[extropy-chat] Planck time, and why it does not matter (was: "Dead Time" of the Brain)

[J. Andrew Rogers]

On Apr 26, 2006, at 7:17 PM, Heartland wrote:
> Please explain how any activity *itself* (not representation of it)  
> is information.
> Isn't information merely a part of a system that organizes that  
> activity?


If it can be specified, it is not just information but finite  
information.  Algorithms (and their implementations) are just compact/ 
efficient representations of static information.  How we choose to  
represent information does not alter the underlying information content.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity


Think of the brain as nothing more than a Giant Look-Up Table (GLUT)  
for the purposes of discussion.  It is a very simple process: given a  
static index of all possible states, return the corresponding state  
the index references.  The only "activity" that happens in the GLUT  
brain is that a list of states is searched and a corresponding state  
is returned.  The universe as a hash table.

For the GLUT brain, the algorithm for all activity (e.g. all those  
bits that are not the static state in the table) can be specified  
succinctly and finitely on a cocktail napkin.  The passage of time in  
the GLUT brain is a function of the number of look-ups that occur and  
nothing more.  Think of a single look-up as Planck time, the  
fundamental transition in state that creates "activity".


If Planck time suddenly changed from 5.391^-44 seconds to 5.391^-43  
seconds, would you even notice?  How about to 3.154^9 seconds (a  
century)?  Your experience of time and "activity" is not based on the  
latency between state transitions but is only dependent on those  
transitions occurring, since you define your experience of time as a  
function of the number of those transitions.  If the GLUT brain  
stopped functioning for a second or a year, would the GLUT brain  
notice?  After all, it has no sense of time outside of a sort of  
transition counter.  The result of the next lookup is not dependent  
on when that lookup occurs or how long the lookup takes to happen.


And just to nip the inevitable "but brains are not GLUTs" argument in  
the bud:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_completeness

Which basically says,"yes, they are" in a lot more words.



J. Andrew Rogers