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So you want to think of an original idea?
Apr. 30th, 2007 03:37 pmThe average brain contains 100 billion neurons, each linked to 10,000 other neurons; this gives an initial possibile start pathing of 1,000,000,000,000,000 (1,000,000 billion (US) options) Ie 10^15. Now a thought is more than a single logical leap, so we'll say it's at least 5 distinct pathway leaps to determine a thought which then after that seeds an idea in that crazy mush we call a brain. So that gives 10^75 possible original ideas, thoughts and concepts that mankind can actually conceptualise.
Interestingly the total number of stars in the universe is estimated to be 400 billion x 130 billion or 52,000*10^18. Pretty damn small in comparison. And if we assume (useful word) that each of these stars has around it has an average billion or so unique things about it that still only gives us 5.2x10^27 different things in the universe available for us to discover.
This is, as far as I'm concerned, a welcome thought (possibly an original one, I can but hope) - that humanity has the possibility of conceiving (not necessarily creating mind you) of more things than exist in the universe. Neato! Plenty more sci-fi books for eons to come!
Anyway.
Average life expectancy before the health transition of the modern era is thought to have varied between about 20 years and 35 years, however there are now more people living in the world than have ever lived before and I could rattle on endlessly about statistics about how long people could live, so for purposes of this highly accurate prediction everyone has 35 years to live and thats it, mainly because I don't want to have statistically died already dammit.
In these thirty five years you're going to need a bit of programming by parents/machines/sugar/wolves in order to get your brain working so we'll give the average human until 5 years old to get the hang of this whole existence lark, so that's thirty years of productive thinking life, use them well boys and girls.
Now, your average human is a usually a creative sort, given to doodling in margins of their maths book/rock/wall/etc and using the old folk saying that "you learn something new every day" as a basis for these calculations we'll say every human that's ever lived from mammoth hunters to lawyers has one original thought a day. This gives them 365.25x30 original thoughts in their entire life; or about 11 thousand near as dammit (10957.5 for you pedants). Right, even more numbers and statistics, perhaps this will get somewhere.
There have been appoximately 96,100,000,000 people on the earth. I.e. 9.6x10^10 people having existed. Now I'm sure fish, dogs, squirrels and other creatures can also have original thoughts but as far as I'm concerned if they want to know the answer to this question they can work it out themselves, this is a humanity only thing, damn their eyes.
This gives us a total of 9.6x10^15 different concepts that have already been thought of, which barely even dents the 10x10^75 actual ideas available to us. Ideas that could include, air cooled doughnuts, self replicating cat litter, tyre-proof hedgehogs and hangover free alcohol!
Come on people! You're not even trying!!
Disclaimer
Firstly as most of the places I use here are US sites my billion will be a little billion, ie 10^9.
Secondly all my quoted facts come from (usually) the first hit on the internet or if I can, Wikipedia. Thus since everything on the internet is true all the data I have is also true.
Interestingly the total number of stars in the universe is estimated to be 400 billion x 130 billion or 52,000*10^18. Pretty damn small in comparison. And if we assume (useful word) that each of these stars has around it has an average billion or so unique things about it that still only gives us 5.2x10^27 different things in the universe available for us to discover.
This is, as far as I'm concerned, a welcome thought (possibly an original one, I can but hope) - that humanity has the possibility of conceiving (not necessarily creating mind you) of more things than exist in the universe. Neato! Plenty more sci-fi books for eons to come!
Anyway.
Average life expectancy before the health transition of the modern era is thought to have varied between about 20 years and 35 years, however there are now more people living in the world than have ever lived before and I could rattle on endlessly about statistics about how long people could live, so for purposes of this highly accurate prediction everyone has 35 years to live and thats it, mainly because I don't want to have statistically died already dammit.
In these thirty five years you're going to need a bit of programming by parents/machines/sugar/wolves in order to get your brain working so we'll give the average human until 5 years old to get the hang of this whole existence lark, so that's thirty years of productive thinking life, use them well boys and girls.
Now, your average human is a usually a creative sort, given to doodling in margins of their maths book/rock/wall/etc and using the old folk saying that "you learn something new every day" as a basis for these calculations we'll say every human that's ever lived from mammoth hunters to lawyers has one original thought a day. This gives them 365.25x30 original thoughts in their entire life; or about 11 thousand near as dammit (10957.5 for you pedants). Right, even more numbers and statistics, perhaps this will get somewhere.
There have been appoximately 96,100,000,000 people on the earth. I.e. 9.6x10^10 people having existed. Now I'm sure fish, dogs, squirrels and other creatures can also have original thoughts but as far as I'm concerned if they want to know the answer to this question they can work it out themselves, this is a humanity only thing, damn their eyes.
This gives us a total of 9.6x10^15 different concepts that have already been thought of, which barely even dents the 10x10^75 actual ideas available to us. Ideas that could include, air cooled doughnuts, self replicating cat litter, tyre-proof hedgehogs and hangover free alcohol!
Come on people! You're not even trying!!
Disclaimer
Firstly as most of the places I use here are US sites my billion will be a little billion, ie 10^9.
Secondly all my quoted facts come from (usually) the first hit on the internet or if I can, Wikipedia. Thus since everything on the internet is true all the data I have is also true.
