TITLE: All The Words
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: February 27, 2021 11:12 AM
DESC: 
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BODY:
 In
<a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1931/a-humorist-at-work-fran-lebowitz">
   a Paris Review interview</a>,
 Fran Lebowitz joked about the challenge of writing:

<blockquote><em>
 Every time I sit at my desk, I look at my dictionary, a Webster's
 Second Unabridged with nine million words in it and think, All
 the words I need are in there; they're just in the wrong order.
</em></blockquote>

 Unfortunately, thinks this computer scientist, writing is a
 computationally more intense task than simply putting the words in
 the right order.  We have to sample with replacement.

 Computational complexity is the reason we can't have nice things.
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