• Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    51·
    19 days ago

    Also see Dyson’s Eternal Intelligence:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson's_eternal_intelligence

    Basically, if you assume it’s possible to upload our intelligence to a computer and run it, then you can keep the energy going to run it for a very, very long time. Well past the heat death of the rest of the universe. It depends on running things in an on and off state to conserve energy for trillions of years. Subjectively, the people in there wouldn’t notice that and would simply see their active lifespans go for trillions of years. It’s not clear what the limit would actually be.

    It’s something like Zeno’s Paradox. You cut things in half each cycle, but never quite get to zero.

  • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.worldEnglish
    40·
    18 days ago

    This is the main reason why, if you come across a genie in a lamp, you should probably not wish for immortality. You’re gonna be hellafuckin bored for a loooooooong time.

    • CaptainBlagbird@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      18 days ago

      From what I have read on the internet so far, it’s probably best to not wish for anything at all. Just throw it in the deepest ocean to do us all a favour.

      • ameancow@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        17 days ago

        Fuck that, I will mess with shit.

        “I want all humans to be able to change sex, race or species at will.”

        “Give every human being the ability to experience what someone else has experienced by pressing a small button on the top of our heads.”

        “Make volcanoes erupt food. Just endless, nutritious food for everyone.”

        “Babies are hatched from eggs. I dunno man, seems like it would be silly.”

        “No more mosquitoes. Replace them with tiny little airplanes that sometimes circle around you and you have to swat them down like king kong.”

    • HugeNerd@lemmy.caEnglish
      3·
      18 days ago

      Why? Are you bored now? If so, why is it a problem? If not, then what’s the problem?

      • Aljernon@lemmy.todayEnglish
        1·
        17 days ago

        Spending Eternity either crushed to a point in the heart of black hole or drifting thru the darkness of space all alone with nothing to do or even anything to look at.

    • ameancow@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      17 days ago

      If you get the chance, ask for omnipotence or to become conscious energy systems or something. You can still choose to experience being a human and having all these experiences, but you will never be stuck, you will never get bored or feel anything related to being mortal if you don’t want.

      You could even choose to live a whole lifetime. Maybe billions of lifetimes, each one feeling totally and completely indistinguishable from reality, because it would be reality.

      You could be experiencing that right now.

    • markovs_gun@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      18 days ago

      I feel like reading this story is an internet nerd Rite of Passage. It had a huge impact on me when I read it as a teenager and I think about it a lot.

  • DarkFuture@lemmy.worldEnglish
    32·
    19 days ago

    We’re doing a pretty bang up job of making that one second as stupid and painful as possible.

  • Bennyboybumberchums@lemmy.worldEnglish
    21·
    18 days ago

    Want to live forever? Tough. Cos even if you could stop your body from growing old and dying, the planet is going to get too warm and nothing will be able to live on it. Then the sun will expand and destroy the planet. But even if you could leave the planet, theres no where close by to get too that wont have the same problems later on. But even if you could get to another solar system, same thing happens again. But then eventually the universe runs out of hydrogen and its fucked. Or the universe gets spread too thin, and its fucked. Or some fucking quantum field takes a shit, and creates a bubble of true vacuum that expands at the speed of light and everything’s fucked.

    Im fucked, youre fucked, the earth is fucked, the solar system is fucked, the galaxy is fucked, the local cluster is fucked, its all just fucked. One way or another. At some point nothing exists except an endless absence of anything. Not even nothing will exist…

    And people say there are no good arguments for weekly drug fuelled sex orgies…

    • Mr_Dr_Oink@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      18 days ago

      This always blows my mind to think that we are here and we are experiencing this life and in the grand scheme of things its so fleeting, but that it all came from somewhere and its all going to die eventually. Could it really be true that there will just be nothing for eternity after this? Or are we not just a random chance in a previous eternity. Can we ever really know or is it all just our best guess?

      Its humbling but also makes me feel even more like life is important and should be taken seriously.

      • Bennyboybumberchums@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        18 days ago

        You know, I often find myself coming at from the other direction. Trying not to take life too seriously, because after all in the end, nothing really matters. It matter now, of course. You and I sharing a conversation, matters. Well, as much as a conversion on a social media platform can without one or both of us showing our arseholes. But in the end, the very end, when theres no one left for us to have influenced. We… do that blade runner thing in the rain.

        When I was a boy I used to stay at my grandmothers a lot. And it was there that I had my first taste of existential dread. She had this painting of a ship, an old schooner or something(I dont actually know the names of types of ships, so we’ll just go with that). It was this ship and it was in the middle of the ocean at night and riding the waves of a storm. And for whatever reason I saw, not only myself in this image, but also the world as a whole. I couldnt really understand what my brain was telling me, but it freaked me out. Seeing this ship in this framed moment of being alone in an endless nothing, and battered by elements with no hope or land in sight. And if the ship sank, no one would ever know it was ever there. It would be lost to time. Our world is that ship. Its alone in the dark, and surrounded on all sides by terrors both known and unknown. And at any moment, it could be dragged down to the depths and never seen again and all that we ever were or ever could be would be lost.

        When got a bit older, and I found myself plagued by thoughts of embarrassment, as teenagers at want to do, I would remember that ship. And whatever it was that I wanted to do, I would do because as much as being in the storm terrified me, not steering into it and fighting for every moment would terrify me more. One day I will be at the bottom of that abyss, but right before that, Ill be on a bed. Ill be surrounded by family or I wont, and it will just be a loan nurse whose is tired of constantly fixing my pillows and hearing stories of when I was young, and you didnt need sun block factor 5000. And it will be that quiet moment that regret will get deafeningly loud. And while regret is just unavoidable, the absolute last thing I want to hear myself say is “I wish I had said something.”. Ill have a million “I wish I hadnt done that.”, and they will all be valid. But at least Ill know that it was the wrong thing, instead of always wondering what could have been. I think that if I took life more seriously, I might not have done anywhere near the amount of things that I did. And while they werent all winners, they were all brilliant moments of life. And as cringe as it can some times be to look back, it was always fun. Although, I probably could have done without seeing a middle aged man jumping out of a wardrobe in crotchless batman outfit… Id say never go home with strange older women in Brighton, but that would really undercut everything else I just said lol.

        Life really is terrifying. Which is why you really just have to shit yourself and jump in to get most out of it.

        • Mr_Dr_Oink@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          17 days ago

          That was a great read and an interesting take. (You should write, if you don’t already, it was very engaging)

          To be fair i guess i don’t take life too seriously because i know that ultimately none of it matters, but equally this short time i get to spend here is my opportunity to experience as much as possible and i don’t want to miss any of it so i have to take my life seriously and the lives of those my actions impact. Feeling anger and happiness, fear and love, pain and pleasure are all things to be taken seriously because they are all part of the ride.

          If i relax too much i will miss out. It may not matter ultimately but right now in this moment it does. So i should make the most of it. But remember to be able to let go of my grudges, and enjoy the ride. And try to pass that on to others. Remind those that are so wound and tangled up that they can just let go and things will get better.

          For me the meaning of life is just to live it and feel as much as possible.

      • 3laws@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        18 days ago

        We can’t truly know, our math still aims to several couple of extra physical dimensions and we have no other proof of that, our quantum physics show a glimpse of infinite universes and have no way of visiting them, probably ever.

        We will die and the universe will continue its course like we never where here to begin with, since a repeat for any other lifeforms past, present and future.

    • BeeegScaaawyCripple@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      18 days ago

      Wait I’ve heard of the vacuum one but never understood it. Do you have a link (or the name of the doomsday theory) so I can read?

  • FilthyShrooms@lemmy.worldEnglish
    19·
    19 days ago

    That’s neat, stars are just the sparks after the big bang, and “soon” that energy will be gone. Even with all the bad shit happening, it makes me happy to be alive in this beautifully short window of time in the universe, even if our little dust speck circling a spark is a bit fucked up sometimes

  • HyonoKo@lemmy.mlEnglish
    17·
    19 days ago

    I think the passing of time, as in waiting, is an experience of the mind. Without a waiting mind, the length of time is just another number out there, like the distance between the edges of the universe. If after the dark finale of this universe there exists another event that spawns a conscious mind, there is no actual waiting happening between this universe bright, starry second and the next one.

    • whotookkarl@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      14·
      19 days ago

      Time can stretch and squish and follow physical rules, if the passage of time is an experience of the mind time itself would remain existent without minds just as real as distance and the passage of distance via movement between objects would remain without minds.

      One interesting thing I heard is the DESI data from a telescope observatory in Arizona that was trying to build a more accurate map of the universe identified the dark energy acceleration as slowing. That could mean if the trend continues eventually gravity will overpower dark energy and everything collapses back together again. I don’t think it’s conclusive, but it is evidence maybe heat death isn’t an ending phase.

    • kazerniel@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      19 days ago

      Reminds me of that Kurzgesagt video about Optimistic Nihilism:

      “If you don’t remember the 13.75 billion years that went by before you existed, then the trillions and trillions and trillions of years that come after will pass in no time once you’re gone. Close your eyes. Count to 1. That’s how long forever feels.”

  • 4gramsEnglish
    14·
    18 days ago

    Honestly, this factoid is the closest thing to a real Total Perspective Vortex that I’ve ever felt.

    • 𝄞 Inkstain (they/them)𓆩 𓆪@pawb.socialEnglish
      1·
      18 days ago

      What’s that phenomenon that describes noticing things more after you become aware of them because I’m seeing a lot more Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy references than I remember now that I’ve started reading it

    • humorlessrepost@lemmy.worldEnglish
      29·
      19 days ago

      The black holes evaporate eventually.

      After that, depends on who you ask. Most physicists would say something like “as close to nothing as possible”. Penrose would say at a certain point when nothing can interact with anything else, distance loses meaning, which makes the universe and a singularity equivalent, so then things restart.

        • humorlessrepost@lemmy.worldEnglish
          8·
          19 days ago

          If it’s mathematically equivalent to the starting conditions of our universe, why would it behave differently?

          • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            8·
            18 days ago

            I don’t think you can argue that it’s mathematically equivalent. Just because space and time become so spread that they are effectively meaningless is not the same as them having not meaningfully existed and then existing. Neither can you really say that since any baryons that have not decayed are so far apart none of them interact that they behave like the concentration of all matter in the known universe. At those scales of time I’m not even sure that there are any left.

            It’s like arguing that one tiny piece of something in one place is the same as all the matter and all of space and time being in one place: it’s I guess analogous but not equivalent. I will of course caveat and say that my undergrad physics degree did not cover end of the universe timelines lol. Kurzgesagt does have a video though.

            The cyclical universe approach as I understand it is predicated on an eventual big crunch which I don’t think is being argued anymore.

        • Eagle0110@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          18 days ago

          Yeah I also think it would take a lot more than just one single bit of discrete information in an universe of completely uniform and homogeneous nothingness, to restart the universe lol /s

        • Karjalan@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          18 days ago

          Because things haven’t progressed linearly with the universes evolution, and, as the op stipulates, we are part of one second vs countless billions of years (relatively) till it’s theoretical demise, it is possible/probable that we don’t know what will happen down the line.

          Certain things might change to make it possible that we simply can’t predict due to lack of information (the future) and technological difficulties.

    • markovs_gun@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      18 days ago

      From what I understand, the universe would just be in equilibrium. Nothing but cold particles floating around.

      • polydactyl@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        18 days ago

        A recent discovery might suggest that we happen to be in a big void, and that a great amount of the universe is much much denser than where we are or what we have observed. If true, Big Crunch time bby

      • mkwt@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9·
        19 days ago

        And Hawking radiation. Hawking radiation is pretty “dark” for solar-mass scale black holes and up, but it can become relatively very intense for smaller holes.

        For the holes we observe astronomically, the things we can see are the accretion disks and the orbits of stars around the black hole.

        • Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          6·
          19 days ago

          But that happens because of matter falling into them, right? When they’ve already swallowed everything, there’s not going to be accretion disks.

          • Björn@swg-empire.deEnglish
            3·
            19 days ago

            Yeah, though eventually they should all evaporate one after another with a last huge tiny energy burst due to hawking radiation. But that will take a looooooooong ass time. And we still don’t know (might never know) if hawking radiation is real.

            • MotoAsh@piefed.socialEnglish
              2·
              19 days ago

              They said the same thing about the curvature of spacetime 100 years ago. Then it was proven like three years later.