I don’t see how the divisibility story helps with that though? I can say similar things about mass.
Might be able to push back on it a bit: Consider the motion of the subatomic particles that make the matter, pushing against each other, holding their chemical bonds. Why doesn’t that count as a continuous flowing of energy around the system? How do you distinguish that from the energy of computation? It still has the shape of the computation.
We wouldn’t normally think of it as an exchange of energy because none of it gets converted to heat in the process of doing the thing, it’s conserved. Is that metaphysically relevant? Maybe it is??
This is rough (I’ve made a bit of progress on this and should write another version soon), but in there I come across reason to think that this would all work out very neatly if observer-moments only appear in low-entropy systems.
So if you’re saying that the experience is had in the traversal from low-entropy to higher-entropy, That’d do it. It would make more sense than I can easily articulate right now, if that’s how anthropic binding works.
I come to the idea of the energy as a measure of computation based on the exploration of Ebborian brains, which are 2 dimensional beings which have thickness in 3d dimension. They could be sliced horizontally, creating copies.
The biggest part of the mass of a computer could be removed without affecting the current computations, like different bearing and auxiliary circuits. They maybe helpful in the later computations but only current are important for observer-counting.
This also neatly solves Boltzmann brains problem: they by definition have very low energy of computation, so they are very improbable.
And this helps us to explain the problem of thermodynamics which you mentioned. The chaotic movement of electrons could be seen as sum of many different computations. However, each individual computation has very small energy and “observer weight” if it is conscious.
I didn’t read the post you linked yet, and will comment on it later.
Boltzmann brains necessarily have a low energy of computation? Relative to what? The heat surrounding them?
Don’t we also, relative to that?
Can it actually be argued that the total energy of life-supporting universes (not even limiting it to just the cognitions inside them, just the whole thing) is higher than the total energy of boltzmann brains within the much more frequent highly entropic universes? I’m not even sure of that. See, I’d expect orderly universes to be much less frequent than highly entropic universes, order requires highly intricate machines—with just the right balance of push and pull and support for variation but not too much—which so easily collapse into entropy when the parameters are even slightly off.
But I’m not sure how that ratio compares to the rate of boltzmann braining, which is also very low.
I think that most BBs have low energy in absolute terms, that is, in joules.
While total energy and measure of BBs may be very large, there are several penalties which favour real minds in anthropics:
Complexity. Real mind capable to think about anthropic is rather complex, and most BBs are much simpler, and by saying “much” I mean double exponent of the brain size.
Content. Even a complex BB has the same probability to think about any random thing as about anthropics. It gives 10-100 orders of magnitude penalty.
Energy. Human mind consumes for computations, say, 1 Watt, but a BB will consume 10-30 orders of magnitude less. Here I assume that the measure is proportional to the energy of computations.
Side note: there is a interesting novel about how universe tries to return to the normal state of highest entropy via creating some unexpected miracles on earth which stop progress. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitely_Maybe_(novel)
Note that the part of your reply about entropy is related to a plot of fictional novel. However, the plot has some merit, and a similar idea of anthropic miracles was later explored by Bostrom in “Adam and Eve, UN++”
I agree that energy measure seems intuitive.
I don’t see how the divisibility story helps with that though? I can say similar things about mass.
Might be able to push back on it a bit: Consider the motion of the subatomic particles that make the matter, pushing against each other, holding their chemical bonds. Why doesn’t that count as a continuous flowing of energy around the system? How do you distinguish that from the energy of computation? It still has the shape of the computation.
We wouldn’t normally think of it as an exchange of energy because none of it gets converted to heat in the process of doing the thing, it’s conserved. Is that metaphysically relevant? Maybe it is??
This is rough (I’ve made a bit of progress on this and should write another version soon), but in there I come across reason to think that this would all work out very neatly if observer-moments only appear in low-entropy systems.
So if you’re saying that the experience is had in the traversal from low-entropy to higher-entropy, That’d do it. It would make more sense than I can easily articulate right now, if that’s how anthropic binding works.
I come to the idea of the energy as a measure of computation based on the exploration of Ebborian brains, which are 2 dimensional beings which have thickness in 3d dimension. They could be sliced horizontally, creating copies.
The biggest part of the mass of a computer could be removed without affecting the current computations, like different bearing and auxiliary circuits. They maybe helpful in the later computations but only current are important for observer-counting.
This also neatly solves Boltzmann brains problem: they by definition have very low energy of computation, so they are very improbable.
And this helps us to explain the problem of thermodynamics which you mentioned. The chaotic movement of electrons could be seen as sum of many different computations. However, each individual computation has very small energy and “observer weight” if it is conscious.
I didn’t read the post you linked yet, and will comment on it later.
Boltzmann brains necessarily have a low energy of computation? Relative to what? The heat surrounding them?
Don’t we also, relative to that?
Can it actually be argued that the total energy of life-supporting universes (not even limiting it to just the cognitions inside them, just the whole thing) is higher than the total energy of boltzmann brains within the much more frequent highly entropic universes? I’m not even sure of that.
See, I’d expect orderly universes to be much less frequent than highly entropic universes, order requires highly intricate machines—with just the right balance of push and pull and support for variation but not too much—which so easily collapse into entropy when the parameters are even slightly off.
But I’m not sure how that ratio compares to the rate of boltzmann braining, which is also very low.
I think that most BBs have low energy in absolute terms, that is, in joules.
While total energy and measure of BBs may be very large, there are several penalties which favour real minds in anthropics:
Complexity. Real mind capable to think about anthropic is rather complex, and most BBs are much simpler, and by saying “much” I mean double exponent of the brain size.
Content. Even a complex BB has the same probability to think about any random thing as about anthropics. It gives 10-100 orders of magnitude penalty.
Energy. Human mind consumes for computations, say, 1 Watt, but a BB will consume 10-30 orders of magnitude less. Here I assume that the measure is proportional to the energy of computations.
Side note: there is a interesting novel about how universe tries to return to the normal state of highest entropy via creating some unexpected miracles on earth which stop progress. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitely_Maybe_(novel)
[edited]
Note that the part of your reply about entropy is related to a plot of fictional novel. However, the plot has some merit, and a similar idea of anthropic miracles was later explored by Bostrom in “Adam and Eve, UN++”