Let’s say we left one single very smart guy (not necessarily with the knowledge: they may be able to understand hard stuff when taught it, but not know it already) alone on a copy of the earth. That person is also immortal. Could that person, by themselves, gain back all knowledge, maybe also experimental, or even surpass that is already available to us right now, before the planet gets inevitably engulfed by a sun turning red giant?
Infinity by its very nature in a sense guarantees all possibilities. Perhaps even a dumb person with infinite time would recreate all technology and beyond.
It reminds me of this disturbing video.
“infinity … guarantees all possibilities” no, no it does not and that is such a common misunderstanding of infinities its kind of annoying.
I.e. The list of all even numbers is infinite and still doesnt include a single odd number. Real numbers are densely infinite and still dont include the imaginary unit or chocolate cake.
If you had infinite time, you still would probably not be able to learn to fly with just your body and still would die if you stopped breathing.
That was incredible. Such a terrifying concept.
Wtf is that video…
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/505/
ah, so I see the guy has started resorting to the pens that fall
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I think with infinite time it would probably be possible in theory, but so much of todays technology relies on economies of scale that doing it the same way would not make a lot of sense for a single person.
So A smart person would probably create technology that looks very different from the stuff we are using today
One person alone on a planet is quite busy with feeding himself and all personal needs.
Not enough time for doing science.
He didn’t specify what kind of immortality, so let’s assume it’s the kind where you don’t have to worry about food, water, sleep, or dying
you don’t have to worry about food, water, sleep, or dying
that could make it even worse, bc such a person has no motive to explore and research anything.
Boredom is often enough of a motivator, and nothing stops them from doing those things even though they don’t need to.
While my initial reaction was “Yes”, I think that it’s rather “No”.
There are massive amounts of things to build and stuff to discover. And almost all of it, especially the physics, chemistry etc. stuff needs experimentation. Plenty of people had died or chronically made it difficult to do anything because of scientific experiments (think of Marie Curie or imagine what happens when you try to rediscover nuclear energy).
In our scenario, we say, that the person is immortal, but it could always happen, that they get stuck with certain illnesses or co. which significantly reduces their possible auctions. at some point they may be so limited, that they cannot do certain experiments at all and get stuck there forever.
I forgot to say that the immortality I’m talking about also makes it impossible to get challenged by illness and such
Did you just start watching/reading Dr Stone?
If not, give it a shot, it’s obviously not realistic but it’s basically an anime answer to your question lolthe problem with Dr stone is senku already has the knowledge
If they have almost unlimited time, I don’t see why not
If you had unlimited time, you would not be motivated to use it efficiently.
If I was immortal and without worldly concerns, I might spend eight years in the throes of a single good book.
I might never decide I’m in the mood to learn CSS.
yeah but eventually the boredom would hit you
I’m going to say no. A body immune to life threatening illnesses means they cant properly test medicines and get them right. And if they’re not immune, exposing themselves to life threatening illnesses will put a stopper on that when they fail to get their medicines right on tbe first go.
they could be tested on animals though. granted, they may work differently on animals, but they might be smart enough to work something out
If they are just reinventing stuff they already know about, then possibly.
If the have to start from scratch and with no prior knowledge then definitely not. Two significant drivers of invention are necessity and interactions with/observations of environmental factors and those will likely be missing.
Eg the role of cowpox in the smallpox vaccine.
there may be other ways to reinvent the same things though
True. But will there be reason to?
boredom
Probably not if you subscribe to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck's_principle
given enough time, the lone scientist may display something similar to change between generations maybe
I think it’s possible given an infinite amount of time that they could recreate any previous human technology, but would they want to?
It might get kind of boring spending every day for thousands of years just trying to recreate old technology.
Are they the last person on earth? If so I can’t see anyone wasting too much time building tech meant to assist people who don’t exist anymore.
I guess what I’m saying is it’s pretty certain they could do it, but only if there were some motivation like saving humanity after an apocalypse
just boredom I guess. what else are you gonna do for infinitely many years anyway?
Is the guy still immortal after being engulfed by the sun?
sadly
Hed probably go insane, but maybe? Hed have to run logistics all by himself, so possibly not.
with infinite time, why not
