OOTS #1118 - The Discussion Thread

[Kish]

Applying that method, I find my purpose in life is...

"What the asterisks kind of question is that?"

[georgie_leech]

I dunno, you tell me. It's your life not mine.


Whatever makes you go "I would rather not die today", what you feel give your existence worth, what you want to have accomplished before you die.

Why does whatever you want to do become less desirable if you won't die? Like, take away that "before you die" bit. Do you not still have things you want to do or accomplish?

[Fyraltari]

Applying that method, I find my purpose in life is...

"What the asterisks kind of question is that?"

I don't understand.


Why does whatever you want to do become less desirable if you won't die? Like, take away that "before you die" bit. Do you not still have things you want to do or accomplish?

https://www.islam21c.com/wp-content/uploads/procrastination-01-620x330.png

[Kish]

https://www.islam21c.com/wp-content/uploads/procrastination-01-620x330.png
How tragically-hip.

[georgie_leech]

I don't undersatnd.



https://www.islam21c.com/wp-content/uploads/procrastination-01-620x330.png

Seriously, you've never done anything for its own sake? :smallconfused:

[Fyraltari]

Seriously, you've never done anything for its own sake? :smallconfused:

Yes I have. But I do tend to procrastinate. Anyway, you'll notice that "you have all the time in the world" is only one reason I suggested for why putting effort into anything becomes futile when you're immortal.

[Peelee]

What's a "purpose in life"?

(Answer without breaking the rule against no religion here, if you can. :smalltongue:)

For you and everyone else to have as good a time as possible for as long as possible. The "and everyone else" bit is where most of the responsibilities come in. And where a good amount of people disagree.

[neriana]

What's a "purpose in life"?

Sex, drugs, and rock n'roll.

More seriously, one could learn everything and eventually figure out how to save large chunks of the universe (everything possible) while also composing symphonies. As well as experiencing the pleasures of life.

I find the idea that immortal humans would get bored as they get older less compelling as I myself get older. I enjoy things more in my 40s than I did in my 20s, and it's not because I have the fleetingness of existence always on my mind. Old age certainly has physical drawbacks, and obviously one wouldn't want to be caught in the Tithonus trap, but if one could be somewhere between 30 and 60 forever? Sure, why not.

[Fyraltari]

Sex, drugs, and rock n'roll.

More seriously, one could learn everything and eventually figure out how to save large chunks of the universe (everything possible) while also composing symphonies. As well as experiencing the pleasures of life.

I find the idea that immortal humans would get bored as they get older less compelling as I myself get older. I enjoy things more in my 40s than I did in my 20s, and it's not because I have the fleetingness of existence always on my mind. Old age certainly has physical drawbacks, and obviously one wouldn't want to be caught in the Tithonus trap, but if one could be somewhere between 30 and 50 forever? Sure, why not.

Yeah but once you've experienced everything? Once you have composed every symphony that can ever be composed? Once there is litterally nothing you have not done yet?

[Peelee]

Yeah but once you've experienced everything? Once you have composed every symphony that can ever be composed? Once there is litterally nothing you have not done yet?

Like count to e?

[Emanick]

Yeah but once you've experienced everything? Once you have composed every symphony that can ever be composed? Once there is litterally nothing you have not done yet?

Well, you probably wouldn’t remember everything, so you would always be able to experience some things as if you hadn’t done them before.

I once read an article which estimated that if you lived to, say, 900, you would literally run out of space to form new memories. I’m probably using the wrong terminology to describe the process of “running out of space” - I imagine the brain doesn’t work quite like that, and I read the article a couple of years ago so I have forgotten the nuances of what it said, but the basic principle remains relevant, I think.

So even if a brain was redesigned in such a way that it could live on eternally - which is what I picture when I think about a brain in an afterlife - it would presumably not remember everything it had done so well that it tired of existence itself.

[Fyraltari]

Like count to e?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldda7vhmuxU

[Kish]

Yeah but once you've experienced everything? Once you have composed every symphony that can ever be composed? Once there is litterally nothing you have not done yet?
None of us is in a position to know how someone who was a million years old would think...not even you. You're choosing to make assumptions that support going somewhere bleak and negative with it.

I do note that you're tacitly assuming perfect recall; everyone I know in real life comments on my amazing memory, yet somehow I'm pretty sure that if I left Baldur's Gate alone for a hundred years, I could (technology at the end of that time permitting, of course) start it over at the beginning just like I'd never played it, without remembering anything more than that it had been fun before.

[Peelee]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldda7vhmuxU

Ask Euler.

[neriana]

Yeah but once you've experienced everything? Once you have composed every symphony that can ever be composed? Once there is litterally nothing you have not done yet?

People (human or not) still exist and will be creating new things for you to experience and learn. And if they don't, you can create them by seeding various planets with different types of early lifeforms and seeing how they develop into people from whom you can then learn. Immortality would give you time to learn how to do that.

Btw, there are a lot of things that never get dull no matter how often you repeat them. See the first line of my previous response. Minus the "drugs" part, I've never actually been into those, and getting yourself addicted to heroin for eternity would not be a good plan.


I'm pretty sure that if I left Baldur's Gate alone for a hundred years, I could (technology at the end of that time permitting, of course) start it over at the beginning just like I'd never played it, without remembering anything more than that it had been fun before.

Doubt it.

[Fyraltari]

None of us is in a position to know how someone who was a million years old would think...not even you. You're choosing to make assumptions that support going somewhere bleak and negative with it.
Someone who lives a million year old wouldn't be human. A million-year old human would have a bleak existence because of the very fact that it isn't what a human is. You wouldn't enjoy it anymore than you would enjoy having to make a cocoon and dissolve yourself into your own acid to become adult.

Of curse I am making assumptions, I kinda have to since as you pointed out we are discussing something completely hypothetical. I was simply explaining my own views on (im)mortality which is a subject Ihave pondered quite a bit. If I it looked like I was claiming that my position was somehow better or more just than the opposing then I apologize as it was not my intention.

That said, I'd love to read yur assumptions and/or thoughts on what immortality would be like, if I may.


I do note that you're tacitly assuming perfect recall; everyone I know in real life comments on my amazing memory, yet somehow I'm pretty sure that if I left Baldur's Gate alone for a hundred years, I could (technology at the end of that time permitting, of course) start it over at the beginning just like I'd never played it, without remembering anything more than that it had been fun before.
Even if you were picking it up for the fifteenth time? The fiftieth time? The five-thousandth time?

When I pick up a book, a movie or a game I have enjoyed before I don't remember every detail of course. However the more I pick it up again the more I remember and the less it surprises me and the less I enjoy it as déjà vu sets in.


Well, you probably wouldn’t remember everything, so you would always be able to experience some things as if you hadn’t done them before.

I once read an article which estimated that if you lived to, say, 900, you would literally run out of space to form new memories. I’m probably using the wrong terminology to describe the process of “running out of space” - I imagine the brain doesn’t work quite like that, and I read the article a couple of years ago so I have forgotten the nuances of what it said, but the basic principle remains relevant, I think.
Yes the fact that storage room is not infinite is a problem but since to become truly immortal you'd need to overcome the secod law of thermodynamics, I think it is fair to say that we are well into the domain of fantasy.


So even if a brain was redesigned in such a way that it could live on eternally - which is what I picture when I think about a brain in an afterlife - it would presumably not remember everything it had done so well that it tired of existence itself.
But is a life forgotten a life lived? Do experience you cannot remember still mark you? Even if you have lived them before? Is resetting your memory any different than killing yourself leaving behind a clone?

I honestly have no idea.

[Kish]

My thought is that speculating is meaningless because it's unknowable, but you're making very specific assumptions in pursuit of one particular narrative (again: why such amazing recall, and suggesting that you could remember any trace of a game you last played more than a hundred years ago is staggeringly good recall? Why is the million-year-old person supposed to be incapable of enjoyment, but somehow capable of remembering things that were thousands of years ago? Why are you equating "not human" with "bleak existence," even allowing, just for this one post, the "not human" narrative?).

Extrapolating from my experience so far, it seems more logical that I would continue to value and enjoy life than the other way around. Assuming otherwise wouldn't be based on anything but a Teenage Haley-ish belief that if it's not ugly it's somehow not "authentic."

[2D8HP]

...Whatever makes you go "I would rather not die today", what you feel give your existence worth, what you want to have accomplished before you die.


Love of and duty to others, and curiosity.


...I do note that you're tacitly assuming perfect recall; everyone I know in real life comments on my amazing memory, yet somehow I'm pretty sure that if I left Baldur's Gate alone for a hundred years, I could (technology at the end of that time permitting, of course) start it over at the beginning just like I'd never played it, without remembering anything more than that it had been fun before.


I re-read books I dimly remember most every month, if not week (I have a lot of books, and a poor memory).

[Jasdoif]

Extrapolating from my experience so far, it seems more logical that I would continue to value and enjoy life than the other way around. Assuming otherwise wouldn't be based on anything but a Teenage Haley-ish belief that if it's not ugly it's somehow not "authentic."I figure immortality would be a heck of a lot like mortality: a series of encountering situations, deciding how to react to them, learning more about who/what is personally valuable, the world reacting to said reactions in kind, ad nauseum.

I mean really: The Internet as it is today did not exist when I was born. The entire Internet was created during my lifetime. It's utterly silly to even pretend that "experience everything" has a reachable end no matter how much time there is to try, when the world is collectively adding more things to the hypothetical list at a ridiculously ludicrously faster rate.

[2D8HP]

Infinite time, infinite worlds, infinite beings?

Infinite stories.

[factotum]

Well, you probably wouldn’t remember everything, so you would always be able to experience some things as if you hadn’t done them before.

I was thinking exactly this. Fyraltari's doomsday scenario for immortality is pretty much assuming that you have perfect memory as well as immortality, but why should the one necessarily follow from the other? You will forget things, heck, given long enough you'll forget what it is that you've forgotten, and so you'll do that thing next time as if it was the first time and enjoy it just as much.

[neriana]

It's utterly silly to even pretend that "experience everything" has a reachable end no matter how much time there is to try, when the world is collectively adding more things to the hypothetical list at a ridiculously ludicrously faster rate.

Yep, this is exactly it. Change is the only constant; people keep creating new things; the universe itself keeps creating new things. Eternity means that you'll have time to learn how to explore more than anyone ever has -- and teach others, too, which will exponentially increase their ability to create, and the ability of the people they teach to create, and so on.

I suppose things might get dull after the heat death of the universe. But by then, you'll probably have figured out how to either stop it or how to travel to another universe.

[Fyraltari]

Ask Euler.
Oh that e.
Well 0, 1, ϕ, 2, e, π. Wait... I went too far didn't I?


People (human or not) still exist and will be creating new things for you to experience and learn.
Every story has been told a thousand times and will be told a thousand times more. We enjoy them because we haven't heard a thousand times already.


And if they don't, you can create them by seeding various planets with different types of early lifeforms and seeing how they develop into people from whom you can then learn. Immortality would give you time to learn how to do that.
I once went to a science fair (I think that's the word) where one of the exhibit was simulated natural selection via computer. The simulation consited of a room with a constant gravity and a friction quota (to simulate air/water/whatever) inside the room were groups of blocks trying to reach a certain geographical point. The fastest group is kept ("naturally selected") while the others are rejected and a new generation of groups is created from the selected group by adding one block at a random place on the group. Rinse and repeat. They had run the simulation a good number of times and were showing the results of the different selections. While some of them were truly bizarre (there was some kind of helicopter and some kind of screw-like flying worm) most were recognizable as quadrupeds, bipeds or fish-like.

It doesn't look like there is an infinity of outcome to evolution. A lot, sure, but an infinity?
And we can't tell how many form intelligence can take but it is necessary less than the forms life can take.


Btw, there are a lot of things that never get dull no matter how often you repeat them. See the first line of my previous response. Minus the "drugs" part, I've never actually been into those, and getting yourself addicted to heroin for eternity would not be a good plan.
Well I cannot say I have spent years and years having sex or rock n roll but I suspect that eve if they are way more pleasurable than the rest, they will get same-y eventually.


My thought is that speculating is meaningless because it's unknowable
But it is interesting. And I don't consider pondering the value of our inevitable death meaningless.


but you're making very specific assumptions in pursuit of one particular narrative
Hey, allow me the benefit of the doubt here. I am reaching a conclusion based on particular assumptions like every other form of reasonning.


again: why such amazing recall, and suggesting that you could remember any trace of a game you last played more than a hundred years ago is staggeringly good recall?
Because I don't see the difference between forgetting your life and dying. If you don't remember who you were then who you were died and thus wasn't immortal to begin with.



Why is the million-year-old person supposed to be incapable of enjoyment, but somehow capable of remembering things that were thousands of years ago?
That person is incapable of enjoyment because they remember things that were thousands years ago. "Been there, done that" and all.


Why are you equating "not human" with "bleak existence," even allowing, just for this one post, the "not human" narrative?).
You misunderstand me, I equate "human but having a non-human experience" with bleak.
A creature that couldn't experience boredom or existential dread would enjoy immortality sure. But it wouldn't be a human.
Take those birds from H2G2 that are always amazed by the sunrise. These would enjoy immortality.


Extrapolating from my experience so far, it seems more logical that I would continue to value and enjoy life than the other way around. Assuming otherwise wouldn't be based on anything but a Teenage Haley-ish belief that if it's not ugly it's somehow not "authentic."
Good for you, I guess. Though I am amazed that thinking the impossible scenario would be unpleasant while the inevitable one is preferable somehow translates to "a Teenage Haley-ish belief that if it's not ugly it's somehow not "authentic." ".


Love of and duty to others, and curiosity.
I like that one, that's about the same as mine.



I re-read books I dimly remember most every month, if not week (I have a lot of books, and a poor memory).
I am genuinely impressed by that.


Infinite time, infinite worlds, infinite beings?

Infinite stories.
"There's nothing new under the sun"
Also that's an assumption of mine that no-one's questionned here. Infinite time but not infinite space.


I was thinking exactly this. Fyraltari's doomsday scenario for immortality
Nitpicking but since it's about immortality it can't be a doomsday scenario. As for the rest of your post see above.


Yep, this is exactly it. Change is the only constant; people keep creating new things; the universe itself keeps creating new things. Eternity means that you'll have time to learn how to explore more than anyone ever has -- and teach others, too, which will exponentially increase their ability to create, and the ability of the people they teach to create, and so on.

I suppose things might get dull after the heat death of the universe. But by then, you'll probably have figured out how to either stop it or how to travel to another universe.
That the universe keep creating new things in the limite time and space we can perceive doesn't mean it will continue to do so indefinitely. There are only a finite amout of matter inthe universe and thus a finite number of ways it can be arranged.


Also you mostly seem to focus on the "entertainment" part of thing rather than the "existential dread". Ask artists, scientists or politicians why they do what they do. A good many will tell you they are doing it for posterity or "to give our children a better tomorrow". That is dedicating oneself to something greater than oneself (the future, community/mankind), the founders of every nation probably knew that it wasn't going to last for all eternity but a few centuries is as good as eternity for someone who expects to die around 80-90. But if you live eternally there is nothing that is really greater than yourself since everything else will disappear in time. Helping others makes sense in a limited time but if you live forever you end up helping others for no real reason. You help them live, they help you live and nothing comes out of it anymore eventually, all great achievementhave been, well, achieved and you just keep on going.


On a related note, I remember the title of that one Asimov short story I talked about yesterday. It's the last answer, I read it in the winds of change and other stories.

[Kish]

Hey, allow me the benefit of the doubt here. I am reaching a conclusion based on particular assumptions like every other form of reasonning.

Which happen to be all and only the assumptions that point directly to "everything is awful." And you're amazed that I'd compare that to :haley: "Life is pain."

(You bring in death being preferable as a counterargument, but, you're not talking about how good death is--you're talking about how awful immortality with your particular assumptions is.)

[Fyraltari]

Which happen to be all and only the assumptions that point directly to "everything is awful." And you're amazed that I'd compare that to :haley: "Life is pain."
One doesn't reject assumptions because one doesn't agree with the conclusion. One reject a conclusion because one dosn't agree with the assumptions. By saying my assumptions are invalid because they lead to "life would be pain" you do precisely what you accuse me of doing.

Also there is a difference between "life is pain" and "life would be pain". How is that not obvious?

Edited because of your edit:


You bring in death being preferable as a counterargument, but, you're not talking about how good death is--you're talking about how awful immortality with your particular assumptions is.

True. Because death is (under my understanding of it, others might disagree but discussing that would violate the no-religion rule) simply the abscence of life. It only become positive once life becomes unpleasant. Ans since immortality, ie the abscence of death, would make (according to my reasonning) life unpleaseant then death becomes better than immortality.

[Kish]

By saying my assumptions are invalid because they lead to "life would be pain" you do precisely what you accuse me of doing.
No, doing what I accuse you of doing would be to make up cherry-picked assumptions about immortality to make it only positive, not to say "unknowable."

I am saying your assumptions are invalid because they're cherry-picked for a particular conclusion. The logical answer to "what would it be like to be a million years old? What would it be like to have all the time I wanted to compose symphonies? To have fun? To explore the infinite potential of creativity?" is "I cannot possibly know"; instead you have for each of those, "it would be awful" in an interdependent web of "X would be awful because I've already asserted that Y would be awful." Impossible to justify.

[Fyraltari]

No, doing what I accuse you of doing would be to make up cherry-picked assumptions about immortality to make it only positive, not to say "unknowable."
That's fair.


I am saying your assumptions are invalid because they're cherry-picked for a particular conclusion. The logical answer to "what would it be like to be a million years old? What would it be like to have all the time I wanted to compose symphonies? To have fun? To explore the infinite potential of creativity?" is "I cannot possibly know"; instead you have for each of those, "it would be awful" in an interdependent web of "X would be awful because I've already asserted that Y would be awful." Impossible to justify.

No my assumptions are as follows:

1) There's only a finite number of things that can potentially be done.

2) Immortality means you have infinite time.

3) The more you do something the less you enjoy it.

And that is without taking into account the "existential dread" part of my argument.

[Keltest]

Frankly, I agree with Fyraltari. Theres no way that true immortality would not eventually lead to universal apathy. It might take awhile, but that's pretty definitely the inevitable result.

[Fyraltari]

Frankly, I agree with Fyraltari. Theres no way that true immortality would not eventually lead to universal apathy. It might take awhile, but that's pretty definitely the inevitable result.

Yay, support!

[GreatWyrmGold]

I wasn't part of the Forum then (I was reading the strips in The Dragon and in the print books, as "on-line" wasn't something I did back then), but even now there still seems to be a lot of ill-will towards Miko, which I don't understand given her death scene.
Any ideas?
Miko's death scene was moving and emotional. None of those emotions were regret coming from Miko, or anything else which indicated that she felt bad about her actions (as opposed to the consequences of her actions, ie, "I can't be a paladin again").
I thought Miko was an interesting character, an example of a paladin played poorly or as LG vigilantism taken to its illogical extreme. I did not think she was a likable character, and she never showed signs of so much as being interested in correcting the flaws that made her unlikable. Not all unlikable characters need to undergo character development to be interesting, or to be "good characters," but they do need to undergo character development to be likable.



But the author is still the one deciding how the afterlife works regardless of his decisionto include an afterlife-creating character. Unless you are discussing a non-fictionnal afterlife which would be against forum rules I think.
It doesn't make much sense to talk about the author's decisions in designing his fictional world to be just or unjust, either. I mean, unless it's really repugnant (e.g, "Minority X all go to hell 'cause they're just that bad")...but I'm not sure "unjust" would be the right term for that.



You think outliving your loved ones is tough? Try outliving your love for them.
There are two responses for that.
1. Even if you grow tired of friends, you're always stuck with family. I might argue with my brother, we might engage in mutual mockery whenever we get a good chance, but we still love each other. (If you're stuck with a less-loving family...that sucks and I'm sorry for you.)
2. There are seven billion people on the planet. Even in pre-modern times, there were tens of millions on every continent (except Australia and, of course, Antarctica). You might tire of your current friends, coworkers, even spouse, but there are countless zillions of other people to meet.


If you live forever there is no incentive to do anything. Whatever it is, you could do it if you put the effort since you have all the time you will ever need but why do it now?
1. That's a problem even with limited lifespans. The big difference is that you'd actually get to it sooner or later.
2. "I'm bored, I should get to work on that novel/sculpture/whatever"?
3. Even if you are eternal, the opportunity to do what you want might not be.


And since whatever it is you make, not only will you outlive it, but you will spend infinitely more time without it than with it any way. That beautiful statue? Crumbled to dust. That magnificent city? Rusted away. That wondruous painting? The colors faded. That perfect society you and your friends created? Once the novelty wears off you will yearn for something else.
It might takes eons, but for an immortal, eons are less than the blink of an eye.
If you derive all of your self-worth from one thing you do, you're going to be miserable no matter how long you live.


(That is the main reasons Tolkien's Elves come to envy the mortality of Men, by the way.)
There are a lot of things I find questionable about how Tolkien wrote his elves; that barely cracks the top 5. This argument doesn't hold much traction with me.


And even you still decide to do things, what will you do next?
-snip-
But what if you are still alive in a hundred years? What if you fullfill every purpose? What do you do next?
"Life is not a finite list of things that you check off before you're allowed to die. It's life, you just go on living it." —Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
Let's be honest; nobody lives their lives to complete certain tasks. They complete those tasks because they want to, because they think it fits in with their values and ideals. They do other things like watch movies, play billiards, and talk about philosophical subjects for the same reason.


All these other immortals? They're the same as you are. They have done the exact same things as you. Not in the same order sure, but the same things regardless. Your life experience are the same. You are the same. You have loved, betrayed, forgiven and hated every single one of them and every single one of them as loved, betrayed, forgiven and hated you in turn. You have nothing to say to them anymore, you exhausted every possible conversation ages ago. They have nothing to bring you and you have nothing to bring them. You don't feel anything for them anymore, they might as well b your reflections in a mirror.

1. You think people are going to have perfect memories of everything they've ever done? I don't have perfect memory of what I talked about with my gaming group last week, never mind what I said to the Smiths several millennia ago!
2. The Smiths are not the same people they were several millennia ago, and neither are you. People change, Fyraltari.
3. I've watched plenty of movies several times over. Same events, same cinematography, same acting, same framing, same editing, same sound design, same everything. Each time was enjoyable—not always in the same way, not always the same amount, but it was. In fact, with many movies, I always find something I hadn't noticed before (or, at least, had forgotten about noticing before). Why would conversations be any different? I mean, aside from the whole "can't-step-into-the-same-river-twice" bit.



EDIT: Does anybody remember the title of that one Asimov short story with the suicidal god?
No, but I've read it.
That god's problems weren't just that he was immortal. He was also omnipotent, which meant that he could do everything he wanted in the blink of an eye without any effort, and had no peers, which meant that he was lonely AF. Neither of those are problems for the proposed set of immortals.



Applying that method, I find my purpose in life is...
"What the asterisks kind of question is that?"
Ditto. Why do you need a reason to keep on living? That's like needing a reason to not be a jerk; I understand that some people need one, I just don't get why.



Someone who lives a million year old wouldn't be human. A million-year old human would have a bleak existence because of the very fact that it isn't what a human is. You wouldn't enjoy it anymore than you would enjoy having to make a cocoon and dissolve yourself into your own acid to become adult.
A dolphin isn't human, but it's perfectly happy being a dolphin.
For that matter, a baby is human, and they're perfectly happy doing things that would bore any adult.


But is a life forgotten a life lived? Do experience you cannot remember still mark you?
Yes.
We do forget most of our lives, so if a life forgotten isn't a life lived, none of us have lived much of a life. This conclusion is obviously ridiculous, so we need to adjust our definitions until a sensible conclusion is possible.
Experiences we do not remember do mark us. We are affected by things we don't remember. (Which is a good thing, given how much we can't remember.) No amount of philosophy will change that.


Even if you have lived them before?
Of course things we have lived before will affect us. Putting aside how, technically, everything that affects us happened to us in the past, even mortals experience many nearly identical events repeatedly. What makes one Thanksgiving dinner with the family inherently different from the others? How about just normal dinner with a consistent fraction of said family? Another day at work, or another game of D&D or XCOM, or another attempt at explaining to your friends why "Turn off your brain and enjoy it" is a moronic defense of even the schlockiest piece of media?
If living the same thing before makes immortal life meaningless, it makes a lot of mortal life equally meaningless.



I once went to a science fair (I think that's the word) where one of the exhibit was simulated natural selection via computer. The simulation consited of a room with a constant gravity and a friction quota (to simulate air/water/whatever) inside the room were groups of blocks trying to reach a certain geographical point. The fastest group is kept ("naturally selected") while the others are rejected and a new generation of groups is created from the selected group by adding one block at a random place on the group. Rinse and repeat. They had run the simulation a good number of times and were showing the results of the different selections. While some of them were truly bizarre (there was some kind of helicopter and some kind of screw-like flying worm) most were recognizable as quadrupeds, bipeds or fish-like.

It doesn't look like there is an infinity of outcome to evolution. A lot, sure, but an infinity?
Um...you're basically equating horses, frogs, basilisk lizards, and amputee ants as being essentially the same because they're all quadrupeds. Which is wrong on basically every level.
Sure, some people would look at an infinite array of life-bearing worlds as basically just No Man's Sky, but not everyone would. As a biologist, I'd love to see the variety of novel organisms and ecosystems that would evolve on all those different planets. The sheer variety on Earth alone is fascinating, and I can only imagine what would be possible if we varied the starting conditions some.


And we can't tell how many form intelligence can take but it is necessary less than the forms life can take.
Here, we're less interested in the biology and more in the sociology and psychology. Obviously, there's a limited number of forms those can take, but we don't know how limited. There might be only one way it can turn out, or we might run out of stars before we find all the possibilities.


Because I don't see the difference between forgetting your life and dying. If you don't remember who you were then who you were died and thus wasn't immortal to begin with.
You can remember who you are without remembering every event that made you that way.
Example: I don't know what made me so much more skeptical than my classmates, but it must be something. I don't know what it is, so I must have forgotten it. That skepticism lead me on a path that greatly shaped who I am today. I know who I am, but I don't know why I am who I am. I've forgotten what made me that way. And let me tell you, that's a lot better than dying.


You misunderstand me, I equate "human but having a non-human experience" with bleak.
Why?


"There's nothing new under the sun"
Again, that's a problem that affects mortals as well.



One doesn't reject assumptions because one doesn't agree with the conclusion. One reject a conclusion because one dosn't agree with the assumptions.
Generally true, but not universally so. If those assumptions can lead to a clearly incorrect conclusion, then there is a flaw with them and they can be discarded as a set. (Perhaps individual assumptions are correct and others are flawed, or bringing them together is what causes the paradox, but the set as a whole is flawed.)
As I've explained above, your assumptions about immortality apply to mortal life as well. Hence, the bleak conclusions they lead to about immortality apply to mortality as well. Intentionally or no, you have constructed an argument for life being as meaningless and miserable as you believe immortality would be (albeit for a shorter time). This conclusion is, obviously, ridiculous; at the very least, it contradicts the idea that immortality is worse than mortality. Thus, there is a flaw with your assumptions, and hence the conclusions drawn from them are likely also flawed.



No my assumptions are as follows:
1) There's only a finite number of things that can potentially be done.
2) Immortality means you have infinite time.
3) The more you do something the less you enjoy it.
And that is without taking into account the "existential dread" part of my argument.
Whether you realize it or not, you've made many other assumptions (most notably those about memory, e.g. "if I forget things that happened to me, I'm not really immortal").

[Peelee]

I once went to a science fair (I think that's the word) where one of the exhibit was simulated natural selection via computer. The simulation consited of a room with a constant gravity and a friction quota (to simulate air/water/whatever) inside the room were groups of blocks trying to reach a certain geographical point. The fastest group is kept ("naturally selected") while the others are rejected and a new generation of groups is created from the selected group by adding one block at a random place on the group. Rinse and repeat. They had run the simulation a good number of times and were showing the results of the different selections. While some of them were truly bizarre (there was some kind of helicopter and some kind of screw-like flying worm) most were recognizable as quadrupeds, bipeds or fish-like.

It doesn't look like there is an infinity of outcome to evolution. A lot, sure, but an infinity?[/I].

"Infinite" doesn't mean "every." There are an infinite amount of numbers between 2 and 3, but none of them are 4.

[Shining Wrath]

... SNIP ...



You think outliving your loved ones is tough? Try outliving your love for them.

If you live forever there is no incentive to do anything. Whatever it is, you could do it if you put the effort since you have all the time you will ever need but why do it now?
... SNIP ...



I literally would rather die than live forever. I wouldn't mind living a few centuries more though.

Missing from this discussion, though, is this; new people are being born all the time. New worlds are being discovered (assuming space travel, which is bound to happen) all the time. And all the people you already know? They change. None of us is a constant, immutable, unchanging.

That person you shagged 250 years ago? Hook up again today, and it will be a different experience, because you've both changed.

That wine you drank 150 years ago? Drink a similar vintage again today, and you'll experience it differently, because you aren't the same person, and you have learned a little bit more about wine appreciation since then. And guess what? The day you know all there is to know about wine never comes, because there's always a new varietal of grape, a new type of wood for casks, a new climate on a new planet to give a different nuance of flavor. And even if you devote sufficient time to wine that you do keep up - that means you don't have enough time to keep up with what's happening in music. Or art. Or mixed martial arts. The idea that any one person can keep up with everything that's new even on our one little planet is ludicrous; given a galaxy or a universe full of planets, beyond ludicrous.

With any luck, we'll both live long enough to find out who's right. :smallbiggrin:

[Grey_Wolf_c]

It doesn't look like there is an infinity of outcome to evolution. A lot, sure, but an infinity?

The search space for evolution is indeed infinite, within the constraints of the universe. I.e. had we a bigger universe, even more of the infinite search space would theoretically be reachable - as it stands, the constraints on evolution are due to available resources, not due to lack of possibility. What you saw in that simulation (not unlike this one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOFws_hhZs8), I'd imagine) is the existence of local minimums and other forms of attractor - that given the objective of locomotion, legs are a very efficient model that is therefore reached regularly from random evolution. But that was a constrain set by the experiment, who artificially gave them a target location objective. RL evolution is not concerned with such objectives, being far more interested in reproduction.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOFws_hhZs8

Grey Wolf

[Shining Wrath]

The search space for evolution is indeed infinite, within the constraints of the universe. I.e. had we a bigger universe, even more of the infinite search space would theoretically be reachable - as it stands, the constraints on evolution are due to available resources, not due to lack of possibility. What you saw in that simulation (not unlike this one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOFws_hhZs8), I'd imagine) is the existence of local minimums and other forms of attractor - that given the objective of locomotion, legs are a very efficient model that is therefore reached regularly from random evolution. But that was a constrain set by the experiment, who artificially gave them a target location objective. RL evolution is not concerned with such objectives, being far more interested in reproduction.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOFws_hhZs8

Grey Wolf

Given an infinite number of worlds (our universe is not infinite by itself, but it is possible there are an infinite number of universes) anything that can possibly happen not only does happen, but is happening, right now. Right now, somewhere, the Ring goes into the Fires of Mount Doom. Right now, somewhere, Sauron slips the Ring onto his finger (because Sam failed in the Tower of Cirith Ungol) and reaches into Galadriel's mind and says "Hello. Let us begin your lessons in obedience." Somewhere, right now, the Middle Guard carries Wellington's center at Waterloo. Et cetera, for an infinite number of et ceteras.

[Peelee]

Given an infinite number of worlds (our universe is not infinite by itself, but it is possible there are an infinite number of universes) anything that can possibly happen not only does happen, but is happening, right now.

I just said this:
"Infinite" doesn't mean "every." There are an infinite amount of numbers between 2 and 3, but none of them are 4.
Infinite number of universe does not mean "everything and anything can, does, and is happening."

[Keltest]

I just said this:
Infinite number of universe does not mean "everything and anything can, does, and is happening."

He specifically said "anything that can possibly happen".

[Peelee]

He specifically said "anything that can possibly happen".

And immediately went to the One Ring for several examples, so I'm going to stand by my objection.

[Keltest]

And immediately went to the One Ring for several examples, so I'm going to stand by my objection.

In one universe, Tolkien wrote LOTR as a tragic story and was well received.

[neriana]

That person you shagged 250 years ago? Hook up again today, and it will be a different experience, because you've both changed.

This is true even if it was just 25 minutes ago. (I think I'm a lot older and a lot more married than everyone else in this thread except one.)



Every story has been told a thousand times and will be told a thousand times more. We enjoy them because we haven't heard a thousand times already.

It sounds like you've been spending too much time on TVTropes.

Every story is new. Even when a story seems to be put together in a similar way -- even when it was put together in a similar way on purpose -- it's still different from every other story that has been or will ever be. I also find it odd that you think people tire of stories once they've read them once. That's not what most people are like.

You keep ignoring the fact that things change. Just in my infinitesimally short 41 years on Earth, for which I've only really been noticing things for around 35 years, things have changed immensely. I have changed immensely. People change with every breath. If they don't, they're dead.

Immortality would be exactly like life. If you don't change, learn, and experience new things, you die. And you'll still find joy in many things that you've done infinite times as well. There will be a combination of completely new experiences and beloved old ones.

Even the things you've enjoyed a million times before are never exactly the same. A sunset. A purring cat. A piece of music. Every letter I type in this sentence, every one you read, you and I and everything else in the universe have changed.

You mention birds that are always amazed by the sunrise. Now, I hate sunrises, because seeing them means I've either been awake way too long or had to get up way too early. But sunsets? They're always amazing. Something doesn't have to be new or incomprehensible to be wonderful.

Btw, you say to "ask artists" what they do. I'm a writer. I'm friends with lots of other writers. Ask me what I do. Except I've been telling you, if you can see it.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

(I think I'm a lot older and a lot more married than everyone else in this thread except one.)

Heck if I can guess how you measure the amount of marriage (I'm choosing to believe it is "number of different genders of simultaneous spouses", fwliw), so can't possibly know that, but on the basis of your stated age, let me assure you you are not a lot older than everyone else in this thread save one.

Grey Wolf

[Doug Lampert]

I used to worry about boredom if I had eternity. When I was 4 I could be bored in seconds. When I was 14 I could be bored in minutes. When I was 24 I could be bored in hours. Now that I am 54, I'm not sure how long it takes to get me bored, I can always find something to do.


"Infinite" doesn't mean "every." There are an infinite amount of numbers between 2 and 3, but none of them are 4.
Infinity also doesn't just mean "big". People keep talking about "infinite" possibilities or remembering "everything" from an infinite life.

It is estimated by physicists that the ENTIRE OBSERVABLE UNIVERSE has only a finite number of possible states. It's actually a rather small number as big numbers go, you don't even need multiple pages to write down the exponent or anything like that. (The values I can find on the web all look way too small, they account for the size of the universe and number of atoms, but not for the fact that much of the matter is plasma, and that the state of the universe includes the state of a much larger number of photons and neutrinos, atoms are the least of it. But the value is still something you could write as 10^less than a page of number.)

The universe having finite states means you will eventually run out of new stuff, but who cares? Because long before then your brain will run out of storage. Because your BRAIN has only finitely many states, given that the materials making it up will change over time, the number is bigger than you'd get just from the size, energy, and material, but it's still finite, so, unless human memory has a substantial non-material component you WILL NOT remember absolutely everything that happens to you if you live forever. There's simply not enough "there" there.

Even if you are uploaded to a computer with the a few galactic superclusters of mass converted to nano-scale memory to support your mind, you still won't remember an infinite amount. Infinity is bigger than that.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Relevant video about infinity and the number of possible states. (https://youtu.be/FaEkdQiweVE) The number of possible permutations of particles is actually 10^10^77, which is technically 10^something you can write on a piece of paper but certainly violates the spirit of that phrase. And for the record, 10^77 is about 0.1% the number of particles in the observable universe.
Sure, many of them will be functionally identical (who's going to notice if your plastic chair has one stray copper atom?), but I think there will still be more than enough possibilities to keep immortals interested as long as they don't find the possibility where they get trapped in an escape pod drifting through uninhabited interstellar space.

[Ruck]

(Emphasis mine)

When I last took the
What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be? (http://www.easydamus.com/character.html) test

it said that I'm a "Lawful Good Human Wizard (7th Level)", but IIRC, in the last few years that I've periodically taken the

Alignment Test (http://www.easydamus.com/alignmenttest.html)

I've been Chaotic Good, Neutral Good, True Neutral, and (twice) Lawful Neutral.

In reading the descriptions of the Alignment "typical behaviors" I can think of times that I"ve felt that they all described me at different times in my life, sometimes most of them at different times in the same day!

My guess is that those of us who feel that their own behavior consistently fits one of the nine alignments (so not me), are more likely to feel that the D&D alignments aren't "tosh", but almost forty years after I first encountered the then 5-point "Alignment system", I'm still unsure of how to apply it, so you tell me.

Please?

I just took it and got "Neutral Good Paladin/Rogue," which seems like an inherent contradiction.

[zimmerwald1915]

I just took it and got "Neutral Good Paladin/Rogue," which seems like an inherent contradiction.
The test has implicitly mapped out your life. You started as a Paladin, Fell for doing too much Chaos, decided Neutrality was better than atoning, and leveled in Rogue thereafter. That should say "ex-Paladin," but I don't that's supported by the test.

There are worse lives to have.

[Fyraltari]

I just took it and got "Neutral Good Paladin/Rogue," which seems like an inherent contradiction.

You are a paladin of the God of Theft.

Edit: said god scammed the universe into granting him permission to have Neutral paladins.

Edit edit, I probably won't add anything on the immortality topic before tomorrow evening, because it looks like a lot has been said while I was away.

Edit edit edit I will say that I am quite bummed that nobody noticed/reacted to the Doctor Who/Blade Runner/Discworld/H2G2 references I snuck into my first wall of text. Guess I will have to up my game.

[Ruck]

The test has implicitly mapped out your life. You started as a Paladin, Fell for doing too much Chaos, decided Neutrality was better than atoning, and leveled in Rogue thereafter. That should say "ex-Paladin," but I don't that's supported by the test.

There are worse lives to have.
That, uh, feels strangely accurate. I'm surprised I wasn't Chaotic overall, but I guess with Paladins being champions of the downtrodden and whatnot, it makes sense, although I expected my general mistrust of the system to weigh more heavily.

[2D8HP]

I just took it and got "Neutral Good Paladin/Rogue," which seems like an inherent contradiction.


The test has implicitly mapped out your life. You started as a Paladin, Fell for doing too much Chaos, decided Neutrality was better than atoning, and leveled in Rogue thereafter. That should say "ex-Paladin," but I don't that's supported by the test.

There are worse lives to have.


That, uh, feels strangely accurate. I'm surprised I wasn't Chaotic overall, but I guess with Paladins being champions of the downtrodden and whatnot, it makes sense, although I expected my general mistrust of the system to weigh more heavily.


Oh man, I totally want to play you as a PC!

I don't think that mix could work in 3.x D&D (but I'd be happy to be educated otherwise!), but An Oath of Ancients Paladin/Swashbuckler Rogue for 5e D&D would be really cool!

:smile:

An Oath of Conquest or Vengeance Paladin/Assassin Rogue would be a jerk though, especially if "optimal"

:yuk:

[GreatWyrmGold]

You are a paladin of the God of Theft.
I kinda wish different kinds of gods got different kinds of paladins. It would move paladins from being champions of various interpretations of goody-goody-two-shoes-iness, towards being champions of various different divine morality systems, which (to me) is more interesting. I mean, I guess you can play the paladins differently, but it's always nice when you have mechanics backing up your themes.

Maybe they could be different archetypes for some divine supplement in the future?

[Keltest]

I kinda wish different kinds of gods got different kinds of paladins. It would move paladins from being champions of various interpretations of goody-goody-two-shoes-iness, towards being champions of various different divine morality systems, which (to me) is more interesting. I mean, I guess you can play the paladins differently, but it's always nice when you have mechanics backing up your themes.

Maybe they could be different archetypes for some divine supplement in the future?

I dunno. I don't think the aspect of theft particularly wants to be embodied by a knight in shining armor. Paladins fulfill a specific archetype beyond just "servant of a divine power". The chivalry and knighthood were the fundamental principals of the class far more than "minion of a god" was.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I dunno. I don't think the aspect of theft particularly wants to be embodied by a knight in shining armor.
Well, no, but the thief paladin's archetype would presumably have features that made them less of a knight in shining armor. Armor soot, at least.


Paladins fulfill a specific archetype beyond just "servant of a divine power". The chivalry and knighthood were the fundamental principals of the class far more than "minion of a god" was.
It's the paladin class, not the knight class. Even historical paladins were more holy warriors than vanilla knights. Of course, such holy champions don't mesh that great with all of D&D's gods, but that was already an issue, what with having churches devoted to gods of disorder. It's what happens when you take concepts from monotheistic Europe and apply them to a generic monolatrian (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolatry) assortment of gods.

[Jasdoif]

I kinda wish different kinds of gods got different kinds of paladins. It would move paladins from being champions of various interpretations of goody-goody-two-shoes-iness, towards being champions of various different divine morality systems, which (to me) is more interesting. I mean, I guess you can play the paladins differently, but it's always nice when you have mechanics backing up your themes.

Maybe they could be different archetypes for some divine supplement in the future?
I dunno. I don't think the aspect of theft particularly wants to be embodied by a knight in shining armor. Paladins fulfill a specific archetype beyond just "servant of a divine power". The chivalry and knighthood were the fundamental principals of the class far more than "minion of a god" was.3.5 made some attempts in that regard; the first one coming to mind is the Complete Champion's "Sanctified One" prestige class, which is explicitly intended for deities who don't "have paladins as their martial champions, or clerics as their most iconic servants." It's really more of a framework for a few abilities themed by deity than what I would consider a class, honestly...but the example deities are Ehlonna, Kord, Olidammara and Wee Jas; and the abilities granted to a Sanctified One of Olidammara do reinforce the "fast-talking evasive thief" motif.

[Keltest]

Well, no, but the thief paladin's archetype would presumably have features that made them less of a knight in shining armor. Armor soot, at least.


It's the paladin class, not the knight class. Even historical paladins were more holy warriors than vanilla knights. Of course, such holy champions don't mesh that great with all of D&D's gods, but that was already an issue, what with having churches devoted to gods of disorder. It's what happens when you take concepts from monotheistic Europe and apply them to a generic monolatrian (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolatry) assortment of gods.

well of course not. A generic non-empowered knight would just be a fighter, and they already had that. The paladin was "the fighter, but with more stuff to be better at knighting and worse at other stuff." They were holy knights, and they've never really been anything other than that. Asking for a paladin of some in-knightly concept is oxymoronic. Not coincidentally, that's why I always felt the 3.5 paladins of non-lawful-good alignments fell flat. The only one I felt was remotely done intelligently was the lawful evil one, because you could conceivably have a knight of an evil master, empowered by that master to serve better.

[GreatWyrmGold]

well of course not. A generic non-empowered knight would just be a fighter, and they already had that.
...Last post, you were pointing out ways that knights were more than just fighters. This makes part of me wonder if your viewpoint is entirely consistent.
Moreover, there are even more potential ways to make knights distinct from common fighters. A knight is a nobleman, with skills that extend well beyond merely being skilled at arms. He manages his fief, commands his armies, and is well-known by his people (loved if he is good, feared if he is evil). Equating that to any ol' fighting-man is like equating Aragorn and Robin Hood; they definitely have some skills in common, but they are fundamentally different archetypes.


They were holy knights, and they've never really been anything other than that.
My point is that "holy warrior" and "knight" are two separate concepts. They have shared ancestry, but they are separate; there were plenty of holy warriors that weren't knights, and a hell of a lot of knights that weren't holy warriors. The two archetypes naturally share common ground (both archetypically and in an RPG setting), but in the same way that the holy warrior shares ground with the master swordsman and the pious priest. If we can have fighter and cleric classes alongside our paladin class, why not a knight class as well?

[Keltest]

If we can have fighter and cleric classes alongside our paladin class, why not a knight class as well?

What would a knight do that a fighter cannot? Or that a paladin cant? What makes it distinct rather than just a fighter with a fancy title and specific build and playstyle?

If the paladin is the idealized knight, the fighter is the practical knight.

[SilverCacaobean]

You think outliving your loved ones is tough? Try outliving your love for them.

...

I literally would rather die than live forever. I wouldn't mind living a few centuries more though.

Haha, I like the way you ended this :smallbiggrin:. Neither would I, but looks like I'm getting less than one and crappy too. Damn it.

I've had similar thoughts to the rest of what you've said. Less poetic perhaps. Along the lines of "If something's possible, given enough time it's guaranteed to happen, so if a human is immortal, given enough time, they'll do everything they're capable of." They'd lose their individuality.

Two things, though, if I give it more thought.

First, the universe itself doesn't have infinite time so the aforementioned "enough time" won't be given. So it'd be more correct to say that immortals would tend to having done and felt everything.

Second, what does immortal mean? Immortal human? Or something designed to be immortal? The difference is that the human brain doesn't have enough memory to accurately remember a human lifetime, let alone several.

We can't really talk about something designed to be immortal, it'd be completely alien, (This (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_dohrnii) exists, by the way. It's not unkillable, but it doesn't die of old age.) so I'll assume human. So, I guess, the immortal human, as before, would do everything possible but they wouldn't remember it. Unless they got a database to store memory. I wonder how much space would be necessary to store everything that our supposed immortal would have done.

There is, however, a possible way for the immortal to not lose their individuality, come to think of it. Let's assume that the immortal at some point decided they never want to do x. If they could find a way to turn their possibility of doing x per time unit into a convergent series (that they'd never be able to unmake), then given infinite time, their chance of doing that after the day they managed to turn it into a convergent series would be s, where s is the sum of the series. So that immortal would manage to have a solid chance of not ever doing x, which would make them different from all the other immortals who have done it. How they'd do any of that, I have absolutely not the faintest idea...

I think all that's been said here can be said about any entity that lives long enough, even an abstract one like a civilization.


Let me read the rest of the thread now, to see if I've been ninja'd or if the thread has moved away from this. Sorry, that was way too fun for me not to reply to it.

EDIT: Sure enough, ninja'd:

Well, you probably wouldn’t remember everything, so you would always be able to experience some things as if you hadn’t done them before.

...

EDIT2:

...
Yes the fact that storage room is not infinite is a problem but since to become truly immortal you'd need to overcome the secod law of thermodynamics, I think it is fair to say that we are well into the domain of fantasy.
...

That's a common assumption, but it's not a correct one, unless you're an isolated system. As long as the rest of the universe exists the immortal 'll be fine. edit: By "exist" I mean "not at maximum entropy" in this case. That was a way too liberal use of the word "exist" even for me.

EDIT3:
Since so many people answered that:

Whatever makes you go "I would rather not die today"...
Honestly? Breathing. Breathing's nice. Curse that survival instinct, it doesn't have a sense of drama. :smalltongue:
Though I admit I do need more than that to feel satisfied with myself.

EDIT FINAL: Done reading it all.
Hoho, Fyraltari man, the forum really didn't like what you have to say about immortality xD. Damn. That was harsh. Didn't expect the playground to be such proponents of immortality :smallbiggrin:. Here, have some support: I agree with a lot of what you've said. "A lot" as in "as much as the unedited part of my post here implies".


Edit edit edit I will say that I am quite bummed that nobody noticed/reacted to the Doctor Who/Blade Runner/Discworld/H2G2 references I snuck into my first wall of text. Guess I will have to up my game.

Oh, don't feel bad, it's not you, it's me :smalltongue: I haven't read/watched any of them.

[GreatWyrmGold]

What would a knight do that a fighter cannot? Or that a paladin cant? What makes it distinct rather than just a fighter with a fancy title and specific build and playstyle?

Moreover, there are even more potential ways to make knights distinct from common fighters. A knight is a nobleman, with skills that extend well beyond merely being skilled at arms. He manages his fief, commands his armies, and is well-known by his people (loved if he is good, feared if he is evil).
I mean, yes, you can certainly play a knight-like fighter. You can also play a ranger-like druid, or a barbarian-like fighter, or a warlock-like sorcerer, or a paladin-like cleric (or even a paladin-like fighter)...but is that enough reason for barbarians, rangers, paladins, and warlocks to not be in the game?



That's a common assumption, but it's not a correct one, unless you're an isolated system. As long as the rest of the universe exists the immortal 'll be fine.
Yeah...um...the Second Law of Thermodynamics says it won't.
Even if you live in a simulated world running on a computer near the Landauer Limit (and also very near absolute zero) thanks to Clarketech computers, gather every scrap of energy in the observable universe into brown-dwarf-sized chunks, use fuse it all up to iron, chuck all of that iron into black holes (and maybe chuck the other black holes into the biggest to increase the rotational energy), siphon off the rotational energy, and then drain the Hawking Radiation off of that black hole, you still have a limited lifespan. There's only so much energy in the universe, and once it's all in its lowest-energy state...it's over.

[SilverCacaobean]

Yeah...um...the Second Law of Thermodynamics says it won't.
Even if you live in a simulated world running on a computer near the Landauer Limit (and also very near absolute zero) thanks to Clarketech computers, gather every scrap of energy in the observable universe into brown-dwarf-sized chunks, use fuse it all up to iron, chuck all of that iron into black holes (and maybe chuck the other black holes into the biggest to increase the rotational energy), siphon off the rotational energy, and then drain the Hawking Radiation off of that black hole, you still have a limited lifespan. There's only so much energy in the universe, and once it's all in its lowest-energy state...it's over.

What? Anyway, go google it, I don't have any interest in talking more about that than I already have.

[2D8HP]

[...]the human brain doesn't have enough memory to accurately remember a human lifetime, let alone several.[...]


So very true

We Best Remember Events That Happened Between 15 and 25 (http://www.newsweek.com/memories-strongest-age-15-25-522726).

[SilverCacaobean]

So very true

We Best Remember Events That Happened Between 15 and 25 (http://www.newsweek.com/memories-strongest-age-15-25-522726).

I'm about to start getting forgetful it looks like. :smalleek:

[Shining Wrath]

And immediately went to the One Ring for several examples, so I'm going to stand by my objection.

I think it is possible that in an infinite number of universes there's one where magic works as described in LotR.

[2D8HP]

I'm about to start getting forgetful it looks like. :smalleek:

It's usually not a sudden effect (but if you want to learn something well, hurry up and do it).

You can and will learn new skills, it just takes longer.

On the plus side, in my experience, bad things that happen to you usually have less of an emotional impact than they did when you're younger.

[Keltest]

I mean, yes, you can certainly play a knight-like fighter. You can also play a ranger-like druid, or a barbarian-like fighter, or a warlock-like sorcerer, or a paladin-like cleric (or even a paladin-like fighter)...but is that enough reason for barbarians, rangers, paladins, and warlocks to not be in the game?

That's not really answering the question. What would a knight have that makes it distinct from the paladin and the fighter? What, mechanically, is a knight good at that a fighter isn't, and what can a fighter do that a knight couldn't?

[Peelee]

I think it is possible that in an infinite number of universes there's one where magic works as described in LotR.

If they all function off the same set of rules, then it's not. If they don't, then proving so would be.... Quite a thing, to say the least. Everything has to interact, after all, so any differences would snowball fast. Relevant SMBC (https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/quantum-weirdness).

[Fyraltari]

There's nothing quite like spending an hour answering everyone who quoted you whil trying to organize you thoughts in a wall of text that would not be too hardto read and accidentally closing the wrong window before submitting your post. I truly am overjoyed.

Sorry for the rant, here, needed to blow some steam off.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

There's nothing quite like spending an hour answering everyone who quoted you whil trying to organize you thoughts in a wall of text that would not be too hardto read and accidentally closing the wrong window before submitting your post. I truly am overjoyed.

Sorry for the rant, here, needed to blow some steam off.

It's probably too late now, but you might have been able to recover the post by reopening the reply to thread window, and clicking on the "restore auto-saved content" button in the bottom left of the typing area. Only works if you don't type a different answer in the same place, though, since it will have auto-saved the new one over the old one.

GW

[Shining Wrath]

If they all function off the same set of rules, then it's not. If they don't, then proving so would be.... Quite a thing, to say the least. Everything has to interact, after all, so any differences would snowball fast. Relevant SMBC (https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/quantum-weirdness).

I am uncertain why separate universes would have to have exactly the same set of rules. Since I don't know what changes to our rules are necessary to allow for magic, I can't tell you what the interactions at the interfaces would look like.

Also, if we posit the possibility of a sufficiently advanced race that it can interact with a "big bang" to produce one or more desired results in the resulting universe, all bets are off. If you remember the Magratheans in Hitchhiker's Guide, just take that up an octave and start crafting custom universes.

[SilverCacaobean]

There's nothing quite like spending an hour answering everyone who quoted you whil trying to organize you thoughts in a wall of text that would not be too hardto read and accidentally closing the wrong window before submitting your post. I truly am overjoyed.

Sorry for the rant, here, needed to blow some steam off.

Ouch...


Right now, somewhere, Sauron slips the Ring onto his finger (because Sam failed in the Tower of Cirith Ungol) and reaches into Galadriel's mind and says "Hello. Let us begin your lessons in obedience."

Is the Sauron of that universe a creepy old dude in a bathrobe? Cause he sure does sound like one.

[zimmerwald1915]

Also, if we posit the possibility of a sufficiently advanced race that it can interact with a "big bang" to produce one or more desired results in the resulting universe, all bets are off. If you remember the Magratheans in Hitchhiker's Guide, just take that up an octave and start crafting custom universes.
One wonders where the energy in the daughter universes comes from, if not the parent universe.

[Fyraltari]

It's probably too late now, but you might have been able to recover the post by reopening the reply to thread window, and clicking on the "restore auto-saved content" button in the bottom left of the typing area. Only works if you don't type a different answer in the same place, though, since it will have auto-saved the new one over the old one.

GW
Thanks for the heads up but I can't find it. Is it supposed to be over or under the smilies?


Is the Sauron of that universe a creepy old dude in a bathrobe? Cause he sure does sound like one.

No, that would be Supreme Leader Snoke. Sauron has nothing but contempt for bath(robe)s.

Though considering that he is obsessed witht the idea of everyone submitting to his will (dude's right hand men: Nine kings who literally have no personallity left and a warlock who forgot his own name to call himself "the Mouth of Sauron") and that the Rings of Power allow for telepathy between the Bearers...

[Fyraltari]

One wonders where the energy in the daughter universes comes from, if not the parent universe.

I cannot recommend...The Gods themselves... by Asimov, enough it deals with energy crisis, alien sex and parallel universes with different physical laws. In the end, Mnkind sparks the big bang in another universe.

And that it comes from a self-imposed dare to make a plausible explanation for an impossible isotope and a "there are are never any sexuality or aliens in you stuff" complaints is just icing on the cake.

[Ruck]

Oh man, I totally want to play you as a PC!

It's not too bad, honestly. I'd suggest being careful about whom you trust, but then, that's probably why I went from paladin to rogue.


Thanks for the heads up but I can't find it. Is it supposed to be over or under the smilies?

If that doesn't work, sometimes the "restore closed window" function on a browser will. (I think on Chrome for Windows, it's ctrl+shift+T.)

[Jasdoif]

Thanks for the heads up but I can't find it. Is it supposed to be over or under the smilies?If a draft post for the thread has in fact been saved (and you haven't actually posted in the thread since then, I realized after I made this post)....A "Restore Auto-Saved Content" button will appear in the lower-left corner of the editor frame (so right above the "Post Icons" label) the next time you start to post a reply to the thread.

[Fyraltari]

If that doesn't work, sometimes the "restore closed window" function on a browser will. (I think on Chrome for Windows, it's ctrl+shift+T.)


If a draft post for the thread has in fact been saved (and you haven't actually posted in the thread since then, I realized after I made this post)....A "Restore Auto-Saved Content" button will appear in the lower-left corner of the editor frame (so right above the "Post Icons" label) the next time you start to post a reply to the thread.

Test successfull.

Thank you three.

[GreatWyrmGold]

What?
Yeah, probably should have added a TL;DR.
BTLDR: Even if everything is being run at the maximum efficiency allowed under the laws of physics, and even if you bring together every scrap of fuel that relativity allows us to reach, processing the waste as much as the laws of physics allow, you'll run out eventually.



That's not really answering the question. What would a knight have that makes it distinct from the paladin and the fighter? What, mechanically, is a knight good at that a fighter isn't, and what can a fighter do that a knight couldn't?
...I'm not sure how to answer the question in a way I haven't already, short of prototyping a homebrew Knight class (or maybe pointing to a Knight class that existed in older editions). Social stuff, minions, maybe an aura of awe...what more do you need? When you get down to it, the ranger and paladin are basically just druids and clerics with less magic and more martial, while the barbarian is just an angry fighter with some other abilities that could easily have gone to the fighter.



No, that would be Supreme Leader Snoke.
I swear, the man gets no respect. Let your apprentice lethally ambush you once and you never hear the end of it...

[Fyraltari]

I swear, the man gets no respect. Let your apprentice lethally ambush you once and you never hear the end of it...

Look at the bright side. You won't hear the beginning either.

Seriously, though, as much as I liked this movie, the man looked like he just stepped out of the shower. The black cloak look is classic for a reason!

[Snails]

One wonders where the energy in the daughter universes comes from, if not the parent universe.

It is mostly borrowed from gravity. Perhaps.

A physical particle has implicit positive energy of mc^2. But it also has implicit negative energy (that is difficult to calculate unless you know how much stuff is in the universe and how big the universe is).

[SilverCacaobean]

Yeah, probably should have added a TL;DR.
BTLDR: Even if everything is being run at the maximum efficiency allowed under the laws of physics, and even if you bring together every scrap of fuel that relativity allows us to reach, processing the waste as much as the laws of physics allow, you'll run out eventually.

No, I read what you said, I just don't understand what your problem is. Or I didn't at the time, but I think I do now. When I talked about immortality, I didn't mean "outlive the universe" I meant "live about as much time as the universe". I should have been more explicit.

Just wanted to point out that death by old age has nothing to do with the second law of thermodynamics, but now that I look back, I think I misunderstood what Fyraltari meant in the post I quoted. Oh, well.

[Peelee]

I am uncertain why separate universes would have to have exactly the same set of rules. Since I don't know what changes to our rules are necessary to allow for magic, I can't tell you what the interactions at the interfaces would look like.

Let's start at one thing and work backwards, both slowly and not very far (and also very simplified), and see how it screws absolutely everything up if it was different.

Water. Pretty much required for life. Now, the H2O molecule is bent, not linear. This lets it H-bond, and bond to itself, giving it a lot of wonderful properties. If it was linear, it would not have these wonderful properties, and would not support life as we know it in any sort of macro scale. To put it another way, in the beginning water was bent. This has made a lot of people very happy and been widely regarded as a good move.

Now, water is bent because its lone pairs repel better than the Hydrogens. This is because the lone pairs have two electrons, well, paired, and that's better than the Hydrogens, which have one electric and one shared electron.

Infinite number of universes, no reason to have the same rules, so why not lets make water linear!

So, let's say there are two universes with a single, tiny change. In one universe, the Peeleean Gods, far greater than the Magratheans in their design capabilities, want one where all atoms in a molecule have the same repulsive force relative to each other, and one where lone pairs aren't needed to stabilize molecular charges. Both of these would, in theory, create linear water, which would in turn create ridiculously different universes where life, if it was even able to exist at all, would be so incomprehensibly alien that we may not even be able recognize it. And this isn't even going into how the entire rest of those universes would be absolutely radically affected by such small changes. Every interaction between every particle of matter would be different. For an infinite number of universes with an infinite number of changes, you would pretty much end up with an infinite number of incredibly, ridiculously different and nowhere-near-similar results.

You wouldn't just get hobbits, is what I'm saying here.

[Keltest]

Let's start at one thing and work backwards, both slowly and not very far (and also very simplified), and see how it screws absolutely everything up if it was different.

Water. Pretty much required for life. Now, the H2O molecule is bent, not linear. This lets it H-bond, and bond to itself, giving it a lot of wonderful properties. If it was linear, it would not have these wonderful properties, and would not support life as we know it in any sort of macro scale. To put it another way, in the beginning water was bent. This has made a lot of people very happy and been widely regarded as a good move.

Now, water is bent because its lone pairs repel better than the Hydrogens. This is because the lone pairs have two electrons, well, paired, and that's better than the Hydrogens, which have one electric and one shared electron.

Infinite number of universes, no reason to have the same rules, so why not lets make water linear!

So, let's say there are two universes with a single, tiny change. In one universe, the Peeleean Gods, far greater than the Magratheans in their design capabilities, want one where all atoms in a molecule have the same repulsive force relative to each other, and one where lone pairs aren't needed to stabilize molecular charges. Both of these would, in theory, create linear water, which would in turn create ridiculously different universes where life, if it was even able to exist at all, would be so incomprehensibly alien that we may not even be able recognize it. And this isn't even going into how the entire rest of those universes would be absolutely radically affected by such small changes. Every interaction between every particle of matter would be different. For an infinite number of universes with an infinite number of changes, you would pretty much end up with an infinite number of incredibly, ridiculously different and nowhere-near-similar results.

You wouldn't just get hobbits, is what I'm saying here.

Sure, sometimes you end up with Cthulhu. or a universe where the physics were not conducive to life as we know it. One of them probably has a species of sentient ice cream creatures. That's the beauty of infinity.

[Peelee]

Sure, sometimes you end up with Cthulhu. or a universe where the physics were not conducive to life as we know it. One of them probably has a species of sentient ice cream creatures. That's the beauty of infinity.

Infinite set of numbers between 2 and 3. Sure, sometimes you end up with e, or other irrational and never ending numbers. But sometimes you have the number 10. That's the beauty of infinity.

Again, "infinite" does not mean "all." An infinite number of universes does not mean any thing you can think of can potentially be a universe. I can think of an infinite amount of numbers that are not in the infinite amount of numbers between 2 and 3.

This isn't like the monkeys with typewriters. If a monkey pees on the typewriter, ir types "now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country," it's not going to affect anything in any meaningful way. If a universe changes the gravitational constant, or decides neutrons are stupid and protons are just sticky, literally everything changes.

ETA: I was a bit too flippant when I said earlier you wouldn't just get hobbits. At some point you probably would get hobbits. Magic rings would have been better. Either the universes have the same set of rules (and why wouldn't they?), and you never get magic because that's not how it works, or they don't need to have the same set of rules (why would the very foundations of existence be different bring ignored here), in which case you have the ones that don't have different rules and just see above, or the ones that do have different rules, not to belabor the point, have everything different about them, so still no magic rings.

[Keltest]

Infinite set of numbers between 2 and 3. Sure, sometimes you end up with e, or other irrational and never ending numbers. But sometimes you have the number 10. That's the beauty of infinity.

Again, "infinite" does not mean "all." An infinite number of universes does not mean any thing you can think of can potentially be a universe. I can think of an infinite amount of numbers that are not in the infinite amount of numbers between 2 and 3.

This isn't like the monkeys with typewriters. If a monkey pees on the typewriter, it types "now is the time for all good men to come to the stuff of their country," it's not going to affect anything in any meaningful way. If a universe changes the gravitational constant, or decides neutrons are stupid and protons are just sticky, literally everything changes.

ETA: I was a bit too flippant when I said earlier you wouldn't just get hobbits. At some point you probably would get hobbits. Magic rings would have been better. Either the universes have the same set of rules (and why wouldn't they?), and you never get magic because that's not how it works, or they don't need to have the same set of rules (why would the very foundations of existence be different bring ignored here), in which case you have the ones that don't have different rules and just see above, or the ones that do have different rules, not to belabor the point, have everything different about them, so still no magic rings.

Youre right, infinite with constraints is not the same thing as everything. You show me some universal (heh) constraints on what a universe can or cannot be, and I will concede the point.

[Peelee]

Youre right, infinite with constraints is not the same thing as everything. You show me some universal (heh) constraints on what a universe can or cannot be, and I will concede the point.

I already did, in a way, but I have no problem doing it again in case you have any objections or I did something wrong.

Two possibilities exist: universes that rely on the same set of rules (let's call them Multiverse A), and universes that do not rely on the same set of rules (Multiverse 1. Or the Mongooses. That's a good team name).

Multiverse A cannot have magic rings, as per our current understanding of science, which will hold true across all universes in Multiverse A. Such argument to be redacted if we find it magic rings can totally exist, of course.

Multiverse B actually has Multiverse A as a subset, but we can ignore it since it doesn't have any magic rings. This leaves only universes with different rules than ours, which works out well for me. As previously shown, any change to the fundamental mechanisms of the universe would have massive ramifications across the whole of the universe. To (very badly) metaphorize it, if the universe were a landscape painting, changes would not be on the level of adding a tree or a flying castle, or even making it a portrait; they would be more on the level of "now it's a Jackson Pollock piece." Completely alien and un-recognizable to anyone who saw the landscape. Even if a magic ring were to come out of such an arrangement, there could be no Frodo to carry it, no Samwise or Gimli to accompany him, no Middle-Earth or any other sort of landscape, etc.

[Keltest]

I already did, in a way, but I have no problem doing it again in case you have any objections or I did something wrong.

Two possibilities exist: universes that rely on the same set of rules (let's call them Multiverse A), and universes that do not rely on the same set of rules (Multiverse 1. Or the Mongooses. That's a good team name).

Multiverse A cannot have magic rings, as per our current understanding of science, which will hold true across all universes in Multiverse A. Such argument to be redacted if we find it magic rings can totally exist, of course.

Multiverse B actually has Multiverse A as a subset, but we can ignore it since it doesn't have any magic rings. This leaves only universes with different rules than ours, which works out well for me. As previously shown, any change to the fundamental mechanisms of the universe would have massive ramifications across the whole of the universe. To (very badly) metaphorize it, if the universe were a landscape painting, changes would not be on the level of adding a tree or a flying castle, or even making it a portrait; they would be more on the level of "now it's a Jackson Pollock piece." Completely alien and un-recognizable to anyone who saw the landscape. Even if a magic ring were to come out of such an arrangement, there could be no Frodo to carry it, no Samwise or Gimli to accompany him, no Middle-Earth or any other sort of landscape, etc.

But again, infinity. Youre right, its highly improbable that we would end up with Middle-Earth if we picked any random universe. But unless there is something that specifically prevents that outcome, its there, somewhere. Vastly outnumbered by the universes where we cannot understand anything, but it is there.

[2D8HP]

This isn't like the monkeys with typewriters... .


Alright, let's see what it is this time.

"It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times"???

Damn you stupid monkeys!

No banana!

[Peelee]

But again, infinity. Youre right, its highly improbable that we would end up with Middle-Earth if we picked any random universe. But unless there is something that specifically prevents that outcome, its there, somewhere. Vastly outnumbered by the universes where we cannot understand anything, but it is there.

It's not highly improbable, it's impossible, because the only two options are "works exactly like our universe" and "works nothing at all like our universe." There is no "works exactly like our universe except magic exists but everything else is all the same" or "works exactly like our universe but gases sink in liquids and liquids float in gases so we're all living in bubbles the seas and oceans and fish swim above us in the seatmosphere but everything else is all the same" options. It's either drastically, incomprehensibly different rules, or the same rules. It's either Hosnian Dice, which requires senses that we don't have to play and a non-orientable board, or five card stud poker, but it's never poker-but-deuces-wild. Again, poor analogy, but good enough for our purposes.

[Keltest]

It's not highly improbable, it's impossible, because the only two options are "works exactly like our universe" and "works nothing at all like our universe." There is no "works exactly like our universe except magic exists but everything else is all the same" or "works exactly like our universe but gases sink in liquids and liquids float in gases so we're all living in bubbles the seas and oceans and fish swim above us in the seatmosphere but everything else is all the same" options. It's either drastically, incomprehensibly different rules, or the same rules. It's either Hosnian Dice, which requires senses that we don't have to play and a non-orientable board, or five card stud poker, but it's never poker-but-deuces-wild. Again, poor analogy, but good enough for our purposes.

Why not? Whats stopping there from being a superficially similar universe that also has magic?

[Peelee]

Why not? Whats stopping there from being a superficially similar universe that also has magic?

Think of the rules of the universe as a tree. The end result is is all the leaves on all the branches. "Water is required for life" is a leaf, which grows off the "water is a bent molecule" branch, which grows off the "lone pairs are stronger repulsors" branch, etc. etc. Now, say you want a different leaf - water is not required for life. That means that the limb it grows off must be different, which also means every other branch coming off that limb will be different. Now, for that long, the "water is bent" limb to be different, the limb that IT grows off, the "lone pairs are stronger repulsors than H" must be different, which makes every branch coming off THAT branch different and also affecting every branch coming off THOSE branches.

So, even though you want to change a single leaf, you change the whole damn tree. And this is also true if you start at the trunk.

Now, all the trees with the same branches and leaves can look different, so you can still have infinite trees even if they're the same fundamental tree, but you'll never have one with a single leaf changed. You change one thing, you change everything, because they're all connected.

Such is the beauty of the Peelee Tree. The best of the bad analogies I've given, IMO.

[Shining Wrath]

One wonders where the energy in the daughter universes comes from, if not the parent universe.

One wonders where the energy for our universe came from, if it is indeed the only one (multiverses are not proven). Or if a new universe supplies its own energy through some process not yet understod.


Look at the bright side. You won't hear the beginning either.

Seriously, though, as much as I liked this movie, the man looked like he just stepped out of the shower. The black cloak look is classic for a reason!

Considering the ghoulish look of Snope, I think the Supreme Leader wanted to look horrible as a way of showing contempt for every other creature.


Let's start at one thing and work backwards, both slowly and not very far (and also very simplified), and see how it screws absolutely everything up if it was different.

Water. Pretty much required for life. Now, the H2O molecule is bent, not linear. This lets it H-bond, and bond to itself, giving it a lot of wonderful properties. If it was linear, it would not have these wonderful properties, and would not support life as we know it in any sort of macro scale. To put it another way, in the beginning water was bent. This has made a lot of people very happy and been widely regarded as a good move.

Now, water is bent because its lone pairs repel better than the Hydrogens. This is because the lone pairs have two electrons, well, paired, and that's better than the Hydrogens, which have one electric and one shared electron.

Infinite number of universes, no reason to have the same rules, so why not lets make water linear!

So, let's say there are two universes with a single, tiny change. In one universe, the Peeleean Gods, far greater than the Magratheans in their design capabilities, want one where all atoms in a molecule have the same repulsive force relative to each other, and one where lone pairs aren't needed to stabilize molecular charges. Both of these would, in theory, create linear water, which would in turn create ridiculously different universes where life, if it was even able to exist at all, would be so incomprehensibly alien that we may not even be able recognize it. And this isn't even going into how the entire rest of those universes would be absolutely radically affected by such small changes. Every interaction between every particle of matter would be different. For an infinite number of universes with an infinite number of changes, you would pretty much end up with an infinite number of incredibly, ridiculously different and nowhere-near-similar results.

You wouldn't just get hobbits, is what I'm saying here.




It's not highly improbable, it's impossible, because the only two options are "works exactly like our universe" and "works nothing at all like our universe." There is no "works exactly like our universe except magic exists but everything else is all the same" or "works exactly like our universe but gases sink in liquids and liquids float in gases so we're all living in bubbles the seas and oceans and fish swim above us in the seatmosphere but everything else is all the same" options. It's either drastically, incomprehensibly different rules, or the same rules. It's either Hosnian Dice, which requires senses that we don't have to play and a non-orientable board, or five card stud poker, but it's never poker-but-deuces-wild. Again, poor analogy, but good enough for our purposes.

Assuming that you can only turn one knob at a time. I assert there are in fact an infinite number of knobs, some of which have an infinite number of settings. That's what infinity is like. Again, since we don't know what is required to achieve magic rings, we do not know what changes are necessary to obtain magic rings, and it is possible that those changes are relatively benign. I do not think you've proven that any change must have profound results such that the universe would be completely unrecognizable, much less that a combination of many changes can't have results that stack in some ways and cancel or mostly cancel in some others.

If gravity is a little stronger and the atomic weak force a little weaker and the speed of light a little slower, do we get magic rings? I don't know, and I don't think you do, either. We don't get to experiment with fundamental constants.

[Peelee]

If gravity is a little stronger and the atomic weak force a little weaker and the speed of light a little slower, do we get magic rings? I don't know, and I don't think you do, either. We don't get to experiment with fundamental constants.

I do know; you get a tea kettle in orbit.

[Jasdoif]

I do know; you get a tea kettle in orbit.Twinkle, twinkle, earl grey thing.
Tastes better than that one ring.
From above the world you pour.
Like a kettle, watch it soar.

[2D8HP]

...If gravity is a little stronger and the atomic weak force a little weaker and the speed of light a little slower, do we get magic rings? I don't know, and I don't think you do, either. We don't get to experiment with fundamental constants.


I do know; you get a tea kettle in orbit.


Twinkle, twinkle, earl grey thing.
Tastes better than that one ring.
From above the world you pour.
Like a kettle, watch it soar.


In awe of poem.

Thread totally worth it.

[Jasdoif]

In awe of poem.I figured since there was already a tea tray in the sky (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinkle,_Twinkle,_Little_Bat), this was the natural next step....

[Peelee]

Assuming that you can only turn one knob at a time. I assert there are in fact an infinite number of knobs, some of which have an infinite number of settings. That's what infinity is like. Again, since we don't know what is required to achieve magic rings, we do not know what changes are necessary to obtain magic rings, and it is possible that those changes are relatively benign. I do not think you've proven that any change must have profound results such that the universe would be completely unrecognizable, much less that a combination of many changes can't have results that stack in some ways and cancel or mostly cancel in some others.

Also, now that I have a little more time to address this, that doesnt matter, because each time you turn a knob, you don't just turn that knob; you turn that knob and a whole bunch of other knobs that are all connected to the first knob, which all turn a bunch of knobs that are connected to THOSE knobs, which...

You can turn even more knobs if you want, but you'd be making things even more radically different, not less.

[Fyraltari]

Allright, here goes nothing:



It doesn't make much sense to talk about the author's decisions in designing his fictional world to be just or unjust, either. I mean, unless it's really repugnant (e.g, "Minority X all go to hell 'cause they're just that bad")...but I'm not sure "unjust" would be the right term for that.
Yes it does. As much as discussig any other aspect of the work. We can't really discuss Lovecraft's writings without noting at some point that cosmic justic is completely absent from it because that is ont of the major themes.
"Does good ultimately triumph?" is one of the most important questions to answer if you want to know a work's tone, for example.


It sounds like you've been spending too much time on TVTropes.
BUSTED!



Haha, I like the way you ended this :smallbiggrin:. Neither would I, but looks like I'm getting less than one and crappy too. Damn it.
Hey, thank you. I hope your century gets better.


I've had similar thoughts to the rest of what you've said. Less poetic perhaps.
Aww, you think I'm poetic. :smallredface:


Let me read the rest of the thread now, to see if I've been ninja'd or if the thread has moved away from this. Sorry, that was way too fun for me not to reply to it.
Hooray for fun!



Hoho, Fyraltari man, the forum really didn't like what you have to say about immortality xD. Damn. That was harsh.
Thank you, you are the nicest cacao bean I have ever met. Starting to feel guiltyabout all that chocolate I eat...


Didn't expect the playground to be such proponents of immortality :smallbiggrin:. Here, have some support: I agree with a lot of what you've said. "A lot" as in "as much as the unedited part of my post here implies".
Well peopl have strong opinions on death, it only makes sense that they'd have strong opinions on immortality. I am glad that (at least) two people agree with me generally, I was feelng a bit isolated for a while. All in good fun ofcourse I am not going to get hurt by people disagreeing with me, or anything. People are allowed to be wrong. I am not sure I should use blue text for sarcasm. Would it have been clear that it was sarcasm had it nor been blue? Holy Conjugation, Batman!




Oh, don't feel bad, it's not you, it's me :smalltongue: I haven't read/watched any of them.
They are very good. To develop:
"You make the universe your backyard and all you are left with is a backyard" is something the 11th Doctor, from Doctor Who (About 1000 years old, 2000 ifyou count the movie as canon if what I heard is true) tells to his human friend Amy. He explains that he is so old that for every star in the universe he was probably there at its birth and at its death (he has a time machine)and the only way he can see the universe as wonderful as before is by proxy, through the eyes of someone who isn't as blasé as he has become. Note that he has given many dfferent (and conflicting) reasons as to why he travels with humans.
"I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhäuser Gate" is something the replicant Roy from Blade Runner says when listing all the things he is proudof having done during the monologue where he accepts that it is time for him to die.
In the H2G2 books, there is an immortal time traveller that staves off boredom by going after every single thing that ever was or will be to personally insult them. In alphabetical order. At one oints he commands his spaceship's AI to play him a specific movie because he has only watched it 543 (or whatever) times and, consequently, isn't as bored with it aswith the rest of his collection.
"In one hundred years we will all be dead, true. But right here, right now we are alive" becomes something of a motto for St Brutha in Discworld's Small Gods


I would like to retroactively add before my wall of text, because it is not necesaarily clear from what I stated), that consider "immortality" imply that the universe gives you infinite time somehow because "you can't die, until you die (which would happen when the universe runs out of time)" is self-contradictory.




There are two responses for that.
1. Even if you grow tired of friends, you're always stuck with family. I might argue with my brother, we might engage in mutual mockery whenever we get a good chance, but we still love each other. (If you're stuck with a less-loving family...that sucks and I'm sorry for you.)
Whileit is true that every kind of love is different, I fail to see what it is about filial or fraternal loves that would make them indefinitely enduring that romantic or friendly love would not possess. I am also confuse by the fact that you seem to be saying that it isn't true about every family. Are you saying that if you stop to love, say, your mother, you never actually loved her in the first place? If I am reading you wrong, please do correct me.



2. There are seven billion people on the planet. Even in pre-modern times, there were tens of millions on every continent (except Australia and, of course, Antarctica). You might tire of your current friends, coworkers, even spouse, but there are countless zillions of other people to meet.
No that's precisely the problem. There are not "countless" people to meet, just a finite number.


1. That's a problem even with limited lifespans. The big difference is that you'd actually get to it sooner or later.
No it is not. An octogenarian that never learned piano will not have time to master it. It is too latefor them. But it would never be too late for an immortal, who can therefore eternaly push the effort back.


2. "I'm bored, I should get to work on that novel/sculpture/whatever"?
Well it's done. And now every trace of it is gone. I'm bored again.
And that damn bird (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl9pTDK8PAk)* (watch out for Doctor Who spoilers) didn't even fly twice to the mountain.


3. Even if you are eternal, the opportunity to do what you want might not be.
Since your original proposal was that everybody would be immortal too, unless what you want to do is "be at a precise place at a precise time" I don't see why. Whatever it is you want to do you could set the pportunity up. You have time to spare after all.



If you derive all of your self-worth from one thing you do, you're going to be miserable no matter how long you live.
Who said anything said anything about "one thing"? The issue here is that whatever and however how numerous, the things you achieve, they will wither away in a time that is miniscule next to your lifespan.



There are a lot of things I find questionable about how Tolkien wrote his elves; that barely cracks the top 5. This argument doesn't hold much traction with me.
That was not an argument that was an aside remark. Arguments from authority are trash. Especially when no-one could possibly be an authority.



"Life is not a finite list of things that you check off before you're allowed to die. It's life, you just go on living it." —Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
Let's be honest; nobody lives their lives to complete certain tasks. They complete those tasks because they want to, because they think it fits in with their values and ideals. They do other things like watch movies, play billiards, and talk about philosophical subjects for the same reason.
"I keep on living because I like it." is as good a reason to live as any other and better than most. However if that is your only reason to live, you have to question wether their will be a point when you stop enjoying it. "Not in my lifespan" is a perfectly valid answer butonly as long as your lifespan is finite. You cannot in good logic assume something will always be true simply because it has continuously been until now.


1. You think people are going to have perfect memories of everything they've ever done? I don't have perfect memory of what I talked about with my gaming group last week, never mind what I said to the Smiths several millennia ago!
No I don't. Repeat a list long enough, however and you will know it by heart wether you want it or not. You might forget it, butstumble upon it again, and, provided you already read it enough time, it wll come back to you. There are only so many conversations one can have, so many things to be done. Eventually you will have experienced all of them enough times to reach the point that you know all of them that well.


2. The Smiths are not the same people they were several millennia ago, and neither are you. People change, Fyraltari.
Change does not happen spontaneously, GreatWyrmGold. People change by reacting to the experience they live. Same experience, same change. Once you have experienced everything, you will have change in every possible way. At which point you will stop changing. Sure enough, people have different natures, that factors into the equation, however the experience keeps piling on while the "base nature", so to speak, doesn't, which means that in the end the difference will be unnoticeable. Everyone having lived everything, they will be the same.


3. I've watched plenty of movies several times over. Same events, same cinematography, same acting, same framing, same editing, same sound design, same everything. Each time was enjoyable—not always in the same way, not always the same amount, but it was. In fact, with many movies, I always find something I hadn't noticed before (or, at least, had forgotten about noticing before). Why would conversations be any different? I mean, aside from the whole "can't-step-into-the-same-river-twice" bit.
You have seen those movies "several times over". I am going to take the bold guess that you have never watched a movie a hundred times over. Picture doing that. Now picture watching it a million times over. There is not an inifite amount of information in a movie. At some point you will have noticed it all. And mostof the things you will notice would probably not color the way you see the movie anyway (as in "there's a slightly green reflection on the top left corner of the frame at 01:36:27. Huh").


No, but I've read it.
That god's problems weren't just that he was immortal. He was also omnipotent, which meant that he could do everything he wanted in the blink of an eye without any effort, and had no peers, which meant that he was lonely AF. Neither of those are problems for the proposed set of immortals.
I wasn't thinking about the Voice's problems as much as about the scientist. Here's an excerpt:
But it is what you did during your life on Earth! What was your goal, then?
-To discover something new, that onlyI could find, to gather my peers' praises, to enjoy the satisfaction of having achieved something knowing the brevity of the time I was given for this endeavour. Now, I can only gain that which you would find yourself should you accept to give it a little effort. You cannot sing my praises, you would only amuse yourself. Achieving something when one knows one has all of eternity to do so brings no satisfaction.




Ditto. Why do you need a reason to keep on living? That's like needing a reason to not be a jerk; I understand that some people need one, I just don't get why.
If you do something, it is that you have a reason to. Wether you know what it is or not. If you gained nothing from living, be it the smallest of pleasures, you would lay on your bed until you died of thirst.
Again, "I enjoy living" is a perfectly valid reason. But you can't assume you will always.


A dolphin isn't human, but it's perfectly happy being a dolphin.
For that matter, a baby is human, and they're perfectly happy doing things that would bore any adult.
Yes A dolphin is happy living a dolphin's life and a human baby is happy living a human's life. Would you be happy living a dolphin's life while still being you and therefore (I presume), not a dolphin.


Yes.
We do forget most of our lives, so if a life forgotten isn't a life lived, none of us have lived much of a life. This conclusion is obviously ridiculous, so we need to adjust our definitions until a sensible conclusion is possible.
Experiences we do not remember do mark us. We are affected by things we don't remember. (Which is a good thing, given how much we can't remember.) No amount of philosophy will change that.
Something that still marks you, that still shapes you, you haven't truly forgotten. You may not recall it, but it is still there, somewhere, in your subconscious. How isthat for a definition?



Of course things we have lived before will affect us. Putting aside how, technically, everything that affects us happened to us in the past, even mortals experience many nearly identical events repeatedly. What makes one Thanksgiving dinner with the family inherently different from the others? How about just normal dinner with a consistent fraction of said family? Another day at work, or another game of D&D or XCOM, or another attempt at explaining to your friends why "Turn off your brain and enjoy it" is a moronic defense of even the schlockiest piece of media?
If living the same thing before makes immortal life meaningless, it makes a lot of mortal life equally meaningless.
You misunderstand me (that's on me I wasn't very clear). If an event shapes you and you then relieve this event, will this event affect you in the exact same way?

To take an example (disclaimer, I have been lucky enough t be spared this kind of horror and thismay not be the case of everyone reading this so to whoever it may concern, I do not mean to minimize what you have been through I certainly do not pretend to understand what you lived, as I can only repeat what I have been told/read from peole who did and if in doing so I hurt your sensibility, I most deeply and most genuinely apologize): if a soldier loses a brother-in-arms in battle it will traumatize him (in mostcase) but as it keeps happening again and again will it not lose some of its impact?





Um...you're basically equating horses, frogs, basilisk lizards, and amputee ants as being essentially the same because they're all quadrupeds. Which is wrong on basically every level.
Sure, some people would look at an infinite array of life-bearing worlds as basically just No Man's Sky, but not everyone would. As a biologist, I'd love to see the variety of novel organisms and ecosystems that would evolve on all those different planets. The sheer variety on Earth alone is fascinating, and I can only imagine what would be possible if we varied the starting conditions some.
No, I am not. My point was that if the solutions to this problem were infinite, then no solution proposed by this simulation would be in any way like what we know becausr the odds of that would be N/∞ which would be zero (yes I know you can'tdivide by infinity, but you can divide by ever growing numbres which tends to zero. Fortunately, infinity doesn't actually exists, so...


Here, we're less interested in the biology and more in the sociology and psychology. Obviously, there's a limited number of forms those can take, but we don't know how limited. There might be only one way it can turn out, or we might run out of stars before we find all the possibilities.
But if we can run out of possiblity, then, given infinite time, we will. Infinite doesn't mean "really big".



You can remember who you are without remembering every event that made you that way.
Example: I don't know what made me so much more skeptical than my classmates, but it must be something. I don't know what it is, so I must have forgotten it. That skepticism lead me on a path that greatly shaped who I am today. I know who I am, but I don't know why I am who I am. I've forgotten what made me that way. And let me tell you, that's a lot better than dying.
See above.


Why?
Square peg, round hole.


Again, that's a problem that affects mortals as well.
Much less. And we would need much more time than we actually have to see everything tht isn't new under the sun.




Generally true, but not universally so. If those assumptions can lead to a clearly incorrect conclusion, then there is a flaw with them and they can be discarded as a set. (Perhaps individual assumptions are correct and others are flawed, or bringing them together is what causes the paradox, but the set as a whole is flawed.)
I agree.


As I've explained above, your assumptions about immortality apply to mortal life as well.
You have not convinced me that I have.


Hence, the bleak conclusions they lead to about immortality apply to mortality as well. Intentionally or no, you have constructed an argument for life being as meaningless and miserable as you believe immortality would be (albeit for a shorter time). This conclusion is, obviously, ridiculous; at the very least, it contradicts the idea that immortality is worse than mortality.
That is not obvious in any way.
First I have repeatedly stated that many of the problems inherent to immortality would only arise after a ludicrous amount of time and therefore are of no consequence to mortals such as us.

Second the ideas that life has a meaning (or isn't miserable) may be something you believe in, but they are not universally accepted nor obviously correct. The simle fact that no one has ever found any "meaning of life" that would satisfy everyone, while not evidence of aything, do suggest tht tere are none to find. I, fo one, am an existentialist (I know the guy, who mentionned "existential dread" half a dozen times is an existentialist, bigshock). I believe that life has no inherent meaning and that it is up to each and everyone of us to give our own life one (or however many you want.It's your life, I won't judge).



Thus, there is a flaw with your assumptions, and hence the conclusions drawn from them are likely also flawed.
Generally true, however the fallacy fallacy is a thing ;) (That's just petty nitpicking but I just love the nae (and concept) of the fllacy fallacy.)


Whether you realize it or not, you've made many other assumptions (most notably those about memory, e.g. "if I forget things that happened to me, I'm not really immortal").
Well then let's add:

4) To truly forget an experience, requires that experience to not affect you in any way, conscious or unconsious, anymore.

If something no longer affects you in any way, then it is a whole part of you that is gone. Not unlike death if you ask me.



"Infinite" doesn't mean "every." There are an infinite amount of numbers between 2 and 3, but none of them are 4.
I am not sure how that relate to my point. If you pick a handful of numbers between 2 and 3 and then randomly chooses an number within that same space, the probability to find one of the numbers you picked is 0 because of the infinite possibilities.


Missing from this discussion, though, is this; new people are being born all the time. New worlds are being discovered (assuming space travel, which is bound to happen) all the time. And all the people you already know? They change. None of us is a constant, immutable, unchanging.
But the universe is finite. If there is no death, at some point you'd have to stop spawning new things.
Again, all of us keep changing until we don't. We ust never reach the point wher we can't change anymore because we die wayyyyyyy before that.


Thatzperson you shagged 250 years ago? Hook up again today, and it will be a different experience, because you've both changed.
Yes it will be a different experience the N first times (where N is a really big number) then it will be the same as before.


That wine you drank 150 years ago? Drink a similar vintage again today, and you'll experience it differently, because you aren't the same person, and you have learned a little bit more about wine appreciation since then. And guess what? The day you know all there is to know about wine never comes, because there's always a new varietal of grape, a new type of wood for casks, a new climate on a new planet to give a different nuance of flavor. And even if you devote sufficient time to wine that you do keep up - that means you don't have enough time to keep up with what's happening in music. Or art. Or mixed martial arts. The idea that any one person can keep up with everything that's new even on our one little planet is ludicrous; given a galaxy or a universe full of planets, beyond ludicrous.
There's only so many ways to make wine. And it's not about keeping up with someone that runs faster than you, it's about reaching the end of a very long road in a infinite time. It will happen someday.


With any luck, we'll both live long enough to find out who's right. :smallbiggrin:
That reminds me of that one Asterix comic that opened with two boars discussing:
"I bet you that the Gauls won't catch us, today.
-Allright, but if you lose, who wins?"


The search space for evolution is indeed infinite, within the constraints of the universe. I.e. had we a bigger universe, even more of the infinite search space would theoretically be reachable - as it stands, the constraints on evolution are due to available resources, not due to lack of possibility. What you saw in that simulation (not unlike this one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOFws_hhZs8), I'd imagine) is the existence of local minimums and other forms of attractor - that given the objective of locomotion, legs are a very efficient model that is therefore reached regularly from random evolution. But that was a constrain set by the experiment, who artificially gave them a target location objective. RL evolution is not concerned with such objectives, being far more interested in reproduction.

Yes, those are basically the same simulations. Well the one I remember was in 3D and did not account for muscles, but that's just details.


This is true even if it was just 25 minutes ago. (I think I'm a lot older and a lot more married than everyone else in this thread except one.)
I submit to your superior knowledge of marital life. However see above for my rebuttal.


Every story is new. Even when a story seems to be put together in a similar way -- even when it was put together in a similar way on purpose -- it's still different from every other story that has been or will ever be.
Heh. I already have one philisophical debate on my hands, let's say I give you that one. Doesn't change that in a finite universe, there can only be a finite number of stories.


I also find it odd that you think people tire of stories once they've read them once. That's not what most people are like.
This is becoming to become tiring. Why do you eaquate "doing things literally ad infinitum means you will get sick of it eventually" with "you can't enoy the same things twice".

This is not a "you" as in "you ersonally, neriana", this is a general you because I feel like I just keep explaining this.


You keep ignoring the fact that things change. Just in my infinitesimally short 41 years on Earth, for which I've only really been noticing things for around 35 years, things have changed immensely. I have changed immensely. People change with every breath. If they don't, they're dead.
See above.



Immortality would be exactly like life.
Death is part of life.



If you don't change, learn, and experience new things, you die. And you'll still find joy in many things that you've done infinite times as well. There will be a combination of completely new experiences and beloved old ones.
In the words ofGranny Weatherwax
What can't die, can't change. hat can't change can't grow. You are right, Madam', I have lived much less than you. But I'm much older. And that, Madam', ain't hard
Not sure this is the correct quote, though.


Even the things you've enjoyed a million times before are never exactly the same. A sunset. A purring cat. A piece of music. Every letter I type in this sentence, every one you read, you and I and everything else in the universe have changed.

You mention birds that are always amazed by the sunrise. Now, I hate sunrises, because seeing them means I've either been awake way too long or had to get up way too early. But sunsets? They're always amazing. Something doesn't have to be new or incomprehensible to be wonderful.
That's good for you, really. But that you are not bored with them, doesn't mean that you wouldn't be, eventually.


Btw, you say to "ask artists" what they do. I'm a writer. I'm friends with lots of other writers. Ask me what I do. Except I've been telling you, if you can see it.

No, I didn't


Ask artists[...] why they do what they do.



The universe having finite states means you will eventually run out of new stuff, but who cares? Because long before then your brain will run out of storage. Because your BRAIN has only finitely many states, given that the materials making it up will change over time, the number is bigger than you'd get just from the size, energy, and material, but it's still finite, so, unless human memory has a substantial non-material component you WILL NOT remember absolutely everything that happens to you if you live forever. There's simply not enough "there" there.

Even if you are uploaded to a computer with the a few galactic superclusters of mass converted to nano-scale memory to support your mind, you still won't remember an infinite amount. Infinity is bigger than that.
Immortality as I understand it would mean that you can't truly forget anything. Se above for what I mean by truly forget. That's impossible of course but immortality itself is impossible (first of all because the universe does not have infinite time), so that's hardly a problem.


There is, however, a possible way for the immortal to not lose their individuality, come to think of it. Let's assume that the immortal at some point decided they never want to do x. If they could find a way to turn their possibility of doing x per time unit into a convergent series (that they'd never be able to unmake), then given infinite time, their chance of doing that after the day they managed to turn it into a convergent series would be s, where s is the sum of the series. So that immortal would manage to have a solid chance of not ever doing x, which would make them different from all the other immortals who have done it. How they'd do any of that, I have absolutely not the faintest idea...
That would require the immortal to do something that they themselves would not be able to undo given infinite time,nad therfore near limitless ressources. Not sure that makes sense.
If they could then they would indeed not be like everybody else. That wouldn't keep their compay from turning into a bore eventually so we are back to square one except that evrybody's suffernig is slighlty different. Yay for progress?



I think all that's been said here can be said about any entity that lives long enough, even an abstract one like a civilization.
No ideas about that.


That's a common assumption, but it's not a correct one, unless you're an isolated system. As long as the rest of the universe exists the immortal 'll be fine. edit: By "exist" I mean "not at maximum entropy" in this case. That was a way too liberal use of the word "exist" even for me.
The universe is, a priori, an isolated system. The only one, really.


Honestly? Breathing. Breathing's nice. Curse that survival instinct, it doesn't have a sense of drama. :smalltongue:
Though I admit I do need more than that to feel satisfied with myself.
Good for you, I guess.



*Notice that of those billions of years, the Doctor only remembers about 2 and a half days. So he hasn't lived bilions of years

Well, that only took me two hours to type. I am somewhat glad that thereis alimit to how many posts you can quote.

EDIT:

Twinkle, twinkle, earl grey thing.
Tastes better than that one ring.
From above the world you pour.
Like a kettle, watch it soar.
You win an internet.


Considering the ghoulish look of Snope, I think the Supreme Leader wanted to look horrible as a way of showing contempt for every other creature.
And he looked ridiculous. Black cloaks, man.




One wonders where the energy for our universe came from, if it is indeed the only one (multiverses are not proven). Or if a new universe supplies its own energy through some process not yet understod.


If gravity is a little stronger and the atomic weak force a little weaker and the speed of light a little slower, do we get magic rings? I don't know, and I don't think you do, either. We don't get to experiment with fundamental constants.
Okay, I really want you two to read ... The Gods Themselves ...
Okay, I'll shut up about it.


Hosnian Dice
Is that an actual thing in Star Wars or did you just make it up (probably referencing the same thing as Star Wars)?


To put it another way, in the beginning water was bent. This has made a lot of people very happy and been widely regarded as a good move.

[...] the Peeleean Gods, far greater than the Magratheans in their design capabilities

https://pre00.deviantart.net/8039/th/pre/i/2016/185/9/7/i_understood_that_reference_by_lucsales-da8qh3a.png

[SilverCacaobean]

Thank you, you are the nicest cacao bean I have ever met. Starting to feel guiltyabout all that chocolate I eat...

No, eat as many chocolates as you want, just avoid the silver ones :smallbiggrin:


That would require the immortal to do something that they themselves would not be able to undo given infinite time,nad therfore near limitless ressources. Not sure that makes sense.
If they could then they would indeed not be like everybody else. That wouldn't keep their compay from turning into a bore eventually so we are back to square one except that evrybody's suffernig is slighlty different.

Not sure it does make sense myself. It's just the only thing I could think of that would make immortals somewhat different from one another.




I would like to retroactively add before my wall of text, because it is not necessarily clear from what I stated), that consider "immortality" imply that the universe gives you infinite time somehow because "you can't die, until you die (which would happen when the universe runs out of time)" is self-contradictory.

The universe is, a priori, an isolated system. The only one, really.

Yes, I misunderstood you a bit because of my own bias to avoid infinite as much as I can and in an attempt to keep my speculations grounded to some extent, I assumed that our immortal has some limits and doesn't outlive the universe. Doesn't really change much of what I said if the immortal has infinite time. Amplifies it, really.


However I do see a problem with your infinite memory idea. You claim that once the immortal had done everything that can be done then they'd get bored. But... The memory would presumably not only be able to store events that have happened, but also thoughts that the immortal has made. So, even if they've done everything that can be done, have they thought everything that can be thought? No. So, since they have infinite space, the immortal will always be able to have a new thought that they've never had before, even given infinite time, and store it somewhere in their memory. Why would that immortal get bored? There's always something new to think. That immortal would be capable of thinking about every possible state of the entire finite existing universe and store it in their memory and then they'd still be able to make new different thoughts, because they have infinite space. Given infinite space, one can store infinite information. At any given point in that infinite time, the immortal would still have infinite thoughts yet to be thought and there would be no guarantee or reason to believe that they've made the same thoughts as the other immortals with infinite memory, so one immortal wouldn't be the same as another...

That immortal's definitely not human anymore, though...

Aesop: Don't play with infinity, Fyraltari. **** happens when you play with infinity. :smalltongue:

[Fyraltari]

Yes, I misunderstood you a bit because of my own bias to avoid infinite as much as I can and in an attempt to keep my speculations grounded to some extent, I assumed that our immortal has some limits and doesn't outlive the universe. Doesn't really change much of what I said if the immortal has infinite time. Amplifies it, really.


However I do see a problem with your infinite memory idea. You claim that once the immortal had done everything that can be done then they'd get bored. But... The memory would presumably not only be able to store events that have happened, but also thoughts that the immortal has made. So, even if they've done everything that can be done, have they thought everything that can be thought? No. So, since they have infinite space, the immortal will always be able to have a new thought that they've never had before, even given infinite time, and store it somewhere in their memory. Why would that immortal get bored? There's always something new to think. That immortal would be capable of thinking about every possible state of the entire finite existing universe and store it in their memory and then they'd still be able to make new different thoughts, because they have infinite space. Given infinite space, one can store infinite information. At any given point in that infinite time, the immortal would still have infinite thoughts yet to be thought and there would be no guarantee or reason to believe that they've made the same thoughts as the other immortals with infinite memory, so one immortal wouldn't be the same as another...
It is true that to have an infinite memory, you would need an infinite mind, therefore an infinie brain therefore infinite space therefore basically nothing I said holds water.

Ah, screw it. Infinity makes no sense.

It was fundebating with you all.


That immortal's definitely not human anymore, though...
Indeed.



Aesop: Don't play with infinity, Fyraltari. **** happens when you play with infinity. :smalltongue:

https://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/assets_c/2009/12/pg._139-thumb-420x579-55510.jpg

[GreatWyrmGold]

Think of the rules of the universe as a tree...
I'm going to merge this with another tree analogy—the Tree of Life, a family tree for all life on Earth. Mutilating both in the process, but...
Imagine that you had a similar Tree of Life for all organisms that could possibly have been born, from every possible mutation; the "final universes" would be the results of several billion generations. For the purpose of not letting the rules of biology get in the way of this analogy's applicability, we'll keep out all evolutionary forces (so that organisms with deleterious or even lethal mutations still stay in the Tree, and even "reproduce") and start the Tree of Life at various organic molecules that could arrange themselves into self-replicating complexes. This life could have any set of amino acids to build proteins or building blocks that create other kinds of macromolecules with the same function, any genetic code with any type of polymer, metabolisms based on any profitable chemical reactions, etc etc.
Now, surely you can imagine that there would be a ridiculous variety of species at the end. Most of them would just be "species" of random agglomerations of chemicals (roughly equivalent to universes which don't have laws of physics appropriate for matter); most of the rest would be bacterial, nonviable, or otherwise boring to most people (roughly equivalent to universes which aren't suitable for intelligence). But focusing on the remainder, we'd expect to see organisms similar to the ones we know if we comb through sufficient trillions. If we searched long enough, we would be able to find one which looks very, very similar to (say) humanity, but with purple skin. Oh, it wouldn't actually have all that in common with humanity; the internal anatomy of the pseudo-humans would be vastly different, their behavior would be completely alien, they might have bigger eyes or smaller toes, etc. They wouldn't be exactly the same as "purple humans," but they'd be close enough to pass.

Of course, all of this depends on the plausibility of the magical system. Anything which contains internal contradictions is going to be impossible, for instance. But beyond that, it should be possible to find worlds that look like our world with X, even if there are technically other differences.

(Putting that aside, a sufficiently infinite number of universes will result in several where the impossible seems to happen (https://youtu.be/FaEkdQiweVE?t=12m50s). All that is really required for the scenarios in that video are random, ridiculously improbably quantum events which cause particles to rearrange themselves, which exist under known physics.)



One wonders where the energy for our universe came from, if it is indeed the only one (multiverses are not proven). Or if a new universe supplies its own energy through some process not yet understod.
There are loads of theories about where the energy came from which are compatible with known physics. Of course, known physics



Yes it does. As much as discussig any other aspect of the work. We can't really discuss Lovecraft's writings without noting at some point that cosmic justic is completely absent from it because that is ont of the major themes.
"Does good ultimately triumph?" is one of the most important questions to answer if you want to know a work's tone, for example.
The tone of the work is related to how just the inhabitants of its world are, but the two are not the same thing. Tone is not justice, any more than tone is death count.
Also, the absence of anything to judge is not the same thing as injustice.


Whileit is true that every kind of love is different, I fail to see what it is about filial or fraternal loves that would make them indefinitely enduring that romantic or friendly love would not possess. I am also confuse by the fact that you seem to be saying that it isn't true about every family. Are you saying that if you stop to love, say, your mother, you never actually loved her in the first place? If I am reading you wrong, please do correct me.
The members of a healthy family are capable of maintaining love even if they can't stand each other. If you really stop loving your mother, you are not a member of a healthy family.


No that's precisely the problem. There are not "countless" people to meet, just a finite number.
1. People change.
2. People have ways of making new people.



No it is not. An octogenarian that never learned piano will not have time to master it. It is too latefor them. But it would never be too late for an immortal, who can therefore eternaly push the effort back.
So...you're saying that because some people delay some things until their death, immortals will consistently delay everything until their heat death.


Well it's done. And now every trace of it is gone. I'm bored again.


Since your original proposal was that everybody would be immortal too, unless what you want to do is "be at a precise place at a precise time" I don't see why. Whatever it is you want to do you could set the pportunity up. You have time to spare after all.
Everybody is immortal. But not everything is. If you want to visit the supergiant Betelgeuse, for instance, you only have until it goes nova. If you want to
And, despite what you keep saying, people can change even if they're immortal.


Who said anything said anything about "one thing"? The issue here is that whatever and however how numerous, the things you achieve, they will wither away in a time that is miniscule next to your lifespan.
1. There are already people who dedicate their lives to things that won't last as long as they do. People make ad campaigns and parade floats and so on that will end or be dismantled within months. Authors write stories which will be forgotten within years. Nurses take care of senior citizens who could die any minute. These people enjoy those things, and you claim that you can get no satisfaction out of doing anything if it's not going to last until you die?
2. And you can go on to achieve more things. I don't see why that's a problem.
3. Have you ever heard of "maintenance"?


"I keep on living because I like it." is as good a reason to live as any other and better than most. However if that is your only reason to live, you have to question wether their will be a point when you stop enjoying it. "Not in my lifespan" is a perfectly valid answer butonly as long as your lifespan is finite. You cannot in good logic assume something will always be true simply because it has continuously been until now.
Nor can you, in good logic, assume that something will be true simply because the situation changes.


No I don't. Repeat a list long enough, however and you will know it by heart wether you want it or not. You might forget it, butstumble upon it again, and, provided you already read it enough time, it wll come back to you.
...No, that's not how memory works. If your memory works like that, you don't have a human mind. People's memories do fade to nothingness; they degrade and fade until nothing is left. Even if you still have the memory, it will change each time you remember it, until it bears little resemblance to the original memory, because that's how memory works.
This is all very basic information about memory. I learned it in high school. Your willingness to speak with authority and be so very wrong makes me wonder if the rest of the wall of text is worth replying to...and I decide "Probably not, since it's a wall of friggin' text". Sorry.