4 ms·
Something that consumes an unbounded amount of electricity is hardly a "non-physical thing."
by makk 9y ago
Something that consumes an unbounded amount of electricity is hardly a "non-physical thing."
- Frogolocalypse 9y agoTIL electricity is a physical thing.
- wizardforhire 9y agoSo is data, so are files, so are ledgers. Every program physically resides somewhere... Just because it's infinitesimally small and it's interface obfuscated doesn't mean it isn't real. Cue Feynman quote "the world is real and it's made of atoms!"
- Frogolocalypse 9y agoSo does that mean a 1 weighs more than a 0? Big-endian bytes weigh less than little-endian ones? What about polarization? North heavier than south?
- ncallaway 9y agoIf I move a rock from my left to my right does the rock weight more? Just because a physical thing changes state doesn't mean it weights more.
- Frogolocalypse 9y ago> If I move a rock from my left to my right does the rock weight more? It does to your left and your right. If I have a piece of paper with a one on it, and another one with a zero on it, and I exchange them. Do they weigh differently? Its a bit surprising that I'm being downvoted on a tech forum for asserting that information doesn't have weight.
- xtian 9y ago> Its a bit surprising that I'm being downvoted on a tech forum for asserting that information doesn't have weight. You are being downvoted for espousing an erroneous definition of the word "physical".
- Frogolocalypse 9y agoI think the clarifications on what is physical were pretty clear. The information in a ledger isn't physical. The information stored in data isn't physical. It's information. Information isn't physical no matter what medium you choose to store it in.
- jcoffland 9y agoI have to agree with you. If I take an empty hard drive and fill it with information, clearly it's information content has increased but its physical weight would be the same. You could argue that it contained 0s or 0xffs to begin with but since they are all the same the quantity of information is less. So information itself does not have a weight but it exists in the state of physical objects which do have weight.
- natalyarostova 9y agoOf course information has non-zero weight. Whether on a harddrive, or in your brain, it is a physical state, which has non-zero weight by definition. Why do you think information can exist that does not consist of matter?
- ouid 9y agoWhat class do you learn about electricity in, in school?
- perbu 9y agoElectricity is certainly physical. It can, after all, kill you.