Assuming the universe is purely physical and self-contained (there aren’t things “outside” causing effects or changes), it seems clear that no subset of the universe can contain all the information in the whole universe. Ok, the trivial subset “the whole universe” can, but there’s no compression or sufficiently-precise knowledge of constants and rules that perfectly describes the universe which fits inside a tiny part of the universe.
Those constants aren’t artifacts of the universe, they ARE the universe. We can learn and encode them to an arbitrary precision, without ever exactly knowing them.
[ETA it’s not actually known if the universe is bigger than itself. It could be a quine. It could be a processing substrate that holds “temporary” information that we’re experiencing which is MUCH bigger than the initial program. I strongly suspect not, but don’t know of any evidence that would point one way or the other. ]
but there’s no compression or sufficiently-precise knowledge of constants and rules that perfectly describes the universe which fits inside a tiny part of the universe.
Why is that clear?
It’s obvious you can’t simulate the universe in the universe. It’s not obvious you can’t build the simulator, just not have the money to pay for all the ram you’ll need to switch it on.
Assuming the universe is purely physical and self-contained (there aren’t things “outside” causing effects or changes), it seems clear that no subset of the universe can contain all the information in the whole universe. Ok, the trivial subset “the whole universe” can, but there’s no compression or sufficiently-precise knowledge of constants and rules that perfectly describes the universe which fits inside a tiny part of the universe.
Those constants aren’t artifacts of the universe, they ARE the universe. We can learn and encode them to an arbitrary precision, without ever exactly knowing them.
[ETA it’s not actually known if the universe is bigger than itself. It could be a quine. It could be a processing substrate that holds “temporary” information that we’re experiencing which is MUCH bigger than the initial program. I strongly suspect not, but don’t know of any evidence that would point one way or the other. ]
Why is that clear?
It’s obvious you can’t simulate the universe in the universe. It’s not obvious you can’t build the simulator, just not have the money to pay for all the ram you’ll need to switch it on.