Since our whole universe may be defined by something as frugal as hundreds of bits of complexity then the fact that there’s an upper bound on speed is an interesting thing since it makes locality a very tangible thing, and not just a question of adding some bits of information to define that where in the universe that “locality” is.
“If you want to print out just Earth by itself, then it’s not enough to specify the laws of physics. You also have to point to just Earth within the universe. You have to narrow it down somehow. And, in a big universe, that’s going to take a lot of information.”
Yes. To put it another way: it takes much more than 500 bits of information to predict a lifetime’s experiences. You have to no where you are in the universe/multiverse. The counterintuitive fact is that a set can contain much less information (down to 0 bits) [*] than one of it subsets..and what we see is always a subset.
[*]”A skeptic worries about all the information necessary to specify all those unseen worlds. But an entire ensemble is often much simpler than one of its members. This principle can be stated more formally using the notion of algorithmic information content. The algorithmic information content in a number is, roughly speaking, the length of the shortest computer program that will produce that number as output. For example, consider the set of all integers. Which is simpler, the whole set or just one number? Naively, you might think that a single number is simpler, but the entire set can be generated by quite a trivial computer program, whereas a single number can be hugely long. Therefore, the whole set is actually simpler. Similarly, the set of all solutions to Einstein’s field equations is simpler than a specific solution. The former is described by a few equations, whereas the latter requires the specification of vast amounts of initial data on some hypersurface. The lesson is that complexity increases when we restrict our attention to one particular element in an ensemble, thereby losing the symmetry and simplicity that were inherent in the totality of all the elements taken together. In this sense, the higher-level multiverses are simpler. Going from our universe to the Level I multiverse eliminates the need to specify initial conditions, upgrading to Level II eliminates the need to specify physical constants, and the Level IV multiverse eliminates the need to specify anything at all.”—Tegmark
Since our whole universe may be defined by something as frugal as hundreds of bits of complexity then the fact that there’s an upper bound on speed is an interesting thing since it makes locality a very tangible thing, and not just a question of adding some bits of information to define that where in the universe that “locality” is.
“If you want to print out just Earth by itself, then it’s not enough to specify the laws of physics. You also have to point to just Earth within the universe. You have to narrow it down somehow. And, in a big universe, that’s going to take a lot of information.”
Yes. To put it another way: it takes much more than 500 bits of information to predict a lifetime’s experiences. You have to no where you are in the universe/multiverse. The counterintuitive fact is that a set can contain much less information (down to 0 bits) [*] than one of it subsets..and what we see is always a subset.
[*]”A skeptic worries about all the information necessary to specify all those unseen worlds. But an entire ensemble is often much simpler than one of its members. This principle can be stated more formally using the notion of algorithmic information content. The algorithmic information content in a number is, roughly speaking, the length of the shortest computer program that will produce that number as output. For example, consider the set of all integers. Which is simpler, the whole set or just one number? Naively, you might think that a single number is simpler, but the entire set can be generated by quite a trivial computer program, whereas a single number can be hugely long. Therefore, the whole set is actually simpler. Similarly, the set of all solutions to Einstein’s field equations is simpler than a specific solution. The former is described by a few equations, whereas the latter requires the specification of vast amounts of initial data on some hypersurface. The lesson is that complexity increases when we restrict our attention to one particular element in an ensemble, thereby losing the symmetry and simplicity that were inherent in the totality of all the elements taken together. In this sense, the higher-level multiverses are simpler. Going from our universe to the Level I multiverse eliminates the need to specify initial conditions, upgrading to Level II eliminates the need to specify physical constants, and the Level IV multiverse eliminates the need to specify anything at all.”—Tegmark