>Wow, another thing Stanislaw Lem beat the scientists to. >In "Imaginary Magnitude", the "Golem XIV" chapter, Lem has his superintelligences disappear up their

>Wow, another thing Stanislaw Lem beat the scientists to. >In "Imaginary Magnitude", the "Golem XIV" chapter, Lem has his superintelligences disappear up their own metaphorical navels, for their own incomprehensible-to-humans reasons. Of course, you can read between the lines about why the Golems disappeared, but "Do Nothing, Eventually" sounds like a good description. While a bit different from the scenario presented (by TFA and Lem), such a "superintelligence" might get caught up in a singular (or set) of question(s) that dominate its consciousness until the heat-death of the universe. Asimov's The Last Question comes to mind, although the intelligence there is prompted by humans rather than posing such a question itself. That said, it's at least as plausible as TFA and Lem, IMHO. [0] http://www.thelastquestion.net/ http://www.thelastquestion.net/