JoshuaZ comments on Theists are wrong; is theism? - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Will_Newsome 20 January 2011 12:18AM

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Comment author: JoshuaZ 21 January 2011 01:27:49AM 3 points [-]

If our understanding of the laws of physics is plausibly correct then you can't simulate our universe in our universe. Easiest version where you can't do this is in a finite universe, where you can't store more data in a subset of the universe than you can fit in the whole thing.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 21 January 2011 01:18:00PM 0 points [-]

You could simulate every detail with a (huge) delay, assuming you have infinite time and that the actual universe doesn't become too "data-dense", so that you can always store the data describing a past state as part of future state.

Comment author: ata 21 January 2011 01:47:21AM *  0 points [-]

That may not be a problem if the universe contains almost no information. In that case the universe could Quine itself... sort of.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 21 January 2011 04:07:02AM *  2 points [-]

If I'm reading that paper correctly, it is talking about information content. That's a distinct issue from simulating the universe which requires processing in a subset. It might be possible for someone to write down a complete mathematical description of the universe (i.e. initial conditions and then a time parameter from that point describing its subsequent evolution) but that doesn't mean one can actually compute useful things about it.

Comment author: Sniffnoy 21 January 2011 03:48:12AM 1 point [-]

Sorry, but could you fix that link to go to the arXiv page rather than directly to the PDF?

Comment author: ata 21 January 2011 04:37:02AM 0 points [-]

Fixed.