My craziest thought ever

[nbake]

So I was a little [censored] up last night and went to the late showing of March of the Penguins. Lets just say that I was doing some really deep thinking throughout the movie.

At some point I realize that given infinite time, many crazy things are possible. Because there are a finite number of combinations for DNA proteins to line up, the exact same person could be created twice. This really blew my mind.

Please respond with your thoughts on this subject, or tell me why it is flawed.

[Piz0wn0reD!!!!!!]

they are called identical twins.

[daryn]

owned

[nbake]

Not just identical twins though. I mean trillions of years apart, different situations, same person. So theoretically in a bigger time scale you could have a guy that shares your DNA hook up with a girl that shares your wife/gf's DNA. Was pretty freaky to me last night.

[PairTheBoard]

So if the Universe collapses back in on itself and pops back out as another big bang on the other side, and does this a sufficient number of Googleplexes upon Googleplexes, it should redevelop somewhere down the line exactly as it did this time, thus producing you and me again. Haven't we been through this before?

PairTheBoard

[TStoneMBD]

no, the op is not "owned". his observation is very interesting and both you and pizowned are just turning his interesting post into a joke.

[WichitaDM]

Ok i realize this isnt a poker forum but for the sake of analogy ill use this. His argument is similar to saying that every possible poker hand has already been played. You take a 10 handed table and every possible combination of starting cards, board cards, and even folds, bets, and calls have been made before in an infinate sample bc there is a limited number of potential combinations. The same argument could be made for DNA right?

[Ringo]

I was thinking this not long ago too!

My chain of thought was brough on after reading that there was a 1 in 6.5 billion chance of a false positive in DNA crime scene matching. So, I took that to mean that there are 6.5bn different permutations of DNA - is that correct, and if so, what would someone with my identical DNA look like?

Obviously environmental and upbringing would have a lot to do with it, but would this person look like me? There's around 6bn people on earth just now, so it's not unlikely there's a few matches for me, or others.

Thoughts?

[David Sklansky]

"So if the Universe collapses back in on itself and pops back out as another big bang on the other side, and does this a sufficient number of Googleplexes upon Googleplexes, it should redevelop somewhere down the line exactly as it did this time, thus producing you and me again."

One googolplex is enough. Learn some math and spelling.

[PairTheBoard]

[ QUOTE ]
"So if the Universe collapses back in on itself and pops back out as another big bang on the other side, and does this a sufficient number of Googleplexes upon Googleplexes, it should redevelop somewhere down the line exactly as it did this time, thus producing you and me again."

One googolplex is enough. Learn some math and spelling.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, one One would have been enough. And Googleplex is the correct spelling for the word Googleplex.

PairTheBoard

[New001]

dictionary.com (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=googolplex)

[David Sklansky]

I don't care about spelling even though I think you are wrong. But why did you avoid my math point?

[PairTheBoard]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't care about spelling even though I think you are wrong. But why did you avoid my math point?

[/ QUOTE ]

I never claimed that googleplex was the correct spelling for the word googolplex. I doubt you even understand the meaning of the word googleplex which has to do with the number of times plex gets googled rather than powers of ten.

Also I did answer the math part. The statement, "and does this a sufficient number of Googleplexes upon Googleplexes" would mean the same thing if "Googleplexes upon Googleplexes" were replaced by "Ones". Or "millions" for that matter. Or even "millions upon millions" if one wished to convey a real whole lot of millions. Are you ok David? You don't seem to be making much sense.

PairTheBoard

[kpux]

[ QUOTE ]
So I was a little [censored] up last night and went to the late showing of March of the Penguins. Lets just say that I was doing some really deep thinking throughout the movie.

At some point I realize that given infinite time, many crazy things are possible. Because there are a finite number of combinations for DNA proteins to line up, the exact same person could be created twice. This really blew my mind.

Please respond with your thoughts on this subject, or tell me why it is flawed.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm pretty sure that given any system and a number of variables that could result in any number of possible outcomes, if you let the system develop an infinite amount of times, every possible outcome will occur.

So it would work for DNA strands or hold 'em hands or universes or anything.

[riverdance]

"learn some math and spelling"

"i don't care about spelling"

you are a petty little whiner, what are you 12?

[coolhandluke]

sure, on the same theory that if you pur enough monkeys in a room with typewriters for long enough, 1 of them will write all of shakespears works. given enough opportunities, anything can happen.

Which means that, given enough times, someone just like me could be walking around somewhere.

NOW where it get's exciting is that given even MORE chances (so there are a few billions of me walking around in a few billions of whens/wheres) one of them could wind up with someone who's looks just like eva longoria.

Gosh, that's a nice thought. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[PairTheBoard]

[ QUOTE ]
"learn some math and spelling"

"i don't care about spelling"

you are a petty little whiner, what are you 12?

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't be too hard on him. I think David was saving up his powers of concentration for the Round of Sixteen Thread, and just resting on this one.

Best Post-Game Interview since the SuperBowl (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Number=3080991&page=0&view=c ollapsed&sb=5&o=14&fpart=1)

PairTheBoard

[kitaristi0]

On a completely unrelated sidenote, TStoneMBD.

Best. Avatar. Ever.

one woman and one man given infinite time would eventualy produce copies of children i suppose but i dont think the possibility exists in yur "x generations down the line" example. someone with a better background in biology than me could better explain but there are other factors besides a limited number of ways to line up proteins on a dna strand. i know for example that your dna contains certain markers which are picked up and passed on over time and is a ever increasing list of sorts. for this reason the dna of a person from the 1000's could never be confused with a modern persons dna. i also dont think that a dna strand is any specific finite length and that the arrangment of proteins is the only difference. evolution probably also mucks up the whole thing.

just a common sense example it would seem that if the population was 10. 5 men 5 women. men are black, women are white, that there would be no chance that a person could reapper in any subsequent generation.

[Cyrus]

[ QUOTE ]
Given infinite time, many crazy things are possible.

[/ QUOTE ]

Given infinite anything, everything is possible. Let's not introduce deal-breakers !

[ QUOTE ]
Because there are a finite number of combinations for DNA proteins to line up, the exact same person could be created twice.

[/ QUOTE ]

Certainly, and anyone arguing otherwise would be arguing against the premise of life itself!

But as to whether that (physical) duplicate would also turn out to be the same "person" as well (in the sense, of having the same mental and psychological attributes as the "original", in other words the same consciousness), I'm afraid that this would be impossible :

It would require the two copies to have the same physical genalogy (in order to have identical hereditary traits), something that would require either time travle backwards to create a copy family or an experiment that lasts a thousand years into the future and the same living environment from day zero onwards (i.e. identical experiences), which is easier than the other attribute to achieve, but, still, colossally difficult.

Competitive bridge would be tic-tac-toe compared to it...

But doubles are already walking the Earth! Has anyone seen his döppelganger yet ?

[henrikrh]

[ QUOTE ]
So I was a little [censored] up last night and went to the late showing of March of the Penguins. Lets just say that I was doing some really deep thinking throughout the movie.

At some point I realize that given infinite time, many crazy things are possible. Because there are a finite number of combinations for DNA proteins to line up, the exact same person could be created twice. This really blew my mind.

Please respond with your thoughts on this subject, or tell me why it is flawed.

[/ QUOTE ]

What about the profound effect of external factors? They would not be as similar as you think. Even identical twins are not really "identical", and since mz twins tend to have similar upbringings your identical independent people would be even more different.

A more radical though would be that in an infinite universe there are infinite possibilities, and with infinite time to search one could find anything. A world identical to our own except we are all look like headless rabbits and talk out of our asses? It's possible, even inevitable in an infinite universe. Not only world something like that or equally absurd (from our perception) a world like that would not just exist on its own, infinite similar and identical worlds would exist.

With infinite time as you said not only would you find one indentical person, you would find an infinite amount of identical people.

Of course this assumes and infinite universe, infinite time and the ability to search such a universe. Don't flame me if my ideas are basic, I don't know jack about philosophy.

[John Cole]

Some say mine is Andy Fox (or at least Rick Nebiolo says this).

[Patrick del Poker Grande]

Wow. This is some crazy [censored].

[gumpzilla]

Try Googling and reading about the Poincare recurrence theorem. It'll blow your mind.

[Beerfund]

[ QUOTE ]
My chain of thought was brough on after reading that there was a 1 in 6.5 billion chance of a false positive in DNA crime scene matching. So, I took that to mean that there are 6.5bn different permutations of DNA - is that correct, and if so, what would someone with my identical DNA look like?

[/ QUOTE ]

No, the reason that there's a small chance of a false positive is because they don't check the entire strand of DNA. Two humans will have the majority of their DNA the same, except for small areas of reapeating sequences. The chances that two people randomly have the exact same DNA is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay higher.