r/Showerthoughts 10d ago

Speculation With just how many possible combinations there are, you probably say a never-before-uttered sentence every day.

3.1k Upvotes

223 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

16

u/Vitolar8 9d ago

I didn't mean to imply that. If the intent was to create a brand new sentence, you could do it in seconds, and though probability would still play a factor, it wouldn't be a once in a day random occurrence. I'm saying that if you live your day to day life saying probably a thousand sentences, I think it's quite likely one of those is unique. It's like the deck shuffling thing (that everytime you shuffle a deck, you're quite likely to have just made a brand new combination). There are just so many combinations that we're not running out of unspoken sentences in our lifetimes. And out of a near-infinite amount of possible sentences, getting one unused one per day is not that wild, I think.

3

u/_trouble_every_day_ 9d ago

Noam Chomsky agrees with you so I think you’re in the clear

1

u/xMordetx 8d ago

Noam chompshy can chomp a corncob.

1

u/_trouble_every_day_ 7d ago

Sadly he had a stroke over a year ago so he actually can’t