On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 12:54 PM, Edgar L. Owen <[email protected]> wrote:
> Brent, > > If information is not being lost then the amount of information in the > universe is increasing at a tremendous rate as new events occur, and has > been since the beginning. So where is all that new information being > stored? How can ever increasing amounts of information be being stored in > the SAME amount of matter states? > By an increase in Shannon entropy, up to a point. This is why you can compress computer files, for example. Telmo. > > Presumably you do agree that information can't just float around somehow > without actually being encoded in actual matter states? > > I think I know the answer but would like to hear your take on it first.... > > Edgar > > > > On Tuesday, March 18, 2014 8:57:57 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: > >> On 3/18/2014 5:07 PM, LizR wrote: >> >> On 19 March 2014 12:47, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> But in general that would mean knowing the state of everything the >>> system had interacted with in the past, since it is now entangled with >>> them. So even if you suppose there is no collapse of the wavefunction, >>> decoherence has the same effect. >>> >> >> I was only asking about the theoretical possibility, given >> unrealistically perfect information about the state of the system. >> >> >> The universe (assuming unitary QM) is reversible. In fact from the >> standpoint of QM there is no arrow of time - it's deterministic, just like >> Laplace's universe. So, as always, when the word "possibility" is used >> there has to be some context. To *calculate* a history of the universe >> from it's present state would require knowing its *complete* present state, >> including your mental state. Is that "theoretically possible"? I think it >> involves a paradox of self-reference. >> >> To put it another way, in the Game of Life, even with perfect >> information, you can't trace the state of the system backwards because it >> loses information. So even the laws of physics couldn't work backwards in a >> universe based on the GOL. QM, I'm informed, doesn't lose information, so >> (very much in theory) you could work backwards - or (less in theory) the >> laws of physics could. >> >> >> Yes the universe doesn't lose information like the GoL. But relative to >> any point it loses information across spacetime horizons. So there's no >> way to gather that information up into a calculation unless you have some >> God's eye view from outside the universe, in which case you could see the >> past anyway. >> >> There's a couple of nice papers about this by Yasunori Nomura: >> arXiv:1205.267v2 is a popular exposition and arXiv:1205.5550v2 is a more >> technical paper. >> >> Brent >> >> >> I wasn't asking whether I could build a chronoscope and watch the past >> happening on TV. >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> >> >> -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
