I’m going to make some scientific assumptions:
I’m still the same human I was before getting the opportunity to make a choice between the above two boons.The Universe is infinitely large.
Let’s consider the book option.
First off, the book has to provide information on a rather large topic, the Universe. Infinitely large, too. What do I reckon would be the size of such a book? Infinite? Ever-expanding?
How long would it take me to read through the book? Infinity? Nah, I don’t have that much time on my hands.
Does my having the book guarantee that I understand everything I read in it? Probably not, like all books.
Does every Secret of the Universe I get to learn have any applications? Feasible ones? Does this even mean I get to learn something new at all? What if the first 100000000000000000000000000000000 (or less) secrets are just things that have already been discovered?
I remember an answer Jake Williams gave to a question, which said something along these lines:
Imagine you convert an infinitely long fraction such as pi, to binary format, discarding everything before and including the decimal point.
You’d have an infinite sequence, of binary information. This would mean that every possible piece of information would be in there, somewhere. The problem is, how do you get to that data?
Now consider the One trillion (US Dollars, I presume) above. No matter what kind of Dollar that is, that effectively makes me theworld’s richest man. That could easily translate, with some strategy, to the World’s Single Most Powerful Man. I think all my material needs are covered at this point. In only one step, accepting the donation.
If I’m interested, I could invest money into any research I wanted to undertake after getting rich. I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to any more.
I’d take the money over the book every time. Thanks. Also, I may become benevolent and start aiding the poor and needy, persons far poorer than me, like Bill Gates. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
__________________________________
There are quite a lot of intellectual people here, it seems. Well, I’ll be part of the non-existent minority who would choose the book that contains $1,000,000,000,000.
Why?
This is ‘Relativity: The Special And The General Theory’ by Albert Einstein.
It’s said to be our key to the Universe and one of the greatest achievement of humanity during the 20th Century.
Now, how many of you can confidently say that if you read this book you’ll understand it completely and fluently like Einstein himself?
And Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is just scratching the surface of the many secrets of the Universe - hell, we don’t even know if it’s truly accurate. There are still many holes that still need to be filled in Einstein’s theory.
What caveat or guarantee do you have of ever understanding the secrets of the Universe contained within at all? For all you care it’s a book written in mythic equations using laws and rules that are yet to be even discovered and about phenomenons that we have yet seen.
The Universe itself is the greatest mystery for a reason: There’s no simple explanation for it.
The book can be copied and studied for millions, if not, billions of years and we still won’t be able to understand a quarter of it - let alone having it for yourself and learn the seemingly arbitrary existence of the Universe.
