On 7/8/2016 10:22 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 7:18 PM, Brent Meeker <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>wrote:
​> ​
Information about the past is available to us (at least according
to our present understanding of the laws of physics).
​If Quantum Mechanics is correct (and at the very least we know it's
incomplete as it does not include gravity) then information is
conserved, but the process to extract that information takes both time
and energy, the less time the more energy is needed.
That brings up an interesting point. What does it mean to "extract"
information that is already present? I think it means amplifying it to
a classical level, i.e. such that it can be cloned and shared. QM
essentially says you can only extract half the information, in the above
sense, due to the uncertainty relations. That doesn't mean you can't
manipulate and compute with all of the information. Quantum computers
will theoretically be able to do that and will not dissipate energy,
thus avoiding Landauer's limit.
Now I don't think human brains operate at the quantum level (they're too
hot), so I think duplicating a brain is possible at the functional level.
Brent
If your brain is burned up or eaten by worms the information that was
in it may in some sense still exist but there may not be enough energy
in the observable universe to extract it and make use of it before
protons decay in 10^35 years or so destroying the physical universe
and making all further computations impossible. However if my brain
has been frozen in liquid Nitrogen it would take astronomically less
time and energy to extract the information in it than it would with
your worm food brain or burned up brain.
John K Clark ​
--
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]
<mailto:[email protected]>.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>.
Visit this group at https://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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
