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Re:A dozen black holes may lie at the centre of our galaxy by placebo on Friday April 06, 2018 @06:18AM (#16772178)
For all practical purposes, I agree with the analogy, but would like to point out that the box might not be infinite so there could be limits to invention.

Take a chess game as an example. No one would say there weren't creative inventions regarding tactics and strategies to win, but the bottom line is that the number of possible chess games, no matter how staggeringly huge, is still finite. In the end, no matter how intelligent the players, there will be a point were nothing will be left to be invented, so perhaps life is also a solved game in that respect.

Re:A dozen black holes may lie at the centre of our galaxy by iamgopal on Friday April 06, 2018 @07:20AM (#16772372)
Also area of that thought ball increase by square. It means every new invention have tons of application in related and unrelated fields, which may help finds another invention. I think we should be able to invent all that is shown in those Hollywood blockbusters by couple of millenium if not more.
Re:A dozen black holes may lie at the centre of our galaxy by marcosdumay on Friday April 06, 2018 @11:02AM (#16773755)
There is something on the order of 10^100 (~2^300) bits of storage available at the Universe. Is the box larger or smaller than that?
Re:A dozen black holes may lie at the centre of our galaxy by Shorel on Friday April 06, 2018 @05:58PM (#16777829)
There are some indications that the Universe itself is unbounded.

In that case the issue is that some parts of the universe are out of reach from other parts, because of the light-speed limit.