Am 10.01.2017 um 20:17 schrieb Kevin Wampler:
> Ha! Love the post title.
> 
> Hmmm, I am by no means anything of an expert on this, but some of the
> points in that video seem either wrong or poorly described.
> 
> The main issue I think is that randomness or entropy are not properties
> of a single chunk of data or matter, but apply only to probability
> distributions of data/matter.  If you don't have a probability
> distribution, the appropriate concept is complexity (or
> compressibility), which is related but not the same.  The video tries so
> hard to confuse these concepts it almost appears intentional.

Is it truly confusion, or could it actually be insight?

> I think this confusion is behind some strange claims in the video.  For
> instance:
> 
>     claim: If information is constant, then since information is
> entropy, entropy must be constant, which we know is false from the
> second law of thermodynamics.
> 
> Contrary to the video's claims, as far as I'm aware the information in
> the universe is actually believed to be constant, despite the second law
> of thermodynamics.  This is ok, since the second law of thermodynamics
> is really about probability distributions of those states the universe
> might have given our limited observations, but the information content
> is about the state of the entire universe (independent of our
> observations).  So they're really two different things and there's no
> conflict.

Remember that quantum theory does away with the idea that there even
/is/ such a thing as "the" state of the universe.

Also, from a quick glance on Wikipedia, it seems that there isn't really
a clear consensus - let alone irrefutable proof - whether the amount of
information in the universe is constant not.

And I have a hunch that even if the use of technical terms isn't as
precise as a scientist could wish for, these guys may be onto something.


> All in all, interesting and fun, but I'd caution against trusting it
> much (unless I'm totally wrong here myself, which is certainly possible).

According to Heisenberg, shouldn't that be "uncertainly possible"? ;)

Post a reply to this message