"Show me... everything!"

[vakkotaur]

Suppose you have a device that can display bits, or pixels. To make it simple each pixel can be only on or off, white or black, no grays and no color. If each pixel is a bit, the whole display can be represented, or is a representation of, one long binary number. If you make that number 0, display it, add one, display it, and keep adding one and displaying until the binary number has gone from all zeroes to all ones then the display will eventually show you everything it ever could.

Everything. It'd be in high contrast, but it'd be there. Every scene that could be, real or fictional. Every page of every book. Every newspaper headline of the New York Times.. and the National Enquirer.. and the Onion. Everything you ever did. Everything you never did. And the same for neighbors and strangers. Next week's winning lottery numbers. Next week's losing lottery numbers - all of them. There are a few problems. One is that most of things it will show you will be garbage. What isn't garbage will be impossible or at least very hard to distinguish from garbage. Supposing you do see tomorrow's headline how can you be sure it's fact or fiction?

But the real deal-killer of this is that there just isn't enough time to do it. If the display is a very modest 10 x 10 pixels, little more than the size of a character, already the binary number is 100 bits long. That's 2 to the 100th power combinations, or 1.267.. x 10 to the 30th. Supposing an add and display rate of 1000 times per second - too fast to see individual images - and then figuring in 60 seconds per minute and 60 minutes per hour, and 24 hours per day, and 365.25 days per year (on average - remember leap years) and 1000 years per millennium...that's still 4 x 10 to the 17th millennia. For any really usable size display, say 100 x 100 pixels, the time requirements are even more staggering.

Comments

[rillaspins.livejournal.com]

Vakkotaur, my friend, I really thought you had more of a life than this.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Gee, put a few minutes thought into something and be accused having no life. Sheesh. It does point out, however, that of many possibilities, only a few are seen as being worthwhile. And, I expect, that those aren't known until they actually happen - something that folks who protest about some research or activity "..still no cure for cancer.." and such don't quite realize. I wonder how many times the equivalent to "Stop wasting time watching tiny imaginary animals in the water and do something medically useful." is said these days.

[rillaspins.livejournal.com]

That is assuming that I was serious and not just tweaking at you. This is coming from someone that sits and spins for hours on fiber that will never become anything other than a ball of fur.

Recreating the wheel is great as far as you may get a better wheel--but isn't this a modern version of putting monkeys in a room with a typewriter and eventually getting the works of Shakespeare?

As if you didn't need more harrassment in your life. sigh--was nice seeing you last weekend.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

...but isn't this a modern version of putting monkeys in a room with a typewriter and eventually getting the works of Shakespeare?

Something like it, but with trained monkeys that go through a predictable order to get there. I figure the modern version of the monkeys would be turning a TV to a empty channel and having the 'snow' happen to be a real picture of something.

'twas good to see you, too.