[ExI] Which direction does the arrow of time point in Conway's Game of Life?

[Stuart LaForge]

Quoting John Clark:

> Except that Black Holes are the most massive thing in the universe but also
> the simplest, they can be completely described by just 3 numbers, mass,
> spin, and electrical charge; 2 really because electrical charge would
> always be zero or close to it.

The black hole information paradox that results from Wheeler's "No  
Hair" theorem is very mysterious. The contradictory predictions made  
by general relativity and quantum mechanics as to what happens at the  
event horizon of a black hole suggest that one or the other must fold.  
Landau's law requires that any destruction or erasure of information  
(quantum or classical) costs energy and releases heat and entropy into  
the environment. Thus the event horizon should be seething with fire.  
But the equivalence principle from GR says that an astronaut should  
not notice anything unusual when he passes the event horizon of large  
enough black hole until he starts to near the singularity and tidal  
forces extrude him. So is our astronaut crushed by tidal forces,  
disintegrated by heat, or in a quantum superposition of both?

https://www.nature.com/news/astrophysics-fire-in-the-hole-1.12726

Interestingly enough Einstein-Cartan theory solves the problem by  
essentially saying that the astronaut's information bounces off a  
discontinuity, instead of a singularity, and forms a new avatar in a  
different expanding universe on the other side of an  
Einstein-Rosenberg wormhole.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Cartan_theory

In the context of a simulation, I suppose Einstein-Cartan theory would  
give black holes a role analogous to TCP-IP ports.

> The Earth was made with far fewer particles
> than a Black Hole but it's vastly more complex, you'd need a hell of a lot
> more than 2 numbers or even 3 to describe it.

Yes, although depending on how big and precise the numbers are, a  
single number can be more complex than a set of multiple numbers. For  
example, a single 20-digit number is more complex than four 2-digit  
numbers.

>> * > For example, think about the slowdown of video games at the more
>> advanced levels when there are too many sprites moving around the  screen
>> at one time.*
>
> If they're running out of processing power but the simulators still want to
> fool us then the solution would be simple, just slow down the simulation of
> the people you're trying to fool, then to us it would look like the super
> complex processing hogging thing had sped up.

But observers in gravity wells ARE slowed down such that they don't  
notice their own clocks running slow. And if we are in a simulation,  
as Henrick pointed out, then why would the simulators try to fool us?  
They could have done so without the extravagance of countless galaxies  
of billions of stars each separated by eons. And if the simulators are  
like psych grad students trying to fool us as a test of some sort,  
then that would mean we really are the central purpose of the entire  
universe. And that smacks of hubris.

The universe is complex enough to process information just fine  
without being a simulation programmed by simulators. Thus I am  
satisfied with an infinite universe or multiverse that is simply the  
base reality. Infinity makes God superfluous.

Stuart LaForge