[hovden]

Interesting. Do you have a source?

How does it compare to other tech, like nails? Or cups? Shoes?

[bnegreve]

Be careful with large numbers: 10^23 shoes would be roughly 854B shoes for every (~117B) human that have ever lived, that is about 14 million pairs of shoes per individual and per day. I am pretty sure there has never been a market for that many shoes.

[mattkevan]

Truly the shoe event horizon. Next step: become birds.

[intrasight]

IEEE

https://spectrum.ieee.org/transistor-density

Interpolate out and we're close to 10^23

[Fatnino]

Letters?

[smaddox]

Paperclips?

[newswasboring]

An average paper clip is 204.8mm^3. 10^23 of those would be 2.048x10^19 L in volume[1]. That would be only two orders of magnitude less than total volume of oceans 1.33x10^21 L [2]. So I think not.

[1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=volume+of+a+paperclip+t...

[2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=total+volume+of+oceans

[mecsred]

10^23? Maybe if we push all the way to AGI.

[FoeNyx]

Is that a reference to the "Universal Paperclips" game?

[smaddox]

Basically, yes. Or at least it's related. The game is based on (arguably, a misinterpretation of) the writings of Elizer Yudkowski.