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The universe is infinite, so there are no limits.
by roschdal 3y ago
The universe is infinite, so there are no limits.
- Pat_Murph 3y agoGood joke
- imtringued 3y agoIf the universe is infinite then you are a more likely to be a disembodied Boltzmann brain thinking that you have posted a Hackernews comment about the universe being infinite than being a human brain in a human body evolved on a terrestrial planet with limited growth, because that chain of events is far less likely than a spontaneously formed brain.
- ganzuul 3y agoThat's only an artefact of the extended Church-Turing thesis. And you only need about 1000 bits to encode a perceptron so that universe is actually teeming with intelligence anyway.
- bmitc 3y agoI don't think the current models suggest the universe is infinite. As far as I understand, there is a finite amount of atoms supposed. Also, there are very clear examples of physical limits to growth. For example, gravity and its interaction with the other forces prevents animals, buildings, trees, stars, etc. from growing too big. What happens if they grow too big? Collapse.
- ganzuul 3y agoWhich model? They are diverging you know.
- bmitc 3y agoThe observable universe is finite, is it not?
- ganzuul 3y agoA finite observer would observe a finite universe. Long story short your ability to observe qualia suggests to you that you have a faculty which is infinite.
- Vecr 3y agoWhy? That's not how most models of practical computing work. If you don't need infinite precision you can do with a lot less and break loops/recursions.
- ganzuul 3y agoIf quantum works infinite precision is free.
- Vecr 3y agoI'm not sure if that's true in practice, but even if so, how's that an argument for an infinite universe?
- ganzuul 3y agoYou need an infinite universe to have infinite precision. The existence of transcendental numbers such as pi seem to indicate this is the case.
- Vecr 3y agoThat just means that you can't realize infinite precision, infinite length, or infinite time. That's fine, and is probably correct. Good and Real by Gary L. Drescher (2006) talks about it, but large parts of the book are "wrong" (in the same way Occam's razor is wrong, not the same way the flat Earth is wrong). I'd say almost all of it is fixable though, so it's useful. I'd look out for the parts on the multiple worlds hypothesis of quantum mechanics (no better than modern version of the Copenhagen interpretation, unless you think wave function collapse is a physical event that has a cause), gives more respect to Wolfram's cellular automata ideas than it should (it should give almost no respect at all), and accepts evidential decision theory more than it should. Sabine Hossenfelder and modern causal decision theorists would have problems with it, but it's a good introduction for people who think human brains are magical and/or better than computers.
- ganzuul 3y agoPersonally I'm a fan of Gödel's rotating universe. With closed time-like loops at this scale eternity too is close at hand.
- layer8 3y agoGödel’s rotating universe presupposes that space is empty. Even if it could be made to work with a universe containing matter, it would just mean that everything repeats identically over and over. That’s effectively more akin to a finite-in-time universe.
- layer8 3y agoThe universe is expanding at an exponential rate, which means our future light cone will contain fewer and fewer matter. For all practical purposes, the observable and accessible universe is thus continuously shrinking. While the universe may indeed be infinite, that fact is of no help here.
- timeon 3y agoMost people do not grasp nothingness so they think about infinity instead. But everything has it's end. Emptiness is most powerful concept.