Where is the information stored?

[SteelCurtain]

Esq and Alex, I am continuously amazed by you guys' intelligence and ability to formulate ideas into sentences so eloquently. It's fucking astonishing, really.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Stick men indeed



Although to be fair, those are just a representation of a perturbation series.

They look so happy!

[Davka]

Stick men indeed



Although to be fair, those are just a representation of a perturbation series.

They look so happy!

Representations always look happier than the real thing. That perturbation series was smiling for the camera - in reality, it suffers from debilitating depression and a deep inferiority complex.

[Alex K]

You're too kind, SteelCurtain.

---

They look so happy!

Representations always look happier than the real thing. That perturbation series was smiling for the camera - in reality, it suffers from debilitating depression and a deep inferiority complex.

The real thing is a nightmare. Would you believe that there is an entire industry of people spending their entire lifes classifying and evaluating these happy pictures?

[Esquilax]

Esq and Alex, I am continuously amazed by you guys' intelligence and ability to formulate ideas into sentences so eloquently. It's fucking astonishing, really.

In that sense "Information" is simply on the same footing as Energy and any other physical observable, wouldn't you agree?

Hmm. On the one hand, I see what you're saying. On the other, my increasingly powerful need to complicate things to avoid creating loopholes for theism insists that information is conceptual, and thus not on any level with physical things.

If I had to sum it up in a pithy way, I'd say that the physical observable world is one thing, and information is our description of that. But bear in mind that I'm only saying that so we don't have an "ah ha! Therefore god!" moment from Heywood or some other theist down the line; in a general sense, where I don't have to over-engineer every statement I make to avoid the gaze of hawkeyed, legalistic god of the gaps types, I agree with your conclusion there, Alex.

[Heywood]

What?

Where do you get the idea that by smashing two electrons together, you will end up with more matter and more energy? You'll get two electrons' worth of subatomic particles.

---

Your concept is like saying "smash two cars together and you'll get a shower of car particles, everything you need to build a car. Continue to smash the car parts together and conceivably you can have an entire auto-assembly-line, showroom, and a huge lot full of all makes and models of car."

You're not making a lot of sense.

And yes, "where is the information stored" is a puzzle that's currently being worked on. But the answer doesn't include magical multiplication of mass and energy simply by smashing things together.

(there is, of course, the outside energy needed for the smashing, but in you scenario that's arrived at magically as well. Who or what is doing the smashing, if there are only two electrons to begin with?)

---

The reason smashing two electrons together gives you more mass in the form of particles then the two electrons themselves is because of mass energy equivalence. If you started with enough energy and just two electrons you could create enough particles to reconstruct anything.

Yes the outside energy for the smashing is magically derived through the magic of thought experiments. Stop being so nitty and have some fun with it.

[Davka]

What?

Where do you get the idea that by smashing two electrons together, you will end up with more matter and more energy? You'll get two electrons' worth of subatomic particles.

---

Your concept is like saying "smash two cars together and you'll get a shower of car particles, everything you need to build a car. Continue to smash the car parts together and conceivably you can have an entire auto-assembly-line, showroom, and a huge lot full of all makes and models of car."

You're not making a lot of sense.

And yes, "where is the information stored" is a puzzle that's currently being worked on. But the answer doesn't include magical multiplication of mass and energy simply by smashing things together.

(there is, of course, the outside energy needed for the smashing, but in you scenario that's arrived at magically as well. Who or what is doing the smashing, if there are only two electrons to begin with?)

---

The reason smashing two electrons together gives you more mass in the form of particles then the two electrons themselves is because of mass energy equivalence. If you started with enough energy and just two electrons you could create enough particles to reconstruct anything.

Yes the outside energy for the smashing is magically derived through the magic of thought experiments. Stop being so nitty and have some fun with it.

So you're introducing "enough energy" to keep smashing electrons together until you get a Universe.

*shrug*

In that case I don't get the point of the thought experiment. Energy = mass, I thought we had settled that a while back. You could just as well say "what if you converted the entire Universe into energy, except for two electrons?" You'd get the OP.

It strikes me as a trivially true statement, not even a thought experiment.

[Chas]

Imagine completely empty space. Now in that space place two electrons. Smash those electrons together hard enough and you get a shower of other particles....including protons. This suggests the information necessary to construct a proton is contained in the electron. Continue to smash particles together and conceivably you can have an entire universe....just like ours. Does the information necessary to construct a universe just like our exists in just two electrons? If it doesn't where does this information exist?

Besides wondering who has placed two electrons in the universe and how they were accelerated and aimed, why do you think protons would result?

[Heywood]

Ok, sounds good. But be aware that the "landscape" is already a technical term in String Phenomenology where it is used for all possible sets of laws of physics which can arise from the superstring, without making reference to what concretely is going on in the respective universes.

The string theory people borrowed the term "landscape" from evolutionary biologists who used it to describe the set of all possible organism which could evolve. I'm just borrowing already borrowed goods.

To add theistic slant to this thread......just because you guys expect it and I don't want to disappoint you.....the fields are everywhere so they can be said to be omnipresent. The fields, it seems from this discussion, contain all that is knowable so they can be said to be omniscient. Anything that can happen, happens on these fields so in a sense they are omnipotent.

[The Grand Nudger]

Anything "can be said" about anything.