Always learning. Always wrong.
If the Universe is Spatially Infinite…
…there are an infinite number of identical copies of you on an infinite number of identical copies of Earth. You all always make identical decisions.
…there are an infinite number of identical copies of Earth, except that each of them is also occupied by Thor.
…as above, but it’s the Thor from Marvel Comics.
…there are an infinite number of Earths with alternate histories because they have dragons on them.
…on an infinite number of those Earths, the dragons are all nazis.
…billions of times every second, an infinite number of identical copies of you spring into existence in the depths of space and immediately die freezing and suffocating.
…there are an infinite number of people who are just like you except they’re serial killers.
…identical copies of everyone you love are being tortured to death right now.
…by identical copies of you.
…there’s still no god.
…there’s no hope of ever fixing the universe’s horrors, because if it were possible it would have been done already.
…an infinite number of identical copies of me are hoping that the universe isn’t infinite.
| This entry was posted by WrongBot on April 14, 2011 at 7:32 pm, and is filed under Uncategorized. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
about 10 months ago
A spatially infinite universe doesn’t logically require that all possible finitely sized configurations of matter occur an infinite number of times. For example, it is logically possible that all the infinite space outside our observable universe is actually empty or follows some other pattern that only includes us a finite number of times.
I think that some finitely-sized pattern has to repeat an infinite number of times, but it doesn’t have to be us – and some possible patterns might not exist at all.
about 10 months ago
Also, I suspect that certain versions of Thor are outright impossible as well…
about 10 months ago
Also, I suspect that those versions of Thor are actually impossible as well…
about 9 months ago
I have a number of quibbles with your list
Is it possible that an Earth so unlike ours as to have dragons (which violate our laws of physics) would also have Nazis?
Is Thor (either version) a logically coherent possibility?
Could someone who could be a serial killer be “just like” me in every other respect?
That said, I share your feeling that these possibilities are dreadful to contemplate. Larry Niven dramatised the fact in a story called (I think) All The Myriad Ways
about 9 months ago
Huge flying lizards that breathe fire don’t violate physics, I don’t think. They’re just improbable.
As for Thor, I was imagining his role being played (in both cases) by sufficiently advanced aliens with nothing better to do. Again, merely improbable.
I think you’re probably right about the serial killer one. Said serial killer might act like you (while not killing serially, anyway), but he is probably different from you in other meaningful senses as well.
I’ll have to check out that Niven story, thanks for the tip.