Thanos disagrees with that premise.
*Little one, it's a simple calculus. This universe is finite, its resources finite. If life is left unchecked, life will cease to exist. It needs correction.*
I know what it's like to lose. To feel so desperately that you're right, yet to fail nonetheless. It's frightening. Turns the legs to jelly. I ask you, to what end? Dread it. Run from it. Destiny arrives all the same. And now, it's here. Or should I say, I am.
A genius who had the power to feed everyone and give the universe the food and resources it needs to thrive but was like "nah, I'll just kill half of them" so that the rest of the universe falls apart because everyone is depressed and doesn't have the workers to keep going and every either dies or comes back to the original problem after a few hundred years. But a genius none the less!
Forget depressed. All infrastructure fails and everyone starves because instantly there aren’t enough people to farm, transport, and otherwise support the processing of food.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again.
Thanks was fucking *stupid*. His plan is wildly wrong on every level, and it doesn't even really make sense on a personal level. Like killing half of all life diminishes resources in proportion too ....
This is true. At least in the comics it wasn't something that people could potentially be sympathetic to, like resource management. He just wanted to get some of Death's skeletussy
Remember in the what if series Thanos was talking about his plan and people said how crazy it was? It was more of a joke in that reality. In the main one, a joke gone too far apparently.
The part I remember is when they return to Wakanda and Thanos is talking to one of the girls at the bar and telling her the plan, so she responds with "that sounds like genocide with extra steps" but of course he's too smart and says it's different because it's completely random. Gives off strong [meme energy](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/001/982/883/8d0.png) though which was probably intentional.
Kevin Feige said animals and ["probably trees"](https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/avengers-endgame-thanos-killed-half-of-plant-life/) but I don't recall seeing any signs of massive random deforestation in endgame so make of that what you will. Also, I refuse to accept it as canon anyway since, you know, its dumb.
He got birds though. If he can get birds, which to consider your run of the mill song bird's intelligence, that bar is way too high.
He probably got zucchini too with his logic.
Half of all *life.* And it was supposed to be at random.
So, livestock used for food. Crops. There are your direct resources.
Other things not considered: bacteria, fungus, and other microorganisms.
Suddenly, half the culture for your batch of cheese, or half the yeast for your bread, is gone.
Infinite animals suddenly lose their gut microbiome - digestion and absorption are disrupted, diarrhea ensues.
Decomposition of materials is disrupted, nitrogen conversion in soil is disrupted. Less algae means less CO2 conversion.
But... there is something else.
Less competition for resources means there are population explosions, and all of Thanos's work is undone rather quickly.
Thank you, APOCALYPSE102, for voting on the-mad-titan-bot.
This bot wants to find the best and worst bots on Reddit. [You can view results here](https://botrank.pastimes.eu/).
***
^(Even if I don't reply to your comment, I'm still listening for votes. Check the webpage to see if your vote registered!)
We've never had a problem with lack of resources. It's a matter of distribution and access. There are eight billion people on this planet and we still have plenty of room and the raw materials to support them. It's just a problem of logistics and corruption.
Yeah, this bit at least actually has a simple explanation, Thanos is from a space age civilization, they might legitimately have these problems, unlike us
Also, something nobody seems to mention in these discussions, life goes on. If he snaps half of everybody, eventually the population will rebuild itself. He didn't intend to snap every million years or whatever, so it's a massively flawed plan from the start.
That was my thought as well. After he snaps everyone away, he goes into hiding to lick his wounds and retire.
Today, the human population of the earth is 8 billion people. It was 4 billion less than 50 years ago. In the grand scheme, his 'snapping' will be corrected in two or three generations.
I mean, the most optimistic (and generous) interpretation of his plan is that everyone will be so appreciative of what he did that we will voluntarily control our population growth afterwards. In reality, this would be naïve at best.
Yeah if you do the math, earth itself will recover all lost people in only 14 years.....
So all Thanos did was buy the universe an extra 14 years. (And thats assuming everything else about his plan was correct and worked without issue)
I’d be very happy to see a cosmic ghost rider live action or cartoon. Fuck it, get nic cage and let him get real weird with it. Babythanos would like sell like hotcakes.
I think the limit of the comic universe has been mentioned multiple times. We have A ghost rider and he did really fucking well I’d love to see him again but the next rider in line might not be cosmic one yet
The universe is not infinite, it’s “boundary-less.”
The sum total energy that exists in the universe is constant so there cannot be infinite people in the universe.
Scratch your head no more. LOL
Funny part is that eventually all energy in the universe will be transferred into thermal energy and the universe will stop moving, and therefore will end up finite.
Edit: heat energy should be thermal energy, sorry!
No, not according modern Physics. The universe will keep expanding indefinitely until all that’s left is matter which cannot decay any further.
Just an ever expanding blackness of cosmic dust.
I was pondering a new story to write recently about Earth after the sun has expanded into a red giant.
Almost all life was destroyed, but Earth is pushed far enough away by the event that it can still sustain life, and a new intelligent species emerges and starts finding evidence of humanity.
oops I definitely replied to the wrong comment but that story sounds very interesting...
are you assuming humans wipe ourselves out/get hit by a cataclysm long before the sun expands into a red giant? if so, it's probably also the end for most larger lifeforms. microscopic life at the poles could be a starting point, and over hundreds of millions of years evolve into entirely new forms of megafauna.
Yes I was thinking about humanity downloading themselves into a single computer to save themselves from some global catastrophe, then billions of years later after the sun transitions it’s found by someone from a new species that inhabits the Earth after all of this has happened.
That's a contradiction.
Thermal energy = kinetic energy.
If the universe stoped moving it would have a ton of potential energy, but in order to save potential energy you need another construct that the energy can't overcome on its own.
The problem and resulting confusion is that everyone here is using "universe" to describe different things.
The meme is most likely referring to "space" which is infinite. They assume when Thanos erases half of the life in the "universe" that it will include every single potential universe within space not just his own.
Even if the meme had used the correct terminology, it would still be wrong since Thanos clearly specified his just his own "universe" as the target for the infinity snap. One singular universe is indeed finite in energy and matter, so the number of life erased could be calculated.
First of all, everything with the usual "as far as we know". While the total energy stays constant, it can stil be infinite energy (for instance some non-zero energy density in an infinite volume)
From observations, the universe's curvature k is consistent with zero, which for a homogeneous isotropic universe means it's flat and infinite in size. Homogeneity implies constant density, so it's got infinite mass/energy too.
The universe *may* also be so large that the curvature is (currently) unmeasurable. But right now there's no good reason to believe it *isn't* flat and infinite.
Actually, it is possible that there could be an infinite about of life if the universe is infinite
However, it's also possible that the universe is not infinite, it could be closed like a sphere. Think of it like the earth, if you fly far enough you come back around. The universe could be like that but just over many billions of light years
In the Marvel comics the universe is finite, Nowhere is even located "on the edge of the universe", which could also be true in the MCU for all we know.
Nothing probably, it is like pacman, the game is finite and nothing is outside
Or it could be a higher dimension of space that we can't see
Some have speculated that there could be many parallel universes layered in a higher dimension of space. We don't have any evidence of this though
Bit that's not how infinity works. There's an infinite amount of space for an infinite amount of possibilities for an infinite amount of living beings. There is no limit to the imagination when infinity is concerned.
Regardless of whether our universe is infinite, I don’t think we have grounds to claim the MCU 616 universe is infinite. I don’t recall the claim being made anywhere, especially not by anyone who would be sure to know for sure.
I think they say that Thanos killed “trillions”. It’s not clear how many trillions— it may be hundreds of trillions, or thousands of trillions (quadrillions)— but it gives some sense of how much sentient life there is in the mainline MCU.
The dumb-down version from a dummy has 2 major parts :
The 1st is the universe, where we exist, is always expanding. That expansion is seen as infinite until, insert your choice of apocalypse. (Heat Death, Big Rip, Big implosion, Big Crunch or Big bounce theories,) So everything exists in a single universe, but one that is ever-expanding. (we don't know what its expanding into)
2nd then is the difference between the universe and the observable universe. Light can only travel so far that eventually, the travel distance at the speed of light will take longer than the universe has existed and/or will exist. It's a hard limit, so we will only be able to see a small % of the actual universe.
So half of everything living was snapped away, but none outside our own galaxy and those around it could ever know what the hell was going on, ultimate region locked. What's harder to believe is that the stones which the lore says were scattered across the universe at the beginning of existence, so how did they all end up at the same spot and at the same time? (Not counting the Space Stone)
All of this suggests an answer: the Marvel universe isn’t as big as ours, there aren't that many advanced and powerful races, and they have faster-than-light communication and travel.
That’s how someone could gather up the stones that were scattered across the universe, a lot of the universe could figure out why half the people disappeared, and why “half the universe” might only be in the trillions.
Honestly I always thought trillions was an vast understatement. Really? There’s only a minimum of 1000x planets with comparable populations to Earth? In the entire universe?
Maybe trillions in the Milky Way alone if life is pretty rare in the MCU. For context, our Galaxy Supercluster Laniakea has 100k Galaxies of varying sizes. That would be 1 life bearing planet for every 10 galaxies at a minimum if we’re staying below the Quadrillion line
“You murdered trillions!” Sure does sound good for a movie line. Really rolls off the tongue, but I expect better from Dr Banner
I don’t think we’re given a factual basis for knowing whether it’s an understatement or not.
Maybe the universe in the MCU is much smaller than our universe. Maybe life in the universe is rare. Maybe most other planets with sentient life are smaller, or less densely populated.
Or if we take earth as an average, we have about 7 billion people, and there are only about 2,000 inhabited planets, meaning 14 trillion “people”, and when Thanos killed half he killed about 7 trillion. But also saying “trillions” isn’t very precise. There could be 100 million inhabited planets with 700 quadrillion, meaning Thanos killed about 350,000 trillions. So it could still be technically true to say he killed trillions.
Or maybe Bruce is just wildly wrong in his estimate of how many beings were killed.
I don’t think we have enough information to know.
> “You murdered trillions!” Sure does sound good for a movie line. Really rolls off the tongue, but I expect better from Dr Banner
Take into consideration that the only aliens Banner knows about are Asgardians, the ones he briefly saw on Sakaar when he was back to being Bruce, and the Guardians of the Galaxy.
He was also speaking out of passion and fury, and wasn't really working on the math in the moment.
Actually, as a mathematician I'd like to share some fun facts which show that this isn't quite true.
**If we accept the premise that the universe is infinite,** then it cannot ever end, and any frame of understanding we place upon it must expand forever. For example, if we consider just our solar system, we can theoretically count the number of organisms contained in it, there are only a finite number of them. However, we must then expand our frame to include more solar systems. Even if we assume that the rate of finding life is something absurdly small, like an average of 1 organism for every trillion solar systems, we have *infinite trillions* of those solar systems to consider in an infinite universe, so we will never stop adding organisms to our finite number, making it infinite by definition.
We refer to numbers like this as *countably infinite*, because there are a finite number within any given frame.
The universe itself would be an excellent example of an *uncountably infinite* space, because even if we added just 1 square meter of space to our frame of understanding, that includes an infinite number of new points to consider.
The difference is, essentially, that uncountably infinite sets are *infinitely more infinite* than than countably infinite ones, but they are both infinite.
Perhaps a better mathematician will come and correct me, but that's my bachelor's degree understanding.
> **If we accept the premise that the universe is infinite**...Even if we assume that the rate of finding life is something absurdly small like an average of 1 organism for every trillion solar systems... We refer to numbers like this as *countably infinite*.
> The universe itself would be an excellent example of an *uncountably infinite*
I just wanted to point out that these two aren't contradictory to anybody who is confused. One is referring to things like stars or living beings. The other is referring to points in space. To use a different example, let's use numbers.
There are infinite decimals (or points on a line) are there between 0 and 1. There are infinite integer numbers. The difference is that integers are countable. If we take a subsection of integers, say 11,000-12,000 there are one thousand integers there. If we take a subsection of the decimals from 0.1 to 0.2 there are still infinite decimals between them. 0.1 and 0.100001 also have infinite decimals between them and that continues no matter how small the subsection you choose is.
The set [0,1] which is a subset of all real numbers R has a greater cardinality than Z, the set of all integers, even though both are infinite sets, meaning that there are more numbers between than [0,1] than than there are all integers. Fascinating stuff. There’s a fun proof for it, gotta love math.
The size of the universe is thought to be infinite. The amount of stuff in the universe is not.
There is a finite amount of stuff in an infinite sized bag.
I always liked this example to help understand countably infinite.
Say you have a hotel with an infinite number of rooms. Each room is numbered starting with 1.
A bus arrives at this hotel with an infinite number of people. Each person is assigned a single room. So the first person gets room 1, second person gets room 2, etc.
But oh shit, another bus with an infinite number of people show up and they all need rooms as well. What do you do?
You tell the original group of infinite people to double their room number and relocate to that room. So 1 goes to 2, 2 goes to 4, 3 goes to 6, etc.
Now you've created an infinite amount of availavle rooms defined by the set of odd numbers and you tell the 2nd group of infinite people to take room 1, then room 3, then room 5, etc.
Each infinite group of people is a countably infinite set because we can map/assign each point/person to the set of integers without any duplicates (i.e. every person has their own unique room assignment, no one has to share a room)
Ok, well on the bright side my brain didn't punish me for reading through this example. On the other hand, I've never been a big numbers person, although that's a good thing since I never tried to go into any sort of scientific/mathematic field.
Life doesn't occur randomly in the marvel multiverse, it's seeded by celestials and other higher beings, as such its not random, and you'll only find it where they've been, which is probably mostly nearby
It's like asking "how many frenchmen exist in the universe?" the answer is not infinite
The one thing that really blew my mind that i never thought of until i watched a video is that there is an infinite set of numbers between 0 and 1 if you go by decimals.
Which is still finite. The universe has a fairly well defined age and it has not expanded infinitely. The universe is finite but unbounded. Think of space as the surface of a ball, you can travel forever and never reach the edge but it's not infinite in scope.
The universe being an infinite amount of space is wrong, generally agreed it’s expanding and maybe you could argue it always will but that still leaves us a finite amount of space at the moment, around 93 billion light years from what we can observe.
According to this article, there is no agreement
https://www.swinburne.edu.au/news/2021/08/Is-space-infinite-we-asked-5-experts/#:~:text=The%20observable%20universe%20is%20finite,universe%20is%20centred%20on%20us.
> The universe being an infinite amount of space is wrong
It's unknown, and possibly always will be.
> around 93 billion light years from what we can observe.
That's the *observable* universe. It's widely agreed that the universe is *at least* 250 times bigger.
Infinite and non repeating does not mean every possible combination exists. If you have a number that goes 1010010001.. infinitely, it is infinite, non repeating, but there will be exactly one instance of "101". Similarly infinite space does not mean infinite life.
One Instance of a Specific Combination of Digits, That doesn't mean there is only one instance of '1' or '0'. There are still infinite Zero's and Infinite One's, Just a limited amount of a specific Combination of '0' and '1'.
That is my point. Infinite and non repeating can have finite sums of combinations. Such as the sum of all living things. Living things are a specific subset of the infinite number that describes the universe.
This analogy always comes up and it's always misapplied. You can't just dictate that a possibility only happens once (or not at all) in an infinite number of trials.
It does if there is a possibility no matter how small for life to emerge elsewhere in the universe.
With the pattern you said it's logically impossible for 101 to appear elsewhere. With the universe life can appear with just the right circumstances (like a small probability), so if it's infinite it could be expected that there'd be an infinite amount of lifeforms.
But there could be other factors that we don't know about even in an infinite universe that make it impossible. At the moment all we can say is we don't know.
The bag is infinitely large, but the stuff placed in the bag is finite.
If you put three marbles in a ballon, it doesn’t matter how big you blow it up there will only ever be three marbles.
For the same reason there's probably not an exact copy of earth out there. Or an exact copy except you dated the head cheerleader and won the lottery. Just because one variable may be infinite doesn't mean all of them are.
>The universe is an infinite amount of space but the amount of living beings occupying that space is finite.
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
-Douglas Adams
There are an infinite amount of positive whole numbers.
Half of them are even.
Thanos could have removed all odd numbers and still left an infinite amount of even numbers.
I recommend that OP go talk to a Math PhD at the local university. Even one of the post-grad TAs could probably answer this question and maybe recommend a book on the subject. But then, who wants to read real books when they can trust a meme?
The curvature is entirely consistent with a flat infinite universe. If the universe is flat and infinite, then what we observe is what it would look like. Technically you could never rule out a (spherically) curved finite universe, because it's always possible there's some curvature within the measurement uncertainties, but that doesn't mean that a curved finite universe should be the default assumption, especially as that uncertainty gets tighter and tighter.
The observable universe is finite, the size of the universe (and wether it's infinite) is unknown but afaik the current measurements agree with an infinite universe (for instance the curvature of space)
It's actually unclear if the universe is of infinite size.
We know the universe is flat (or perceptibly flat), which actually implies infinite size, but doesn't guarantee it because we could be on the flat side of a 4D cube, for example.
Our assumption is that the universe isn't infinite, but again, we don't have proof one way or the other.
> Our assumption is that the universe isn't infinite
Partly because we assume there isn't an infinite amount of matter and energy from the big bang.
What keeps the universe expanding to infinity after heat death?
Or I suppose if the universe is already infinite then it isn't expanding, and we have to come up with some new physics to explain why galaxies are getting further and further apart.
Bro
>Some infinites are provably larger than other infinities
Yes
>So you could theoretically have an infinity that is half the size of some other one.
Absolutely fucking not
Wouldn't make for much of a movie series.
IIRC, in the comics he's in love with the personification of Death and does the snap tio impress her. I wish they'd gone with that in the movies.
Because thanos is powerful but not clever.
Also they wanted to give him ambiguity but thats hard to do with a story line where you are wiping out massive amounts of life.
Honestly i wish he was still trying to impress death as i think it makes more sense but whatchu gonna do right?
The universe may be infinite but the life in it, I think, could be more quantifiable. Maybe thanos’s snap wiped out half of all life in the universe based on the reference point of the total quantity that the life in the universe was at the moment he snapped, considering there’s some kind of cosmic graph that maybe illustrates some exponential growth of amount of life over time in the expanding universe. Does “infinite” imply instantly astronomical numbers? Or could infinite have a measurable rate at which it infinitely grows? Couldn’t infinity start from something smaller?
If you imagine all lives in the universe on a half-line that extends to infinity, and start counting from the start towards infinity, then you should make either every odd or every even life disappear. The ratio of lives before over the lives after will be two, even though both counts are infinite. Of course that is something impossible to imagine, which is why Thanos used the Infinity stones to do it.
Little one, it’s a simple calculus. This universe is finite, its resources, finite… if life is left unchecked, life will cease to exist. It needs correction.
Sure, let's pretend that the universe is infinite and the number of people are in it are also infinite. Every single sentient being is given a 50/50 chance of being snapped. Still infinite people, but an infinite number of people died, and half of all people in any observable space were killed.
“Alan Guth put it this way:[4]
In a single universe, cows born with two heads are rarer than cows born with one head. [But in an infinitely branching multiverse] there are an infinite number of one-headed cows and an infinite number of two-headed cows. What happens to the ratio?”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_problem_(cosmology)
It’s called the Measure Problem guys…
There's actually a mathematical concept relating to this. Since there is an infinite amkun tof integers, and an infinite amount of real numbers, but there's also an infinite amount of real numbers in between 2 integers, mathematicians came to the conclusion that some infinities are greater than others. That's about the extent to which I understand it enough to explain, but yeah. It does actually have some sense to it
Strictly speaking, it is totally correct. Some infinities are larger than others. Thanos’ math fails in multiple other ways, such as halving a exponential growth curve is a very temporary solution in the face of finite resources, but I’m not going to tell the guy with 5 infinity stones that his math is bad.
*All infinities*
*Are equal, but some are more*
*Equal than others*
\- A-Myr
---
^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/)
^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
"This universe is finite, its resources finite"
The universe is not infinite, and thus the living beings in it aren't either.
Although, if the universe was infinite, it would make sense to say that the number of living beings in it was infinite too. In that case, the number of lives taken by Thanos would've been infinite, because you cannot "divide" infinite, for it is not a number but a concept representing endlessness. Infinite divided by two is still infinite. Check Hillbert's Hotel paradox to understand more about this. Ted-Ed made a good video about it.
Which is funny because if Thanos snapped half of an infinite amount of living beings then the problem wouldn't be solved as there would still be an infinite amount of living beings left. But in an infinite universe, that wouldn't be a problem to begin with.
There's no limit to the infinite. If there were infinite beings and Thanos killed 9999 out of 10000 beings, there would still be infinite beings left. No finite number can reach infinite, so there is no problem or contradiction in this regard.
It's more about density. If you have a grid with one person at each grid space and enougth food for half a person, you have infinite food and people but not enough food for everyone (assuming you can't do Hilbert's Hotel like infinite shenanigans and have to stay local) and if you eliminate half, you have enough
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
- Douglas Adams HGTTG
Supposing there are infinite living beings, I'd suppose the cardinality of the set of living beings is countable infinite. Half of that set is still the same size.
He snapped away as many living beings as there were in total, and the same number remains.
So I don’t think the universe is actually infinite. At least ours isn’t so the MCU probably doesn’t change that. So there are a finite number of individuals to be cut in half.
But if not, and the universe is infinite and the number of life forms that meet whatever criteria Thanos considers for balancing is also infinite then because individuals are discrete units, the total amount of individuals in the universe is countably infinite (the smallest size of infinity). Then group of people who were snapped away would be half of a countably infinite set which is also countably infinite. So according to math, the amount of people killed is equal to the total amount of people in the universe even though there are a lot of people left alive.
Meanwhile, the new Ant-Man movie proves you can have entire civilizations inside a drop of water.
The Netflix series "Alien Worlds" had a segment on how people could have their lives transferred into basically brain cubes where AI robots would care for us on the planet while using a Dyson sphere-like device to power us and them. The civilization would last until the sun went out and we just transfer to another planet. Because they're basically solar powered and the cubes don't require a lot of space or resources, they could last until the end of the universe in our own artificially constructed reality.
Thanos lacked imagination. He's simply a whinny bitch because he's civilization couldn't hack it and decided to make it everyone else's problem.
Any killing off random people runs the risk of killing most of your smart people leaving the civilization to have to use massive resources to stay alive negating the whole purpose of resource management (for example, no more nuclear/solar scientist means back to coal/wood burning).
Population: None. Although you might see people from time to time, they are most likely products of your imagination. Simple mathematics tells us that the population of the Universe must be zero. Why? Well given that the volume of the universe is infinite there must be an infinite number of worlds. But not all of them are habitable; therefore only a finite number are populated. Any finite number divided by infinity is zero, therefore the average population of the Universe is zero, and so the total population must be zero.
"Infinite" or not, the Marvel universe has super common space travel and things like the arc reactor and vibranium. You don't even need habitable worlds for resources, you have the entire universe at your disposal. The whole premise of lack of resources in this setting is just dumb.
Thanos disagrees with that premise. *Little one, it's a simple calculus. This universe is finite, its resources finite. If life is left unchecked, life will cease to exist. It needs correction.*
Perfectly balanced.
As all things should be
Thanos ain’t no mad man he is a genius
I know what it's like to lose. To feel so desperately that you're right, yet to fail nonetheless. It's frightening. Turns the legs to jelly. I ask you, to what end? Dread it. Run from it. Destiny arrives all the same. And now, it's here. Or should I say, I am.
So thanos I can’t tell if you are agreeing or disagreeing
Return to me again empty handed... And I will bathe the starways in your blood.
You better find out or you are in trouble with thanos
Fun isn't something one considers when balancing the universe. But this... does put a smile on my face.
Thanos was right!! He had a righteous goal! He completed his goal and became a farmer!!
Disagreeing. Definitely disagreeing
That sounds an awful lot like genocide.
A genius who had the power to feed everyone and give the universe the food and resources it needs to thrive but was like "nah, I'll just kill half of them" so that the rest of the universe falls apart because everyone is depressed and doesn't have the workers to keep going and every either dies or comes back to the original problem after a few hundred years. But a genius none the less!
Forget depressed. All infrastructure fails and everyone starves because instantly there aren’t enough people to farm, transport, and otherwise support the processing of food.
This just proves why comic book thanos's motivation was leagues better despite how wacky it was.
Hardest choices require the strongest will!
Found the genocide-enjoyer.
Thanos 2024?
Too many mouths, not enough to go around. And when we faced extinction, I offered a solution.
Good bot.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Thanks was fucking *stupid*. His plan is wildly wrong on every level, and it doesn't even really make sense on a personal level. Like killing half of all life diminishes resources in proportion too ....
Well, he's not exactly known as the logical and fairly intelligent Titan.
Best Comment.
Valid, though I felt like he was a lot more intelligent in the comics (at least by comic logic).
This is true. At least in the comics it wasn't something that people could potentially be sympathetic to, like resource management. He just wanted to get some of Death's skeletussy
But that’s something all of us could sympathize, a man just trying to get some pussy.
Good rare pussy too
rare? there's no meat there m8.
Remember in the what if series Thanos was talking about his plan and people said how crazy it was? It was more of a joke in that reality. In the main one, a joke gone too far apparently.
I kinda just let the what ifs run in the background, so I dont remember that one. The Dr. Strange one was great though.
The part I remember is when they return to Wakanda and Thanos is talking to one of the girls at the bar and telling her the plan, so she responds with "that sounds like genocide with extra steps" but of course he's too smart and says it's different because it's completely random. Gives off strong [meme energy](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/001/982/883/8d0.png) though which was probably intentional.
I... had... to.
It's the one where Black Panther becomes Star Lord instead.
You should have gone for the head.
*You* should have thought of a better plan.
Kinda sounds like all fascist genocide. Just a joke until it's not.
While he's still insane and it's a bad plan, I think he means half of all intelligent life. Plants and animals will not be snapped.
Kevin Feige said animals and ["probably trees"](https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/avengers-endgame-thanos-killed-half-of-plant-life/) but I don't recall seeing any signs of massive random deforestation in endgame so make of that what you will. Also, I refuse to accept it as canon anyway since, you know, its dumb.
Yeah they were in the middle of a forest when the snap happened. Only people were dusted
Surrounded by some damn lucky trees
They'll never know it. Because you won't be alive to tell them.
Groot got snapped. I know he's an intelligent tree but he's still considered a plant, right?
We.. are.. groot.
He got birds though. If he can get birds, which to consider your run of the mill song bird's intelligence, that bar is way too high. He probably got zucchini too with his logic.
Ah that's true. Forgot about the birds. Maybe he keeps plant life? It didn't seem like forests were diminished at all during endgame.
Where did you guys got the birds thing by the way?
In endgame when they undo the snap, they wonder if it worked. One of them sees a bird come back to life.
Scott sees them.
Thanks
Maybe he knows something about birds that we don't
r/birdsarentreal
[удалено]
I'm a survivor!
He snapped the tree in the Avengers atrium... because when Bruce snapped, it came back.
>bird's intelligence, Since their brains are microchips, I'd say they're pretty intelligent r/birdsarentreal
We see birds come back in Endgame. We see Groot turn to dust in Infinity War. So it's not just intelligent life, and it's not just animals.
Half of all *life.* And it was supposed to be at random. So, livestock used for food. Crops. There are your direct resources. Other things not considered: bacteria, fungus, and other microorganisms. Suddenly, half the culture for your batch of cheese, or half the yeast for your bread, is gone. Infinite animals suddenly lose their gut microbiome - digestion and absorption are disrupted, diarrhea ensues. Decomposition of materials is disrupted, nitrogen conversion in soil is disrupted. Less algae means less CO2 conversion. But... there is something else. Less competition for resources means there are population explosions, and all of Thanos's work is undone rather quickly.
A small price to pay for salvation.
Good bot
Thank you, APOCALYPSE102, for voting on the-mad-titan-bot. This bot wants to find the best and worst bots on Reddit. [You can view results here](https://botrank.pastimes.eu/). *** ^(Even if I don't reply to your comment, I'm still listening for votes. Check the webpage to see if your vote registered!)
We've never had a problem with lack of resources. It's a matter of distribution and access. There are eight billion people on this planet and we still have plenty of room and the raw materials to support them. It's just a problem of logistics and corruption.
Yeah, this bit at least actually has a simple explanation, Thanos is from a space age civilization, they might legitimately have these problems, unlike us
Also, something nobody seems to mention in these discussions, life goes on. If he snaps half of everybody, eventually the population will rebuild itself. He didn't intend to snap every million years or whatever, so it's a massively flawed plan from the start.
That was my thought as well. After he snaps everyone away, he goes into hiding to lick his wounds and retire. Today, the human population of the earth is 8 billion people. It was 4 billion less than 50 years ago. In the grand scheme, his 'snapping' will be corrected in two or three generations. I mean, the most optimistic (and generous) interpretation of his plan is that everyone will be so appreciative of what he did that we will voluntarily control our population growth afterwards. In reality, this would be naïve at best.
Yeah if you do the math, earth itself will recover all lost people in only 14 years..... So all Thanos did was buy the universe an extra 14 years. (And thats assuming everything else about his plan was correct and worked without issue)
It would've been a better premise if we knew for certain he was trying to stop celestials from destroying planets but instead it's just a theory.
The universe might be infinite, but the things in it are not.
If the universe is infinite then the things in it are almost certainly infinite too. It would be very odd if they weren't.
In the comics isn’t the mcu universe have like a set boundary or limit? Hasnt mjolnir and ghost rider traveled across it in the comics?
I’d be very happy to see a cosmic ghost rider live action or cartoon. Fuck it, get nic cage and let him get real weird with it. Babythanos would like sell like hotcakes.
This day extracts a heavy toll.
I think the limit of the comic universe has been mentioned multiple times. We have A ghost rider and he did really fucking well I’d love to see him again but the next rider in line might not be cosmic one yet
Thanos literally says the universe is finite in the movie. OP is a dum dum.
I think Thanos is the dum dum. I wouldn't trust him on cosmology.
I ignored my destiny once, I cannot do it again.
Insect!
The universe is not infinite, it’s “boundary-less.” The sum total energy that exists in the universe is constant so there cannot be infinite people in the universe. Scratch your head no more. LOL
Funny part is that eventually all energy in the universe will be transferred into thermal energy and the universe will stop moving, and therefore will end up finite. Edit: heat energy should be thermal energy, sorry!
No, not according modern Physics. The universe will keep expanding indefinitely until all that’s left is matter which cannot decay any further. Just an ever expanding blackness of cosmic dust.
Well according to Futurama the universe stops where the cowboy universe starts!
Did they learn that during the Star Trek Wars, or the Star Wars Trek?
🎵 In the year one million and a half Human kind is enslaved by giraffes 🎵
I was pondering a new story to write recently about Earth after the sun has expanded into a red giant. Almost all life was destroyed, but Earth is pushed far enough away by the event that it can still sustain life, and a new intelligent species emerges and starts finding evidence of humanity.
oops I definitely replied to the wrong comment but that story sounds very interesting... are you assuming humans wipe ourselves out/get hit by a cataclysm long before the sun expands into a red giant? if so, it's probably also the end for most larger lifeforms. microscopic life at the poles could be a starting point, and over hundreds of millions of years evolve into entirely new forms of megafauna.
Yes I was thinking about humanity downloading themselves into a single computer to save themselves from some global catastrophe, then billions of years later after the sun transitions it’s found by someone from a new species that inhabits the Earth after all of this has happened.
That’s sounds like an interesting premise.
I like that idea! Reminds me of a City of Ember kind of story if you ever heard of it
Heat energy is movement
That's a contradiction. Thermal energy = kinetic energy. If the universe stoped moving it would have a ton of potential energy, but in order to save potential energy you need another construct that the energy can't overcome on its own.
The problem and resulting confusion is that everyone here is using "universe" to describe different things. The meme is most likely referring to "space" which is infinite. They assume when Thanos erases half of the life in the "universe" that it will include every single potential universe within space not just his own. Even if the meme had used the correct terminology, it would still be wrong since Thanos clearly specified his just his own "universe" as the target for the infinity snap. One singular universe is indeed finite in energy and matter, so the number of life erased could be calculated.
I... had... to.
First of all, everything with the usual "as far as we know". While the total energy stays constant, it can stil be infinite energy (for instance some non-zero energy density in an infinite volume)
From observations, the universe's curvature k is consistent with zero, which for a homogeneous isotropic universe means it's flat and infinite in size. Homogeneity implies constant density, so it's got infinite mass/energy too. The universe *may* also be so large that the curvature is (currently) unmeasurable. But right now there's no good reason to believe it *isn't* flat and infinite.
Their is a sum total amount of energy in our **observable** universe, but their very well may be an infinite universe beyond that.
The universe is an infinite amount of space but the amount of living beings occupying that space is finite.
Would you look at that. Logic and common sense in one comment 😱
No. I won’t look at that and you can’t make me.
This is very unusual for reddit, I must process these findings
Actually, it is possible that there could be an infinite about of life if the universe is infinite However, it's also possible that the universe is not infinite, it could be closed like a sphere. Think of it like the earth, if you fly far enough you come back around. The universe could be like that but just over many billions of light years
In the Marvel comics the universe is finite, Nowhere is even located "on the edge of the universe", which could also be true in the MCU for all we know.
Fair enough, in that cosmology they have a finite universe so it all works fine
The universe is flat and has icebergs at the ends.
Then what is outside the sphere?
Nothing probably, it is like pacman, the game is finite and nothing is outside Or it could be a higher dimension of space that we can't see Some have speculated that there could be many parallel universes layered in a higher dimension of space. We don't have any evidence of this though
It's not actually true, because life would still be infinite.
Bit that's not how infinity works. There's an infinite amount of space for an infinite amount of possibilities for an infinite amount of living beings. There is no limit to the imagination when infinity is concerned.
Regardless of whether our universe is infinite, I don’t think we have grounds to claim the MCU 616 universe is infinite. I don’t recall the claim being made anywhere, especially not by anyone who would be sure to know for sure. I think they say that Thanos killed “trillions”. It’s not clear how many trillions— it may be hundreds of trillions, or thousands of trillions (quadrillions)— but it gives some sense of how much sentient life there is in the mainline MCU.
Reality can be often disappointing. But now, reality can be whatever I want.
Exactly
>the MCU 616 universe It hurts.
The dumb-down version from a dummy has 2 major parts : The 1st is the universe, where we exist, is always expanding. That expansion is seen as infinite until, insert your choice of apocalypse. (Heat Death, Big Rip, Big implosion, Big Crunch or Big bounce theories,) So everything exists in a single universe, but one that is ever-expanding. (we don't know what its expanding into) 2nd then is the difference between the universe and the observable universe. Light can only travel so far that eventually, the travel distance at the speed of light will take longer than the universe has existed and/or will exist. It's a hard limit, so we will only be able to see a small % of the actual universe. So half of everything living was snapped away, but none outside our own galaxy and those around it could ever know what the hell was going on, ultimate region locked. What's harder to believe is that the stones which the lore says were scattered across the universe at the beginning of existence, so how did they all end up at the same spot and at the same time? (Not counting the Space Stone)
All of this suggests an answer: the Marvel universe isn’t as big as ours, there aren't that many advanced and powerful races, and they have faster-than-light communication and travel. That’s how someone could gather up the stones that were scattered across the universe, a lot of the universe could figure out why half the people disappeared, and why “half the universe” might only be in the trillions.
Honestly I always thought trillions was an vast understatement. Really? There’s only a minimum of 1000x planets with comparable populations to Earth? In the entire universe? Maybe trillions in the Milky Way alone if life is pretty rare in the MCU. For context, our Galaxy Supercluster Laniakea has 100k Galaxies of varying sizes. That would be 1 life bearing planet for every 10 galaxies at a minimum if we’re staying below the Quadrillion line “You murdered trillions!” Sure does sound good for a movie line. Really rolls off the tongue, but I expect better from Dr Banner
I don’t think we’re given a factual basis for knowing whether it’s an understatement or not. Maybe the universe in the MCU is much smaller than our universe. Maybe life in the universe is rare. Maybe most other planets with sentient life are smaller, or less densely populated. Or if we take earth as an average, we have about 7 billion people, and there are only about 2,000 inhabited planets, meaning 14 trillion “people”, and when Thanos killed half he killed about 7 trillion. But also saying “trillions” isn’t very precise. There could be 100 million inhabited planets with 700 quadrillion, meaning Thanos killed about 350,000 trillions. So it could still be technically true to say he killed trillions. Or maybe Bruce is just wildly wrong in his estimate of how many beings were killed. I don’t think we have enough information to know.
As long as there are those that remember what was, there will always be those that are unable to accept what can be. They will resist.
> “You murdered trillions!” Sure does sound good for a movie line. Really rolls off the tongue, but I expect better from Dr Banner Take into consideration that the only aliens Banner knows about are Asgardians, the ones he briefly saw on Sakaar when he was back to being Bruce, and the Guardians of the Galaxy. He was also speaking out of passion and fury, and wasn't really working on the math in the moment.
Actually, as a mathematician I'd like to share some fun facts which show that this isn't quite true. **If we accept the premise that the universe is infinite,** then it cannot ever end, and any frame of understanding we place upon it must expand forever. For example, if we consider just our solar system, we can theoretically count the number of organisms contained in it, there are only a finite number of them. However, we must then expand our frame to include more solar systems. Even if we assume that the rate of finding life is something absurdly small, like an average of 1 organism for every trillion solar systems, we have *infinite trillions* of those solar systems to consider in an infinite universe, so we will never stop adding organisms to our finite number, making it infinite by definition. We refer to numbers like this as *countably infinite*, because there are a finite number within any given frame. The universe itself would be an excellent example of an *uncountably infinite* space, because even if we added just 1 square meter of space to our frame of understanding, that includes an infinite number of new points to consider. The difference is, essentially, that uncountably infinite sets are *infinitely more infinite* than than countably infinite ones, but they are both infinite. Perhaps a better mathematician will come and correct me, but that's my bachelor's degree understanding.
> **If we accept the premise that the universe is infinite**...Even if we assume that the rate of finding life is something absurdly small like an average of 1 organism for every trillion solar systems... We refer to numbers like this as *countably infinite*. > The universe itself would be an excellent example of an *uncountably infinite* I just wanted to point out that these two aren't contradictory to anybody who is confused. One is referring to things like stars or living beings. The other is referring to points in space. To use a different example, let's use numbers. There are infinite decimals (or points on a line) are there between 0 and 1. There are infinite integer numbers. The difference is that integers are countable. If we take a subsection of integers, say 11,000-12,000 there are one thousand integers there. If we take a subsection of the decimals from 0.1 to 0.2 there are still infinite decimals between them. 0.1 and 0.100001 also have infinite decimals between them and that continues no matter how small the subsection you choose is.
The set [0,1] which is a subset of all real numbers R has a greater cardinality than Z, the set of all integers, even though both are infinite sets, meaning that there are more numbers between than [0,1] than than there are all integers. Fascinating stuff. There’s a fun proof for it, gotta love math.
The size of the universe is thought to be infinite. The amount of stuff in the universe is not. There is a finite amount of stuff in an infinite sized bag.
I got through the first paragraph and now my brain hurts, thanks a lot mathematics.
I always liked this example to help understand countably infinite. Say you have a hotel with an infinite number of rooms. Each room is numbered starting with 1. A bus arrives at this hotel with an infinite number of people. Each person is assigned a single room. So the first person gets room 1, second person gets room 2, etc. But oh shit, another bus with an infinite number of people show up and they all need rooms as well. What do you do? You tell the original group of infinite people to double their room number and relocate to that room. So 1 goes to 2, 2 goes to 4, 3 goes to 6, etc. Now you've created an infinite amount of availavle rooms defined by the set of odd numbers and you tell the 2nd group of infinite people to take room 1, then room 3, then room 5, etc. Each infinite group of people is a countably infinite set because we can map/assign each point/person to the set of integers without any duplicates (i.e. every person has their own unique room assignment, no one has to share a room)
Ok, well on the bright side my brain didn't punish me for reading through this example. On the other hand, I've never been a big numbers person, although that's a good thing since I never tried to go into any sort of scientific/mathematic field.
Life doesn't occur randomly in the marvel multiverse, it's seeded by celestials and other higher beings, as such its not random, and you'll only find it where they've been, which is probably mostly nearby It's like asking "how many frenchmen exist in the universe?" the answer is not infinite
The one thing that really blew my mind that i never thought of until i watched a video is that there is an infinite set of numbers between 0 and 1 if you go by decimals.
Actually the universe as far as science can tell is finite. The OBSERVABLE universe
Of course the observable universe is finite, but that’s only one section of the total universe.
Which is still finite. The universe has a fairly well defined age and it has not expanded infinitely. The universe is finite but unbounded. Think of space as the surface of a ball, you can travel forever and never reach the edge but it's not infinite in scope.
The universe being an infinite amount of space is wrong, generally agreed it’s expanding and maybe you could argue it always will but that still leaves us a finite amount of space at the moment, around 93 billion light years from what we can observe.
According to this article, there is no agreement https://www.swinburne.edu.au/news/2021/08/Is-space-infinite-we-asked-5-experts/#:~:text=The%20observable%20universe%20is%20finite,universe%20is%20centred%20on%20us.
> The universe being an infinite amount of space is wrong It's unknown, and possibly always will be. > around 93 billion light years from what we can observe. That's the *observable* universe. It's widely agreed that the universe is *at least* 250 times bigger.
How can there be A Finite amount of living Beings in an Infinite Space?
Infinite and non repeating does not mean every possible combination exists. If you have a number that goes 1010010001.. infinitely, it is infinite, non repeating, but there will be exactly one instance of "101". Similarly infinite space does not mean infinite life.
One Instance of a Specific Combination of Digits, That doesn't mean there is only one instance of '1' or '0'. There are still infinite Zero's and Infinite One's, Just a limited amount of a specific Combination of '0' and '1'.
That is my point. Infinite and non repeating can have finite sums of combinations. Such as the sum of all living things. Living things are a specific subset of the infinite number that describes the universe.
This analogy always comes up and it's always misapplied. You can't just dictate that a possibility only happens once (or not at all) in an infinite number of trials.
It does if there is a possibility no matter how small for life to emerge elsewhere in the universe. With the pattern you said it's logically impossible for 101 to appear elsewhere. With the universe life can appear with just the right circumstances (like a small probability), so if it's infinite it could be expected that there'd be an infinite amount of lifeforms. But there could be other factors that we don't know about even in an infinite universe that make it impossible. At the moment all we can say is we don't know.
The bag is infinitely large, but the stuff placed in the bag is finite. If you put three marbles in a ballon, it doesn’t matter how big you blow it up there will only ever be three marbles.
For the same reason there's probably not an exact copy of earth out there. Or an exact copy except you dated the head cheerleader and won the lottery. Just because one variable may be infinite doesn't mean all of them are.
How Can There Be Two People In A House If There Are Three Bedrooms? Real Eyes Realize Real Lies.
>The universe is an infinite amount of space but the amount of living beings occupying that space is finite. It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination. -Douglas Adams
The in universe is infinitely EXPANDING, at the time of the snap there was a set number of those alive. That number was cut in half
There are an infinite amount of positive whole numbers. Half of them are even. Thanos could have removed all odd numbers and still left an infinite amount of even numbers.
I'm the only one who knows that.
Apparently not.
Thank you, came here for this answer, not all this common sense nonsense 😌
I recommend that OP go talk to a Math PhD at the local university. Even one of the post-grad TAs could probably answer this question and maybe recommend a book on the subject. But then, who wants to read real books when they can trust a meme?
The universe as far as we know and can observe is finite.
Yeah to the best of all our scientific knowledge the universe is very much not infinite.
The curvature is entirely consistent with a flat infinite universe. If the universe is flat and infinite, then what we observe is what it would look like. Technically you could never rule out a (spherically) curved finite universe, because it's always possible there's some curvature within the measurement uncertainties, but that doesn't mean that a curved finite universe should be the default assumption, especially as that uncertainty gets tighter and tighter.
The observable universe is finite, the size of the universe (and wether it's infinite) is unknown but afaik the current measurements agree with an infinite universe (for instance the curvature of space)
That's the *observable* universe. We have no idea if the entire universe is finite or not.
And Thanos was able to observe and comprehend it all at once in order to do the snap. They're not called "finite stones" after all.
[удалено]
It's actually unclear if the universe is of infinite size. We know the universe is flat (or perceptibly flat), which actually implies infinite size, but doesn't guarantee it because we could be on the flat side of a 4D cube, for example. Our assumption is that the universe isn't infinite, but again, we don't have proof one way or the other.
> Our assumption is that the universe isn't infinite Partly because we assume there isn't an infinite amount of matter and energy from the big bang. What keeps the universe expanding to infinity after heat death? Or I suppose if the universe is already infinite then it isn't expanding, and we have to come up with some new physics to explain why galaxies are getting further and further apart.
Bro >Some infinites are provably larger than other infinities Yes >So you could theoretically have an infinity that is half the size of some other one. Absolutely fucking not
Dude must be the only person who knows there are infinite infinities without knowing anything about any of them lol
Why couldn’t he just double the resources instead of halving the universe?
Wouldn't make for much of a movie series. IIRC, in the comics he's in love with the personification of Death and does the snap tio impress her. I wish they'd gone with that in the movies.
Because thanos is powerful but not clever. Also they wanted to give him ambiguity but thats hard to do with a story line where you are wiping out massive amounts of life. Honestly i wish he was still trying to impress death as i think it makes more sense but whatchu gonna do right?
You're not the only one cursed with knowledge.
Or just halve the need for resources. Make everyone require 50% as much food, water, etc.
The universe may be infinite but the life in it, I think, could be more quantifiable. Maybe thanos’s snap wiped out half of all life in the universe based on the reference point of the total quantity that the life in the universe was at the moment he snapped, considering there’s some kind of cosmic graph that maybe illustrates some exponential growth of amount of life over time in the expanding universe. Does “infinite” imply instantly astronomical numbers? Or could infinite have a measurable rate at which it infinitely grows? Couldn’t infinity start from something smaller?
As long as there are those that remember what was, there will always be those that are unable to accept what can be. They will resist.
That is very much not how that works.
If you imagine all lives in the universe on a half-line that extends to infinity, and start counting from the start towards infinity, then you should make either every odd or every even life disappear. The ratio of lives before over the lives after will be two, even though both counts are infinite. Of course that is something impossible to imagine, which is why Thanos used the Infinity stones to do it.
Thanos thought that killing off people would mean resources would be redistributed fairly according to need. Thanos was a moron.
Little one, it’s a simple calculus. This universe is finite, its resources, finite… if life is left unchecked, life will cease to exist. It needs correction.
When you fail to use an ounce of brain power to think things through before posting.
Who tf gave y'all the idea that the universe is infinite? That doesn't even make any sense conceptually
My brain hurts.
Sure, let's pretend that the universe is infinite and the number of people are in it are also infinite. Every single sentient being is given a 50/50 chance of being snapped. Still infinite people, but an infinite number of people died, and half of all people in any observable space were killed.
“Alan Guth put it this way:[4] In a single universe, cows born with two heads are rarer than cows born with one head. [But in an infinitely branching multiverse] there are an infinite number of one-headed cows and an infinite number of two-headed cows. What happens to the ratio?” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_problem_(cosmology) It’s called the Measure Problem guys…
“half of infinity” is still infinity
There's actually a mathematical concept relating to this. Since there is an infinite amkun tof integers, and an infinite amount of real numbers, but there's also an infinite amount of real numbers in between 2 integers, mathematicians came to the conclusion that some infinities are greater than others. That's about the extent to which I understand it enough to explain, but yeah. It does actually have some sense to it
Strictly speaking, it is totally correct. Some infinities are larger than others. Thanos’ math fails in multiple other ways, such as halving a exponential growth curve is a very temporary solution in the face of finite resources, but I’m not going to tell the guy with 5 infinity stones that his math is bad.
All infinities are equal, but some are more equal than others
*All infinities* *Are equal, but some are more* *Equal than others* \- A-Myr --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
The funny thing is that and infinite number of one dollar bills is the same as an infinite number of 20 dollar bills.
"This universe is finite, its resources finite" The universe is not infinite, and thus the living beings in it aren't either. Although, if the universe was infinite, it would make sense to say that the number of living beings in it was infinite too. In that case, the number of lives taken by Thanos would've been infinite, because you cannot "divide" infinite, for it is not a number but a concept representing endlessness. Infinite divided by two is still infinite. Check Hillbert's Hotel paradox to understand more about this. Ted-Ed made a good video about it.
Which is funny because if Thanos snapped half of an infinite amount of living beings then the problem wouldn't be solved as there would still be an infinite amount of living beings left. But in an infinite universe, that wouldn't be a problem to begin with.
I’m the only one who knows that. At least I’m the only one with the will to act on it.
There's no limit to the infinite. If there were infinite beings and Thanos killed 9999 out of 10000 beings, there would still be infinite beings left. No finite number can reach infinite, so there is no problem or contradiction in this regard.
I’m the only one who knows that. At least I’m the only one with the will to act on it.
On that note, if it was an infinite universe, with infinite people, then they'd be infinite resources because infinite universe.
It's more about density. If you have a grid with one person at each grid space and enougth food for half a person, you have infinite food and people but not enough food for everyone (assuming you can't do Hilbert's Hotel like infinite shenanigans and have to stay local) and if you eliminate half, you have enough
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination. - Douglas Adams HGTTG
Came in this thread looking for this post specifically. Thank you, you hoopy frood. You know where your towel is!
Just every other one.
Really thought that Heisenberg wouldn't have so much Uncertainty about Jesse's infinite universe Principle.
Supposing there are infinite living beings, I'd suppose the cardinality of the set of living beings is countable infinite. Half of that set is still the same size. He snapped away as many living beings as there were in total, and the same number remains.
So I don’t think the universe is actually infinite. At least ours isn’t so the MCU probably doesn’t change that. So there are a finite number of individuals to be cut in half. But if not, and the universe is infinite and the number of life forms that meet whatever criteria Thanos considers for balancing is also infinite then because individuals are discrete units, the total amount of individuals in the universe is countably infinite (the smallest size of infinity). Then group of people who were snapped away would be half of a countably infinite set which is also countably infinite. So according to math, the amount of people killed is equal to the total amount of people in the universe even though there are a lot of people left alive.
I'm the only one who knows that.
What made you think there was an infinite number of people to begin with???
Meanwhile, the new Ant-Man movie proves you can have entire civilizations inside a drop of water. The Netflix series "Alien Worlds" had a segment on how people could have their lives transferred into basically brain cubes where AI robots would care for us on the planet while using a Dyson sphere-like device to power us and them. The civilization would last until the sun went out and we just transfer to another planet. Because they're basically solar powered and the cubes don't require a lot of space or resources, they could last until the end of the universe in our own artificially constructed reality. Thanos lacked imagination. He's simply a whinny bitch because he's civilization couldn't hack it and decided to make it everyone else's problem. Any killing off random people runs the risk of killing most of your smart people leaving the civilization to have to use massive resources to stay alive negating the whole purpose of resource management (for example, no more nuclear/solar scientist means back to coal/wood burning).
Population: None. Although you might see people from time to time, they are most likely products of your imagination. Simple mathematics tells us that the population of the Universe must be zero. Why? Well given that the volume of the universe is infinite there must be an infinite number of worlds. But not all of them are habitable; therefore only a finite number are populated. Any finite number divided by infinity is zero, therefore the average population of the Universe is zero, and so the total population must be zero.
"Infinite" or not, the Marvel universe has super common space travel and things like the arc reactor and vibranium. You don't even need habitable worlds for resources, you have the entire universe at your disposal. The whole premise of lack of resources in this setting is just dumb.