HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015821.jpg
1.8 MB
Extraction Summary
2
People
1
Organizations
0
Locations
0
Events
0
Relationships
3
Quotes
Document Information
Type:
Book page / evidentiary document
File Size:
1.8 MB
Summary
This document is a single page (page 131) from a book or essay titled 'Knowledge,' bearing a House Oversight Committee Bates stamp. The text discusses mathematical probability, scientific notation, and the 'infinite monkey theorem' concept, illustrating the immense time required to randomly generate the book 'War and Peace' using the entire universe's atoms and the Planck interval.
People (2)
| Name | Role | Context |
|---|---|---|
| William Shakespeare | Author |
Mentioned as an author whose complete works would be generated during the counting process described in the text.
|
| School teachers | Educators (Generic) |
Mentioned in a parenthetical remark regarding the validity of the word 'ginormous'.
|
Organizations (1)
| Name | Type | Context |
|---|---|---|
| House Oversight Committee |
Inferred from the Bates stamp 'HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015821' at the bottom of the page.
|
Key Quotes (3)
"The plank interval’ is the shortest time that can exist in the Universe as a discrete ‘tick’."Source
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015821.jpg
Quote #1
"If I counted up from one, I would print out War and Peace eventually but it would take 120 billion, billion, billion, billion, billion... years!"Source
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015821.jpg
Quote #2
"contrary to statements by school teachers that ginormous is not a word – it is!"Source
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015821.jpg
Quote #3
Full Extracted Text
Complete text extracted from the document (2,921 characters)
Knowledge 131
Easy!
No, unfortunately. The problem is subtler than it first appears. First
it will take a VEEEEEERRRY long time. If I counted up from one, I would
print out War and Peace eventually but it would take 120 billion, billion,
billion, billion, billion... (I would need the entire length of this book
to write out all the billions) years! For the physicists amongst you, I
would need 10^30,000 years, assuming I could use every atom in the known
universe counting in parallel at the plank interval. ‘The plank interval’ is
the shortest time that can exist in the Universe as a discrete ‘tick’.
Even going at this speed using with every atom in the known
Universe would take 10^5,000 longer than the age of the Universe. This is
stupendously long. Remember scientific notation means I have a 1 with
5000 zeroes after it. It is a deceptive notation as something as innocuous
as 10^120 is equal to the number of atoms in the known universe. 10^5,000 is
an absolutely enormous number. If you hear something is going to ‘take
until the end of time’, we’re talking a lot longer than that!
You may have spotted that in the process of counting up to the War
and Peace number we also count through EVERY book ever written
shorter than 500,000 words in all the world’s languages. Interestingly we
counted through the Japanese and Chinese translations of War and Peace
quite a bit before we reached the English and finally French translations.
During the process, we also stepped through countless other wonderful
works: proofs of amazing theorems, the complete works of William
Shakespeare, and every composition ever written. Sadly, we never knew
it. The problem is my program never stopped and told me it had found
any of these wonderful things. I would have to sit staring at the screen to
spot them. If I was off doing something else – making a cup of tea, taking
the kids to school – I would miss all these wonders; the program never
tells me if it has succeeded, but quietly prints out War and Peace and
carries on. This is really annoying. It’s not a useful machine.
What I need is a machine that rings a bell when it finds something
interesting so I can break away from what I am doing and take a look.
Reading every book it writes in every language and all the nonsense
in between would take a ginormous amount of my time. (By-the-way,
contrary to statements by school teachers that ginormous is not a word
– it is!) I want a computer to come up with War and Peace without me
having to do all the work.
It’s no help if the machine writes everything down and lets me take
a look in my own good time. That only puts off the time when I have to
begin reading all the gibberish it produced. Another practical problem
is the massive storage required. Just imagine the immense piles of printer
No, unfortunately. The problem is subtler than it first appears. First
it will take a VEEEEEERRRY long time. If I counted up from one, I would
print out War and Peace eventually but it would take 120 billion, billion,
billion, billion, billion... (I would need the entire length of this book
to write out all the billions) years! For the physicists amongst you, I
would need 10^30,000 years, assuming I could use every atom in the known
universe counting in parallel at the plank interval. ‘The plank interval’ is
the shortest time that can exist in the Universe as a discrete ‘tick’.
Even going at this speed using with every atom in the known
Universe would take 10^5,000 longer than the age of the Universe. This is
stupendously long. Remember scientific notation means I have a 1 with
5000 zeroes after it. It is a deceptive notation as something as innocuous
as 10^120 is equal to the number of atoms in the known universe. 10^5,000 is
an absolutely enormous number. If you hear something is going to ‘take
until the end of time’, we’re talking a lot longer than that!
You may have spotted that in the process of counting up to the War
and Peace number we also count through EVERY book ever written
shorter than 500,000 words in all the world’s languages. Interestingly we
counted through the Japanese and Chinese translations of War and Peace
quite a bit before we reached the English and finally French translations.
During the process, we also stepped through countless other wonderful
works: proofs of amazing theorems, the complete works of William
Shakespeare, and every composition ever written. Sadly, we never knew
it. The problem is my program never stopped and told me it had found
any of these wonderful things. I would have to sit staring at the screen to
spot them. If I was off doing something else – making a cup of tea, taking
the kids to school – I would miss all these wonders; the program never
tells me if it has succeeded, but quietly prints out War and Peace and
carries on. This is really annoying. It’s not a useful machine.
What I need is a machine that rings a bell when it finds something
interesting so I can break away from what I am doing and take a look.
Reading every book it writes in every language and all the nonsense
in between would take a ginormous amount of my time. (By-the-way,
contrary to statements by school teachers that ginormous is not a word
– it is!) I want a computer to come up with War and Peace without me
having to do all the work.
It’s no help if the machine writes everything down and lets me take
a look in my own good time. That only puts off the time when I have to
begin reading all the gibberish it produced. Another practical problem
is the massive storage required. Just imagine the immense piles of printer
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015821
Discussion 0
No comments yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this epstein document