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We will never know the name of a human that lived 50,000 years ago
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
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It’s theoretically impossible to create a system to remember every human that doesn't rely on external storage.
I’ll explain: let’s say that for every human that dies, they will be remembered and live on in the heart of another, living human. Each living human can remember n dead humans.
we can set up an equation
pn >= r
where p is the current population of live humans, r is the amount of dead humans that must be remembered.
We can express the rate of deaths as a proportion of the current living population:
d/dt[r] = pb
Where t is time and b is the instantaneous death rate per captia with respect to time (generally a constant).
Combined with the previous, we get the separable differential equation:
d/dt[r] = pb >= (r/n)b
dr/dt >= rb/n
[1/r] rt >= [b/n] dt
Integrated:
ln|r| >= tb/n+C
r >= e^(tb/n+C)
pn >= r >= e^(tb/n+C)
p >= e^(tb/n+C)/n
So in order for this system to work, the living population must always be growing exponentially, which is not feasible for modern humanity.
You could say that n would also have to increase with time. I'm thinking you have a tribe of 10 then 1 dies then 9 people to remember that person. We can say as time goes on the tribe stays at 10 but the original 10 die off then n = 1. So you could turn n into a function of it then solve the equations to see if it prevents a divergence