Let’s say we left one single very smart guy (not necessarily with the knowledge: they may be able to understand hard stuff when taught it, but not know it already) alone on a copy of the earth. That person is also immortal. Could that person, by themselves, gain back all knowledge, maybe also experimental, or even surpass that is already available to us right now, before the planet gets inevitably engulfed by a sun turning red giant?
Infinity by its very nature in a sense guarantees all possibilities. Perhaps even a dumb person with infinite time would recreate all technology and beyond.
It reminds me of this disturbing video.
Wtf is that video…
Within boundary conditions of the system.
One person alone on a planet is quite busy with feeding himself and all personal needs.
Not enough time for doing science.
He didn’t specify what kind of immortality, so let’s assume it’s the kind where you don’t have to worry about food, water, sleep, or dying
you don’t have to worry about food, water, sleep, or dying
that could make it even worse, bc such a person has no motive to explore and research anything.
Boredom is often enough of a motivator, and nothing stops them from doing those things even though they don’t need to.
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/505/
What transmits the information, I don’t understand. The rocks just sit there. Don’t get it. The guy maybe?
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/505:_A_Bunch_of_Rocks
It can be hard to explain, but basically each row of rocks is a line of input/computation/output not unlike the binary code that flows through the circuits of a processor. It’s a different representation of the same kind of work your device is doing right now. And, as you might think, waaaaaay slower.
Yeah, what is slower though. Presumably they mean the rate at which the guy lays the stones, otherwise there’s nothing changing over time. It would just be a record.
Right. Think of Cueball laying stones as a CPU, and the rate at which he can finish laying a row and return to the beginning as his clock speed.
Very long lines, then.
Mind-bogglingly long!
ah, so I see the guy has started resorting to the pens that fall
If they have almost unlimited time, I don’t see why not
If you had unlimited time, you would not be motivated to use it efficiently.
If I was immortal and without worldly concerns, I might spend eight years in the throes of a single good book.
I might never decide I’m in the mood to learn CSS.
Let alone invent CSS.
yeah but eventually the boredom would hit you
While I know that infinity means infinity, I think that like fractals we tend to move about one point instead of trending away at random. I wouldn’t change radically over time, I would just become a more complex self-similar being.
By themselves? I’m not entirely sure. Some manufacturing processes would be so difficult or physically demanding that they’d require someone to help. But those would be necessary to advance to the next stage of tech…
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No. Think of how big the category of technology involved in keeping the human body alive. Ok our immortal wants to recreate the pacemaker but there is no one else but them around. How would that work exactly? Presumably as an immortal they wouldn’t need one. So how would they test it?
Then you add in things that only make sense if there are multiple people in the world. You don’t exactly need passenger side airbags if there are no passengers. Tandem bicycles would be strange for this lone immortal to make. Everything involved in childcare from the simple (how to swaddle a baby) to the surprisingly complicated (breast milk pumps) to the obvious (diapers).
Hed probably go insane, but maybe? Hed have to run logistics all by himself, so possibly not.
with infinite time, why not
Thinking back about it, it’s pretty much Factorio’s plot, isn’t it?
Special productive power of cooperative labour. So, even if intellectual ability was not a limiting factor, I don’t believe it would be possible. Can’t prove it, though.
Probably not if you subscribe to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck's_principle
given enough time, the lone scientist may display something similar to change between generations maybe
I think it’s possible given an infinite amount of time that they could recreate any previous human technology, but would they want to?
It might get kind of boring spending every day for thousands of years just trying to recreate old technology.
Are they the last person on earth? If so I can’t see anyone wasting too much time building tech meant to assist people who don’t exist anymore.
I guess what I’m saying is it’s pretty certain they could do it, but only if there were some motivation like saving humanity after an apocalypse
Good point. If there aren’t other people, why would you need a printing press?
Or those fire trucks where someone from the rear will steer.
just boredom I guess. what else are you gonna do for infinitely many years anyway?
Is the guy still immortal after being engulfed by the sun?
