The minimal explanation for what is going on still requires that something must hold the state of the universe and execute its transition function. This prime mover, the basic Turing machine ticking away in the void is a debt that freaks me out.
No! I know that a minimal finite state machine for performing universal computation is incredibly easy to make. And yet, how is there something rather than nothing? Does that not blow your mind?
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3.1415 … what is next? Information and it’s patterns have a kind of existence, but lack causal powers. Except when it comes to sequences (eg Fibonacci), previous states determine the next. Kind of existence, kind of causality — do we exist inside some math pattern?pic.twitter.com/IPkXS283pZ
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(I think that is where Egan got confused when he developed the dust theory. The meaning of information is its relation to change in other information. It must be dynamic.)
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It does not, because I think the question is ill-defined. What is "something", what is "nothing"? It becomes more interesting if you define it in terms of entropy.
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The universe started out with extremely low entropy and is trending towards extremely high entropy. It is neither "something" nor "nothing" - from the perspective of an observer, only change exists.
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