I volunteered to write an article for the the next issue of the Graduate Student New magazine a while ago, but that meant that I had to actually sit down and write something this past week. In typical fashion, serious writer’s block ensued, and whenever I struggle to write, I always think about George Gamow’s One, Two, Three … Infinity. It’s been a long while since I read the book, and I don’t remember much of it except this one thing that I always think of:

In one of the earlier chapters, Gamow mentions a machine that could theoretically output all sentences that have ever been written, as well as every sentence yet to be written. The machine resembles one of those combination locks that has a series of dials on them, except the dials on this machine have all 26 letters, 10 numbers, space, and a multitude of punctuation marks, and there are many many of these dials in a row. So in theory, the machine can just go through all the combinations of dial positions to make strings of characters. The vast majority of the strings would be gibberish (ie. “oajsmd928*9.asl\e”), but the sentences of the best written works would also be among the outputs. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

So theoretically as well, this machine could output sentences of the most ground-breaking scientific papers, or more importantly for my current state, it would be able to generate my entire thesis proposal for me, and/or have written that GSN article for me.

If only I had me such a machine.