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[Hypothetical] Infinite (Raw) Resources versus Infinite Knowledge? (hexbear.net)

submitted 4 months ago by GamersOfTheWorld@hexbear.net to c/askchapo@hexbear.net

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There are two groups of people. They're each given a magic/alien/divine trinket.

Group A's trinket can instantly produce any raw resource. A raw resource is anything that could exist without a humor labor process (cooking, blacksmithing, woodworking, etc). If something absolutely requires human labor to be put into it to exist, it can't be made by the magic box.

Group B's trinket can make one gain a hypothetically "perfect" theoretical understanding of everything. Essentially, if there was a Universal PhD in Everything (medicine, engineering, etc.), they would obtain it without any effort. It works on anyone, and this knowledge is implanted instantly.

If given all the time in the universe, which group would survive the test of time or come out on top of the other? This has been stirring in my brain for a while, and I want to hear your thoughts.

I personally lean Group B because they wouldn't have to discover or painstakingly engineer anything, and could immediately set their sails for technologies they know to exist. But at the same time, Group A would never have to worry about scarcity, so they could dedicate all of their time to infrastructure and research unlike Group B which still has to deal with scarcity.

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[–] Speaker@hexbear.net 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

They're not putting the asteroid in orbit, they're using their perfect knowledge to point a laser at some specific point in space such that the cotton candy asteroid just does that (because they can predict the position and velocity of every particle in the universe). If we're gonna be perfect science dorks about the magic-device-driven hypothetical, group A has to fail because they violate conservation of mass unless the resource generator is actually teleporting those resources from somewhere else, and then they're breaking c (plus they're probably also colonizers, now).

[–] TreadOnMe@hexbear.net 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

As far as we are aware, that isn't how matter works, and perfect knowledge would have to operate within the confines of existing physics. You don't just magically have lasers, and lasers don't magically realign atoms into carbohydrates.

As well, perfect knowledge only means perfect foresight if you think the world is completely deterministic. Otherwise it only gives you perfect knowledge of the percentages. Which is far more likely given the way quantum mechanics appears to work at the moment. Still incredibly powerful, I grant you.

Correct, that is the whole point of the thought exercise, does the ability to have perfect knowledge defeat the ability to literally break conservation of energy and elimination of opportunity costs. In my opinion, it does not.

Idk why you are bringing concepts such as 'colonization' into it. It is a game scenario, where they are both likely to become colonizers.There is no larger morality of genocide at play here. This isn't real. You could just as likely say that Group B perfectly knows how to psychologically manipulate Group A, and uses that to farm them for unlimited resources. That would at least be a more compelling game outcome than 'cotton candy asteroids'.