Born to do Math 121 – Forms of Order: 10^58, 10^9, 10^22, and 10^89
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Born To Do Math
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/05/22
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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about the overall argument?
Rick Rosner: My argument would be that it is untenable with the overall universe and its information processing with its holding every individual atom in its awareness. So, the matter in the universe at our scale – a planetary scale or planetary affairs, what goes on, on a planet. That stuff is allowed to go on below the overall awareness of the information processing that is the universe.
The universe still needs this stuff going on, this micro stuff. It still needs stars at 10^60th atoms. But the universe is not concerned or able to keep track of what is going on from a moment to moment basis among the 10^58 to the 10^60 atoms in a star
Because among those 10^50th atoms – they’re really atoms as everything is ionized, so nuclei and free electrons, each atom – let’s call them atoms for now – might interact a billion times in a second. It doesn’t matter if a million or a trillion times in a second.
It is still 10^58 times 10^9 interactions per atom per second gives you 10^67 interactions in a star per second, and the computational entity that is the wider universe, even though it has a huge information capacity, is not aware of its computations.
Every one of the 10^67 interactions going on in every 10^22 stars in the universe per second. That raises a second question, “What then does count as a computation in the universe or a consequential computation in the universe, or a consequential thought or conclusion?”
Jacobsen: A computation not separated from the wider universe.
Rosner: Regardless of whether the universe is conscious, a computational entity should be able to draw something like conclusions. That when we put data into a computer, we expect data to come out. We expect the computer to compute and to deliver the product of those computations, whether it is numbers on a spreadsheet or frames of a videogame.
Those frames are the results of computations. That’s what computers are for, to do computations. ON a larger scale, in an analogous way, you would expect the universe to be processing data and producing results.
Regardless of whether the results are end products or through products, but, what are they in the wider universe? For one thing, the universe is computing itself. The quantum interactions that take place at the huge rate that we’re talking about.
We’re talking 10^67 interactions time 10^22 stars is close to 10^89 quantum interactions per second in the entire universe. But those are micro computations or interactions. You would expect that the universe is operating on a more macro level.
What are those more macro computations or forms do those macro computations take? Or is the universe just the sum of its micro computations? Which I have a hard time believing, because if the universe were really just its micro computations and quantum interactions, why would it need these vast macro structures – 10^11 galaxies each containing 10^11 stars with the galaxies, clusters, and the solar systems? These macro structures that reflect the overall structure.
You cannot have a universe that is self-defining to this extent without those macro structures or the universe having differentiated itself into 10^22 stars. There is a question as to the significance of micro phenomena and macro phenomena and what they mean informationally to the overall universe.
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