#205 - Infinity
1 Family Photo, 1 Dad-Joke, Many Highlights
Family Photo:
Infinity
Calvin came home with a book he wrote at school. He calls it The Book of 6-7.
Longtime readers (and parents across America) will recognize the 6-7 phenomena.
The book’s cover has a big 67, surrounded by little people saying “67”. In my mind, each speech bubble 67 has its own little people, with their own tiny “67” speech bubbles...and then little-er people encircle those tiny 67s with their own tinier speech bubbles...on and on in infinite fractal complexity.
I call it: six-ception.
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I like talking with Calvin and Lawrence about infinity.
My favorite children’s book on the subject is Bake Infinite Pie with X + Y by Eugenia Chen.
I had them live action role play Zeno’s paradox by telling them to walk halfway across the kitchen, then halfway again, then halfway again...when they eventually bumped into the wall I’d say, “Wait! That last one was a little bit more than half...let’s start over.” They thought that was funny...a finite number of times.
Talk about infinity always circles back to other things. Numbers are infinite, but we are not. There’s numbers so big we can’t count them. Even if we spent our whole lives counting. Yes, even if we counted by 10s.
I’ve written before about Finite and Infinite Games. I still hope that, given the choice, Calvin and Lawrence choose to play infinite ones.
Dad Joke:
To Infinity...
Never discuss infinity with a mathematician.
They can go on about it forever.
Source: Dad[AI]Base
Highlights:
...and Beyond
The Infinite Monkey Theorem by Michael Dean
The infinite monkey theorem is often stated as, “if you give an infinite amount of monkeys an infinite number of time, one of them will eventually write Hamlet.” This is very off. I assume most people think it’s off because they know monkeys can’t write (which misses the point). I think it’s off in the other direction; it misunderstands what happens when you multiply infinite x infinite. You won’t just get one Hamlet; you’d get a whole lot more.
Let’s start with a single infinite: a monkey with infinite time. Imagine putting said monkey in a magic bubble that gives him immortality, endless focus to type random characters, and the ability to survive the death of all universes, quantum foam, or whatever. This monkey has a lot of time. Endless time. He won’t just write Hamlet once, he’ll write it many times. Actually, infinite times. Sometimes the monkey will go several million/billion/trillion years without writing Hamlet, but that’s okay because he’s on adderall, can’t die, and has only one job.
Now imagine there are infinite monkeys, too. In every frame of reality (assume this an Unreal Engine monkey simulator running at 120 FPS), the Creator can spawn monkey bubbles, 2 or 2 trillion bubbles, or however many bubbles are necessary for one of them to begin writing Hamlet in that moment. Then in the next frame (0.0083 seconds later), more monkeys are spawned until one of them starts Hamlet too. Over and over. (What we do with all the unsuccessful monkeys is a different problem.) Since all of these monkeys have internet, there are 432,000 Hamlet uploads every hour. And if these infinite monkeys started at the dawn of our universe, they would have written Hamlet 2.18×10^20 times.
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This thought experiment feels prescient now, because, of course, AI. While agents can replicate & work at radical speeds, it’s not literally infinite. Even if some monkey virus infected every computer on Earth, and did a years worth of work in a day, that’s still finite. But even if you multiply an astronomical x an astronomical, or even just a very big x very big, a similar effect happens: the unlikely thing becomes omnipresent.
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Now this is a simple, harmless example. But it gets weirder when you imagine a single person’s intentions leveraged to such an extraordinary degree that they become the entirety of the Internet. It would be like, after I publish this note, all the comments came from fake accounts based on real people I know, but they each post a link to a version of Hamlet where all the characters are monkeys. And then I go to Reddit, or check my email, or listen to my voicemail, and it’s just monkey Hamlet everywhere. This is an exaggeration, but I’m trying to make a point that is something like an offshoot of the dead Internet theory. It won’t just be fake AI stuff that tries to blend in, but an assault of the bizzare, a thousand oddly specific info-viruses that we won’t be able to escape, orchestrated towards various ends that we won’t be able to wrap our heads around.I generally don’t think the open Internet, as it’s designed today, will be able to stand it. I also don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, because the web today has ossified and enshittified and is probably due for a shakeup. I do think there will be some chaos/danger ahead, and we’ll have to each figure out how to navigate that safely, but I imagine we’ll reassemble into smaller communities, sheltered from the near-infinite...
The Slopification of Everything by Brian Phillips
The logic of slop is commercial and is tuned to both the attention economy and the money economy; slop’s premise is that a massive output of arbitrary products, if they can be produced cheaply enough or with little enough effort, will outperform a limited supply of more carefully designed products. The ultimate condition to which slop aspires is infinite quantity produced instantly and for free.
Exit the supersensorium by Erik Hoel
The infinite entertainment of the supersensorium is especially problematic if you happen to be someone who likes and maybe even produces art or fictions.
the hunger to be everything. by amber.
They told us we are lucky, to live in an era of endless doors; of infinite selves waiting to be summoned with a scroll, a post, or a step-by-step transformation. But no one warned us of the disease it carries. Of how too much possibility can fray the edges of a person.
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But I have lost myself in a million other people. I’m no longer fluent in my own language. I’ve consumed so many dreams that weren’t mine, I don’t recognise the hunger of my own longing.
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There is ripe fruit left untouched on every tree I’ve grown.
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The hunger to be everything was only ever a longing to be loved.
But you were always worthy.
Even as just one true, marvellous thing:
yourself.
Riding the Leopard by Packy McCormick
What is technology for, anyway? What are we doing here?
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Here’s what I propose: the meaning of life is to increase the range and depth of experience in the universe.
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Perfection can’t know itself. Only finite, imperfect conditions make experience possible.Our job, then, cosmically, is to be limited, imperfect things having experiences on behalf of something too perfect and limitless to be able to.
Which was kind of the point of Jesus, right? Christianity’s deepest claim - that God became man, the infinite became finite - is the same claim the other traditions are making, from a different angle.
Jesus even had his own version of thou art that: “The Kingdom of God is within you.”
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You are here to experience and create in a way that only you can, and for many of you in this room, that means experiencing and creating in a way that expands humanity’s capacity for experience and creation. Differentiation is a moral obligation.
Your Most Improbable Life by Kevin Kelly
Your life’s goal should be to become the most improbable person you can be. Your path, your character, your life, should be the most unlikely, the most unexpected, the least predictable version you can make. Improbable lives have fewer competitors, more unique rewards, and are harder to replace with AIs, since AIs run on the predictable. This is true whether you favor traditional humanist directions or work on a frontier.
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We are complex enough that our life will never be repeated, nor anticipated, on any planet in any galaxy in any part of the universe. No matter what you do, the sum of your life is unique and unrepeatable.But it can be even more improbable. You can align yourself with this grand arc moving from the expected to the unexpected and aim to become the most improbable person you can be.
Here is what you gain with your most improbable life:
The authentic you. Your particular mix of talents, native abilities, personal inclinations, genetic limits, life experiences, and ambitious desires points to a mixture that is distinctly unique – if it is allowed to blossom. The further you move in that direction, the more you-like you become.
The more you-ish you become, the less competition you have, because you are occupying your own niche. Less competition means you don’t have to be in a race; you can relax and focus on your strengths. You have the space to become even more you, and even less likely.
The more you occupy a category of one, the easiest it is for you to appreciate this trait in others. It becomes easier to see past the conventional, to identify authenticity, and to encourage the improbable in others. For some people that makes them great friends and mentors; for others this makes them good in backing and investing in the work of others on their way to being improbable.
iamJoshKnox Calvin Highlights:
The Complete Book of 6-7
Kids’ number books seem like good business...reach out if you’re interested in the publishing rights...movie franchise and videogame rights also available.
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iamJoshKnox