientists to like science fiction um but i feel like he's almost that he's a sort of literary equivalent to someone like mc escher uh as an artist that actually you know he deals with the same sorts of themes about curiosities about the fundamentals of the universe um and uh the way that he approaches something like the library of babel you know in the hands of a lesser writer they might be tempted to just uh to just describe a very big library and make a few um comments about that borges is very methodical about the way that he describes it is very vivid and you can tell that he has given some serious thought to actually how that would work what are the what are the mechanics of it so i i think that there's might be might be a reason why um people who are interested in scientific ways of approaching things

Speaker A: 00:16:55

would be would be interested in borges okay that's a good advert for borges there i think and i like

Speaker D: 00:17:02

i like the blend um he uses the the short story fiction story as a as a medium for exploring these very deep philosophical questions yeah um and uh it's a sort of it's a that's a a blur in genres that's kind of disappeared when before we had scientists we had natural philosophers and that or and theologians and and they they this would be how they would do their sort of their kind of um their exploration of a topic rather than conducting highly highly engineered structured experiments they would wean a story you know they just spin a story and invite people to

Speaker A: 00:17:41

think think about i like that i like that um andres anything final to say no i just something maybe on

Speaker B: 00:17:49

a national topic on argentina is i mean now that you guys are saying everything that you are saying from this type of more kind of formal logic uh type of approach i'm wondering how borges became something like a national writer for argentina if you think i mean you start reading borges when you are i don't know 13 12 years old at school primary school uh high school and these type of stories of borges is the the type of stories that shape the identity of argentina part of the argentinian identity and it's really strange that you think that something that is so let's say cold distant in some way could end up being a national writer besides his merit as a writer that this is an amazing writer no but how this type of set of ideas could become something

Speaker A: 00:18:37

that is the axis that you build idea of identity well fascinating yeah excellent okay chaps i really enjoyed that so i hope you did too so thank you very much um so thanks uh as always to nick hare and peter coggill from aleph insights and a special thank you for andres taxir for coming in this week to talk to us about borges and specifically the library of babel hopefully we'll get you in for more borges related um podcasts and maybe other stuff as well i'm fraser mcgruer uh thank you very much as always for listening um and until our next episode thank you and goodbye