[ExI] Holy cow!

[Jason Resch]

On Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 9:58 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 13, 2026 at 9:47 AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Consider that this would only be run on a computer that actually
> >> exists - which, by consequence of existing, has finite memory and thus
> >> a maximum exact value that it can hold in memory.  So, for a given
> >> computer, we can know if foo() will be called, since we only need to
> >> calculate up to that maximum number.
> >
> > Only?
>
> Only, to see what will happen on that particular computer - even for a
> supercomputer.
>

A typical computer today has 1 GB of memory.

For a computer with 1 GB of memory to count through the maximum number of
distinct states it can represent it would need to iterate through 2^(number
of bits of memory) or 2^(2^33), or 2^(8 billion and change).

Modern encryption keys are only 256 bits long, because no super computer
can ever hope to count to 2^256.

Jason
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