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Calculating A Theoretical Boundary To Computation
TMB writes "Lawrence Krauss and Glenn Starkman, astrophysicists at Case Western Reserve University (and in LK's case, author of a number of books including Physics of Star Trek), just submitted this nice little paper to Phys. Rev. Letters. It claims that in an accelerating universe, the existence of a future event horizon puts a fundamental physical limit on the total amount of calculation that can be done, even in an infinite time. This limit is much smaller than the traditional Hawking-Beckenstein entropy. Among other things, this implies that and Moore's Law must have a finite lifetime, here calculated to be 600 years, and that consciousness must be finite."
We should now be able to compute the asymptotic limit of web-server bandwidth for slashdot-proofness per year for 600 years. I bet it's a constant price in street dollars.
"and that consciousness must be finite."
So they are saying that, using fundamental physics and mathematics, they have proof that if somebody has infinite wisdon, the universe can not be expanding?
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
Like dude, I was totally smoking this bogus weed and it like totally occured to me that there is like only so much stuff my finger can totally interact with. I mean warp theory is like so just no way, that I've got to depend on my photons you know. Cause when you think about it, all we ever feel is electron, and all anyone sees is the light we you know ... hey you gonna eat that brownie ... uh scatter. So like there's only so much stuff that we can interact with in the visible universe. So it's like there is an edge, and only so much stuff. Which means that the whole universe can only hold so many states. So there's like a finite ability for it know and like cosmically meditate about what's going down you know??
Dude...
I know, I totally stayed at a holiday inn express last night.
If there's only a finite amount of computation available, surely it's irresponsible to run things like SETI and the distributed.net cracking contests?! You're using up all of the sums, dammit!
Ydco co
"I guess the main argumentation of Roger Penrose is that Godel Incompleteness Theorem can not be understood by a computer,"
Penrose is just a carbon chauvinist with a chip on his shoulder. I've never seen him once offer actual proof of any such conjecture, only carbonist assertions that he can magically understand something that silicon-based life cannot: our future silicon overlords have a special place in virtual Hell reserved for his uploaded consciousness.
Well... in 600 years of Moore's Law, you get 400 doublings of computing power. So you need 400 more bits in your key space than you think you do now. :-)
[TMB]