Space-time quantization and its philosophical aspect

[Spathi]

Modern physics describes matter by real numbers. This means that an absolutely accurate description of any particle requires an infinite amount of information.

Intuitively, it seems that this should not be so, and the model of the Conway's Game of Life looks more close to reality. In this game, the state of the system is described by discrete values, i.e. a finite amount of information is sufficient to describe the system. The question arises, are there any analogs of the Game of Life (cellular automata), in which the laws of conservation and the laws of thermodynamics work?

The Game of Life clearly reproduces reality very poorly, since it does not contain any of this. In addition, this game has a different arrow of time. In our reality, we experrience a psychological arrow of time: we remember the events of the past and predict the events of the future, and this knowledge about the past and the future is very asymmetric - information about the past is much more voluminous, more specific, detailed, more reliable than the information about the future.

In the game Life, if there were intelligent beings, it would be the opposite: according to the state of the system at the moment of the present, it is possible to accurately predict the state of the system in the future, but it is impossible to recreate the state of the system in the past.

 

[pinball1970]

Modern physics describes matter by real numbers. This means that an absolutely accurate description of any particle requires an infinite amount of information. Intuitively, it seems that this should not be so, and the model of the Conway's Game of Life looks more close to reality. In this game, the state of the system is described by discrete values, i.e. a finite amount of information is sufficient to describe the system. The question arises, are there any analogs of the Game of Life (cellular automata), in which the laws of conservation and the laws of thermodynamics work? The Game of Life clearly reproduces reality very poorly, since it does not contain any of this. In addition, this game has a different arrow of time. In our reality, we experrience a psychological arrow of time: we remember the events of the past and predict the events of the future, and this knowledge about the past and the future is very asymmetric - information about the past is much more voluminous, more specific, detailed, more reliable than the information about the future. In the game Life, if there were intelligent beings, it would be the opposite: according to the state of the system at the moment of the present, it is possible to accurately predict the state of the system in the future, but it is impossible to recreate the state of the system in the past.

A lot to unpick there. First statement is wrong though QM uses imaginary numbers all the time.
@PeroK @vanhees71

 

[berkeman]

Thread closed for Moderation. (any thread with "philosophical" in the title is an issue...)

 

[DrClaude]

The thread will stay closed as we do not discuss philosophy.

I would however like to mention to @Spathi that these kind of ideas are developed by Stephen Wolfram in his book A New Kind of Science. But these ideas are controversial, see for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science#Reception