11–20 of 22 posts
The premise that we think we can pack an infinite amount of information into finite space time just feel wrong to me.
Why?
Z = { x | ... -2, -1, 0, 1, 2 ... }
I just packed an infinite amount of information in a couple of characters.
The premise that we think we can pack an infinite amount of information into finite space time just feel wrong to me.
> The premise that we think we can pack an infinite amount of information into finite space time just feel wrong to me. Why? Z = { x | ... -2, -1, 0, 1, 2 ... } I just packed an infinite amount of information in a couple of characters.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you think an infinite amount of thoughts? Are thoughts information? Interestingly, if the answer is "no" to the first question, that implies we should be able to quantify the maximum number of thoughts we can think in a single hour. I wonder if there's any research along these lines...
This makes me wonder how the information is stored in nature? Like how the characteristics of the particles and fields and all the interaction rules are are stored or embedded? If we know how much bits nature is taking to store some data and how it is storing, can we use this knowledge of structure to somehow compress the data and store it more optimally? Or is nature have most optimal storage ever?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you think an infinite amount of thoughts? Are thoughts information? Interestingly, if the answer is "no" to the first question, that implies we should be able to quantify the maximum number of thoughts we can think in a single hour. I wonder if there's any research along these lines...
16 bits per second - the bandwidth of consciousness: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4828313
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This makes me wonder how the information is stored in nature? Like how the characteristics of the particles and fields and all the interaction rules are are stored or embedded? If we know how much bits nature is taking to store some data and how it is storing, can we use this knowledge of structure to somehow compress the data and store it more optimally? Or is nature have most optimal storage ever?
Scientists don't really ask the question that where nature stores the laws it operates under. This is because the laws of nature (such as general relativity) are human conceptions - we don't think these laws are true laws of nature, only approximations to them. If the actual laws of nature are different from the ones found in science textbooks, they probably they have different storage requirements. For instance, rig…
[0] [RABBIT HOLE WARNING] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you think an infinite amount of thoughts? Are thoughts information? Interestingly, if the answer is "no" to the first question, that implies we should be able to quantify the maximum number of thoughts we can think in a single hour. I wonder if there's any research along these lines...
This makes me wonder how the information is stored in nature? Like how the characteristics of the particles and fields and all the interaction rules are are stored or embedded? If we know how much bits nature is taking to store some data and how it is storing, can we use this knowledge of structure to somehow compress the data and store it more optimally? Or is nature have most optimal storage ever?
This article is about relatively new things, but if you rewind 100 years, you find people thinking hard about this in simpler contexts. Gibbs is the big name, who essentially re-wrote thermodynamics (the study of heat, which until then had been thought of as some kind of invisible fluid) in the statistics of microscopic particles. This often involves counting the number of different possible states, for instance of all the atoms in a gas. Gasses whose molecules have two atoms (like N_2, compared to He) have larger heat capacity precisely because there are more different ways that these bi-atoms can be oriented, i.e. more information is needed to write down their states completely.
The older, thermodynamic, description is in a sense an optimally compressed representation of this microscopic picture. It keeps only what little information is visible to giants like us, who cannot see the individual atoms.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
16 bits per second - the bandwidth of consciousness: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4828313
I tripped hard yesterday and realized that it is likely that the subsystems of our brain harbor other consciousnesses. If consciousness is an artifact of our brain's process of decision making, acting on sensory inputs -- then consciousness is like a black hole, it is marked by an event/information horizon. The outside world is higher dimensional and the conscious subject experiences a lower dimensional projection of…
But kidding aside, yes, what we're experience is lower-fidelity version of the outside world. First reference to that idea that I'm aware of is Plato's cave. Of course, that idea and Occam's razor together says that trips aren't deep insights, but merely differently distorted but still low-fidelity projections of the world around us.
I'm liking the thought of a brain as a time share, though. If nothing else, it makes for a rich subject for interesting stories. And a good metaphor for the existence of the subconscious (and heck, the limbic system)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I tripped hard yesterday and realized that it is likely that the subsystems of our brain harbor other consciousnesses. If consciousness is an artifact of our brain's process of decision making, acting on sensory inputs -- then consciousness is like a black hole, it is marked by an event/information horizon. The outside world is higher dimensional and the conscious subject experiences a lower dimensional projection of…
Are you sure the trip is over? ;) But kidding aside, yes, what we're experience is lower-fidelity version of the outside world. First reference to that idea that I'm aware of is Plato's cave. Of course, that idea and Occam's razor together says that trips aren't deep insights, but merely differently distorted but still low-fidelity projections of the world around us. I'm liking the thought of a brain as a time share,…
Do you know if there have ever been experiments done to investigate whether alternate subconscious will can 'show itself conscious' by way of asking a person for a demonstration? Of course, this would require the subconscious to both observe the instruction and follow it, and have some method of conveying action. I tend to think that only the main consciousness would be able to execute direct actions. So I would guess the experiments would be very hard to perform without some clever setup.
It sounds almost silly but I really do wonder if the other decision making / executive functional parts of the brain have some level of understanding about their relative capacity to influence the body they reside in? Sharing a mind seems like such a silly "alien body snatchers" kind of idea. But HTM seems to hint at it.
https://discourse.numenta.org/t/oscillatory-thousand-brains-...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_temporal_memory
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you sure the trip is over? ;) But kidding aside, yes, what we're experience is lower-fidelity version of the outside world. First reference to that idea that I'm aware of is Plato's cave. Of course, that idea and Occam's razor together says that trips aren't deep insights, but merely differently distorted but still low-fidelity projections of the world around us. I'm liking the thought of a brain as a time share,…
I am pretty much back to normal except for the unsettling thoughts about alternate consciousnesses in the same being. Like you say, why wouldn't different parts of the brain have a will - the limbic system certainly has sway. Do you know if there have ever been experiments done to investigate whether alternate subconscious will can 'show itself conscious' by way of asking a person for a demonstration? Of course, this…
If you're interested in the science, I'd suggest starting from the Libet experiments (who essentially thinks his experiments show that the subconscious makes decisions, and the conscious retains a veto right)
It's a fascinating thought to entertain. (But you will forever doubt if you our your subconscious made the decision to think about this ;)
If you care more for pop-sci, Kahnemann's "Thinking fast and slow" idea of system1/system2 thinking might be a good read.
That still doesn't mean that different consciousnesses share a mind. We certainly have different systems competing for attention, but what consciousness even means. (I'd recommend Popper as a starting point for that debate, but mostly because the science is still very much in the "Dunno, but what happens if we poke here?" stage, IMHO. Philosophy seems more apt)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Scientists don't really ask the question that where nature stores the laws it operates under. This is because the laws of nature (such as general relativity) are human conceptions - we don't think these laws are true laws of nature, only approximations to them. If the actual laws of nature are different from the ones found in science textbooks, they probably they have different storage requirements. For instance, rig…
Along these lines, also see the Anthropic Principle [0] which states that "observations of the universe must be compatible with the conscious and sapient life that observes it." [0] [RABBIT HOLE WARNING] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
The simpler version of it is "God's will".