A dystopic idea of how all writings will end at some point
Sometimes when I have long walks, I think about how finite or infinite the possibilities of the world and society we live in are. This is one of those short ideas and small writings. And to be honest, I did not research anything to see if this was already thought (but it is a big maybe here), so this is my tiny disclaimer 🙂
All alphabets in all languages have a finite number of characters and thus all alphabets can produce a finite number of words. For example, the English one consists of 26 characters that can produce about 600.000 words. I am thinking in “about” terms because I take into account the dictionary per se plus slang or jargon. Looking at the base structure of a sentence, like just a subject and a verb, this turns into a math problem of summing all combinations of permutations of 600.000 words starting from 1,2,3 ….n words sentences and that is finite also. (I am including the possibility of nonsense sentences as those are all in the math sum above) This will give us a finite number of all possible sentences that can be written.
So from the above, we can understand that at some point it will be mathematically impossible to write a sentence that has not been written before. Another sum of combinations and permutations of the number of sentences will give us the finite number of books that can be written with those sentences in any order possible. Of course, we are talking about an unimaginable number but, a finite number.
At this point, any association of words has been written before, and all the books are already written, so nothing can be unique anymore. All ideas have been put in words before, and no new idea can exist per se. Anything that you might say or think, was somewhere written in the exact context that you are facing right now. This is the end of all words and all ideas.
But wait! Someone just invented a new word… the math starts again.
Before you leave…
I hope you enjoyed this thought experiment as I loved writing it! Think about it. Challenge your mind towards the impossible. Stay tuned, follow, subscribe, share, leave a comment, and be as social as possible for the sake of the Social Media Gods! I will sign out now and have another walk 🙂