Vanishing Point . [Le Dot]

From	Mild Shock <janburse@fastmail.fm>
Newsgroups	sci.logic
Subject	Vanishing Point . [Le Dot]
Date	2025-10-05 00:52 +0200
Message-ID	<10bs8f5$hne8$2@solani.org> (permalink)

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In a Tibetan lamasery, the monks seek to
list all of the names of God. They believe
the Universe was created for this purpose,
and that once this naming is completed, God
will bring the Universe to an end. Three

centuries ago, the monks created an alphabet
in which they calculated they could encode
all the possible names of God, numbering
about 9,000,000,000 ("nine billion") and
each having no more than nine characters.

riting the names out by hand, as they had
been doing, even after eliminating various
nonsense combinations, would take another
15,000 years; the monks wish to use modern
technology to finish this task in 100 days.

They rent a computer capable of printing all
the possible permutations, and hire two
Westerners to install and program the machine.
The computer operators are skeptical but
play along. After three months, as the job

nears completion, they fear that the monks
will blame the computer (and, by extension,
its operators) when nothing happens. The
Westerners leave slightly earlier than their
scheduled departure without warning the monks,

so that it will complete its final print run
shortly after they leave. On their way to the
airfield they pause on the mountain path. Under
a clear night sky they es timate that it must be
just about the time that the monks are pasting

the final printed names into their holy books.
Then they notice that "overhead, without any
fuss, the stars were going out."

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

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Vanishing Point . [Le Dot] Mild Shock <janburse@fastmail.fm> - 2025-10-05 00:52 +0200
  Lets compare AI data centers (Re: Vanishing Point . [Le Dot]) Mild Shock <janburse@fastmail.fm> - 2025-10-05 01:04 +0200
    USA domestic chips for the never ending crunch (Was: Lets compare AI data centers) Mild Shock <janburse@fastmail.fm> - 2025-10-05 01:16 +0200
      Holy Schrimp Jesus: The Internet is Dead [Rossy Boy dethroned?] (Re: USA domestic chips for the never ending crunch) Mild Shock <janburse@fastmail.fm> - 2025-10-05 10:31 +0200
        Try https://mathstodon.xyz by Christian Lawson-Perfect (Re: Holy Schrimp Jesus: The Internet is Dead [Rossy Boy dethroned?]) Mild Shock <janburse@fastmail.fm> - 2025-10-07 19:44 +0200
          Some statistics about Mastodon (Re: Try https://mathstodon.xyz by Christian Lawson-Perfect) Mild Shock <janburse@fastmail.fm> - 2025-10-07 19:58 +0200
  Re: Vanishing Point . [Le Dot] WM <wolfgang.mueckenheim@tha.de> - 2025-10-05 12:27 +0200
    British writer Arthur C. Clarke (Was: Vanishing Point . [Le Dot]) Mild Shock <janburse@fastmail.fm> - 2025-10-05 19:04 +0200
      Aryabhatta of Bihar [Indian Mathematician-Astronomer] (Was: Re: British writer Arthur C. Clarke) Mild Shock <janburse@fastmail.fm> - 2025-10-05 19:20 +0200

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