TBT #33: There’s nothing that has not been said about Infinity

The computer screen you are looking at right now probably has a resolution of 1024-by-768 pixels. If you’re using an older computer, it might be 800-by-600 pixels. If your monitor is larger, it could be anywhere up to 1600-by-1200 pixels or bigger. These pixels display 24-bit colour, which means they are capable of displaying over 16.7 million colours. The monitor you are looking at is capable of displaying a high-quality image of any tangible object on earth. It is also capable of displaying every piece of visual or literary art ever created — every painting, every poem, every story, every movie — in a clear, unobscured format. Furthermore, your monitor is capable of displaying everything that will be created, from now until the end of time.

Think about that for a moment. Every situation, every conceivable facet of life, every arrangement of matter could be displayed on the screen in front of you. And then consider, from that, that your monitor is made up of a finite number of pixels and colours. Thus, if you let a program run that randomly selected colours of pixels and displayed them on a monitor, you would eventually see every conceivable facet of the universe. You would see yourself doing everything that you are capable of doing. You would see love. You would see God. You would see the meaning of life spelled out on the side of a speeding train. You would see your own death. You would see your own heaven. Everything that has been, is, and will be would be laid out in front of you, in flashing images, coming as fast as your computer could generate them.

That’s the Best Thing Ever for Sunday, March 13, 2005.

But consider Infinity

Two guys drink in a run-down bar, as guys are known to do. They drink and drink and play darts and talk about their troubles with women and money and probably more women. They listen to tracks from 25-years-ago that remind them of a time in their lives when they were paragons of cool. And they sigh and drink because they know that eventually — if they drink just the right amount — they’ll start to laugh. And that’s about the best thing you can do when you’re 42 and drinking in a run-down-bar with one of the only friends you have left.

“Do you think the universe is infinite?” one guy asks the other.

The other guy has to think about this for a while because in addition to being a very hard question, it’s also a question you don’t often get asked at a bar. So he thinks and drinks and stares at the other man. He puts his drink on the coaster, scratches his chin, runs his hand through his thinning hair, and finally, after all this, gives his answer.

“Are you high?” he asks.

The first man sort of laughs as he hasn’t been high since his third year of university. It was the time when he and his friend chased a flock of pigeons across a courtyard and threw every penny they had into the harbour.

“No No No,” he chuckled. “I’m not high. I read about this in a magazine. They’ve been going back and forth for years. And I don’t know. I don’t think you need to be a scientist to debate this. Just think about it for a while. Is the universe infinite?”

There were peanut shells strewn across the floor, under their chairs. When you stood up, they crunched loudly.

The other man still looked confused. “Um,” he stalled. “What do you think?”

The man took some time. Sipped his drink until it emptied. And then he replied with the simple word “Infinite”, because that’s what he thought. “Infinite,” he said. “The universe is infinite because, otherwise, there’s no guarantee that we’d be having this conversation.”

Gigantic Numbers

On an 800-by-600 pixel monitor at 24-bit colour, there are roughly 10²³⁷ possible images. This number, if expressed in a computer text file, would take almost 2 megabytes of hard drive space. This is a gigantic number. It’s so gigantic that it’s hard to understand just how big it is without thinking about some other big numbers.

First of all, there are 10⁶ possible poker hands. Continuing upwards (and with the playing card theme), there are 10²¹ permutations in a 52-card deck. There are 10⁵⁷ atoms in the sun. There have been 10¹⁸ seconds since the big bang. There are only 10¹⁵ seconds left before the sun explodes. There are 10⁷⁸ atoms in the universe.

In summation, there is no way to see everything. But if there was, you could.

Close Enough to Infinity

“I don’t understand,” said the second man, stifling a cough.

“Think,” said the first man, simply, “if the universe is finite, then there are so many planets, so many dimensions, so many alternate versions of us. And the alternate versions of us — those of them that are even in this sodding bar — are having a finite number of conversations. And what are the odds, do you think, of any of them choosing to talk about the nature of the infinite or finite universe? For godsakes, it doesn’t make any sense!”

“But we ARE talking about it!” stressed the second man.

“Yes,” said the first man, “And that proves the universe is infinite. Because in an infinite universe, everything must be talked about. Everything we COULD be talking about is being talked about right now! And everything we COULD be doing is being done right now!”

He banged his hand on the bar with a thud.

But it’s randomness

So you can’t see everything. Not unless we figure out both a way for humans to live essentially forever and a way to stop our sun from exploding. But couldn’t we see something? Something from the future? Just as a random stroke of luck, couldn’t we see something that changes the world? Or just something simple, but beautiful, like a randomly generated version of Paris at noon?

Imagine a man sitting in front of a monitor all day, watching colourful static. Dead eyes, scraggly beard, absent-mindedly munching salted crackers as he downs bottle after bottle of spring water. And his monitor shows static, static, static to the point where the corners of his eyes begin to fade and the back of his eyelids looks like fireworks. And imagine this man sees, one day, a flower on his screen, or an image of a forest fire, or volcanic ash falling to the earth like dark rain. Imagine he sees all this, randomly, interspersed with colourful static. Maybe one day he sees himself, staring back at him, frowning.

Maybe he can’t stop watching because isn’t seeing everything the exact point of living?

Complications

The second man had been thinking for a while, as the first man rambled on about all the conversations the alternate dimension versions of themselves were having. He was struggling with the idea the first man had given him, mostly because he thought ‘infinity’ was just something little kids used to win arguments.

“Okay,” he finally said to the first man, “if the universe is infinite, and everything that could be happening right now IS happening right now, isn’t there… — hold on, I have it — isn’t there a version of me, or you, or anyone, right now building a device to destroy the universe?”

The first man raised a finger as if he to respond, then let it fall back to the table. He furrowed his brow, stuttered for a second, and wished he had a cigarette.

The second man was finally getting into the conversation. “And wouldn’t someone be PRESSING that button right now, destroying this universe and all universes and whatever? Because everything that could happen is HAPPENING, right? Everything is destroyed!”

“We need more drinks,” said the first man, gesturing to the bartender who was off in the corner of the room.

“You don’t know what to say.”

“No… no,” the first man said thoughtfully. “I think I have it. I think I know what this means. Okay, look, you’re right that someone is currently pressing a button that will destroy all universes right now. But infinity also means that someone has designed a machine to counter-act the effects of the first machine, thus rendering it useless!”

Pinwheels in Stereo

There’s a street scene happening more times than I can count all over the world. A man and a woman are waiting for a bus. They’ve been dating for years but he’s been distant lately. She doesn’t understand why. The bus is late and she hasn’t brought her scarf. She shivers in a November breeze and part of him wants to take her in his arms but he doesn’t think he can. He’s not sure if he loves her. Somehow he feels himself aging as he stands on that street and he hates it. He wants it stop because he’s not sure if this is how his life is supposed to go. She casts darting glances at him. He puts his hands in his pockets.

The bus comes. The bus doesn’t come. He takes her into his arms. He does not touch her. She runs to him and kisses him with everything she has. He responds. He does not respond. She does not kiss him. She tells him to ‘fuck off’ and storms off to cry in a field. She does not cry. The bus veers off the road and kills them both. Meteors fall to earth. He loves her. He doesn’t. She only wants to dance. Somehow music starts to play. He bursts into flames. They both laugh and grow old together.

The Epic Conclusion

The bartender is sweeping up peanut shells and the clock on the wall is broken.

The second man spoke as if he knew what he was talking about. “Okay, so someone has couter-acted the first universe-destroying machine. But somewhere, hasn’t someone counter-acted THAT machine?”

“Last Call, guys” said the bartender.

The first man didn’t hear him. “Okay, so someone is counter-acting THAT machine which is counter-acting THAT much which is…”

“How many machines were there?” asked the second man.

“There were a lot of machines.”

Silence. The bartender repeated his words. “Last call, guys,” he said.

“So it’s a never ending series of actions and counter-actions,” declared the first man.

“Yes,” said the second. “And I feel like we can never leave.”