this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 51 points 4 weeks ago (15 children)

Also see Dyson's Eternal Intelligence:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson%27s_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.

[–] erusuoyera@sh.itjust.works 11 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

with only a finite initial store of energy, only a finite number of thoughts can ever be processed. This "thermal death" of the universe prevents the infinite hibernation and computation trick from working, thus rendering Dyson's eternal intelligence scenario impossible in a universe with a positive cosmological constant.

My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined.

[–] ThatGuy46475@lemmy.world 6 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Eternity would get boring, a few trillion years would give you plenty of time to not miss out on anything life has to offer

[–] BlueMagma@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 weeks ago

How would you know ? Maybe life really only gets interesting after trillions of years, and nobody has experienced truly great life yet, who's to say..

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