lemma 1: exponential growth is (probably) not sustainable: or, Line Go Down

lemma 1.5: do not drink 8 cups of tea. i think you'll get some kind of organ damage if you do this often. caveats: i don't do anything i'm talking about for a living. in fact, i'm barely alive. if i say something blatantly wrong, in that instance i'll revise or outright delete if the thesis at any point is refuted, and i'll probably breathe a sigh of relief and think about the next problem that arises instead of the one that led me to start writing this. suppose for a moment that there is a limited amount of stuff you can reach. right now, i'm watching a gay blue wolf play earth defense force, and i can reach this laptop, a glass of water, and some writing implements because i have arranged this situation prior. if i were really, really smart, i could probably make all kinds of things out of this stuff, but right now, what i can make is this post. if i were as smart as a being could possibly be in this universe, i could make the absolute most of my situation and make something--potentially, even better than this post--but the fact remains that i would quickly run out of resources within reach of my desk. that means that at some point in the future, i'll have to get up. that's awful, but such is life in this place we call our universe. the things which i can grab are limited by a number of factors: namely, my ability to identify Cool Stuff, and my ability to run up and grab them. the ability to identify Cool Stuff is only limited by my ability to see. if my room were obliterated, i could see a pretty fair distance away, in which case i would be cold, but also i would be free to run after different Cool Stuff. my access to Stuff, then, would be limited primarily by my ability to run after them. if my desk, too, were obliterated, i could simply focus on grabbing the Coolest Stuff and carrying only that, but the fact would remain that my access to Stuff is limited by both my ability to move after things and my ability to carry things while moving after things. you can use machines to make this easier, but ultimately, the speed of light places an upper limit on your ability to get after Stuff. one might be tempted to think, oh! i have an idea! what if there were a thing that did nothing but exactly what i wanted them to do and had them get me stuff too? (this thing is called capitalism. it won't save you.) as a finite being, there is a limit in your ability to convert thing you have into things you want. this is part of the reason why my artworks are lacking in quality. furthermore, if all you make is thing that makes things you want, those things, too, are limited in their ability to make stuff. (we are ignoring things like structural denial of opportunity or oppression here; we want the best case scenario. it won't save you.) additionally, thanks to the speed of light barrier, the things you can grab are limited. suppose you have a really big array of grabby robots that fly away from you in all directions, know what you want, and grab them, so you can just sit there and have things. this creates a time-dependent sphere of influence which increases in volume proportionally to the third power of time. you might notice that t^3 is less than t^x for large values of x. this will be important pretty soon.

here comes your big thesis!

the gay blue wolf is doing an amazing job at playing earth defense force, i just wanted you to know that. both your ability to make the universe do whatever you want it to do, and your ability to get at that universe with things that are doing whatever you want them to do, are limited by physical law. suppose you are a being whose happiness is determined by your ability to make any physically definable parameter, such as Stuff You Own, increase as a percentage of itself with respect to any fixed time period, such as a year. let's make it really specific and say you'll be happy if your Stuff Go Up at a rate of 0.0000001% of itself every 10,000 years, because you're gonna live forever. eventually, even this rate will become unsustainable without breaking the laws of physics, and you'll just have to make do with the Rate of Profit Having a Tendency to Decline. boooooo. yeah, you could've just read capital, but i don't really like reading. this gay blue wolf is about to unlock the gigantic unloader mech Barga. it's all about opportunity cost here. by the way, if at any point anything for you in this universe becomes suboptimal? you reach the limit sooner. likely, way, way sooner.

Bonus Stage!

suppose you make a really good thing that grabs a really good thing and it makes a really really really good thing that BREAKS THE LIGHT BARRIER! WOW! now you have to contend with new problems: 1. is the universe finite? 2. can you leave the universe if it is? 3. is the multiverse finite? 4. can you actually bring anything back? 5. will the universe collapse if you bring an exponentially growing amount of mass-energy back? 6. can you meaningfully move your consciousness or body to another universe which has parameters such that it will collapse later or never if you try this? have fun solving these problems. or, you can simply grow in polynomial time instead of exponential time, for pete's sake. thank you. p.s. the gay blue wolf is in the barga. EDF!

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