Could one really really smart person eventually recreate all technological advancements granted immortality?

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?

monotrox,

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

feedum_sneedson,

Special productive power of cooperative labour. So, even if intellectual ability was not a limiting factor, I don’t believe it would be possible. Can’t prove it, though.

jtk,
@jtk@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Without other people, they’d spend their entire time trying to invent something that can kill an immortal being. Whatever that takes is as far as they’d get.

NeoNachtwaechter,

One person alone on a planet is quite busy with feeding himself and all personal needs.

Not enough time for doing science.

Royal_Bitch_Pudding,

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

NeoNachtwaechter,

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.

Royal_Bitch_Pudding,

Boredom is often enough of a motivator, and nothing stops them from doing those things even though they don’t need to.

zero_spelled_with_an_ecks,

Probably not if you subscribe to en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck's_principle

6mementomori,

given enough time, the lone scientist may display something similar to change between generations maybe

Ocelot,

As much as people on the internet love to imply they know everything I don’t think the human brain has enough neurons or any sort of capacity to deal with all of that knowledge and expertise to get even close. Even with unlimited time.

soulifix,

Our brains are like hard drives. We know a fair amount but over time, we forget some things to make room for newer things. Some things, we can’t access because some part of it was overwritten. Some other things, we can’t simply recount at all.

So it’d be an eternity spending time figuring it out, forgetting, misplacing the knowledge, coming to a realization, forgetting again .etc .etc

collegefurtrader,

Is the guy still immortal after being engulfed by the sun?

6mementomori,

sadly

GolGolarion,

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.

6mementomori,

they could be tested on animals though. granted, they may work differently on animals, but they might be smart enough to work something out

afraid_of_zombies,

No. Think of how big the category of technology involved in keeping the human body alive. Ok our immortal wants to recreate the pacemaker but there is no one else but them around. How would that work exactly? Presumably as an immortal they wouldn’t need one. So how would they test it?

Then you add in things that only make sense if there are multiple people in the world. You don’t exactly need passenger side airbags if there are no passengers. Tandem bicycles would be strange for this lone immortal to make. Everything involved in childcare from the simple (how to swaddle a baby) to the surprisingly complicated (breast milk pumps) to the obvious (diapers).

livus,
livus avatar

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.

6mementomori,

there may be other ways to reinvent the same things though

livus,
livus avatar

True. But will there be reason to?

6mementomori,

boredom

livus,
livus avatar

Hopefully boredom will lead to better inventions than flurocarbons and atom bombs.

Tetra,
Tetra avatar

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 lol

6mementomori,

the problem with Dr stone is senku already has the knowledge

banana_meccanica, (edited )

I think be smart isn’t enough to find the motivation to do something. More harder is the goal and much motivations are need it. Human race actually have evolved during crieses and inventions was maded to fix immediate needs, like market at beginning of trades in the babilonian cities. One single guy left alone even with infinite time can do nothing, or actually, you say about the sun turning a red giant, he will find the way to build a rocket probably a couple of years before that happen, just in time to flew like a rat motivated by survival instinct.

the_dopamine_fiend,
@the_dopamine_fiend@lemmy.world avatar

Relevant XKCD: xkcd.com/505/

6mementomori,

ah, so I see the guy has started resorting to the pens that fall

feedum_sneedson,

What transmits the information, I don’t understand. The rocks just sit there. Don’t get it. The guy maybe?

the_dopamine_fiend,
@the_dopamine_fiend@lemmy.world avatar

www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/…/505:_A_Bunch_of_Rocks

It can be hard to explain, but basically each row of rocks is a line of input/computation/output not unlike the binary code that flows through the circuits of a processor. It’s a different representation of the same kind of work your device is doing right now. And, as you might think, waaaaaay slower.

feedum_sneedson,

Yeah, what is slower though. Presumably they mean the rate at which the guy lays the stones, otherwise there’s nothing changing over time. It would just be a record.

the_dopamine_fiend,
@the_dopamine_fiend@lemmy.world avatar

Right. Think of Cueball laying stones as a CPU, and the rate at which he can finish laying a row and return to the beginning as his clock speed.

feedum_sneedson,

Very long lines, then.

the_dopamine_fiend,
@the_dopamine_fiend@lemmy.world avatar

Mind-bogglingly long!

Blaze,
@Blaze@sopuli.xyz avatar

Thinking back about it, it’s pretty much Factorio’s plot, isn’t it?

swnt,

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.

6mementomori,

I forgot to say that the immortality I’m talking about also makes it impossible to get challenged by illness and such

swnt,

Ah, okay! Then my worries don’t apply. They may run all kinds of dangerous experiments knowing they’d survive.

wolfpack86,

This is an interesting take based on the quality of years. But unless the task becomes impossible to, and not just more arduous, the answer should still be yes.

Whether the person enjoys life or not is another question.

swnt,

Whether the person enjoys life or not is another question.

Haha. I think we threw that question out when we assumed immortality.

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