Jason wrote:
> If that is true then my underlying assumptions were flawed. My
> argument assumed that a non-reversible universe could not be simulated
> by a computer with bounded memory and using only reversible
> computations. The way I arrived at this assumption was imagining a
> non-reversible universe, such as the John Conway's game of life. If
> the computer that implements this simulation has limited memory then in
> order for the simulation to continue forever, prior states cannot be
> saved in memory and instead old states would have to be overwritten.
> This destruction of information which cannot be undone would be
> logically irreversible as I understand it. However if the simulation
> were one where each state has a 1 to 1 mapping, overwritting old states
> does not destroy them forever because previous states could always be
> computed from the current state.
Ok, I understand your argument more clearly now. But, why do you assume a
computer with bounded memory? Even with a finite amount of energy, we can
(theoretically) obtain unbounded memory by spreading it over an unbounded
volume of space. I'd guess that in practice this has approximately the same
level of difficulty as achieving an unbounded number of computations from a
finite amount of energy.
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Received on Sun Jan 14 2007 - 08:40:37 PST