This is a classic
πFS
161–170 of 224 posts
Re: πFS
#162[deleted]
Re: πFS
#163This got me thinking about the "simulation theory":
If our universe is simulated, it must be possible to snapshot the entire state for one iteration (however time now is quantized, open question). "... From here, it is a small leap to see that if π contains all possible files, why are we wasting exabytes of space storing those files, when we could just look them up in π!" (from pifs, above)
This means that not only does a singular snapshot of our universe exists in pi, but every single one does
The information for our entire universe's simulation is stored in pi (and every other number like it)
Re: πFS
#164This got me thinking about the "simulation theory": If our universe is simulated, it must be possible to snapshot the entire state for one iteration (however time now is quantized, open question). "... From here, it is a small leap to see that if π contains all possible files, why are we wasting exabytes of space storing those files, when we could just look them up in π!" (from pifs, above) This means that not only d…
A theory is something you can test, model, write proofs, do calculations, eg quantum field theory, group theory.
Simulation "theory" isnt a theory its a conjecture.
Theres no meat to it.
Re: πFS
#165This got me thinking about the "simulation theory": If our universe is simulated, it must be possible to snapshot the entire state for one iteration (however time now is quantized, open question). "... From here, it is a small leap to see that if π contains all possible files, why are we wasting exabytes of space storing those files, when we could just look them up in π!" (from pifs, above) This means that not only d…
If we could restore the snapshot from around the year 2000 that'd be great, would like to make some changes.
Re: πFS
#166Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Fnd_in_a_Lbry
Meta: every single comment seems to start with some variation of "Reminds me of". Had to get mine in.
Re: πFS
#167Reminds me of when I tried to use the library of babel as a data compression tool. It led me down a fun rabbit hole and was my first introduction to information theory. The conclusion being that you basically need the same amount of data to represent the address of your data as the data itself, so it's not really effective at compression, just a fun thought experiment. The cool part of this in modern times is that LL…
In some sense, science is the most extreme form of compression - Newtonian mechanics explains an incredible number of phenomena in a few lines of text.
Yes. But /lossful/ compression: (scientific, philosophical etc.) laws compress an abstract narration of events into that tiny, hard, fundamental, predictive detail.
(Then it depends on your concern: "Aagh, the aunt fell!" // "Oh yes, that'd be Newton")
Re: πFS
#168This isn't really going far enough; the readme says - keep the metadata on a piece of paper or whatever. But: The metadata is data too, you can find it ALSO within \pi. So it's \pi all the way down.
Not even sure if there an interesting Collatz-like conjecture here.
Re: πFS
#169This got me thinking about the "simulation theory": If our universe is simulated, it must be possible to snapshot the entire state for one iteration (however time now is quantized, open question). "... From here, it is a small leap to see that if π contains all possible files, why are we wasting exabytes of space storing those files, when we could just look them up in π!" (from pifs, above) This means that not only d…
> This means that not only does a singular snapshot of our universe exists in pi, but every single one does
The word 'exist' is doing a lot of work here. Could any computer actually find the value in pi? Each computation takes energy, and there is a finite amount of energy in the universe. Does the value 'exist' in pi if it could never be rendered? How much different is that claim from "our simulated universe is a file on gods computer, located just past the edge of the observable universe or 18 inches away in the 4th dimension"?
A similar thought experiment I've had is with the lottery. With just a few sheets of paper, there exist a sequence of numbers that would completely shut down both major US lotteries - ossibly even get you arrested - if they contained the winning numbers for the next 50, 20, or even 10 consecutive draws. Think about the consequences. You would win, and win again the next draw, and they would be certain you cheated. Then confiscate your pad, and draw again and win a third time. They would have to shut the contest down because this is "mathematically impossible ". But it's not. Just like your thought experiment, it's "just numbers"
Re: πFS
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
I once interviewed for a company and the interviewer was telling me how he (a vc) funded a project to generate large streams of random numbers; you would select an index at random, share that private key with somebody, and then the subsequent text could be used as a one-time-pad. NSA would be forced to buffer/save the entire stream, which could be generated at GB/sec, if they wanted to decrypt. It didn't seem very pr…
I wonder if we could mess with NSA-style surveillance by having a good chunk of the population streaming lots of random data over the internet. Essentially, Alice piping her /dev/random to Bob's /dev/null over netcat or something. Make a slick looking app that does it 24/7 in the background using excess bandwidth and tell people it sticks it to the NSA. Spy agencies would not only have to store it all in case it was…
That's known as cover traffic and is a tactic employed by many of the anonymity oriented overlay networks.
I'll note that any observer already has this problem to the extent that video streams are also encrypted. However most observers presumably recognize the endpoints as well as being able to classify the traffic by means of statistical analysis.
What might be useful would be a tool to generate arbitrary user data of various forms, including HMTL, video, audio, and various message formats. Then it could assemble a convincing traffic stream full of gibberish to exchange with peers at random. You wouldn't even necessarily need all that much of it to overwhelm any would be observers when considered relative to the volume of streaming service traffic that already exists.