3 ms·
Can we take the anthropic out of this? I reckon it'll make things easier. Instead of me knowing, do other physical objects get affected. I might get anemsia an
by lizzas 2y ago
Can we take the anthropic out of this? I reckon it'll make things easier.
Instead of me knowing, do other physical objects get affected. I might get anemsia and forget what the dots on a dice mean and say they are all the same: all dotty!
Imagine each hydrogen atom has a hidden guid but this is undetectable and has no effect on anything else. This is a secret from the rest of physics!
I guess!!! (Armchair pondering!) that that guid cannot be taken into account for entropy changes. At least from any practical standpoint.
You could imagine each atom having a guid and come up with a scheme to hash the atom based on where it came from ... but is that info really there and if so does it affect anything physically beyond that atoms current state (as defined by stuff that affects other stuff).
- bubblyworld 2y agoWhat anthropic do you mean? I'm describing properties of models, not people. Physics (probably) doesn't care what you "know". On the guid idea - fundamental particles are indistinguishable from one another in quantum mechanics, so they don't have anything like a guid even in principle. There is no experiment you could perform on an electron to determine whether it had been swapped out for a "different" one, for instance. Maybe I'm missing your point though?
- lizzas 2y agoSorry ... I am replying mostly to the dice idea which wasn't you. Yes correct about the guid idea. My point is the discussion is easier to follow if grounded in reality (as best modelled since that is all we have plus some evidence stored in the same "SSD"!)
- bubblyworld 2y agoOh I see. But on your guid thing, people often describe entropy in terms of the set of micro states of your system (the actually physical states in your model) and the macro states (sets of microstates that are described by a collection of high-level state variables like pressure/temperature). Physically indistinguishable stuff would have the same micro state, so yeah, they wouldn't affect entropy calculations at all, no matter what macro states you picked. But I disagree a bit about grounding things in reality - some concepts are quite abstract and having clean examples can be helpful, before you start applying them to the mess that is our universe!