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Why would we entertain this conjecture? Why is it plausible in the slightest, since it seems to clash with intuition that information is a completely separate t

by jl6 3y ago

Why would we entertain this conjecture? Why is it plausible in the slightest, since it seems to clash with intuition that information is a completely separate thing to mass-energy?

cratermoon 3y ago
> it seems to clash with intuition that information is a completely separate thing to mass-energy? How intuitive is the mass-energy equivalence? Before Einstein's era, people might have said that such an idea clashes with the intuition that is a completely separate thing from energy.
- jl6 3y ago
  I didn’t say all valid ideas must be intuitive, but that if an idea is not intuitive then we should have some other reason to believe it is worth investigating.
  - foxyv 3y ago
    A few reasons to consider something for study is either existing empirical evidence or internal consistency of a theory. The reason information conservation and energy/mass/information equivalence are interesting is because there is a possibility for such consistency in a few theories. Physicists are always looking for equivalences and conserved quantities. They are the basis for modern physics. It's how we discovered that 3 of the 4 known forces were all based on the same equivalent principle. You find a conserved quantity that unifies the two forces. Possibly one of the greatest feats of this was Maxwell when he unified electrical and magnetic forces by discovering an equivalence between the two that allowed energy to be conserved. This helped us to discover the underlying principles of light itself and describe it as an electromagnetic wave. Information conservation could prove to unify gravity with the remaining forces. Or not! Or it could break them all apart again. That's just what scientific inquiry is all about.
simcop2387 3y ago
I don't have the knowledge or smarts to give much detail about it but there's some rather interesting parts of this in Quantum Mechanics and Entropy. Along with that it's also one of the fun little areas of things that may or may not be breaking down with our current models around black-holes and our understanding of gravity. It's an active area of research because of this because it may point to a way to reconcile the incompatibilities between QM and Relativity to get a Grand Unified Theory. I believe Loop Quantum Gravity ends up with effects around this mass-energy-information/entropy equivalence idea as an emergent property of how it's trying to reconcile QM and Relativity.
MacsHeadroom 3y ago
>since it seems to clash with intuition Intuition hasn't been a good guide for physics since newton. It's not clear to me that anything physical is separate from the information that describes it though.
- foxyv 3y ago
  Even Newtonian physics can be very non-intuitive. Especially when things get complicated. A lot of experiments done in introductory physics courses revolve around this. Stuff like a feather and a bowling ball falling in a vacuum and throwing a ball on a merry go round. Rotating reference frames are the worst...

by jl6 3y ago

Why would we entertain this conjecture? Why is it plausible in the slightest, since it seems to clash with intuition that information is a completely separate thing to mass-energy?

cratermoon 3y ago

> it seems to clash with intuition that information is a completely separate thing to mass-energy? How intuitive is the mass-energy equivalence? Before Einstein's era, people might have said that such an idea clashes with the intuition that is a completely separate thing from energy.

jl6 3y ago
I didn’t say all valid ideas must be intuitive, but that if an idea is not intuitive then we should have some other reason to believe it is worth investigating.
- foxyv 3y ago
  A few reasons to consider something for study is either existing empirical evidence or internal consistency of a theory. The reason information conservation and energy/mass/information equivalence are interesting is because there is a possibility for such consistency in a few theories. Physicists are always looking for equivalences and conserved quantities. They are the basis for modern physics. It's how we discovered that 3 of the 4 known forces were all based on the same equivalent principle. You find a conserved quantity that unifies the two forces. Possibly one of the greatest feats of this was Maxwell when he unified electrical and magnetic forces by discovering an equivalence between the two that allowed energy to be conserved. This helped us to discover the underlying principles of light itself and describe it as an electromagnetic wave. Information conservation could prove to unify gravity with the remaining forces. Or not! Or it could break them all apart again. That's just what scientific inquiry is all about.

simcop2387 3y ago

I don't have the knowledge or smarts to give much detail about it but there's some rather interesting parts of this in Quantum Mechanics and Entropy. Along with that it's also one of the fun little areas of things that may or may not be breaking down with our current models around black-holes and our understanding of gravity. It's an active area of research because of this because it may point to a way to reconcile the incompatibilities between QM and Relativity to get a Grand Unified Theory. I believe Loop Quantum Gravity ends up with effects around this mass-energy-information/entropy equivalence idea as an emergent property of how it's trying to reconcile QM and Relativity.

MacsHeadroom 3y ago

>since it seems to clash with intuition Intuition hasn't been a good guide for physics since newton. It's not clear to me that anything physical is separate from the information that describes it though.

foxyv 3y ago
Even Newtonian physics can be very non-intuitive. Especially when things get complicated. A lot of experiments done in introductory physics courses revolve around this. Stuff like a feather and a bowling ball falling in a vacuum and throwing a ball on a merry go round. Rotating reference frames are the worst...