My view is that information is not identical with the physical, but all
information is instantiated as physical. For example stones can be used
to spell out words and hence may be said to instantiate information, but
that overlooks the fact that the representation of information is only
relative to someone who knows that language. Otherwise it is just
stones. So not everything physical is information; that's just a way of
looking at it, like energy or position.
Brent
On 11/15/2024 4:29 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Thu, Nov 14, 2024 at 5:27 PM Brent Meeker <[email protected]>
wrote:
*>> Me: The idea of entropy is inextricably linked with
information, and information is physical; Landauer's
principle allows us to calculate the fundamental lower
bound on the energy needed to erase one bit of
information, it is _kT ln 2_, where k is the Boltzmann
constant and T is the temperature in degrees kelvin. At
room temperature it's about 2.9 x 10^-21 joules per bit.
That sure sounds physical to me.*
/>Sounds like a theory to me.
"https://arxiv.org/html/2402.15812v1";
<https://arxiv.org/html/2402.15812v1>/
*>> Me: Sounds like a theory to me too, maybe it's true, but even
if it is I note that they include with: *
*/"/**/Although our erasing strategy can operate in a regime that
goes beyond the Landauer limit, the statement that the erasure of
information always produces heat still holds true. In fact, as
discussed in Subsec. III B, the memory always ends up in the
ground state by releasing some amount of heat. In this context,
the present erasure protocol can also be understood as a perfect
cooling process. In this context, the present erasure protocol
can also be understood as a perfect cooling process. Our results
strengthen the view that quantum processes can surpass certain
classical thermodynamic limits, and may contribute to the
progress of the emerging field of green computing"/*
*>> So information is still physical*
/> Chalk on a blackboard is physical too but it isn't entropy just
because you write S=kT ln(2)./
*That would be correct, the equation is irrelevant. The chalk on the
blackboardis not physical just because it's used to write a particular
equation, the chalk is physical because it is capable of encoding
information and it is capable of interacting with other bits of
information that are also encoded physically. Even one molecule of
CaCO₃can encode information because now you know that a molecule of
chalk is at that one particular point in spacetime and not at some
other point. *
*I would say that the best definition of "physical" that I know of is
that something is physical if and only if it is capable, at least in
theory, of encoding information. It wouldn't be very practical but
even entropy could encode information, a high entropy state could
encode 1 and a low entropy state encode 0. It turns out that according
to General Relativity even completely empty spacetime can have a
memory, after a gravitational wave passes through a region of
spacetime it does not return to exactly the same shape it had before
the wave, there is a very tiny difference. *
*Does space-time remember? The search for gravitational memory
<https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25934501-400-does-space-time-remember-the-search-for-gravitational-memory/>
*
*I think the ideaof information and computation existing in some sort
of a platonic heaven in the complete absence of anything physical is
ridiculous; that's why I think physics is more fundamental than
mathematics. *
*>> Forget many worlds forget quantum mechanics, even Newton
knew that if you say "X measured my foot" then that implies X
is consciousness, or at least an intelligence. If you say "X
changed my foot" then X may or may not be conscious or
intelligent. *
/> Then// what do you call all the decoherence implementing
interactions not involving consciousness or intelligence,/
*A change.*
> / It was my impression you called them all measurements in the past.
/
*If so then that was probably because I was talking about a thought
experiment,and those almost always involve an observer, and observers
are conscious, or at least intelligent. A measurement is just a
particular type of change. *
*John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis
<https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>*
ptc
*
*
*
*
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