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What you're saying makes perfect sense, but that isn't what Yegge is saying at all. You're saying the state of the universe may or may not be sensible before th

by jd 18y ago

What you're saying makes perfect sense, but that isn't what Yegge is saying at all. You're saying the state of the universe may or may not be sensible before the Big Bang, but it's unknowable so speculation is pointless. What Yegge is saying is that it's like an undefined variable: the state is totally arbitrary. But we don't even know if the universe could be anything before the Big Bang.

derefr 18y ago
The state is arbitrary to the Host system, just like the state of memory before it is initialized is arbitrary to us. In the guest (Embedded) system, it's unknowable. Arbitrary is a term Gods (creators of embedded systems) use to refer to things that are unknowable from within guest systems, and that they don't particularly care about from the vantage point of the host. The only assumption Yegge is making is that the Big Bang wasn't self-started from a confluence of previous state, but "initialized", overwriting that state, which almost makes sense: black holes overwrite later state, rendering incoming material arbitrary to its later states (they're an "information sink"), so why couldn't the Big Bang overwrite earlier state, rendering outgoing material arbitrary from its previous state (an "information tap")?
- jd 18y ago
  By saying the universe has an arbitrary state before the Big Bang you're also assuming the universe has _a_ state before the Big Bang. But perhaps the universe had no state at all. A variable is a piece of memory and always has _a_ value. The value may be arbitrary, the value may be unknowable, but we know at least one thing: that at any point in time a variable has exactly 1 value.
  - incomethax 18y ago
    Most values for quantum variables have multiple values at any point in space-time. That said, even if we assume that the universe had no state prior to the big bang, we can postulate that state to be arbitrary, because it may be 0, it may be 1, or it may be both 0 and 1 at the same time.

by jd 18y ago

derefr 18y ago

The state is arbitrary to the Host system, just like the state of memory before it is initialized is arbitrary to us. In the guest (Embedded) system, it's unknowable. Arbitrary is a term Gods (creators of embedded systems) use to refer to things that are unknowable from within guest systems, and that they don't particularly care about from the vantage point of the host. The only assumption Yegge is making is that the Big Bang wasn't self-started from a confluence of previous state, but "initialized", overwriting that state, which almost makes sense: black holes overwrite later state, rendering incoming material arbitrary to its later states (they're an "information sink"), so why couldn't the Big Bang overwrite earlier state, rendering outgoing material arbitrary from its previous state (an "information tap")?

jd 18y ago
By saying the universe has an arbitrary state before the Big Bang you're also assuming the universe has _a_ state before the Big Bang. But perhaps the universe had no state at all. A variable is a piece of memory and always has _a_ value. The value may be arbitrary, the value may be unknowable, but we know at least one thing: that at any point in time a variable has exactly 1 value.
- incomethax 18y ago
  Most values for quantum variables have multiple values at any point in space-time. That said, even if we assume that the universe had no state prior to the big bang, we can postulate that state to be arbitrary, because it may be 0, it may be 1, or it may be both 0 and 1 at the same time.