A Meaningless Infinity

[@YanaTanc]

It's curious how in recent years, the theme of buildings that look like they were made for humans and by humans, but actually weren't, is becoming more popular. The backrooms and the liminal spaces just being the most popular examples.

[@elnico5623]

The oldest house

[@lawrencelord9777]

@@elnico5623i still play every day

[@lolbitbot4791]

It's mainly because its more prominent irl. Lots of structs no longer feel welcoming. Modern styled structures with limited and sleek design really sucks all humanity from he structure

[@gerarddip]

An older example would be the room Dave winds up in during the end of 2001 a space odyssey

[@tettettettettet]

I feel like a bit of it comes from the way culture naturally evolves. Before alien environments where… well alien. As different as possible from human environments, and that was new and imaginative for a long time but now it’s just cliche. Si culture evolves to subvert that cliche, making the alien environments too human, too familiar.

[@frobthebuilder]

When you come to understand why the ID of any book in the library of babel must be as long as the book itself, you realize that not only is the library massive, it's also very small.

[@solsystem1342]

Yeah, that irritates me. It's annoying when people try to claim that the library has infinitely many different books. It doesn't. There are finite ways to arrange every particle in the observable universe. I'm pretty sure that there aren't more 40 page books than that 😂

[@mikoajnatora3786]

@@solsystem1342 depends what you understand as a book. If all combinations of letters in a 40 page book then the number is uncomparably greater

[@lXlDarKSuoLlXl]

​@@solsystem1342technical infinity isn't the same as infinity, but for our punny brains is basically the same, if I told you to walk to jupiter, you'd think that's basically an infinite road (assuming you could walk there and that you wouldn't die from hunger or thirst) even tho we KNOW it's not that far away compared to everything else in space. The observable universe is also not infinite, but we will n-e-v-e-r be able to reach any of what we see beyond our galaxy unless we figure out how to beat space itself. If it's big enough, it's basically infinite for us.

[@Dilligff]

Both infinity and nothingness are abstract concepts that truly have no definition because neither truly exists. There's no way to quantify infinity therefore no way to discern whether or not an end exists, and nothingness requires something to observe it which negates its existence.

[@martyrsaint]

⁠@@DilligffThe concepts seem pretty clearly defined. Infinite means unending, Nothing means lack of anything. Sure, neither exists but the concepts themselves are clear cut.

[@AexisRai]

6:58 "But not in BLAME. The city can forget about humans. The humans cannot forget about the city." (Because they can't not be in it.) You very precisely condensed so much of why that story affected me so strongly. A thought I have had when seeing BLAME's descendants, or brutalist structures: "It would be neat to _visit_ there. I wouldn't want to _live_ there." Because part of the nature of "there" itself, that space, is its enclosing vastness, its inescapability. If a place you "couldn't escape" was hospitable, well, you maybe wouldn't care too much about escaping it. Once you can't leave and it's _not_ hospitable, and yet you're still inside it, it's a prison. -edited to fix a grammar mistake that probably confused the conclusion.

[@oberonpanopticon]

Is it really a prison if it’s a world? Is our entire universe a prison?

[@AexisRai]

@@oberonpanopticon IRL, Earth is hospitable. Also, the possibilities of other places being hospitable, and of escaping to there, are not precluded. Not, in principle, a prison. In BLAME!, almost nowhere is hospitable; the places that are weakly hospitable are as fragile (to attack and utter destruction) as a solitary blade of grass sprouting in the only crack to be found in miles of concrete; and for any human inhabitant the possibility of escape to any outside place that is hospitable has been totally foreclosed upon by the Builders' rampancy. Prison.

[@oberonpanopticon]

@@AexisRai Earth is hospitable? Have you ever been in nature? Have you been to Australia or Central America????? Survivable, yes. Hospitable, debatable.

[@taelim6599]

@@oberonpanopticon I mean, at least it's not the City.

[@Technohazard]

We can't escape Earth, and by definition it is habitable because it gave rise to us. But if we make it uninhabitable, it will be a prison. And if we never get off the planet, it will be our tomb.

[@Tarnished-bn5gq]

The concept of something, like a landscape/planet or a universe, being both eternal and infinite, terrifies me in a very unique way. It’s why No Man’s Sky, while not being a horror game, has this perpetual feeling of dread and isolation, and Gmod’s InfMap increases this feeling by 2,000 times. It’s something I wouldn’t want to see in open world games, the concept of infinite content in an infinite procedurally generated setting.

[@Maski500]

You'd HATE minecraft

[@logsupermulti3921]

I have the exact opposite reaction, I get an intense feeling of catharsis, looking on to an endless horizon. The isolation of such a place is comforting.

[@DanteCats98]

Elite old DOS game

[@Vivicect0r]

Elite Dangerous is a meaning of endless lonelyness. One may go for several months in an expedition, yet if you will decide you are done with it, you will still have to spend a real live month before you'll see another human.

[@oberonpanopticon]

Never try space engine. Stick to universal paperclips.

[@wastelanderone]

I've been obsessed with Kowloon, the walled city, for a long time, and the idea that nobody managed to document it all is absolutely fascinating for me. It is the idea of the infinite, but built by humans and as humans needed it for what said humans needed.

[@katakana1]

Part of the reason is that Kowloon was just too hard to map due to being both 3-dimensional and very irregular - Even if you did manage to map it, that map wouldn't have been very useful before the time of computers that could allow you an in-depth 3D visualization. Even _then,_ the city was constantly changing! So after a year, some structures might have ended up becoming completely different.

[@ikarder]

If you interested, there is "Samosbor" fandom that use eternity along with usual concept of prefab building where people live in. However, there is some dangerous anomalies stuff and i'm not sure how similar it to Kowloon itself, since i'm not into it, but maybe you'll be interested

[@TheLuckyOne-rg4vk]

While it wasn't particularly safe (because both the gang presence and the improvised architecture) I would have loved to visit Kowloon just once before it was torn down. What photos we have look so interesting, almost like a sci-fi dystopia. So beautiful and depressing at the same time.

[@anonymouse4496]

The library of babel not only contains all true information but all lies as well. If you found something coherent (nearly impossible) and that said something of substance (nearly impossible) you would still need to know if it was true. I would posit that it is possible to make thousands or millions of lies out of a single true thing.

[@bridgerald]

I mean, infinite lies. You could spend 10,000,000,000 years reading only coherent books all about the same subject, all with minor or major differences, and if you read the truth one time, every single other book would be a lie.

[@AexisRai]

and even so, there would be more falsehoods than truths, for entropy reasons. "corresponding with reality" is an order-imposing constraint on information. there are more ways to arrange information to be false or meaningless than ways to arrange it to be true, in the same sense and for the same reason as there are more configurations for a billion air molecules to exist ANYWHERE in a box than there are configurations where they only exist in one quadrant of the box.

[@echosmoon5605]

Maybe it’s like a possibility as well. Like maybe I get that one shot snipe in Fortnite from 4000m and it’s written but in another timeline it missed and it’s written down their.

[@Chrisspru]

conciousness generates meaning, and meaning that promotes conciousness validates it. so every little step of enjoyment on an infinite journey is profoundly meaningful, as you as a being are there.

[@quantum2432]

⁠@@Chrisspru I like this comment. This speaks of creation, finding purpose in madness, and the purpose that this comment is wagering is that consciousness should be joyful in life. Even if you can’t explore the universe or do anything meaningful in life, this comment is saying that so long as you’re happy, you’ll find meaning in a meaningless life. Not due to your persistent. Hope or your persistent anything. But due to that you are and you are happy that you are. ​​⁠​⁠​​⁠​⁠Chrisspru did a good job, explaining what I was trying to find for a very long time. That’s not to say that there’s no suffering but you’re happy that you are. You’re happy that you’re here and that’s what’s important, and to me, that’s the truth, which is a very good thing can probably lead you through many hurdles in life.

[@ml_dali]

One of the best games like this is The Long Drive. It's empty. You have a car, and a desert road. There's stops along the way, with supplies to keep you going. Just abandoned buildings some of them recognisable and some totally alien. There's sometimes weak enemies, but you can turn them off in the settings. I usually do. It's a ridiculously big, procedurally generated game, but it feels small. It feels real. Every stretch of the road feels like an actual journey. When I'm too tired or bummed out to enjoy 'proper' games, I play The Long Drive. I put on an album I love and just drive, with nothing but the road and my thoughts. It's probably my favorite game of all time.

[@Quinn2win]

"Why are caves the perfect size for humans to explore?" Because if they're smaller than that we don't call them caves

[@petrkinkal1509]

Yeah this exactly. It was a bit weird point to make.

[@Tongonto]

There's an interesting connection here to cryptography. Modern encryption works essentially on a somewhat similar principle; that is, in order to break encryption through brute-force, a computer esseeeentially just guesses random answers until it gets the right one. This is why we've had to update encryption protocols over time - encryption in the 90's might have taken 100,000 guesses on average to get the answer, but computers then could only make 1,000 guesses a day. Now that they can make a million in a second, we need it to take 100 billion guesses to break. In some sense, a computer using a brute-force algorithm to break encryption is essentially "reading the library of babel", searching for the answer to an impossible-to-solve puzzle. Unlike a human reader though, computers - through sheer speed - can sometimes actually find the right book.

[@nedherman]

The library of babel website works with encryption, encrypt the address of the book generates the content of the book and decrypt the content generate the address

[@cerulity32k]

The Library of Babel actually does use some form of reversible encryption; the contents and titles of the book are mathematically connected to their locations in the library. However, you can also search for a book that has specific content. The position is "encrypted" into the content, and your query is "decrypted" into a position.

[@Preston241]

I wonder if we can leverage the computers speed to our advantage in the Library. AI could read through it much faster than us. And should be able to scale nearly infinitely. We could be notified whenever they found something readable. Edit: but then again they could just output random content of their own and it would amount to the same thing. Nvm.

[@denysvlasenko1865]

@@cerulity32k > The Library of Babel actually does use some form of reversible encryption No, it does not. It just seeds the PRNG by the "location of the book" and then runs PRNG to generate the text.

[@cerulity32k]

@@denysvlasenko1865 It's two way (you can search text in books), so it kinda fits under encryption.

[@d-os1.883]

While playing NaissanceE, and especially after it's ending, i had only one wish. "Please don't end".

[@ewabrzakaa6395]

thank god there's someone to tell me how that game is called, because I don't think I could find it blindly trying to type whatever could be read like that (and cc is trash)

[@d-os1.883]

@@ewabrzakaa6395 Yeah, that's pretty much the only drawback to the game, the title being written in a fr*nch way

[@kwaddell]

NaissanceE was such a gem

[@YEs69th420]

@@d-os1.883 "birth" would be a much less interesting and memorable name

[@kennycarter5682]

thank you, your a life savor. the game is on steam too!! just copy and paste how you spelled it. thank you again

[@eveleynce]

I'm in love with the idea of practical infinity. We may spend millenia shuffling cards, but it is entirely possible that no matter how long we spend doing it, there may never be a time when humans have laid eyes on every single possible combination of shuffled decks

[@oberonpanopticon]

Imagine how creepy it would be if you saw a comprehensible image in the babel image archives. Especially if it was personal.

[@tgoods5049]

I see becoming a digital Ouija board of sorts.

[@ipointmistakes]

A story without an author is unsettling.

[@Hawk7886]

That's literally most stories in the cosmos

[@Allplussomeminus]

​@@Hawk7886 what's "the cosmos"? An actual book?

[@84b_t]

@@Allplussomeminus no, space

[@DartNoobo]

​@@Hawk7886could you provide an example of a story without an author irl?

[@Hawk7886]

@@DartNoobo two asteroids colliding, a black hole feeding, a quasar spinning, a volcano erupting, etc.

[@SilverInkblot]

Borges was commenting on a phenomenon that didn't even exist yet and calling out problems he knew we would one day have. What is the Internet if not a giant library? On such a massive scale, all information is effectively zero information; infinity goes in all directions. It's fascinating that a person could be so prescient. Borges himself was blind and a librarian in his later years; access to information and difficulty parsing it would have been a familiar struggle. You gotta love how many different levels this metaphor works on.

[@TheMasonX23]

Glad you covered Manifold Garden, crossing the void between the two infinite staircases was such a memorable moment for me

[@levibruner7553]

At the rate of 0.5% in 10 years, it would take 2000 years to fully explore Elite Dangerous.

[@demitrischoenwald1436]

Another game with an infinity within it is a game called Megaton Rainfall. Similar to Elite Dangerous, the galaxy is explorable, but as a super being with infinite power, you can explore... Everything. You can fly to other galaxies in mere moments. There's a technique that allows you to turbo boost yourself an immense distance within only a second or two. Being so far from home feels very... Scary in a way. You can even find a black hole and throw yourself into it, killing yourself in the only way possible, since not even the burning surface of the sun can harm you. It's so ridiculous but it's a fantastic game where you don't really have to leave the solar system. Also you can blow up the Earth, which is pretty funny.

[@Gmcking75]

Great game

[@Foxhound141_67]

Played it in VR for 1 day

[@lxmziken]

I wish that more of your video would reach a wider range of people just because your videos are so good

[@hwsorty]

This video is an almost 1:1 recreation of Jacob Geller's "the shape of infinity" the only differences it that this video came out 3 years after Geller's and the order of the topics he discusses is rearranged.

[@Brambrew]

Perhaps our little planet is a tiny bubble of meaning in an infinite sea of nonsense. To be alive is a miracle. We're all alive, despite the odds. _Love each other._

[@cvangemon1307]

A blank canvas.

[@Brambrew]

@@cvangemon1307 like the final Calvin & Hobbes comic

[@davisdf3064]

There is no meaning, not even in Earth, the meaning comes from us, we give meaning to everything. We are made for giving meaning, it's in our blood.

[@JB52520]

Maybe there are no odds. This is where we emerged to observe ourselves. It could be like asking what the odds are that pi would be close to 3, given the infinite expanse of the number line. Once you specify the special thing you're evaluating, you've already made the observation that it exists and where it is. This creates a context in which other possibilities aren't allowed, so you're asking the odds that a known truth would come to exist as you defined it with your observation.

[@cerulity32k]

so real

[@gtsteel]

I think that an important part of Manifold Garden is the realization that its levels don't repeat infinitely any more than the earth repeats infinitely. Like a sphere, they are finite (and often quite small), but compact. Those infinite spires in the distance are just different paths to reach the one beside you, wrapping around the manifold in different ways.

[@cheeseboy8241]

my extremely not Occam's Razor interpretation that I enjoy bc it's s mindfuck is that it is infinite, those other repeating spaces really are other identical spaces, and there are just infinite evenly spaced copies of any cube you pick up (bonus points bc that last part feels so goofy)

[@Vivicect0r]

As for Elite Dangerous, I believe it has the best feeling of endless space ever made. Its travelable in a somewhat reasonable time yet it shows perfectly the sheer size of our galaxy. Going 2500 times the speed of light yet you need several minutes to reach an object in the same star system as you. Its actually the only game where I chilled in a many month exploration expedition knowing that I have to spend a real life month to return and see another human, even while skipping 70 light years in a few seconds. I believe that time gap is actually what make you feel the size of a galaxy.

[@rolletroll2338]

Yes. And I love the fact that this unfathomable gigantism is real. Our milky way in real life is really that big. This not meaningless infinity, this is quite the opposite.

[@roberth.5363]

​@@rolletroll2338Infinity meaningless?

[@rolletroll2338]

@@roberth.5363 infingless meanininty.

[@hovant6666]

YES. YOU LINKED IT ALL TOGETHER. YES. Also, RE: Library of Babel, it will take only 10^1500 years for iron stars to form. Black holes will have evaporated by 10^90, and the stelliferous epoch of the universe will be far, far less

[@ZephyrusAsmodeus]

What really puts it in perspective is that the space of Elite Dangerous is indeed enormous, impossible for one person to witness the entirety of, and yet it is not infinite, in fact, it is infinitely smaller than infinite, it is finite, it has an explored percentage, where infinite space would never have a percentage small enough to even start counting. That's the imposition, the weight, the horror of infinity, that no matter how big a number, how big a space or how long a frame of time, it will only ever be infinitely less than infinity itself.

[@alexxx4434]

The best time in a new game is when you haven't explored it enough to figure out its boundaries and limitations yet, it's when many possibilities are still opened.

[@ElDaumo]

The pronounciation of BLAME! kills me

[@mint5438]

Read your comment and rolled my eyes, and said something like "look at this pronunciation cop over here" then heard it. No, No you're right and I apologize for doubting you, that hurt to hear.

[@darcybarrett311]

Blamb

[@JB52520]

In Japanese, it's ブラム!, or buramu. It's the transliteration for the onomatopoeia for the sound Killy's gun makes, if you take emphasis off the first and third vowels. I've read that it appears in the manga as a sound. However, for some reason it's written as BLAME! in English. Maybe it was a mistake he got stuck with, or maybe it's an intentional double meaning. In any case, it says BLAM! in Japanese, as far as I can tell. It's like how the word Earth became Earisu (エアリス, e a ri su), which came back to English as Aeris.

[@ElDaumo]

@@JB52520 interesting. I am always torn in those cases. For example, I know the original pronounciation of Studio Ghibli, but I cant bring myself to say it that way, behause it just isnt the common pronounciation wäre i live.

[@FalkFlak]

as an english speaker you can't really blam him for not knowing how to pronounce words.

[@sosaw8034]

Playing Signalis ost while talking about Blame is absolutely perfect considering how much the game’s designs seem inspired by it

[@S_N1ST3R]

Eternity, Is terrifying. I’m glad someone else, especially someone like crescendex agrees with me on this.

[@oberonpanopticon]

Life is a fate worse than death if it never ends.

[@bungiecrimes7247]

Third grade philosophy? 😅

[@oberonpanopticon]

@@bungiecrimes7247 You had a very interesting third grade

[@noahcole6856]

@@oberonpanopticonhello

[@oberonpanopticon]

@@noahcole6856 Hello

[@arkwend4090]

8 years ago, when Vsauce made a video on the Library of Babel, it was purely shocking. Infinite became palpable and abstract at the same time, it became comprehensible and incomprehensible at the same time. It became a truth teller for all that has, does, and will exist, as well as everything that could exist, maybe even including a multiverse. This video's exploration of infinity has really waked my brain up, got it into places it had never been. I never expected the subject could still have so much to offer, so I'm very grateful to you making these videos. The hardest hitting part was the Canvas of Babel. You made me realize just how much deeper it can go, that every single event that has happened, is happening, or will happen, including the whole multiverse, a complete slideshow of every single angle possible in all the positions possible in the whole universes, are captured there. You blew my mind with the revelation that the Library of Babel, as a screenshot or photo taken for each page, exists within the canvas. You actually made me re-experience the same level of shock and realization as 8 years ago. Wow, what an evening. This is a precious experience. Thank you very much.

[@booba2141]

Dude shut up

[@Seer_Of_The_Woodlands]

infinity is to me a promise of endless possibilities. I want to know what's behind the universe and I don't want to know what's there, I'd rather live in a world where I can wonder what's behind the next hill, next lake, next sea and mountain. there isn't it, traveling is in our blood? didn't we wander hundreds of thousands of years before the birth of cities? and aren't we still thirsty for adventure and excitement? at least for me, that little adventure along a path I've never walked before gives meaning to life and the world around us. and doesn't infinity offer that best?

[@Seer_Of_The_Woodlands]

+ at least for me, everything doesn't need a deeper reason to exist, to be endless. sometimes just a thought or a little experience of it all gives life meaning. the fact that there are more experiences worth experiencing than one person could ever experience. it just means that if we want, we have endless things to experience, see and wonder about.

[@JB52520]

There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. The promise of endless possibilities has to be defined in terms of things you'll find interesting and meaningful.

[@Rex-fm3vj]

I get what you mean

[@moonlightsonata9396]

I agree, but I think that it can also be scary for the fact that there is *every* possibility. How many of those possibilities could be fatal? How many could lead to the end of everything you know? As you said, infinity offers the best, but it also offers the worst, and you can’t know which you will find.

[@Seer_Of_The_Woodlands]

@@moonlightsonata9396 well said. but in its own way, what makes life exciting is precisely the fact that we don't know our destiny. it's like a book you haven't finished reading yet. but unlike in a book, you write your own destiny, of course you can't decide everything and unexpected things happen, good and bad, but you can at least push your destiny in a different direction with your own decisions. and even if you do nothing else with your life, the possibility that you could have done something else makes every decision you make valuable. but anyway thanks for your comment it was quite good and nice to read and have a nice day! -good luck to you and make your best decisions and create the best destiny for yourself.

[@nilok7]

I just realized something that may actually turn the Library of Babel into something more than an examination of infinity. We now have access to Large Language Model AIs (LLMs), which have the ability to read language. There is ongoing research on if there is actual understanding there, and at least in Stable Diffusion there may be some form of understanding beyond statistics. An LLM would be able to start going through the Library of Babel and while it couldn't learn from it, it could exclude all nonsense books, turning the Library of Babel into a legible library. Something filled with stories, fiction and nonfiction, fantastical and mundane.

[@ChaoticNeutralMatt]

I can only imagine this.. from an algorithmic perspective. As actually traversing it would be time and resource ineffective

[@nilok7]

@@ChaoticNeutralMatt Well, that's assuming you're using a binary computer. However, if you use a quantum computer, you should be able to collapse the wave function to only the valid books all at once. The first big hurtle is that you need enough q-bits to hold the LLM, and our best quantum computer only has 1000 right now.

[@ToastUrbath]

As I had just commented a second ago I imagine you could build a filter to eliminate all books which do not contain valid words, measured against our modern lexicon of course, and once you've narrowed the search down to only books which contain real words we can use that portion of the books and reduce those to only books which contain complete sentences. Of course this is easier said than done, and even still a book containing only valid words and in complete sentences no less does not mean those sentences will combine together to say anything; you would simply have a collection of every possible complete sentence. Even that might be a less than accurate way of representing what exactly you're observing still. But once you've done at least this much you will have at least found something more workably useful as even though you'll have surely eliminated all the gibberish you'll still have more books than could be observed. What fraction of the library contains only books such as these? Surely it is comparatively small to the exclude tomes and yet so vast. Although it might simply be easier to just build a collection of all possible sentences than to cut away the fat of the library itself.

[@solsystem1342]

​​@@nilok7 Great, then we just need a way to mathematically filter out nonsense word combinations from plaintext. Then also a way to make sure that the book makes sense and is actually readable. After that you'd need an algorithm for truth so the machine doesn't just turn out constant lies and every single one of these steps is more absurd than the next. You may be able to snoop on internet traffic with a quantum computer but to create a algorithmic process to produce only true statements would require the designer to be omnipotent already. Related rant: quantum computers still process things algorithmically. You still need to write a program that destructively interferes with everything except the correct answer (and sometimes other values that we can extract the correct answer from with conventional computers) ie: shors algorithm produces (mostly) correct answers and multiples of that correct answers. If we get our potential keys it's simple enough simplify them to a prime numbers and check if their product matches the public key with conventional computers.

[@nilok7]

@@solsystem1342 We have an algorithm for that, it's Large Language Model AIs. As for truth, we're not looking for truth. The library will contain both fact and fiction. It will be for humanity to read through it and find which have tangible meaning.

[@trungkien4187]

Man you are way too underrated

[@vividiscool]

fr

[@Joyboy15753]

Ong I'm a fan of him

[@PaulRudd1941]

We're all here for it.

[@pryofireeditz]

Agree

[@Attiya05]

Honestly

[@Ezqxra]

I retained full focus during the entire video, its so interesting and you told it really in a unique way that piqued my interest. Nice video man.

[@Betapvnk]

Superliminal and Manifold Garden are definitely games that push rarer non-Euclidean designs

[@whitewampa2910]

just so you know, circles and spheres are considered non-euclidean

[@Betapvnk]

@@whitewampa2910 thanks

[@cheeseboy8241]

you should check out Hyperbolica! it's actually properly non-Euclidean and a great game besides

[@BinaryDood]

I never thought the Builders went out of control. They merely continued the work of humanity bu converting every bit of mater in space to the artifice of humanity. Like we stopped building a world for people long ago, and the builders gave it its dialectical end.

[@katakana1]

I remember having a dream like 10 years ago where I was trapped in an infinite bathroom. I was stuck in the bathrooms

[@zrakonthekrakon494]

Must have done a lot of shitting

[@tonik2229]

This reminds me of a quote from In Space with Markiplier. "When speaking in infinity, impossible is just certainty waiting for its turn"

[@terryterry5653]

it's fairly alarming when an enormous desert or rooms the size of jupiter manages to give you a sense of claustrophobia. i guess that's the weight of infinity for you

[@egontokessy1610]

Literally at the start of your video, I’m playing Dark Souls 2 and I’m in Majula. I’m listening to the sad melancholic music while watching the virtual sunset and waves. I’m thinking about the last video I watched to do about submerged mechanical phobias and thinking about the lost but recently rediscovered civilisation’s that are long dead and submerged underwater. It made your intro description way too on point with what I was doing as I notice a parallel between the from software souls games with lost civilisation’s and the parallel to real life civilisations that have been lost to history. It fills me with sadness but gratitude about how fleeting life is and how in time I will be long forgotten in history but can live a very meaningful life of fulfilment by going towards my value based goals in the present. I’m mostly happy but do feel sad that I will never have my curiosity satiated about learning our past history and will never get to see what the future looks like because my life is fleeting.

[@grayadnap]

Love The Long Dark, the music (especially Wintermute theme) takes on a life of its own

[@egontokessy1610]

@@grayadnap I’ll check it out. Don’t know the songs name but I assume it’s different to the Majula one. I love the music in these games. I just hope I’m competent enough to finish Dark Souls 2. That one I’ve found challenging in particular but if I can’t I can always enjoy the music of Majula 😜.

[@luhdemco]

even if your videos don’t get 80mil views just know the people who watch genuinely enjoy and love them!!😘😘💯

[@hwsorty]

This video is an almost 1:1 recreation of Jacob Geller's "the shape of infinity" the only differences it that this video came out 3 years after Geller's and the order of the topics he discusses is rearranged. and seeing the rest of this persons channel makes it clear to me that a lot of his videos are even more copys of already existing jacob Geller videos

[@Arman_Editss]

This video opened my eyes to some topics I’ve never thought about. The library of babel part had me thinking about it for the rest of the day. Amazing video

[@adisanjay7178]

Such carefully crafted content! A true wizard with words. Subbed👍🏼

[@hwsorty]

This video is an almost 1:1 recreation of Jacob Geller's "the shape of infinity" the only differences it that this video came out 3 years after Geller's and the order of the topics he discusses is rearranged. so no, you are not correct, not a wisard just a liar

[@momsaccount4033]

Using SIGNALIS music while talking about BLAME! is genius

[@Mr.Mo_6]

20k? Bro your content makes me think, you make me feel emotions with your content, you have a gift and you are super underrated

[@hwsorty]

This video is an almost 1:1 recreation of Jacob Geller's "the shape of infinity" the only differences it that this video came out 3 years after Geller's and the order of the topics he discusses is rearranged. this creator has copied jacob in the past aswell so no, not underrated

[@Mr.Mo_6]

@@hwsorty i dont know a lot about Jacob Geller, is all of his content a ripoff though because i am talking about all of his content

[@WylieWolfenstein]

Thankyou for introducing me to manifold garden, it was a beautiful experience. I thought I was incompetent and incapable of securing an occupation in this life, but upon my completion of manifold garden, I felt that maybe i'm not as stupid as I thought I was.

[@xBINARYGODx]

There is not meaning, or lack of meaning, inherent to anything. The human brain decides variably was does and does not matter.

[@xBINARYGODx]

Also, you earned a sub (anyone talks about stuff similar to Gellar but without his annoying-to-me voice is a keeper), but this video feels like a 15-20m video with some stuff repeated too much. Maybe that was on purpose, but I would argue you could have handled that point better.

[@north_01fm58]

The signalis ost went so hard, as i didn't expect to hear it there. Great video, i love your content!

[@saigesplayce3915]

I KNEW I HEARD WINTERMUTE IN THERE sorry I’m an obsessive Long Dark player. Was it just me that got really happy when they heard that? Always makes me really happy when people learn about hidden indie gems like The Long Dark, even if you aren’t interested in the game itself, it’s soundtrack is also amazing and Wintermute is one of my favorite songs of all time, as well as Crossroad’s Elegy.

[@paveldobcz23]

Damn, I was just searching the comments to see if someone else has also noticed. TLD's sountrack is such a masterpiece and it's so fitting too. The vibes are real. Still waiting for episode 5.

[@Adam-jv9wz]

Oblivion was the first time i could see something in the distance and go there. It was a beautiful moment, no more pre rendered backgrounds, i fell in love and still very much am

[@phuturephunk]

I wasn't expecting a kid half my age to give me an existential crisis on a random Saturday, but here we are. Well done. Many years ago I did a 11K ly trip to a random O class star on the starmap in a slightly tricked out Hauler. I get this video on a fundamental level.

[@whaler1-150]

Having been a huge fan of Solar Sands for years, I am beyond excited to have found your channel! Love your style, keep it up!!

[@SpringySpring04]

Hey, NaissanceE! I liked that game, it was quite an interesting experience and it does certainly have parallels to the infinite megastructure architecture in "Blame!". Wandering around in NaissanceE gave me feelings reminiscent of wandering around the dream worlds of Yume Nikki, it was quite relaxing. Also, the concept of the Library of Babel and the Canvas of Babel feels a lot like the monkey typewriter thought experiment, where if you had a bunch of monkeys sitting and using typewriters, and given infinite amount of time, one of them will eventually produce a perfect word-for-word copy of a Shakespeare play or something, lol

[@foxxify1]

I walked up those stairs for at least 45 minutes at 1 am

[@NatanTrombetta]

if you have not read it, i strongly recommend girls last tour, it's a manga that for what i saw about Blame! in this video (i've never read it but i badly want now!) is very similar in artstyle, at least for scenery, and vibe. It's not exactly infinite or about inifinity, but it is about contemplation of the wider world and how the human fits in it.

[@Abnerxdlol]

I hope I get more than 1millions subscribers soon, this channel it's so underrated, I've been following you for a little over 7 months and I love this channel, you always do your commentary so chill and very emotional in a way I can't describe, I just had to tell you you do a great job and hope you get the recognition you deserve

[@thomassloan1997]

My god man... Blam? Blam? Blam?!?! Its blame!

[@dr.cheeze5382]

It is most definitely BLAM!. The E is silent.

[@samw1501]

​@@dr.cheeze5382while I express no opinion on the original statement... You pronounce the 'e' in 'blame'?

[@samw1501]

​@@dr.cheeze5382sorry, just being facetious 😅 I know what you meant

[@ocean_monster1]

It's the onomatopoetic way Japanese say the English phrase of the sound of the gun. "Blam!" So it's not "blame". More like "Blamme" Loanwords going back to the original language by translation is fun. Surely causes some confusion.

[@samw1501]

@@ocean_monster1 My personal favourite Japanese loan-word from English is "painapurru" which is about as close as you can get to "pineapple" you can get with the set of symbols/syllables provided by katakana, but is far enough from the original English that we have to transliterate it *back* into something relatively unrecogniseable. Why they went with the English version of the word and not "ananas" like seemingly almost every other language in the world is beyond me. "Ananasu" would have been easier to transliterate.

[@LightYagami-ik1cg]

18:06 imagine you go years and the first coherent sentence is “you’re reading this right now”

[@NormalGuyINCorp]

Eternity is a scary thing this video portrayed it really well.

[@temporalteleporter2874]

Ya know when you started the video, I thought they should make a game like mc eschers stair case. Then you brought up manifold garden.

[@starlightsynthonies]

The Library of Babel literally brought a tear to my eye. It is beautiful in an existential awe-inspiring way

[@complex_city]

5:40 distance between bros eyes bigger than the city could ever hope to be

[@awesomespoon11]

HAHAHAHA

[@rodeletters]

When I started watching this video I did not expect it to go where it went. Very interesting and though-provoking, thanks!

[@mategido]

Damn awesome video, do your job algorithm, this man deserves it

[@doomrevolver8387]

I clicked on this and had no idea you were gonna talk about one of my favourite scifi stories ever. Blame is fascinating.

[@secondhandguitarist]

Wow. I found your channel from the backrooms video and I'm already hooked. The way you discuss these incomprehensible concepts is something I've never seen replicate.

[@hwsorty]

This video is an almost 1:1 recreation of Jacob Geller's "the shape of infinity" the only differences it that this video came out 3 years after Geller's and the order of the topics he discusses is rearranged. its crazy because the thing you say you've never seen replicated is a copy of someone else's work

[@Wersser]

Thanks for making this sort of content and for the games, I'll definitely play them. I like that you're doing vids on such obscure topics. Keep it up!

[@Hypercube2017]

I see now. The Library of Babbel, much like the Tower of Babbel, is an exercise in hubris. Humanity created something impossibly large. And, feeling successful, hundreds, thousands of people flock to the Library of Babbel, determined to be the one to find _something,_ anything. To find the answers to questions unanswered, to find the questions unasked. Believing in their hubris that they have made something infinite, that they have answered and asked every question. But they fail to realize the task they've given themselves; blinded by hubris, by pride and ego, humanity searches in endless, nonsensical tomes for answers, unaware that for every answer, there are a hundred, thousand, million false answers, hidden by billions, of trillions, of quadrillions of almost answers, hidden by unimaginable numbers of nonsense. The time from the beginning of the universe to its literal *heat death* (assuming proton decay) is said to be 10^110 years. Without proton decay, in only 10^1500 years iron stars will form. The Library of Babbel, 10^4677 books long, is an infinite word search, within an infinite word search, not a library of hidden answers to every mystery. Humanity can find answers... but not within that social experiment.

[@adultpersonman4612]

I read it in a slightly different way. Instead of it being a metaphor for hubris, it represents humanity’s desperation. Some people are willing to spend their entire lives in the library, searching through an infinite amount of nonsense, just to find one clear, glimpse of something that makes sense. Even if it’s just a sentence, it would make all of the chaos and nonsense and all of your hard work feel like it has a purpose.

[@saucevc8353]

The Babel aspect of the library could also represent the gibberish that makes up the vast majority of the library, much like the curse that God put upon the builders of the Tower in the Old Testament. If only the books were comprehensible, we could reach heaven, but because they are not, our efforts are doomed to fail.

[@Hypercube2017]

Yes, both of you... hubris, pride, desperation, a desire to reach heaven, perhaps even to _take_ heaven. Doomed from the start, but nonetheless, a burning desire to find something, anything, keeps people pushing forward. Regardless of whether or not what they find has meaning (a single word, a couple words, perhaps even a full sentence); in a way it seems that the allure is of the "because we can" nature, possibly stemming from hubris or pride as I speculated. Though, it could also come from more altruistic desires; as Cresendex says, the cure for cancer _is_ in there... however, a hundred, thousand false cures are also in there. Perhaps the Library was never actually meant to be used to find information, but to produce it. To see the _why_ of people searching unceasingly through tomes of nonsense for a chance - however miniscule - at discovering something important. Whether for a determination to uncover truth and record history like professor Zei from ATLA, or for a chance at glory like Dr. Wily from Megaman or certain real-life examples.

[@samfowler2073]

An infinity plagued with nonsense is a good name for an album

[@oberonpanopticon]

20:57 Actually, it does. There are names for any number no matter how large. Welcome to infinity.

[@codynovick5701]

Having seen both Jacob Geller's and now your video, I truly appreciate how much there is to say on this topic. Both of your videos are very well thought out and well written essays about this topic that are looking at it from differing perspectives, and both of you have said things that I haven't thought about it before. But I spend so much of my time wondering at infinity that I doubt that either of you have nailed every thought I've ever had about it, and I don't even have the motivation to write an essay or record a video. Idk, thank you for taking your time with this project and I'm sorry you got flak for copying someone you clearly didn't copy. It is tough in this day and age, where people throw around accusations of plagiarism when it can be so unfairly harmful to someone's livelihood if untrue. I think IP is the real joke in all of it, the library of babel being the best example of the folly inherently built in. Someone HAS already imagined everything and anything there is to imagine, there IS no such thing as an original idea. Giving credit to someone makes enough sense while they live and can use it to prosper, but there is IP on the books that belongs to corpses and corporations will defend that IP with millions if not billions if need be. It would be hilarious, if it weren't so sad. Idk, I appreciate your existence while acknowledging that all individual existence is meaningless in an infinite universe, and I think it is super stupid neat we can hold these contradicting ideas inside us simultaneously. Keep up the awesome work, and don't let haters discourage you when they clearly haven't taken the time to watch both videos all the way through

[@moshelinke2979]

thanks for having Fugue in Void in this cool video ❤

[@cheeseboy8241]

great game dude, I gotta replay. the vibes are unmatched

[@a.p.e.x3195]

the Library of Babel is something I now want to draw

[@WhiteRed-Black]

This video is existential horror. It's like looking into an abyss that grows a billion times bigger every time you blink

[@pear999]

bro this video is so good

[@0Blueaura]

man i loved naissance

[@Sodasaman]

E

[@ohmnesia]

Thanks for writing down the name. Didn't now how to write it and the creator of the video somehow didn't reference it anywhere

[@joshmapes4311]

That was INCREDIBLE! Thank you for making this!

[@jamesgeorge7579]

If the Library of Babel is digitized, can't you add a search function then? Type in a key phrase and the Library will look through books until it finds that phrase

[@Shadowkey392]

The point is to ensure that there is always something out there that hasn’t been seen yet.

[@takanashi8905]

Hell yea! Blame! getting more love

[@nikonradish]

Hearing it pronounced as Blam rather than Blame threw me off for sure lol, but it’s always one of my favorite series to listen about, I love that the mangaka was an architect that wanted to create impossible buildings and made a manga around that. naissancE and Manifold Garden have always been perfect subjects for philosophical musings and I love that for creators like you. Thank you for the video!

[@JB52520]

If the process which generates text in the library doesn't specify any information other than noise, then the library contains nothing. Any apparent structure is an artifact of interpreting the noise. This means the librarians are using the library to explore themselves. A more efficient and less tragic method of doing so would be to leave the library. When infinite things are understood in terms of the process that generates them, they can become disappointingly small. Since the human experience is (currently) a vast and irreducible complexity, then simply living is already deeply meaningful.

[@mycroft3322]

NaissanceE is so captivating and stylistic that it’s stuck with me for years and I can’t stop thinking about it

[@logsupermulti3921]

It should be noted that Borges' library is not infinite, it's very large, so large that infinite would be a better word to describe it. But it is still finite. There is only so many permutations of 410 pages of 25 characters you can create. I remember doing the math in high school, as described in the original story each page in each book has 40 lines of 80 characters each. In a 410 page volume that's 1,312,000 characters per book. That means assuming each book as the total 25 different characters described in the story, the total number of books in the library is 25^1,312,000. That's 25 followed by 1,312,000 zeros. (It should be noted the total number of electrons in our universe is estimated to be somewhere in the realm of 1.5^80, not atoms, electrons.) Now, assuming the books are about 1.5 inches thick and take about 1.5 feet to shelve vertically, figuring about 8 shelves 200 feet long and about 100 square feet of living space, the width and breath of the library is about 7.16^1,297,369 light-years wide and deep. A distance so great that the human mind is unable to even fathom what that would look like. You could fling yourself over the railing and fall, for hundreds of billions of years, and not even get 1% of 1% the total distance to the bottom.

[@zachialadams9279]

A creator that understands what it means to create, only passingly expects that creation to be appreciated. If given infinity as a paintbrush, you don't care that a beautiful hue of blue is lost on some corner of eternity. You just know that it was meant to be there.

[@Brambrew]

1:11 "Sure, it would take years" Erm akshually, it would take less than a year, only 345 days; 8,300 hours of walking at 3 mph

[@eveleynce]

though you should remember that about half your time is going to be spent sleeping, eating, relieving yourself, etc.

[@arkadian2917]

This made me open the library of babel, see you after the thermal death of the universe

[@endredomokos1770]

Hey, I recommend taking a quick detour to "in a nutshell" on KZbin and their video on what will happen after the heat death of the universe, just so you can be prepared

[@arkadian2917]

@@endredomokos1770 oh thanks, tho i don't think anything at all would happen other than bumping into slowly decelerating atoms, but still you never know

[@Lunar.67]

This is why i love Fromsoft's world so much. These worlds are often built on jagged rocks over the side of an abyss (of water or otherwise.) The world seems so unwelcoming, but the isolated kingdoms remind you this is all you have. When you read the item descriptions you hear of outside kingdoms, but they seem so far away. It starts to make you wonder why the world is the way it is.

[@veitmaroli9965]

I have no idea how people can feel unsetteled or being hostilized by these enviroments. To me they look... like home. Like the place i would like to be. To stay. To explore. To remain. The atmosphere of these places are just hypnotizing. Just so inviting. Just so... familiar. Idk how to put it. It's just... so magnetizing.

[@SeraphimFelis]

Huh, just realized that the library of babel is a description of entropy.

[@GrandDukeMushroom]

"...There isn't a point, and that's the point, at one point...."

[@cameronwebb5621]

"We have Jacob Geller at home"

[@hwsorty]

fr

[@hwsorty]

This video is an almost 1:1 recreation of Jacob Geller's "the shape of infinity" the only differences it that this video came out 3 years after Geller's and the order of the topics he discusses is rearranged. he even speaks in the same way

[@ratiquette]

Jacob Geller would never say that all caves are the right size for humans.

[@lukemoore8757]

Both is good

[@corolla9742]

​@@hwsortyJacob geller makes amazing content so why not expand upon that and inspire other creators to make such content as his

[@jambothejoyful2966]

Yessss I love NaissanceE, its one of my favorite games I'm so glad you're giving it the attention it deserves!

[@TMOQF]

0:23 for me, that game is minecraft xbox 360 edition, yes there a Boundary, But if you were to go past it. How far could you go before you fall through the world.

[@Waryfuls]

I remember having this one dream where I was drowning in 'a Minecraft like world' which was like 10 blocks deep but infinite in width, under that a black infinite void. If you managed to stay up in the water, there was also an infinite sky with no clouds. I hold it out for like 5 minutes of swimming then fell out of the world for a few seconds. That triggered a 'panick attack' that made me wake up.

[@fitetso]

These type's of videos are what I really like watching, and I know many people agree with me that there's something "cool" about videos like these.

[@lukasboruvka5151]

You also explained Fermi Paradox now. This is why there are no signs of aliens in the infinite universe

[@zombie_catgirl]

pretty silly this is almost identical to Jacob Geller's video

[@firstprimehunter]

A bit too close imo. It almost feels like it was plagiarized.

[@hwsorty]

it was@@firstprimehunter

[@j-rey-]

Another excellent example of this is the book House of Leaves. It is a very complicated narrative, but one of the main threads is about a gigantic labyrinth inside of a house that a family recently moved into. They discover it after a weird set of circumstances where impossible things start happening, like the inside of their house measures larger than the outside; a door randomly appears on a wall, behind which should lead to the outside, but instead leads to a dark corridor; and more. The labyrinth is unlit; full of completely featureless rooms made entirely of some unknown, ash-black substance; constantly changes; and extends seemingly forever. There is a giant circular stairway in the center of an enormous room they call the Great Hall that decends downward farther than the diameter of the Earth. There is so much more to the story, and I highly recommend it.

[@JurassicCube]

Mate come on you are straight up plaigarising Jacob Geller!!!!!!!

[@Ghostshrimp1533]

That Long Dark music really caught me off guard. Phenomenal video bro

[@zedbags]

Meaningless Infinity? Hell, isn't our own universe a meaningless Infinity?

[@alasanof]

You forgot to mention the best part of Manifold Garden where you can drag the cubes against stairs and they make satisfying noises.