To our best knowledge, what are the hard limits on ‘compressing’ physical systems? That is, given some bit of physics, what are the limits on building a simulator using less space/time/energy/bits/… than the original, and still having a similarly sized phase space? I expect physics is in general incompressible, but perhaps we can use some physical phenomena that don’t ordinarily play a part in the everyday systems we want to simulate?
I’ve seen people discuss what level of emulation is necessary for WBE. Supposing outright simulation is needed, how much bigger/more complex/more expensive might a robust simulator have to be compared to a regular brain?
I don’t know, I’m not a physicist. Don’t they have vacuum energy and virtual particles and other stuff that makes even empty space full of information? ETA: what’s empty space? A near-zero value of all relevant fields? But if fields can be measured to the same precision regardless of magnitude (?) then don’t you get the same amount of information unless the fields are actually a constant zero? I don’t understand physics, this may well be completely wrong.
Anyway, I expect the lack of phenomena important to brains in empty space (no ordinary matter and energy, atoms, chemistry) allows the compression of that. But can you simulate a typical physical system using significantly less matter or energy? (Or time?) Can you simulate the human brain or body?
I don’t know, I’m not a physicist. Don’t they have vacuum energy and virtual particles and other stuff that makes even empty space full of information?
Not so much as near black holes. Just look at their respective entropies.
FWIW, I expect that the human brain will prove to be highly compressible with advanced molecular nanotechnology.
Do you mean the compressibility of a single human brain in isolation, or the compressibility of an individual human brain given that at least one other human brain has already been stored (or is expected to be available during restoration), or both? I expect the data storage requirements of the latter to be orders of magnitude smaller than the former.
To our best knowledge, what are the hard limits on ‘compressing’ physical systems? That is, given some bit of physics, what are the limits on building a simulator using less space/time/energy/bits/… than the original, and still having a similarly sized phase space? I expect physics is in general incompressible, but perhaps we can use some physical phenomena that don’t ordinarily play a part in the everyday systems we want to simulate?
I’ve seen people discuss what level of emulation is necessary for WBE. Supposing outright simulation is needed, how much bigger/more complex/more expensive might a robust simulator have to be compared to a regular brain?
Why would “physics” be incompressible? Most of the universe is empty space, no?
I don’t know, I’m not a physicist. Don’t they have vacuum energy and virtual particles and other stuff that makes even empty space full of information? ETA: what’s empty space? A near-zero value of all relevant fields? But if fields can be measured to the same precision regardless of magnitude (?) then don’t you get the same amount of information unless the fields are actually a constant zero? I don’t understand physics, this may well be completely wrong.
Anyway, I expect the lack of phenomena important to brains in empty space (no ordinary matter and energy, atoms, chemistry) allows the compression of that. But can you simulate a typical physical system using significantly less matter or energy? (Or time?) Can you simulate the human brain or body?
Not so much as near black holes. Just look at their respective entropies.
FWIW, I expect that the human brain will prove to be highly compressible with advanced molecular nanotechnology.
Do you mean the compressibility of a single human brain in isolation, or the compressibility of an individual human brain given that at least one other human brain has already been stored (or is expected to be available during restoration), or both? I expect the data storage requirements of the latter to be orders of magnitude smaller than the former.
I was talking about the compressibility of a single human brain in isolation.