An unbeatable game

[ThrillingHuman]

I read a thread about immortality on novel updates (too lazy too look up link) and it had the following question: what would you do if you were immortal?
The thread had conditions like infinity memory capacity and eternal youth, and it also excluded any possible way to "kill" yourself: brainwashing yourself to forget your own identity to start over, falling asleep forever, going mad and such.
I thought it was a pretty interesting question and then began thinking what I'd do... But then I came to the conclusion that I wouldn't be able to do anything that mattered. Avoiding the government to prevent experimentation? No government would be able to hold me forever, I'd outlive all of them. I'd outlive everyone - literally everyone. Learning new things? Eventually I'd be able to read - no, I'd memorize - all the books that could ever be written by humanity. I'd be able to think through every thought that my brain would be able to think through too - if we go by the theory that should don't exist and all our thoughts are made by human brains with their finite states.
Explore space? Eventually I'd remember every star, every asteroid, every planet - everything in the Galaxy, outlive that Galaxy and he following ones too.
Explore other dimensions? The author of the thread put the condition that only our Universe exists.
Make other people immortal? Not to mention the immorality of it, the author said that only I would be immortal and nobody else.
Wait until the Universe dies and time doesn't move anymore? The author of the thread said that the Universe is immortal too.
Then... What could I possibly do? There would be no end condition, no objective that would make whatever I'd do actually matter.
I was stumped. I didn't know how to answer. Any ideas from you?

 

[Nhatduongg]

Continue writing novels on SH until I get pass 50 readers.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

You will finally git gud. That's all that matters.

 

[Anon_Y_Mousse]

Create your own universe within your head, with blackjack and hookers. With all that capacity to remember every single little detail about the entire universe and everything that it has and will ever be, won't it be simply possible to create your own 'paradise' inside your head? With all the knowledge and creativity you'll get in the years before the universe's inevitable heat death(presuming it happens). By that time you open up so many possibilities of different universes and lives to 'imagine' that the amount of time it would take to go through all of them would be a very long time(we talking numbers we can't even comprehend)

 

[yansusustories]

I honestly don't think it's that much of a problem. The most difficult part would probably be not to become emotionally stunted because anyone you get to know dies before you.

I think there's one error in your thinking in regard to this:

Eventually I'd be able to read - no, I'd memorize - all the books that could ever be written by humanity.

So, I looked up stats for my country and there were roughly 70k books published alone last year. I'm sure that number also only includes traditionally published ones, not self-published ones or webnovels. So even if you just want to keep up with traditionally published books of one (!) country, you'd need to read almost 200 books a day.
Now, factor in the hundreds of other countries where books are published and the fact that 2020 was actually a year with fewer publications here compared to previous years, plus the thousands of years of human history where books had been written already, and I don't think you're going to catch up any time soon. In fact, time is somewhat against you because while you would be trying to make up for what you haven't read so far, new books are continuously published all over the world.

Also, let's be honest: Reading is nice but by far not the only hobby you can have. Try movies, games, crafts, cooking, baking, painting, sewing, rock-climbing, recycling, sculpting, singing, playing instruments, writing, traveling, acting, dancing, ... whatever you can think of.
Actually, if somebody is thinking of picking up something new, here's a (probably not even exhaustive) list on Wikipedia of possible hobbies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hobbies
There are a lot of possibilities. And just because you're immortal doesn't mean your day suddenly has more than 24 hours. Also, if you still need to sleep (I'd assume?) you won't even get to use all of those. But even if: 24 hours are still only 24 hours and you'd need a long-ass time to really master all of those things.

Speaking of which: Even after you master all of this, you can still put your skills to good use. Go volunteer somewhere! Help people. Change lives. If you have endless time, you might as well try to make the world a bit better somewhere. Or go and spread chaos if that's more to your liking. It's not like they could kill you for it, right?

And let's not forget that the world changes. We have technology today that they didn't have 2k years ago. Who is to say that the same won't be true 2k years further into the future? Honestly, I wouldn't be worried about ever getting bored. I'd be more worried about not having enough time to try out all the fun stuff there is in the world.
So yeah, I don't think it's really that bad. The worst part might be the first couple of hundred years where you slowly have to figure out how to sustain yourself (in case you have to eat) without getting into trouble with the government of wherever you currently are.

 

[ThrillingHuman]

Now, factor in the hundreds of other countries where books are published and the fact that 2020 was actually a year with fewer publications here compared to previous years, plus the thousands of years of human history where books had been written already, and I don't think you're going to catch up any time soon. In fact, time is somewhat against you because while you would be trying to make up for what you haven't read so far, new books are continuously published all over the world.

I might not read all of them in a thousand, or two thousand years, but a billion, a trillion years will grind it away easily.
You seem to forget that while I am immortal, humanity isn't. Even if (a huge if), it ever leaves the planet, even if the entire Galaxy and the one next to it will be populated to the brim with humans, eventually they all will die. Being immortal means having infinite time and infinity is something that will eventually overcome all.
Even if I don't have the access to those books, I can do it like this: take M - the number of bytes it takes to store the biggest, longest novel ever.
By permuating all possible combinations I'd be able to sift through all of them, giving a ton of garbage and every possible book ever.

By that time you open up so many possibilities of different universes and lives to 'imagine' that the amount of time it would take to go through all of them would be a very long time(we talking numbers we can't even comprehend)

Awesome idea! But those incomprehensible numbers are still finite, meaning that they are << the amount of time I'll be alive. Didn't I say that despite the infinite memory I have, my brain is still human (think magic), and, assuming its the brain that makes us think, even if I augment with technology to the point of the fastest supercomputer that could calculate every state of every particle in this Universe ahead of real time, the states it could take on would still be finite, a huge number beyond anything imagineable, but still finite. Again, eventually immortality will make me go through all that

 

[Anon_Y_Mousse]

I might not read all of them in a thousand, or two thousand years, but a billion, a trillion years will grind it away easily.
You seem to forget that while I am immortal, humanity isn't. Even if (a huge if), it ever leaves the planet, even if the entire Galaxy and the one next to it will be populated to the brim with humans, eventually they all will die. Being immortal means having infinite time and infinity is something that will eventually overcome all.

Awesome idea! But those incomprehensible numbers are still finite, meaning that they are << the amount of time I'll be alive. Didn't I say that despite the infinite memory I have, my brain is still human (think magic), and, assuming its the brain that makes us think, even if I augment with technology to the point of the fastest supercomputer that could calculate every state of every particle in this Universe ahead of real time, the states it could take on would still be finite, a huge number beyond anything imagineable, but still finite. Again, eventually immortality will make me go through all that

meh, I think with infinite memory you should have the mental capacity to do what I suggested, even if not, there was that one story about the super computer that created it's own universe before it's death, upload your brain to one, perhaps?To your second question, yes, you will have gone through every possibility there is and ever will be. I think you're underestimating the sheer scale of possibilities, that's practically absolute infinity. You'll become god and at the same time the lowliest being. In my opinion, by that time, you've won. What is there to lose? Time doesn't matter to you at that point anymore, despite it technically still existing.

Edit: Watch this video, if you can simulate the 10th dimension, that's already a win in my book.

 

[yansusustories]

I might not read all of them in a thousand, or two thousand years, but a billion, a trillion years will grind it away easily.
You seem to forget that while I am immortal, humanity isn't. Even if (a huge if), it ever leaves the planet, even if the entire Galaxy and the one next to it will be populated to the brim with humans, eventually they all will die. Being immortal means having infinite time and infinity is something that will eventually overcome all.
Even if I don't have the access to those books, I can do it like this: take M - the number of bytes it takes to store the biggest, longest novel ever.
By permuating all possible combinations I'd be able to sift through all of them, giving a ton of garbage and every possible book ever.

There is no "all possible combinations". The combinations of possible stories are endless because languages have the ability to make endless variations and the beauty of stories isn't always just in "what happens" but "how" and "how is it told". Not to mention the emergence of new forms along the way.
But anyway, that doesn't matter either. Because even if humans died out, there'd be other things around. Heck, if you could go to space just like that, you could go to other solar systems and might find things far more interesting than humans. And by the time you're back, who knew what you'd find here? Because time doesn't stand still and there will be development somewhere. There would certainly be times of boredom but those could be easily overcome as well. Not that taking a break sounds that bad.

Also, I didn't see the other post so not sure what exactly the conditions were but, like, infinite memory space doesn't mean you're suddenly a genius. It just means you can remember all the things you encounter and won't forget them, not that you can extrapolate everything from a smaller thing that contains elements of them.

 

[BenJepheneT]

well, since I literally HAVE TIME for myself, might as well start honing abilities, like living in a volcano or seeing how far I can sink to the bottom of a trench. does living include regeneration of limbs? what if I lobotomized myself and kept my brain in a jar? does immortality come with the body or the mind?

your parameters for immortality is cast so wide that I still don't know how to answer. the amounts of cheats you missed out on in the 'kill yourself' section of the OP that I began wondering if it's really a way to prevent cognition or just a cop-out for a poorly thought out limit.

 

[sereminar]

Slowly go mad over hundreds of millions of years. Probably end up stuck on some uninhabited planet for a few billion years watching every star wink out of existence as they all moved away from me faster than I could ever hope to catch up. Eventually being left utterly stranded on a dead rock in a cold dead universe flashing through empty space.

Stuck with the crystal clear memory of hundreds of horrifically painful experiences and the crushing loneliness of my existence. All while constantly choking on a non-existent atmosphere.

Like, I might have fun for a few centuries, perhaps even millennia, but any societies I find will die and if we never overcome the speed of light the sheer speed of the expansion of the universe will inevitably outpace anyone's ability to find each other

 

[WarJoy]

I'd figure out how to make other people immortal too. And research science until full Control of entire Universe. Then id figure out why i am immortal. Everything has a reason.

 

[Reborn_Cat]

Everyone has such long and well thought out answers while mine would be to just sleep.

 

[Lloyd]

I read a thread about immortality on novel updates (too lazy too look up link) and it had the following question: what would you do if you were immortal?
The thread had conditions like infinity memory capacity and eternal youth, and it also excluded any possible way to "kill" yourself: brainwashing yourself to forget your own identity to start over, falling asleep forever, going mad and such.
I thought it was a pretty interesting question and then began thinking what I'd do... But then I came to the conclusion that I wouldn't be able to do anything that mattered. Avoiding the government to prevent experimentation? No government would be able to hold me forever, I'd outlive all of them. I'd outlive everyone - literally everyone. Learning new things? Eventually I'd be able to read - no, I'd memorize - all the books that could ever be written by humanity. I'd be able to think through every thought that my brain would be able to think through too - if we go by the theory that should don't exist and all our thoughts are made by human brains with their finite states.
Explore space? Eventually I'd remember every star, every asteroid, every planet - everything in the Galaxy, outlive that Galaxy and he following ones too.
Explore other dimensions? The author of the thread put the condition that only our Universe exists.
Make other people immortal? Not to mention the immorality of it, the author said that only I would be immortal and nobody else.
Wait until the Universe dies and time doesn't move anymore? The author of the thread said that the Universe is immortal too.
Then... What could I possibly do? There would be no end condition, no objective that would make whatever I'd do actually matter.
I was stumped. I didn't know how to answer. Any ideas from you?

You are actually misunderstanding infinity. You will never be able to do everything because of the different rates of infinity. Like you can never read all books because as long as sentient life exists they will continue making books indefinitely, and thus reach a higher degree of infinity than you can read. The same is true for everything else, because the universe is not static, it is always changing. Even if all life dies, eventually it will start back up again, and as long as they produce more books than you can read, extremely likely with a high population, then their rate of infinity will be higher than yours.

 

[ThrillingHuman]

meh, I think with infinite memory you should have the mental capacity to do what I suggested, even if not, there was that one story about the super computer that created it's own universe before it's death, upload your brain to one, perhaps?To your second question, yes, you will have gone through every possibility there is and ever will be. I think you're underestimating the sheer scale of possibilities, that's practically absolute infinity. You'll become god and at the same time the lowliest being. In my opinion, by that time, you've won. What is there to lose? Time doesn't matter to you at that point anymore, despite it technically still existing.

Edit: Watch this video, if you can simulate the 10th dimension, that's already a win in my book.

I really like your idea. Do you mind if I use it in a story sometime?

 

[Piisfun]

I read a thread about immortality on novel updates (too lazy too look up link) and it had the following question: what would you do if you were immortal?
The thread had conditions like infinity memory capacity and eternal youth, and it also excluded any possible way to "kill" yourself: brainwashing yourself to forget your own identity to start over, falling asleep forever, going mad and such.
I thought it was a pretty interesting question and then began thinking what I'd do... But then I came to the conclusion that I wouldn't be able to do anything that mattered. Avoiding the government to prevent experimentation? No government would be able to hold me forever, I'd outlive all of them. I'd outlive everyone - literally everyone. Learning new things? Eventually I'd be able to read - no, I'd memorize - all the books that could ever be written by humanity. I'd be able to think through every thought that my brain would be able to think through too - if we go by the theory that should don't exist and all our thoughts are made by human brains with their finite states.
Explore space? Eventually I'd remember every star, every asteroid, every planet - everything in the Galaxy, outlive that Galaxy and he following ones too.
Explore other dimensions? The author of the thread put the condition that only our Universe exists.
Make other people immortal? Not to mention the immorality of it, the author said that only I would be immortal and nobody else.
Wait until the Universe dies and time doesn't move anymore? The author of the thread said that the Universe is immortal too.
Then... What could I possibly do? There would be no end condition, no objective that would make whatever I'd do actually matter.
I was stumped. I didn't know how to answer. Any ideas from you?

Any rules against pausign time for only yourself?

 

[Anon_Y_Mousse]

I really like your idea. Do you mind if I use it in a story sometime?

Not at all, I'd like to see how you do it.

 

[Sice]

Eventually I'd be able to read - no, I'd memorize - all the books that could ever be written by humanity.

Does being immortal mean you are no longer human? Even if that is so, non-humans can still write. My point is that even if you read all the books everyone else has written, you can still write books yourself, possibly books than never end, just not the Never-Ending Story. In the worst case, dedicate yourself to recording history from your perspective. How well can you document every change undergone by a universe-level complex system? Discover the ultimate truth! And then "enlighten" every new species as if you were a god. Or don't.
The real issue is not whether you can find things to do but whether you can find reasons to do them. Those conditions you posed, or quoted from elsewhere, about not being able to die via any means, would an immortal being not try to subvert them? If you can't die, figure out why. Everything happens for a reason. If the universe is the only one to exist, figure out how to make more. If only immortal can exist in a universe, maybe more Immortals can be created.
f the Immortal isn't learning the limitations experimentally, did someone teach them? (Presuming the Immortal person was once mortal here.) If so, then how does that person know? If the Immortal is experimenting, why would they ever accept those limitations as valid? They have infinite time to discover loopholes. In-universe, every one of those conditions exists for a reason. Understanding those reasons should the Immortal's goal, eventually.
Even chronicling current events continuously will eventually lead to an understanding of how things happen which can be backwards extrapolate to consider how they became an Immortal in the first place.
That's only one set of ideas though.
Recalling that universe computer idea (didn't Isaac Asimov do something like that with a computer that tried to calculate the reason for entropy?), what's to stop an immortal from creating a virtual world so realistic that they accept it as real and populate with other immortals? Even if they are aware it's a virtual reality, well, there are plenty of people who spend time constructing virtual worlds right now. (With the right philosophical stance, literally everyone does.) Infinite memory doesn't mean you recall everything all at once all the time, right? You can simply not think about certain things or choose to overlook certain details. The way I see it that bit about no brainwashing means "you will always be you", not that you can never change. Even if you must accept the mortality of everything around you, that doesn't mean one must be become depressed. Beauty is ephemeral, as is life, so cherish what you see. An Immortal truly has the time to cherish beauty, to invent words, languages, art to perfectly encapsulate the beauty they see. If the universe has finite space for art, their memory does not, being infinite.
Now, I don't know if I walked over some of the conditions of that thread that wasn't linked (plus the definitions of the words ), but regardless, I'll repeat the core point. The real issue is not whether you can find things to do but whether you can find reasons to do them. Motivation and discipline, as always, are of paramount importance.

 

[Armored99]

Yeah sounds tough, the guy was really trying to eliminate all possible loopholes. Probably just jump into a black hole either you would break or the universe would.

 

[RepresentingCaution]

I would make an immortal harem, obviously. Haven't you read my story?