Ah yes, I read this one right after having played Universal Paperclips -- which if I'm not mistaken was inspired by it.
The Last Question
41–50 of 169 posts
Re: The Last Question
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was a much smaller internet. Crowds and server overload were much more visible.
It’s actually not the “hug of death” that I fondly remember happening more often (although that too was undoubtedly more common) but finding cool, weird, niche topics on the internet that I didn’t know before and were really fascinating.
For me, it was (and to some degree still is) finding out the things I thought were amazing… other people did too. I was very alone and kind of helpless when I read The Last Question (and The Last Answer) and lots of other things, and seeing other people appreciate these things and not just appreciate them, but appreciate them they way I appreciated them really makes me feel much more connected than I was when I was younger.
Re: The Last Question
#43Wait, are you telling me there are people out there who don’t know Asimov and haven’t read one of his best short stories??? The Last Question, along with Nightfall and The Last Answer are generally accepted as the best.
Re: The Last Question
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
>If you haven’t read it before, don’t read the Wikipedia summary; read the actual story. Read it from the original publication: https://archive.org/details/Science_Fiction_Quarterly_New_Se... >
OMG, I loved the original scan of this, wow, flash backs for me!!! Thank you soooo much. BTW, anyone just cruising by this post, it might be just me, but the advertisements at the very end of it are so dear. Just take a peek, so funny!
Use YOUR AMAZING physic (soul)
powers NOW!! Why “Develop” for
years??? MONEY? HEALTH? LOVE?
NOTHING IS HOPELESS. Remarkable
NEW APPROACH (demonstrated by
Jesus) now verified by modern science.
Re: The Last Question
#45A similarly thought-provoking short story, perhaps my favorite, is The Egg[1] by Andy Weir. [1]: http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Egg_(Weir_short_story)
There's this really good animation on The Egg made by Kurzgesagt:
Re: The Last Question
#46Douglas Adams’s parody of Multivac gave us The Answer, so it’s nice to see this here… :)
Re: The Last Question
#47Wait, are you telling me there are people out there who don’t know Asimov and haven’t read one of his best short stories??? The Last Question, along with Nightfall and The Last Answer are generally accepted as the best.
They’re one of today’s lucky 10,000.
Re: The Last Question
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
The rabbi recently on the Lex Fridman podcast told a joke that went (roughly) like Scientists come to God and say "OK God, we've had a lot of progress lately in synthetic biology, genetics, engineering, etc. and we're pretty sure we know how you did it." God says "Oh really?". "Yes. We'll create living creatures out of dirt to show that we can do just as you did with Adam." God says "Wow, fantastic!" So the scientist…
Right, God and his talking dirt.
The point isn't about the dirt's abilities. The point is how did the dirt come to be in the first place (or really, the atoms, subatomic particles, and mass itself)?
Re: The Last Question
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s an atheist’s most religious dream to think of becoming one’s own creator. It’s nonsense, of course, but it definitely blew my mind reading it as a child. What set the parameters that the ultimate computer must work within? The ultimate computer can reverse entropy, but it can’t make its own reality. There are limits to the power of knowledge.
The rabbi recently on the Lex Fridman podcast told a joke that went (roughly) like Scientists come to God and say "OK God, we've had a lot of progress lately in synthetic biology, genetics, engineering, etc. and we're pretty sure we know how you did it." God says "Oh really?". "Yes. We'll create living creatures out of dirt to show that we can do just as you did with Adam." God says "Wow, fantastic!" So the scientist…
Did God create the substrate he exists in?