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Many moons ago, I wondered what it would look like if you iteratively generated every possible image. It doesn't sound very useful at all (and it certainly isn't) but I learned C++ and SDL that way.

This is probably terrible code by anybody's standards but maybe someone wants to take a look: https://github.com/svenstaro/infinerator




I've thought about this as well; it's one of those weird things where you realize that with enough pixel count and shading options, every image you can think of exists within the total set of generated images.


"enough" hides a surprising amount of work. Mobilise the entire planet's computers for a decade, assuming a generous Moore's law increase as well, and you might count through seventeen 8-bit grayscale pixels in that decade.

Annihilate the Sun and you won't get enough energy to drive a simple counter through thirty 8-bit grayscale pixels.

https://security.stackexchange.com/a/6149/


A story about the text version of this concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel



An an online version based on that story: https://libraryofbabel.info/


I think about it from the perspective of ideas, once we figure out something (how to fly, electricity) we know it. How do you brute force find that info through random/massive computation. Specifically to find the next things we don't know like jumping dimensions or FTL, etc...




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