Here is a thought to kick-start your imagination. Imagine a computer screen, like the one you are staring at now. This computer screen has an infinite life, and has a computer program that randomly spits out different colored pixels all over your screen, again for an infinite amount of time.
So accordingly, at some point, through random coincidence, a picture of yourself will happen to appear on the screen. Now remember, we are talking about an infinite amount of time and an infinite amount of “instances” in which the pixels on the screen could occur in any configuration. This gets a little harder, but theoretically will still occur: Not only will a picture of you pop up, but an entire playback of your life will play through. Very difficult to imagine, but again this is infinity.
Of course this also means that a playback of your life with a single pixel different will also play through at some point in the infinite progression. Maybe a playback of your life, where you made one decision different? We could go on and on with the endless possibilities. Hopefully I am getting my picture across?
Last point to be made. So this exact playback of your life. Not only will it occur once, but will actually reoccur infinitely.
Although this will happen when those pixels are released to infinity, does it mean the action exists? Because in theory we could imagine every possible instant given an infinite amount of time doesn’t mean that its nothing more than pixels playing out on a screen. Its similar to people “decoding” the bible. One could decode Moby Dick. It doesn’t change the fact that its all just pixels playing out random images on a scene.
Well to me, it clearly means, at least in our universe, that due to infinite time, we have infinite possibilities or to borrow Murex’s signature, “All that can be imagined can, will, or does exist.”
Agreed, but it doesn’t require randomness. Adding rules or physics just allows the occurrences to reoccur in shorter proximity. It’s simply statistics.
Funny, that you mention the randomness problem. I got into a deep debate with a programmer friend about the random function in any programming language. I was trying to tell him that computers cannot produce random events. They are machines and are extremely deterministic. So how does a random number program, like a slot machine game, produce seemingly random events? Shouldn’t it produce the same situation every time you pull the slot? Any guesses?
I think a problem is the chain of events and that people are finite. My image presently moves from here to there in a sequence (I drink my beer in 10 frames of sequentially ordered images). Now random pixels may provide an image of me, but whats random_image+1 to 10? Does it get me to the store to buy beer? So at the moment I don’t think it has anything to do with reality.
By distinguishing between the wide and narrow content of our knowledge of things based on description as compared to acquaintance we can differentiate between infinite possible worlds and the actual one.
I’m sure anyone who’s heard my rant already knows full well what I think about this. I don’t even want to repeat it for fear of boring someone. I would see your eyes rolling.
But if infinity is anything like it’s cracked up to be, then it would render the hypothetical not only true, but trivial. And not. Oops, there I go again.
I agree with this concept of infinity and randomness. Your whole life would eventually play out on that screen. Anyone who doesn’t think so hasn’t grasped what infinity is.
It is indeed very hard to grasp, but I see this as a great way to get a good picture. Does it also makes sense that you will actually live your life out an infinite amount of times? I call it, eternal recurrence. A term I stole from Nietzche.
Computers use the current time as seconds elapsed since a certain date (at least on unix systems the date is sometime in the 70’s) and use it as a seed for a complex function that transforms it into something seemingly random.
That’s interesting… no two moments in time are the same so the function would not work in the same way two times. Ever.
Excellent Yorick! I was hoping someone would get that. It’s just shows how we take for granted the depth determinism goes sometimes. But then again that is what is so wonderful about the illusion of free will.
Actually this depends on the algorithm that is used to commit a random function. Well, no. I guess your right. Well, it depends on where the algorithm chooses to cut decimal places of the counter. A shorter number can be repeated, or can it?
One cannot know that there might ever pop up a picture of oneself. Infinite time, does not mean that one may assume every single possible variation will at one point or another be generated. For all one knows, the computer can randomly generate a picture of a banana for an infinite amount of time. Low probability, but possible. Such is the nature of Chance, which leaves us specs with nothing definitive to deduce.
I could agree, but only if we knew there were an infinite amount of matter. We only know for sure that time is infinite.
A finite amount of matter and an infinite amount of time requires repetition. For instance, look at pi. It is infinitely progressing larger as a series of numbers. However, it is only made up of 10 numeric symbols. Although, there is no known pattern to the number, segments of the number repeat all the time, and are required to repeat infinitely.
To disagree, you would have to know that the quantity of matter itself is infinite. I’m not sure why yet, but I have a hard time believing this. Something about proximity, but I can’t quite grasp the whole picture.
