5 ms·

Off-topic query: The above linked aeon.co article has these opening lines: After you die, your body’s atoms will disperse and find new venues, making their way

by swatkat 11y ago

Off-topic query: The above linked aeon.co article has these opening lines: After you die, your body’s atoms will disperse and find new venues, making their way into oceans, trees and other bodies. But according to the laws of quantum mechanics, all of the information about your body’s build and function will prevail. The relations between the atoms, the uncountable particulars that made you you, will remain forever preserved, albeit in unrecognisably scrambled form – lost in practice, but immortal in principle. Can anyone point me to the article or wiki of this theory/phenomenon? I would like to read up more about it.

Natanael_L 11y ago
Study the overlap between information theory / entropy and physics.
wodenokoto 11y ago
If you think of the world as being deterministic then the way your atoms will react with other atoms (their place in time and space) will be a direct consequence of where they were before, which again is a consequence of their previous state and we can track this all the way back to your current life.
- deathanatos 11y ago
  That assumes that the universe is both deterministic and reversible. SHA2 is deterministic, but good luck reversing it. Essentially, to work backwards, time, when going forwards from state A would need to move to some unique state B. Consider two hills with a valley between them. In one universe, I roll a ball down one hill. In the other, I roll it down the opposite hill. In both, the ball ends up in the valley, and the information about which hill the ball rolled down is lost. You could perhaps argue that other effects (me disturbing the air on the hill I walked up) might still imply which hill the ball rolled down, but the question really is if such a scenario could exist, probably in a more simple form.
  - tfgg 11y ago
    Right, and as far as we know, quantum mechanics evolves the wave function in a time-reversible fashion.

by swatkat 11y ago

Natanael_L 11y ago

Study the overlap between information theory / entropy and physics.

wodenokoto 11y ago

If you think of the world as being deterministic then the way your atoms will react with other atoms (their place in time and space) will be a direct consequence of where they were before, which again is a consequence of their previous state and we can track this all the way back to your current life.

deathanatos 11y ago
That assumes that the universe is both deterministic and reversible. SHA2 is deterministic, but good luck reversing it. Essentially, to work backwards, time, when going forwards from state A would need to move to some unique state B. Consider two hills with a valley between them. In one universe, I roll a ball down one hill. In the other, I roll it down the opposite hill. In both, the ball ends up in the valley, and the information about which hill the ball rolled down is lost. You could perhaps argue that other effects (me disturbing the air on the hill I walked up) might still imply which hill the ball rolled down, but the question really is if such a scenario could exist, probably in a more simple form.
- tfgg 11y ago
  Right, and as far as we know, quantum mechanics evolves the wave function in a time-reversible fashion.