Quote:
Originally Posted by thejeff
Of course, if you're contemplating a theoretical perfect world, there is no reason to assume things like the laws of thermodynamics will apply.
You're trying to assume infinite space and infinite stuff, while still holding onto real world economies and population dynamics.
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Thermodynamics would apply in any possible world.
More generally, unless you plan on presenting a fully self-consistent alternate physics to demonstrate these other rules of physics are even *possible*, its far safer to assume that a physics fairly similar to our own is required. You can't just toss physics out and say 'we can imagine arbitrary stuff'. No you can't - matter has to hold together, etc...
Finally, for this to even be meaningful, we have to assume a world where something sort of like humans could live (my tongue-in-cheek 'a perfect world is where everyone is dead' aside), because what's the point in imagining a perfect world if you can't imagine yourself into it?
Infinite stuff: I said the only situation in which it would be even possible for competition to not arise would be infinite stuff. And then of course there's the time component. No matter how infinite the stuff is, you don't have access to infinite amounts of it *right now*. Thus, competition centers on efficiency rather than access. Its still competition. Assuming infinite stuff with infinite access violates quite a few things, chat up a Computer Scientist about sorting algorithms, runtime, and the like.
Exponential population growth is true by definition. That's how breeding works mathematically. It doesn't require any assumptions except that parent(s) give birth to offspring.