4 ms·

> It is not Eventually Consistent... If there's anything the universe is, it's Eventually Consistent. Nobody has ever found a case where it isn't. Relativity w

by rlpb 8y ago

> It is not Eventually Consistent... If there's anything the universe is, it's Eventually Consistent. Nobody has ever found a case where it isn't. Relativity was predicted to exist because "eventual consistency" was assumed axiomatic in our universe. Essentially, eventual consistency is exactly why the universal speed limit exists. > but rather, it is Infinitely Inconsistent We will fall behind in knowledge of events, but causal knowledge of an event in our universe, if it exists, is always consistent. Knowledge of events in our universe is like an immutable, append-only database (think git), not data that gets updated (like a key/value database).

stcredzero 8y ago
> If there's anything the universe is, it's Eventually Consistent. Please disregard this inconsistency guff! The Universe isn't Eventually Consistent. It's simply consistent. What's really going on, is that some programmers don't understand relativity. Relativity doesn't actually say that everyone gets their own reality. There is a consistent consensual reality. Spacetime intervals are consistent between all observers. The time ordering of events changes depending on the observer's POV and relative motion, but there is an underlying consistent reality that's the same for everybody. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFAEHKAR5hU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFAEHKAR5hU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YFrISfN7jo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YFrISfN7jo The "Spacetime Globe" by Minute Physics is the most helpful thing I've seen, flat out, for understanding relativity. > Knowledge of events in our universe is like an immutable, append-only database This is correct. Relativity just says that different users get different results, depending on how they query. The underlying database is the same for everybody. (Some parts of it are forbidden access, of course.) Programmers have been causing physicists to facepalm since at least the USENET days. I should know. I was one of them!
- rlpb 8y ago
  > Please disregard this inconsistency guff! The Universe isn't Eventually Consistent. It's simply consistent. We agree except for what we mean by "eventually" which is just semantics. What I mean by "eventually" is that eventually all the information arrives for my (or anyone's) model of the universe to match reality, analogous to eventually consistent distributed databases. Like an eventually consistent database however we can never catch up completely, since new events are happening in the universe all the time. It takes time for this information to "replicate", but there is no inconsistency. I was following lkrubner's analogy.

by rlpb 8y ago

stcredzero 8y ago

> If there's anything the universe is, it's Eventually Consistent. Please disregard this inconsistency guff! The Universe isn't Eventually Consistent. It's simply consistent. What's really going on, is that some programmers don't understand relativity. Relativity doesn't actually say that everyone gets their own reality. There is a consistent consensual reality. Spacetime intervals are consistent between all observers. The time ordering of events changes depending on the observer's POV and relative motion, but there is an underlying consistent reality that's the same for everybody. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFAEHKAR5hU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFAEHKAR5hU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YFrISfN7jo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YFrISfN7jo The "Spacetime Globe" by Minute Physics is the most helpful thing I've seen, flat out, for understanding relativity. > Knowledge of events in our universe is like an immutable, append-only database This is correct. Relativity just says that different users get different results, depending on how they query. The underlying database is the same for everybody. (Some parts of it are forbidden access, of course.) Programmers have been causing physicists to facepalm since at least the USENET days. I should know. I was one of them!

rlpb 8y ago
> Please disregard this inconsistency guff! The Universe isn't Eventually Consistent. It's simply consistent. We agree except for what we mean by "eventually" which is just semantics. What I mean by "eventually" is that eventually all the information arrives for my (or anyone's) model of the universe to match reality, analogous to eventually consistent distributed databases. Like an eventually consistent database however we can never catch up completely, since new events are happening in the universe all the time. It takes time for this information to "replicate", but there is no inconsistency. I was following lkrubner's analogy.